A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on July 4, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Mark 6:1-13. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Mark, the sixth chapter:
He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
A prophet is not without honor, except in his own hometown and among his relatives and in his own household. We don't really talk a lot about the pastoral office, but we should. What is it that parishioners owe to their pastors? It's a big question. Isn't it? We should honor our pastors. God has set them over us that they might guide us in the ways of God. And for that, and for their office, we should hold our pastors in the highest esteem. I know I do those pastors who are there for m.e Certainly we owe obedience to our pastors, that when he speaks from the pulpit, according to the word of God, we should obey. And we trust them, too.We know that when the pastor speaks the absolution, we trust it. We trust that we are forgiven. When he delivers to us the sacrament, we trust that he is acting in the place of Jesus, in the stead of Christ. When it comes to the pastor of a church, parishioners owe them their honor, obedience, and trust. We know that the main reason behind this is because the pastor is the person that God has put into the pulpit, And we look at our pastor the way that God would have us. He has set the example.
Sadly, it doesn't always go that way in every church, in every place. And I'm not talking about anything here, of course, but it is that pastors actually today are among the least trusted professions. Now you might think, oh, well, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it's true. According to a Gallup poll done just three years ago, pastors are the 12th least trustworthy profession in our society. Hey, you can hardly blame the people can you, when you have pastors who are bilking people out of their money, when you've got pastors, like we talked about last week, who are telling you that while you won't get sick or diseased if only you have enough faith, pastors who groom and then sleep with their parishioners, pastors who abuse the sheep in their church, lording it over them, like some kind of dictator. It is no surprise then that pastors have become among the least trustworthy in all the nation.
It's amazing. I was just thinking about this the other day. When I went out on my vicarage, I would wear my collar like this and I wasn't really used to it. I didn't really like it a whole lot back then. I still don't really honestly like it all that much now, but it is my uniform so I still wear it. But you know, I would be driving on the roads of Missouri. And if you've ever driven in Missouri, especially St. Louis, it is just insane. You think Chicago's bad? St. Louis is worse because, in Missouri, they don't require that anybody take driver's education. So, everybody does what they want to do. And so you're driving along this road and I'm in my collar and I'm not going super fast, probably five miles over, along the line of what is normally the speed of traffic. And I realize I'm pretty much the fastest person on the road. This was just 10 years ago. I realized I was the fastest person on the road because when people would move to overtake me, they would lean over in their windows to flip me off because I was not going as fast as them, realize I was wearing the collar, stomp on their brakes like I was the police, and slowly creep up behind me. Today, I just get flipped the bird. It's how it goes.
Pastors just aren't seen to be trustworthy in our society today. And that is a shame. It's a big shame. I can tell you that I, as a pastor, try to be faithful. That is the promise that I made to you in my installation. That is the one thing that I've promised you: that in all things, I would be faithful to the word of God, that I would not lead people astray, that I would be with the people where they need to be. Sometimes I'm good at that. Sometimes I fail at that. And when I fail, I certainly need to repent of that. I ask your forgiveness if it's ever been you that I’ve failed personally. But here's the thing: when it comes to the pastor-parishioner relationship, there is a mutual trust between the two. I trust that my parishioners are going to tell me what's going on in their lives. I trust that. They should tell me that when they go into the hospital (guess how well that's going). I trust that my parishioners are living according to the word of God. And certainly as I visit with people and I discover that these things may not be, these are sins, that they must be called out. And my parishioners need to trust in me that I'm a man above reproach. That I am not one of those who is going to preach falsely. I'm not one of those who's going to hold up my own power and my own position as something to Lord it over people, but someone who ministers, according to the word of God.
Jesus was such a minister. Now you have to imagine Jesus, his family, his brothers and sisters, probably grew up hearing all of the stories about Jesus' birth. And, you gotta imagine, too, that when it comes to family disputes, no one was ever able to blame anything on Jesus. Right? Who hit first? Well, Jesus hit me… Well, come on, Joses, we know that's just not true. Who left the lights on? Well, Jesus left the lamps going when he went out. Come on, James, that's just not true. Who didn't watch the animals? Well, Jesus didn't want to do it. Judas, you know Jesus doesn’t sin. That’s not true. Mary and Joseph both would have known that their firstborn did not sin, and the kids would’ve tried to blame him anyway, but it never would have worked. You have to believe it's probably a bit of a Joseph situation, where his brothers and sisters looked at Jesus and were jealous of him. Now don't get me wrong, in the story of Joseph from Genesis, you've got Joseph, who certainly was prophesied to be a great man, but he really wasn't very humble when he told his brothers and his father and his mother about all the dreams that he was having and how they would bow down to him, and so you can kind of understand how it was that they got jealous of Joseph and Jesus. In his case, Jesus was humble. I don't think that he wandered around saying, well, you know, I'm God, you better listen to me. Instead, he would live in his family, love his mother and father and brothers and sisters to the very end, and still, even in that love that they would honestly doubt that he was the Messiah. And we know that they doubted that he was the Messiah. In fact, they were not converted, most of them, until after his resurrection and ascension. We know that James, his brother who became the Bishop over Jerusalem, didn't believe in Jesus, even though he was with him through his whole ministry, and eventually was counted sort of among the apostles, he was not converted until Jesus finally rose from the dead.
Even in Jesus's love that he had for all people, he was not respected and so much so that people sought to murder him. And so they did. You can imagine, then, that his brothers and sisters probably had a little bit of this going on in their hearts. After all does not Jesus say that if you hate your brother, you have committed murder against him? You have to think that they're feeling that. And so, Jesus, being the minister and the minister of ministers, probably was not well-respected in his own family. What about even his relatives? His aunts, his uncles, his cousins. The only one we know for sure, other than Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah, who believed in him, was John the Baptist. Elizabeth and Zechariah were probably long dead by the time Jesus started his public ministry. But John the Baptist certainly believed, pointing to him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And Mary, certainly as she went about these things, treasured all these things in her heart, but you can even see in certain circumstances through the New Testament, how she was carried along by the wishes and demands of her children, how she would call Jesus back to them because everybody thought he had gone crazy. And so Mary, even knowing that he is the Son of God was even lead astray on occasion.
But Jesus, even among his own relatives is not honored as a prophet and Jesus in his own hometown, well, you can see the questions that they ask,. Where did this man get these things? What kind of wisdom does he have? How is he able to do these mighty works? Isn't this the son of the carpenter, the son of Mary, and his brother, James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, are they not all with us? We watched this kid grow up. We watched him struggle to learn, to be a carpenter. We know he didn't go to the rabbinical schools. How is it that he is so smart teaching things? Who does he think he is to give us commands? Jesus was not respected in his own hometown or among his relatives or even in his own family. And so it is that pastors, who are what we would today call prophets according to what the biblical standard of what a prophet is, even they are not always respected.
It was when I entered the ministry, that a couple people from my home congregation told me, well, you know, now we can call you back to be our pastor. And I can tell you that I became a little weird, a little uncomfortable about that statement, because the thought of going back to my home congregation and ministering to the people who watched me grow up was a little scary. Literally, in the narthex, in the area that recounts the history of the congregation, there’s a picture of me with a kid in a headlock. That would have been a little awkward as the pastor,.
But it's true. The prophet is not well-respected. And why is that? What is a prophet to do? What is a pastor to do? A prophet is not one who just predicts the future. That's some of the work that a prophet could potentially do, although most of the time in the Scriptures that doesn't happen. A prophet instead speaks the Word of God to the people. Now you say, well, pastor the prophets in the Old Testament, they heard directly from God, and that's absolutely true, but Hebrews tell us that in the former days, God spoke to his people through the prophets, but now in these latter days, God has spoken to us by his Son. And so it is that I need no new word from God to speak to you, but instead speak to you from the Word that has been delivered, the same Word preached the same over the course of the last 2000 years. The prophet merely forth tells the word of God.
That's my job. That is all that my job really truly is. And yeah, we get suckered into a whole lot of other kinds of things: worrying about the money of the congregation, cleaning up vomit in the hallways from the kids during the school year, cleaning up vomit sometimes from the teachers during the school year, getting sucked into yard work, and all the things of the church. And that's perfectly fine, but that's not my job. The job that you have brought me here to do is to study the Word of God, to pray, and to preach God's Word to you. I’m here to bring the gifts of the Church to you.
Now, if you look at our Lutheran confessions, specifically the Augsburg Confession, the church is the place where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are properly administered. And so it is that the church gathers around the pastor, not because I have some indelible character that was given to me in my ordination. I am a sinner. In fact, I am the worst sinner that I know. If you knew the things that I could do, or that I could think, you would probably would be quite ashamed and you would go, thank goodness, I'm not like him. Although, if you were honest with yourself, you probably would be looking at the things that you do and you think, well, at least pastor's not as bad as me. We always know that we are the worst sinner that we know. But, it is that the pastor is the center of the congregation, not because he's so much better, because that's not true, but because the congregation has entrusted to the pastor the very gifts that were given to the Church by Jesus Christ, the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. We call this the Office of the Keys, where, in one hand, the key is there to forgive the sins, to loose the sins from the people that they might also be loosed in heaven. And with the other hand, to retain the sins of the people, should they not repent of them and to then bind those sins to them here and in heaven. Now, that’s a very dangerous thing, but it is the churches all across time and space have entrusted to usually one man that Office of the Keys and the Church then gathers around the Office of the Keys, for there the sins are forgiven of the people and they are retained to the people who do not repent.
That is what we are to be about. It's kind of a scary thought when you think about it, that there is a man among you who has the power of God put on him, not in him, but on him. And he can bind and loose the sins of the people. I sometimes think we would be better off in all the churches if we were to exercise that binding key a little more. I think if churches actually did exercise things like excommunication, which is to say, you're not welcome in here until you repent and if you do not repent, you will go to hell, or what we would call the minor ban, which is you really need to not be at the Supper until you're repenting, we’d be so much better off. You can kind of tell why we would use those different things for different reasons. If we used those more, if we exercised those more, maybe the Church would look a little bit less like the world, maybe the divorce rate within the Church wouldn't be so close to what the world's divorce rate is. Maybe it would be that our people would not live in sin, not living as married couples before they're married. Maybe it would be that churches would actually preach the word of God and all of its truth and its purity. And maybe it would be that we could finally cast out the heretics from among us who claim to be Christian.
But a prophet has no honor in his home hometown and among his relatives and among his own family. People don’t listen to pastors any more. It seems that it's harder and harder to do this. And again, you cannot blame all of the people in the church, but certainly I would hope that you could see the trends of the church over, let’s say even, the last 150 years, that we have forgotten the church, that we've forgotten the pastor, and the pastor is left only to try anything to get people in the the door. They’ll even sacrifice God's word. Doesn't really make it worth it, does it? You also note it was Jesus, the preeminent prophet of all of the prophets, even as he preached truth and purity and love, people walked away from him. They left him, even to the point where Jesus looked at his apostles and said, will you also leave me? And Peter then has his wonderful confession of faith, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Peter makes the confession of the church. Peter makes that confession and we even incorporate that into our liturgy here. We sing it in divine service setting four, we actually sing, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, alleluia.
This is what the church is to be about because it is within the bounds of the church. It has put within the people forgiveness, life, and salvation to be distributed to all who have need to hear of the mercy of God, for them to hear the death of Christ for them. But we would be remiss to think that this would not be for us. And so I tell you very plainly that these gifts have been given to you, the church. You have given the stewardship of them to me in order to administer them to the people. And so I tell you today that your Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was rejected among men, the one to whom God turned his back on the cross, has come to this earth to live for you, to die for you, and to welcome you into eternal life, by forgiving your sins and giving you the righteousness of God that you do not need to depend upon your works, but you see that Christ has done it all. All for you. For you. There is no better news than to be reminded of this week in and week out because it is that we, as the church, will always need to hear it.
Last week, Sunday, we had 10 people in our Sunday morning service. I can literally tell you the number of people who remarked on it, and probably even me guilty among them, that it was a low attendance Sunday. It's getting horrible. People just aren't coming to church anymore, Pastor. That’s true. But I would tell you this, that our Lord has not lost one person who belongs to his church. The church never shrinks. The church only ever grows. Now, it might be that there are people within our church, within our congregation, who are not Christians. We don't know that. So, we trust that the people who are always in the Lord's care will receive it in this place, and we have to trust this because we need it for ourselves. We need to know that our Lord will never leave us nor forsake us, because this is true. You’re not alone. The Lord is not forsaken you in any way. He is with you in all things. He has been with you since the moment you were conceived and he will be with you to the moment that you die. And he will be with you forever in the resurrection of the dead.
The Lord makes the church grow. And it may be that congregations open and close. I have reminded you many times of this, that of all the congregations listed in the New Testament, all of them, except maybe two, are closed. All of them have shut their doors over the millennia. The only two, by the way, that remain the one in Ethiopia, which was started by the Ethiopian eunuch, and the one in Antioch. Those two churches continue on; the rest of them have all shut their doors. Is it that your Lord does not care for these churches? Does that mean your Lord does not care for you? No. No matter what it may be we are going as a church, even now in this season of change, looking at potential partnerships with other congregations, whatever it may be that our Lord has in store for us, whether we join together with another church, whether we merge with another church, whether we have a dual parish with another church, or we close our doors to SPI forever, your Lord takes care of you and he will not leave you nor shall he forsake you.
He has given to you his word that you may lean upon him in every trial and tribulation. He has given to you his Word to be faithfully preached in all of the churches. And he has given to you his Sacraments, which deliver the wonderful gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation to you in a very tangible way. And he has not given these gifts just to this congregation, but he has given them to his Church. You will find these gifts no matter where you go, whether you are called away because of a job, whether you're called away because of the circumstances of life, whether it is that the church shuts these doors and you're forced to find a new congregation, these gifts belong to you. They belong to the church and they are yours. Our Lord will not leave you nor will he forsake you.
It may be that the prophet has no honor in his own hometown or among his relatives or among his family. But our Lord honors you. He has given you honor, just as you owe him honor. He honors you by inviting you here to listen to him. As he teaches, we listen to him as he comes to us out of his Word. We listen to him as he comes out of us in our prayers. We listen to him as our hymnody teaches us of our Jesus. We listen to him when our pastor teaches us and preaches about this good news of Jesus Christ for you, for the forgiveness of your sins, of the life everlasting. He honors us with that invitation, and we discover that we are honoring him. Our Lord has that honor.
Amazingly, you are greater than Jesus's hometown, and you are greater than his relatives and you’re greater than his family. When his family comes to collect him, he looks at the crowds and asks, who are my mother and my brothers? I tell you the truth, whoever does the will of God, meaning whoever listens to me, they are my mother and my brothers and my sisters. You are counted even more highly than Jesus's family because you belong to him by faith. And if this is true, then the honor that you have for Jesus is good, for you this day have been led to this place. You have been led to confess your sins and, in repentant prayer, it is leading you even to have Jesus put into your mouth this day, that you may feel the forgiveness of God within you forever.
Our Lord may be without honor in so many places, and just as much his representatives, but he is not without honor here in his church. He loves this congregation, he loves this people, He loves you, and so we honor him, trust him, obey him, when he tells us that we will be with him forever. Trust in our Lord. Trust in the honor that you have in him, because our Lord has lifted you also to a place of honor, and you shall see it when he raises you to life eternal. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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