“Come and See!” John 1.35-51, LWML SUNDAY, Sept. '16

1.                   Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word this morning we observe Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Sunday is taken from John 1:35-51 and is entitled, “Come and See!” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                   Have you ever been surprised? Surprises can be pleasant. After a romantic stroll in the park, a man gets down on his knee, pulls out a beautiful ring, and asks his high school sweetheart, “Would you marry me?” A young wife shares big news with her unsuspecting husband: “Guess what? We are having a baby!” Surprises can also be unpleasant. Unexpected rain pours down on your much anticipated wedding day. An optimistic job seeker receives a letter of rejection after a seemingly great job interview. News of the sudden death of a loved one crushes us.

3.                   All surprises are, by definition, unexpected. But not all surprises are received in the same way. People can have different reactions to the same surprise. The results of the latest presidential election are in. Some celebrate. Others lament. Think of movie or restaurant reviews on the Internet. One woman’s favorite film or café is another woman’s worst entertainment or dining venue. Maybe you’ve heard someone describe to you an artist’s new style or her latest song by saying, “People either like it or hate it.” Same surprise. Different responses.

4.                   This is exactly what we encounter when Philip and Nathaniel respectively see and hear of Jesus for the first time. Through His only Son, God revealed His greatest surprise for a world in darkness: Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, has come from above to dispel the darkness. But, we have two entirely different reactions to this news.

5.                   After calling Andrew and his brother, Simon Peter, Jesus found Philip and called him to be His disciple too. “Follow me!” After spending time with Jesus, Philip learned the basics about this man from Galilee and shared the good news about Him with Nathanael. We sense excitement in Philip’s words: “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph!” Philip speaks as if he had found a treasure and he must tell everyone about it. He receives the news with a joyful heart. Philip sees Jesus through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the eyes of faith. He has literally seen the Light!

6.                   What about Nathanael? Through the mouth of Philip, Nathanael hears of Jesus for the first time. But his reaction is entirely different from Philip’s. We see no excitement upon Nathanael’s hearing of the good news, but a sense of suspicion about the Galilean Jesus: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael’s is not a joyful attitude.  Unlike Philip, Nathanael sees Jesus through the eyes of the flesh, somewhere between disbelief and unbelief. He’s literally in the dark! The Light has yet to overcome it.

7.                   The question remains: Can anything good come out of Nazareth in Galilee? The odds seem to be against Galilee. The northern province of Galilee is a land too close to unclean Gentiles and too far from holy Jerusalem in the southern province of Judea. No self-respecting Judean Israelite would look for the Son of God, the King of Israel, in such an unexpected place as Galilee of the Gentiles. Unlike their counterparts in Judea, Galilean Jews speak with strange accents and are known for a less than clean record on following prescribed Jewish laws. Why look for God’s power and wisdom in Galilee? It makes no sense! Can God truly work out His salvation from an unlikely place such as Nazareth in Galilee, and among such unlikely folks as Galileans?

8.                   God surprises us. We often look for power and wisdom in the wrong place. But it’s in Jesus of Nazareth, the unassuming man from Galilee, that we are called to see the power and the wisdom of God at work in our lives. We’re called to fix our eyes not on ourselves, but on Jesus. Not on our holiness, but on Jesus’ holiness. We’re reminded that we’re not the light. Jesus is the Light of the World.

9.                   To the surprised and perplexed, to those in disbelief or doubt and seeking answers, Jesus appears and invites them to fellowship with Him: “Come and you will see.” Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist, but then is suddenly sent by the Baptist on a different path. He must now follow Jesus. After all, John the Baptist wasn’t the light, but came to bear witness to the Light. But Andrew likely had questions about this sudden change of allegiance to Jesus from Galilee, and sought answers. So Jesus asked him, “What are you seeking?” And Andrew, along with another one of John’s former disciples, responded: “Rabbi…where are you staying?” Then, we hear Jesus’ wonderful invitation to these seekers: “Come and you will see!”   

10.               Later, Jesus extends the same invitation to Nathanael. But this time, Jesus speaks His words of invitation through Philip, whom He had just called to follow Him. Nathanael’s infamous words, “Can anything good come out Nazareth?” are met with Philip’s call to meet Jesus: “Come and see!” Any questions and doubts Nathanael may have had about the man from Galilee eventually come to an end when Jesus appears to him and, to Nathanael’s surprise, tells him exactly where he was before Philip called him, (“I saw you under the fig tree”). Suddenly, the light came on for Nathanael! The light of Christ overcame the darkness of Nathanael’s heart. Nathanael’s infamous words are now replaced by his confession of faith: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Good things do come out Nazareth in Galilee.

11.               Not only does God work out His salvation, but reveals the Light of the world, from a most unexpected place. Out of Galilee. In addition to this surprising state of affairs, God also chooses to bring the light of His Son to the most unlikely folks—to Galileans themselves—and through them invites others to partake of the fullness of life in His kingdom. Andrew, Simon Peter, and Philip are from Bethsaida in Galilee. Nathanael is from Cana in Galilee. And the list goes on. A Galilean Savior with His Galilean disciples. How shocking! How surprising! A people too close to the Gentiles. A people with too strange an accent. A people cut with a different cultural cloth than their southern counterparts. But it’s out of lowly Galilee that the risen Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, sends out His Galilean disciples to bring the world God so loved into the Light.

12.               Who are the Galileans of our day? Who are the people in our neighborhoods who look and speak differently from us, whose cultural ways confound us? Who are those strange folks from different tribes, languages, and nations in our midst? Who do we think, due to our close-minded sinful ways, are the neighbors least likely to receive God’s gracious invitation into the life-giving kingdom of His Son? You see, we too can be like Nathanael, doubtful about what God can do with neighbors in marginal areas like Galilee, cautiously optimistic about strangers coming into and serving in our churches, guarded about inviting modern-day Galileans to be disciples of Jesus with us for the sake of the world. When we think in these ways, we are in the dark. We only see with the eyes of the flesh, and we close our hearts to the surprisingly gracious ways in which God reveals His great love for new neighbors near and far through His Son.

13.               But God is merciful, and He surprises us again and again, inviting us to see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit what mighty deeds He can do in the most unlikely places. He calls us once again to see the Light, wherever He shines, even in Galilee and among Galileans! Jesus gently sends us a Philip who invites us on His behalf to “come and see” that the Lord can do great things in and out of lowly Galilee. Through Philip, we are called anew to “come and see” that the love of God in Christ Jesus knows no ethnic, racial, linguistic, tribal, or geographic boundaries.

14.               What is the church but a beautiful fellowship of Galileans? A marginal people called out of darkness into the light of the Son. A people once dead raised to new life through faith in God’s Son. God reminds us that the church is a bunch of strangers in a foreign land. We’re in the world, but not of the world. To the world, we’re complete strangers, speaking with a strange accent and walking to a strange beat. We speak the ancient language of Holy Scripture. We initiate people into the church by sprinkling them with water at our fonts. We eat the body and drink the blood of God’s Son at our altars. Our pastors forgive us our sins. We even love our enemies. And we sing to the tune of strange-sounding hymns and songs to worship our Galilean Lord and God. How odd! How surprising! We, too, are strange Galileans.

15.               On this LWML Sunday, we rejoice in Jesus’ calling to come and see once again what He has graciously done in our lives, His great deeds of salvation on behalf of Galileans like us. Today, we also receive with great thanksgiving Jesus’ surprising invitation to come and see what He can do and is doing even among strange Galilean neighbors in our midst to extend His kingdom throughout the world.

16.               Hey Philip! Can anything good really come out of Nazareth in Galilee? Yes, Nathanael. Jesus, God’s greatest gift to us, has come out of lowly Galilee for us and for our salvation. Good things do come out of Galilee!  Hey Philip! Can God work out His salvation in lowly places and among strangers today? Yes, Nathanael. “Come and see!”  Amen.

“Be Good Managers of God’s Earthly Gifts” Luke 16.1-15 Pentecost 18C, Sept. ’16

1.               Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior

Jesus Christ.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word today comes from the Gospel reading for from Luke 16.  Here our Lord Jesus calls us as His disciples to be shrewd (wise) in the use of money (vv. 1–9).  Jesus wants us to be faithful in the use of money, recognize its value (vv. 10–12) and not to overestimate its value (v. 13).  It’s entitled, “Be Good Managers of God’s Earthly Gifts,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.               Maybe some of you remember the old radio and television comic Jack Benny, who cultivated a reputation for greediness. In one of his skits, a robber holds Benny up, puts a pistol in his face, and demands, “Your money or your life!” For the longest time, Benny says nothing but looks extremely pained. Finally, the robber demands, “Hurry up!” To which the comedian responds, “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking it over!”

3.                   “Your money or your life!” Of course, the skit is funny because nobody would choose money instead of life, but if we change the words to read, “Your money is your life!” none of us is laughing anymore. That’s precisely the way a lot of people live—as if life was all and only about money. And maybe that’s true of us too. We devote an enormous amount of our time, our talents, and our energy to acquiring money—and not only acquiring it, but also saving it, investing it, and, yes, worrying about it.

4.                   Our text for today reminds us that money must never be the end or goal of our lives, however much we’re tempted, since as Christians we know that, Jesus Christ, not money, is the source of our life.  At the same time, though, our text today from Luke 16 also teaches us that the disciples of Jesus must be diligent and clever in their use of money.  Maybe that doesn’t seem all that difficult, because, after all.  We live in a world that’s extremely diligent and clever about money.

5.                   And we should all recognize that it’s a real blessing of the Lord to live in a society that knows how to make money!  Even in bad times, our modern economic system produces the necessities of life in abundance, and most of us have more than enough to satisfy both our wants and many of our desires.  And in good times, well, the sky’s the limit—the stock market roars, housing value soars, and “everybody” seems to have money for what they want out of life.

6.                   But it doesn’t happen by accident—and one of the advantages of living in a free enterprise system is that human beings are free to devote themselves to making money. So, boy, do we ever!  We do devote ourselves to making money, and we’re good at it, very clever.  Just like the shrewd manager in our text (vv 1–7).  Very clever indeed!   Only at the extremes of childhood and old age are we not heavily engaged in earning a living; but even in old age, we still pay a lot of attention to investments, taxes, Social Security, retirement plans, and so on. We continue to be concerned about money.  As far as children are concerned, much of our educational system is designed to prepare them for making money—providing the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and habits for being successful in the workplace. Adults, too, are often encouraged to go back to school to enhance their abilities for work and earning a living.  Even our politics often revolve around money. Politicians vie with one another to demonstrate their “cleverness” in economic matters by presenting to the voters their plans for prosperity.

7.                   Of course, not everybody is clever enough, not even in America, to make money all the time.  The politicians’ plans don’t always work; many businesses fail and workers lose jobs; and some who think they are really clever, so clever that they can break the law to make money, get caught and pay the price even if they’re wearing designer suits—again, just like the manager in our text.  If you think about it, no one is really ever clever enough—for the single-minded pursuit of money or devotion to the things that money can buy can’t solve the human dilemma that life leads only to death.  On the contrary, the person who devotes himself to the acquisition of money, no matter how successfully, has turned away from the one who is the source of all blessing, including money. Jesus warns in our text in Luke 16:13, ¹³No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

8.                   On account of the sinfulness that is the natural inheritance of all of us, we’re always looking for substitutes for the true God, and for many of us—poor as well as rich—that substitute is money. Forgetting God, the giver of all good things, we devote ourselves to wealth—getting it, spending it, and worrying about it when it’s gone. But to what end?  Jesus tells us in the Parable of the rich fool, Luke 12:16–21, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ ²⁰But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”  Ironically, worldly cleverness with money turns out to be the height of foolishness, for money doesn’t conquer death, doesn’t forgive sin, doesn’t reconcile us with God. In fact, by dependence on money, we run the risk of spending eternity cut off from all blessings—that’s death in hell.

9.                   To really live—both in this money-clever world and in the one to come—is the generous gift of Christ!  Today’s Epistle reminds us that, “God our Savior . . . wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Tim 2:3–6).  By paying the price for us—not with money but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death—Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, freed us from sin and death and liberated us from the idolatries of life, including our enslavement to money.  With the love of God guaranteed and the promise of heaven and resurrection certain, we need nothing more for ourselves either here or in eternity.

10.               But God has given us more, much more. He has given us time, talents, opportunities, and, yes, money.  Everywhere we look there are needs to respond to with God’s gifts. The church and her agencies are crying out for the resources to help, but often they’re stymied by the lack of funds.  Today’s parable teaches us that God wants us to be as clever with our resources for his purposes as ever we were in accomplishing the world’s.  Jesus says in Luke 16:8-9, ⁸The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. ⁹And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.”  Like the Good Samaritan, then, who stopped to help a stranger in need, even at the cost of his time, his safety, and his money, we, too, should respond to opportunities to show love toward our neighbor by helping him in every need, temporal and spiritual. In this way, we use what God has first given us to carry out God’s work in God’s way for God’s people.  And we’re no poorer for the giving, because we still have the one who gave it to us in the first place—to say nothing of a treasure in heaven beyond our wildest dreams.

11.               Because we’re still sinners, this Word of Jesus about serving God and not worldly wealth may strike us as difficult, maybe even impossible, to obey. And it is—on our own. But we aren’t on our own. Ransomed by Jesus, we belong forever to him—and so does our money. We have life, eternal life, which is infinitely richer than what even our most clever financial schemes and diligent labors can earn. And we didn’t earn it; we were given it, freely, by the forgiving death and resurrection of Jesus. So as forgiven sinners, we can respond to this Word of our Lord not with dread but with joy, because Jesus—and nothing else, not even money—is the source of our life.  Amen.