Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (C) 2019

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: Luke 14:33
Theme: Self-denial and Confession



Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

Christianity involves a radical call to self-denial. And the Bible makes no apologies for it. Jesus didn’t come to merely mitigate the impacts of sin, to just make our lives a little more tolerable- that is, make our sufferings less severe and our pleasures more enjoyable- but to rescue us from eternal judgment. He came to give us hope that we can endure until that rescue is complete. The world as we know it is not going to be indefinitely maintained. We have no future in this state of fallenness. Our future is in the resurrected state, and thanks be to God that Christ has already triumphed over death and secured for us the life to come!

The Bible was written over a period of more than 1500 years. It’s no coincidence that in every age there were multiple calls to repentance. The prophets were sent, rejected, and sent again. The apostles were martyred, but the teaching of the “one holy Christian and apostolic Church”1 continues to be confessed through the pastoral office and congregations of believers to this day. The word of God is proclaimed “in season and out of season.”2 There was never a generation of people that found God and then faithfully and consistently followed Him. We’re not living in one now. God went seeking again, and again, and again. He’s still doing it. The Good Shepherd searches for the lost sheep. He never stops. He is tireless. He is relentless.

But maybe you see things a little differently. Guilt and accountability are not widely acknowledged in our society as matters of high priority. Many try to avoid them. Maybe you’re tired of being labelled a sinner. Maybe you think it’s too depressing or too unfair? Maybe you believe that’s exactly what’s dragging the church down, making it unappealing to the next generation. It’s hard to argue with the fact that people are not exactly knocking down the doors of the church seeking the forgiveness of sins. But does that mean they have sin and all of its complications already solved? Are they in denial? Or are they looking elsewhere?

Life is all about managing our vulnerabilities. Conditions of material prosperity allow for casual associations and explorations. When we have the leisure of making poor choices, we’re more likely to take risks, believing the safety-net will protect us against significant losses. But can material prosperity be equated with spiritual prosperity? The biblical answer is clear. Dear friends, there will never come a day when you will enter into this house, sit down in the pew and be able to say, “Thank God I’m not a sinner today. Thank God I remained righteous and holy this week.” There will never be a pastor who can stand here and make that claim either. Nor will the time come when you can say, “Not to worry, my sins were trivial this time around.”

What do you think Jesus meant when He said, “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be My disciple.”3 Selfishness is the primary expression of sinfulness. What we have that we don’t want to give up is the belief that we can get things sorted without God, that we’re not really at His mercy. We have egos. We have false notions of righteousness. We have delusions of autonomy. But if we don’t believe in a God whose primary mission is to absolve unworthy sinners and finally rescue them from eternal damnation then we don’t have a God worth knowing. If He is incapable of or unwilling to see us through this valley of sorrow to that dimension where immortal life exists, then we only have what Luther would call an ‘apple’ god; one who attends only to temporary and more trivial things.

Remember, God Himself is always the initiator of repentance. He doesn’t wait around for people self-absorbed in their kingdom-making and idol-worshipping to recognize through their own wisdom that God is absent from their lives. No one can do this under his is or her own power. No one turns from ego-building to discipleship except by the Holy Spirit. Our struggle in dealing with sin necessarily involves receiving the gospel of forgiveness again, and again, and again. The Divine Service begins in the name of the triune God, the name into which we are baptized. Repentance returns us to the power of baptism every time we are absolved of our sins. Holy Communion extends to us that same power of forgiveness.

Nothing is more valuable than this forgiveness. Still, it’s not widely appreciated. Perhaps in past ages when people were more cognizant of their mortality, they cherished it more. Maybe it seems too intangible, too irrelevant today? But God didn’t render justice for sin’s offence only in theory, He exacted it from Christ through His bodily death on the cross. The Scripture says, “When Christ came into the world, He said, "Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me [Jesus]; in burnt offerings and sin offerings You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of Me in the scroll of the book.'"4 It says, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”5

You see, sin could not be punished abstractly. Sin is not an independent entity. It is not even a ‘thing’ or substance. It is a corruption. It is a defect so pervasive that it cannot be delineated. Yet it is distinct from our essence. We are full of sin, polluted by sin, tainted by sin, pervaded by sin, but we are not sin. We are sinners that God intends to save from sin’s devastation. We are so encumbered by sin that we can’t see clearly what it’s like to be without it. But we believe. We believe God can make the distinction, the separation, bring the resolution. We believe that God the Father is so completely committed to our regeneration that He gave up His only begotten Son. What does the apostle say, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God- through Jesus Christ our Lord!”6

Therefore, to the extent that we understand that Jesus Christ died for our sins we should have every confidence that the judgment of God against us has been satisfied. Here we are not dealing with possibilities or probabilities, but the established fact that His blood was poured out on the cross. When Herod was ruler of Galilee and Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Jesus of Nazareth, the acclaimed Jewish Messiah, was sentenced to crucifixion in the traditional Roman manner. He was placed in the nearby tomb of a prominent Jew. When the women came to anoint a His body on the third day He was risen. He lives and He rules.

Our struggle with sin will continue until He returns or call us to Himself. The call to self-denial is radical, but it can be no other way. Our Saviour doesn’t permit shared loyalties, not because He’s arrogant, but because He’s gracious. And He attends to us in our struggle every minute of every hour of every day. Martin Luther described it in the way, “This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on.”7 And God will bring it to completion in His time. Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
8 September 2019
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt

1 The Nicene Creed 2 2 Timothy 4:2
3 Luke 14:33 4 Hebrews 4:5-7
5 Hebrews 4:10 6 Romans 7:24-25
7 Luther’s Works, AE 32, 24