The text for today's sermon comes to us from the book of 1 Kings, the nineteenth chapter:
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.
But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
We have arrived. The very last sermon of my vicarage year. I’m a little older now. I’m perhaps a little wiser. Thanks to some of the Dorcas cooking, even though I tried to stay away as much as I could, I’m a little heavier (gotta work on that back at Seminary). I have a few more gray hairs. Yeah, yeah, the bald guy has gray hairs. You can’t see them up top, but they’re in my beard. I blame you for all these things. Thank you.
I spent a lot of hours on this sermon, not just in study, but in what I was going to say. I had different styles of preaching in mind. I had different topics in mind. I was thinking that I could even preach the title of this sermon, like, "I have to go BACK to school? Oh, Lord, take away my life!!!" I could continue to say how great vicarage was, I could say how much I learned, I could say how wonderful it has been serving you all this year. I could say these things. And they’re true.
But, that’s not my job. You see, this morning, I’m still working. I’m STILL doing my job. Yes, I’m hired by you, Trinity Lutheran Church, during this vicarage year, and you have taken care of me generously. And my supervisor is Pastor McCracken, but he's not the one in charge. Not really. You see, my Boss, my Master, my Lord, He has other ideas. He tells me I can't preach about myself. I can't preach about how sad I am to leave vicarage. I can't preach about the desires of my heart and the fancies of my mind, like so many other pastors. My Boss has told me that I am to do something this last morning of my vicarage, and that is to preach His Word, my Boss' Word, the Word of God. Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, and yours as well, has called me this morning to preach to you. So, while I could certainly make this sermon all about me (after all, I’m very good at talking about me), I want you to know that this sermon isn’t really about me, it’s about us and Jesus Christ in us.
You see, I have preached to you 32 different sermons over this last year. I have stood in front of this congregation, preached in at least 65 different services, been the liturgist and lector in nearly a hundred more, and through it all have brought to you the Word of God.
I have condemned you with the Law, as all pastors are called to do. I have preached to you that we all are sinners and by our own works we deserve to go and are sending ourselves to hell.
But I have also preached to you that while you are yet sinners, Christ, God, the second person of the Trinity, in human flesh, died for you, the ungodly, so that you may receive the forgiveness of your sins, so that you may be declared righteous in God’s sight, so that you may inherit the gift of everlasting life.
And in all this work, in all my preaching, I have told you how we receive the gift of God: through the Word, read, preached, and taught, and through the Sacraments: Baptism and the Lord’s Super. These things ARE the Word of God and the physical manifestations of it and are useful to us to grow as Christians in our sanctification, living out our justification.
After all, as Paul says in 1 Timothy:
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted [because we do engage in godlessness], while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.I have worked hard, indeed, to teach you God's profitable and good Word and yet perhaps not hard enough. YOU haven’t changed much this last year, have you? We here at Trinity are still in our sins, are we not? We seem, when we reflect on our congregation, to be the former description of Paul's: evil people and impostors, going from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Yes, we here, we have our sins. Over the last year, I have noticed these sins. We gossip ad nauseum. We love to talk behind people’s backs. We hold our grudges. We don’t let them go until anyone and everyone knows that we have been hurt or spited or ignored or maligned. Everyone’s got to be involved. We love our lustful acts. It’s true. I’ve seen some of your Facebook accounts. I’ve interacted with you. I know what movies you go to, what books you read, and why you read them!
We break the third commandment all the time by despising the very Word of God as it is preached and delivered to us. You don’t think you do? Take a look at the worship attendance some time. Where have you all been? Inconsistency is a major theme for us. Get yourself to church! Be here! Hear the call to repentance AND the forgiveness of sins. Just because you hear it one a week, once a month, once a quarter, once a year, whatever it is, DOESN’T mean that you shouldn’t be here to hear it ALL the time, as much as you can!
Yes, we here at Trinity, even our visitors today, even myself included, we love our sins. We are set in our sins. We cannot free ourselves from our sinful condition, even if we wanted to, and we don’t really want to, do we? My preaching this year, even Pastor’s preaching this year, it has made no real discernible difference.
I think this how Elijah felt, that he was making no real difference. Oh man, if you know your Bible (perhaps another one of our many sins), you know that our Old Testament text for today follows up with Elijah after a major high. This is a great story! It’s one of my favorites! Elijah had just defeated, humiliated, and massacred the prophets of the false god, Baal. He set up a showdown to see which God, Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, or Baal, the false and pagan god, was real. Whatever sacrifice to either god was burned up, that god was the real one.
Baal never showed. Elijah gave a couple of excuses for Baal, in case the pagans couldn’t reason out where Baal was: maybe he was sleeping, maybe he had taken a long trip, maybe he was in the bathroom. They weren't too happy with the snarky attitude. And then it was Elijah’s turn. He set up his altar, he drenched everything with water, including putting a huge trench around the altar, and prayed to God, and fire came down from heaven and licked everything up. Everything was gone. So, all the people knew that Baal was no god at all and that Yahweh was the true God. It was no problem then when Elijah, spurred on by the Word of the Lord, demanded that the people seize Baal’s 450 prophets and slaughter them by the brook.
When the evil queen Jezebel heard that the prophet of God had done this, and this is where our lesson today picks up, she threatened Elijah so badly that he ran. What a turn around! He just has this huge moment of awesome triumph in God’s name and then he turns into a little wimp and runs away. Then he starts whining to God on top of it! “Oh, just take away my life. What’s the point? They killed all the other prophets; they’re going to kill me, too. Just take away my life. Just do it yourself, God. Make it easy for me.” And then he fell asleep.
Sometimes, preaching is this way. Sometimes, when Pastor and I step into the pulpit, and it’s not just for us two leaders of the Church, but for all pastors who preach the Word of God, we speak to you, the redeemed children of God, and it seems to make no difference. We get up here, have a great sermon, we convict you with the Law, we comfort you with the Gospel. And then you just go back to sinning. You gossip. You slander. You lust. You disappear on us for weeks, months at a time. You sin. UGH!!!
“Just take away our lives, God. What’s the point? You send us to this hard-hearted, sniff-necked people! They’re never going to listen! They’re never going to repent! They’re never going to truly know what it is to be forgiven!”
But this, this is sin, too, isn’t it? This is a pastor’s sin. The pastor’s sin is to think that HE is the one who will change you. The pastor’s sin is to think that HE is the one who is in control of your heart. The pastor’s sin is to think that HE is the one who is going to be able to convince you of the very love of God so that you DO turn from your sin by the very faith given to you by Jesus Christ in your baptisms. As much as we want to, WE don’t get to do these things, do we? I don’t get to reach into your chest and start bending your will. I don’t get to put my fingers into your brains to help you start making connections.
If it were up to me, if I could do these things, I know that I would fail. If it were up to me, if it were by my strength, my power, my wisdom, my ability, I would utterly fail and it would give you cause for despair. But it’s not up to me to change people. And it’s not up to Elijah to change people, either. It’s not up to Elijah to change the heart of Jezebel. He doesn’t get to walk into the palace and preach to her the prophesies of God and see her, by Elijah’s own powerful (though whiny) voice, cower in the corner, cringing away from God’s power. It’s all up to God in Christ Jesus, the very Word of God. And God makes this clear in the text today, too.
After all, if it were up to Elijah, he would utterly fail. He's a sinner, like you and me. And that is why God does what He does. He sends the angel of the Lord, the pre-incarnate Christ, to Elijah to say to him, “Get up. Eat.” He might as well be saying, “Take. Eat. Your journey is too much for you. You can’t do this on your own. You can’t do this by your own power. You need my power. You need my sustenance. You need my food. You need my drink. Take. Eat. This is my body, this is my blood, my gift to you, to eat and drink. Do this in remembrance of me, your God, your Lord, your Master.”
Remember a couple weeks ago when I told you that Christ didn’t just institute His sacrament in the upper room the night when He was betrayed? Christ also didn’t just institute it through His incarnate life and ministry on earth, He foreshadows it all through the Old Testament! “Take and eat! The journey is too much for you! Get your strength back!”
And it is the same for us here today. It is the same for harried and let-down Elijah as it is disappointed and tired pastors as it is for forgetful and busy, sinning parishioners. We are all sinners, and sinners in thought, word, and deed. We are awful people. We know that we sin. And because we sin, we often give up on the idea of turning away from it.
“What’s the point? It’s just going to get worse. I’m never going to get better. I’m never going to stop gossiping. I’m never going to stop lusting, slandering, hating. I’m never going to be able to get to church every week. I just don’t feel like it. What’s the point God? Just take away my life. I’m stopping now.”
But the Word of God for you is the same Word of God for Elijah. Get up. Get up out of your pews. Come forward. Take. Eat. This is the body of Christ broken for you. This is the blood of Christ, shed for the forgiveness of all of your sins.
Believe the one who claims that He is the Bread of Life. Believe the one who came down from heaven, the omnipotent one who can do what He says and what He Himself has promised. Renew your strength with the strength of God, with the strength of Christ, with the strength that overcame death and the grave and delivered from the dead, a crucified, and yet risen, Lord Jesus Christ.
I wish that today, my last Sunday with you at Trinity, we would have communion, where all true believers in Christ’s own words, this is My body, this is My blood, could partake of the Lord’s Supper, to share together the very body and blood of Christ, in, with, and under the bread and the wine. I wish we could do this. But today is not a day when we are able to partake of this Sacrament. Today you can’t take it. But what do you have in its place?
Do you have a longing in yourself to eat of Christ’s body and drink of Christ’s blood? Do you have an ache inside yourself that cannot be gotten rid of until you partake in the very Supper that offers to you forgiveness for all of your sins? I pray that you do. All believers in Christ should ache, should long for His Supper, each and every day of their lives. Because that ache, it is not from yourself, but it is from Christ. It’s a work of God to draw you to His own altar. If a Christian does not have this, be on guard! Something is wrong! Something, someone, is turning, not away from sin, but away from God, away from His Word, away for what Christ instituted and promises.
After all, as you grow in strength and faith, you don’t need the Word of God less and less. You don't need the very body and blood of Christ, the forgiveness of Jesus less and less; you need it ALL more and more!
And while we long for the Sacrament of the Altar, while we have the promise of forgiveness when we eat and drink a literal Jesus, we also have the promise of Christ that where two or more are gathered in His name, He is here. Jesus Christ is HERE. So while we do not take Him into ourselves today, while we do not receive His very work into our bodies through the Sacrament, we stand confidently in His presence and receive the same forgiveness through that as we do the Sacrament.
But please, as believers in Christ Jesus, we know that our feelings, our thoughts, our minds, our bodies, we know they will all betray us. Only Christ is true. Only Christ will guide us and lead us. Only Christ will forgive us. And so, when we DON’T long for the Supper, when we forsake our baptisms, that moment in time that God saved us and marked us for salvation, when we turn into sin and away from God... know that these are not things that are UNFORGIVABLE.
Is that what you expected me to say? Did you expect me to condemn you in these? We ALL turn away from Christ, every day in almost any way we can find. We are sinners; that's what we do. We are sinners. And Christ lived for sinners. Christ died for sinners. Christ rose for sinners. And while you are indeed a sinner, there is no unforgivable sin for you, dear Christian.
We, as Christians desire to cast off our sins, or we should, but as hard as WE try, we cannot. We just can't. We need Christ and we need His forgiveness, not just when we did something really bad, but ALL THE TIME because we are always bad, always evil, always sinful.
When you sin, that is you. Anything bad or evil, that is always YOUR work. You, especially on your own, can do nothing good. But when you do NOT sin, when you do the work that God calls good, when you put off the old self, when you are renewed in the spirit of your minds, when you walk in holiness and uprightness, when you put on the new self, that is not you or your work but Christ and His work. Christ does good things; you do not. After all, we worship the God who dwells, not just in the heavens, but in us, Christ in us, the gift whom we received in our baptisms.
When you imitate Christ, that is not you, not your work, it is Christ and His Word. When you repent of your sins, that is Christ in you. When you receive the forgiveness of your sins, that is Christ for you. When you are brought to the waters of baptism, that is Christ in you. When the Old Adam is drowned and the New Adam, Jesus Christ, comes up from the water to take his place, that is Christ for you. When you rightly worship the Triune God, that is Christ in you. When you gratefully receive the Word of God, that is Christ for you.
When you are convicted of the Law, that is Christ in you. When you hear the sweet words of the Gospel, that is Christ for you. When you come forward to receive the Lord’s Supper, that is Christ in you. When His body and blood go into your mouth, that is Christ for you. When you rejoice at God’s goodness, that is Christ in you. When you receive the benediction of the Lord, that is Christ for you.
You repented of your sins; that is Christ in you. My friends, your sins are forgiven; that is Christ for you. The gossip, the slander, the lust, the hatred, the despising of God’s Word, I tell you now, that in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven of all your sins. Do not persist in your sins. Do not despair either. Do not be either Jezebel, despising God, or Elijah, the whining prophet. Rather, be simul justus et peccator, be simultaneously sinner and saint, a sinner forgiven in Jesus Christ, and saint redeemed in Jesus Christ, a sinner and saint who receive the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, a sinner and saint who stands confidently and persistently in the presence of Jesus Christ in this place, this church, and through all your life and vocation as a baptized child of God.
Eat and drink of Christ, look to the Sacraments, and have eternal life, forever with the Bread of Life, the One who has saved you, the One who even now is sustaining YOU, dear friends, into everlasting life. With these words, God’s Word is preached, God's Word is taught, my job is done. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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