The Thirteen Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 2 Kings 5:15-27
In Christ Jesus, who by His blood purifies our consciences from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:14), dear fellow redeemed:
When Martin Luther was ordered to recant, to take back, everything he had written up to that time in 1521, he replied, “[M]y conscience is captive to the Word of God… I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience” (quoted in Kittelson’s Luther the Reformer, 161). For Luther, conscience and the Word of God were so bound up together, that to go against one would be to go against the other.
God gave us a conscience which He informs by the moral law written on our hearts. That moral law totally agrees with and is sharpened by the Ten Commandments recorded in the pages of Scripture. When our conscience is operating properly, it will help keep us in line with the Law of God. And if we are living according to the Law of God, we will have a clear conscience. But as you and I well know, living according to God’s Law is not the easiest thing to do.
When we hear about the Good Samaritan, we might think of him as a professional do-gooder, whose heart was filled with an endless supply of love, patience, and compassion to help a person in need. It seems to us that a person like this must have enjoyed a clear conscience. He was just so good. But let’s bring him back into the real world. Let’s imagine he was something like us.
The Samaritan may have had other concerns and responsibilities occupying his mind. He may have been mulling over troubles at work as he traveled. Maybe he was in danger of losing his job. Maybe he was poor and hardly able to provide for his family. Maybe he and his wife hadn’t spoken for days or weeks. Maybe his parents were beginning to need care he wasn’t sure how to provide. Maybe he was stressed and unhappy and didn’t think his life could get any more complicated or any worse. Then there was this man lying by the side of the road. Could he really handle another problem right now? Should he just pass by on the other side? Would anyone know if he did? His conscience compelled him to stop.
You can’t be a Christian without having struggles of conscience. Those struggles, those inner conflicts, are actually a blessing. If you no longer felt conflict inside, the tug and pull of what is right or wrong, then your faith would be in great danger. Life in this fallen world is not meant to be comfortable for those who believe in Jesus. He plainly said, “In the world you will have tribulation” (Jn. 16:33), and “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mt. 16:24).
Naaman felt this struggle and conflict. As soon as he was converted, he began to be concerned about having a clear conscience. His flesh was cleansed of its leprosy, and he came back to Elisha confessing the name of the true God. But though he was now clean, Naaman was bothered by something new. He would soon be leaving Israel to return to his home. The last thing he wanted was to dishonor the LORD who had miraculously healed him.
He first asked for two loads of soil, so that he could offer sacrifices to the God of the Israelites on Israelite ground. Then he brought up another issue. As the right hand man of the king, he was expected to accompany him into the temple of Rimmon, a false god. Would the LORD pardon him for doing this and even for bowing down—not out of respect for the idol but out of respect for his king? Elisha replied, “Go in peace.”
But Naaman wasn’t the only one whose conscience was troubled. Gehazi, the chief servant of Elisha, couldn’t believe his master had rejected the gifts that Naaman wished to give. Think what good that silver, gold, and fine clothing could do. After all, should the prophets have to scrape by on so little? If nothing else, couldn’t such riches be used to help the poor? This is what Judas Iscariot argued when Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment (Joh. 12:4). But it wasn’t charity that drove Judas or Gehazi to speak up for the generous offerings of others. It was greed.
The love of money caused Gehazi to do great violence to his conscience. He surely reasoned it all out to quiet this inner voice. Perhaps he thought that what Naaman offered probably belonged to Israel anyway. After all, Naaman had attacked the Israelites, taking their goods, and turning them into his slaves. Wouldn’t Gehazi know how to put riches to better use than that wicked man?
Gehazi felt so sure about his purpose that he even took an oath before God that he would handle the situation in a better way than Elisha. “As the LORD lives,” he said, “I will run after him and get something from him.” Then to follow his plan through, he had to lie to Naaman and then to Elisha. Even if Gehazi convinced himself that his cause was right, his conscience was certainly not in line with the Word of God.
The tension of keeping a clear conscience was so great that Gehazi decided he would not listen anymore. We know how that feels. Every day, we are challenged by these tensions. Should I confront my boss about his dishonest business practices, or stay quiet and protect my job? Should I take the shortcuts everyone else is taking, or do what is right? Should I hide my toys so no one else can play with them, or should I share? Should I lie and keep myself out of trouble, or tell the truth?
Sometimes the cost of a clear conscience seems too great, and we make the conscious decision to go ahead with something that we know is wrong. Sure, we reason it all out to keep our conscience from screaming too loudly: “We may not be married, but we are committed.” “Who am I to say what someone else should do with her body?” “It’s not right for me to judge.” “It’s going to happen anyway whether I say something or not.” “I don’t want to be left out.” But even if our conscience is quieted somewhat, we have departed from the Word of God, and the leprosy of the unbelieving world rubs off on us. We think we can just give a little, relieve some of that tension, and still be faithful confessors of Christ.
These compromises can never deliver a clear conscience. They only make our condition worse. No amount of good intentions, compromises, or charitable efforts and good works can earn us a clear conscience. These efforts amount to selling the faith for two talents of silver and two changes of clothing which won’t help us anymore than they helped Gehazi. Then sin continues to cling to us just as leprosy clung to him.
So what can be done to get a clear conscience? If conscience is guided by the Law of God, and we have broken the Law in many, many ways, is a clear conscience even possible?
God knows the cost of a clear conscience. He knows this not because His conscience was ever dirtied or in conflict, but because He knows us sinners. He knows how utterly we failed to keep His holy Law. He knows how what He intended us to be is nothing like what we are since the fall into sin. So He resolved to send His holy Son down to earth to be “born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4-5).
Being placed under the Law, Jesus could fulfill the Law for every sinner. He could maintain a perfectly clear conscience that never departed from the holy Law of God. He was tempted in every way just as we are, but He never blurred the line between right and wrong. He never deviated from His holy task. He never set aside the Word of God—even in the smallest part—in order to appeal to more people.
He kept His conscience clear all the way through a false verdict, unmerited suffering, and a horrible death. He held fast to the promises of God; He had to follow through with God’s plan in order to redeem souls, your soul. God now declares you to be right with Him because of what Jesus did. You are now freed from the guilt of your sins. By the immeasurable price of His holy body and blood, Jesus made the payment to obtain for you a clear conscience, a conscience that is no longer imprisoned in your former darkness and sin.
So a clear conscience cannot be gotten by something you do. It is obtained by what Jesus did for you. Just as Naaman was cleansed of his leprosy in the waters of the Jordan, your conscience was cleansed in the waters of your Baptism. And that powerful cleansing remains in effect as long as you are a believer in Christ. St. Peter calls Baptism “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1Pe. 3:21). And the author of the book of Hebrews writes, “[S]ince we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus… let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (10:19,23).
Baptized into Christ, He is with you to “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience” (1Ti. 1:18-19). He helps you to resist the temptations of this world, the devil, and your flesh, and to continuously battle to uphold the truth of His Word. You will not perfectly avoid what is wrong and do what is right. Your conscience will be sullied again by the leprosy of sin. But it is always cleansed in Christ.
Bring your troubled conscience to Him in humble repentance; acknowledge where you have fallen short; lay all your guilt before Him. Then wrap yourself up in His righteousness and grace. Know that your sins are all forgiven through the blood of Christ. The Cost of a Clear Conscience was very high, and Jesus met that cost in full for you. You can depart as Naaman did with these words of comfort in your ear: “Go in peace.”
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Parable of the Good Samaritan” by Jan Wijnants, 1632-1684)
Septuagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 50:15-21
In Christ Jesus, who came down from His heavenly throne to save us by grace, and grace alone (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #226, v. 4), dear fellow redeemed:
Do you remember the dreams that the teenage Joseph had? The sheaves of his brothers bowing down to his sheaf in the field? And then the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him? His brothers hated him for this (Gen. 37:8). Those dreams were on their minds when they saw Joseph coming toward them in the field. “Here comes this dreamer,” they said. “Come now, let us kill him” (37:19-20). But instead they decided to sell him… as a slave.
By the time of today’s reading, more than thirty years had passed. For seventeen of those, Joseph’s brothers had lived peacefully in Egypt under Joseph’s protection and care. But now their father Jacob was dead. What might Joseph do to them now, and who would stop him if he decided to take revenge? They had sold him for twenty shekels of silver. How much do you think they would have given to undo what they had done?
A clean conscience is a priceless thing to have. You know that because of what a tremendous burden a guilty conscience is. Think back to when you were a child. At some point, you probably took something you weren’t supposed to. Maybe it was a cookie or some treat your parents told you not to take. You took it and ate it, but it didn’t bring you the satisfaction you expected. In fact, it didn’t take long before you wondered why you ever took it in the first place and wished you could go back and change your actions.
That is true of so many of our sins. When faced with a temptation, we tell ourselves it is no big deal. “I can have this, or do this. No one will find out. I can get away with it.” But then it eats away at us. We can’t get it out of our mind. We feel it sticking to us like mud or hanging around our neck like heavy chains. We expect that everyone is going to find out. And we almost hope they do because then we can stop trying to hide it. Then we can take the consequences and move on.
But there is also danger in being found out. If somebody you have to answer to finds out what you have done, you can’t control how they respond. You don’t know how bad your punishment will be. You don’t know how much you could lose, but you always imagine the worst. That’s what Joseph’s brothers did. They saw how much power Joseph had. They imagined how he might sell them as slaves like they sold him. Or throw them in prison and make their wives and children slaves.
So they decided to appeal to the words of their father. If Joseph did not respect them, he certainly respected their father. They conveyed the command from Jacob that Joseph forgive his brothers. Then they asked him to consider their common faith in God and forgive them. Finally, they bowed down before him (just like Joseph’s dreams indicated) and said, “Behold, we are your servants. We are at your mercy.”
And they were. We don’t know if Joseph ever imagined this day. I suspect he did when he was treated roughly and sold in Egypt, and when he wiled away the hours in prison. No doubt the devil tempted him to hate his brothers who dealt so severely with him and tore him away from his home and family. You also know what it is to be wronged. Maybe someone attacked you for no good reason. Maybe someone betrayed your trust. Maybe someone lied to you and hurt you deeply.
It hurt so badly that you may have wanted them to feel that pain, so they would understand what they had done. Then they couldn’t try to pass it off as no big deal, or that they didn’t mean anything by it, or you should just forget about it. No, you wanted them to know how much it hurt you. And you can dwell on that and hold on to that bitterness and anger, so that it consumes you and grows much bigger than the original offense.
Now in Joseph’s case, it was a terrible offense. Who can imagine selling off a family member to an unknown fate? This gnawed at his brothers. They could not forget. They probably imagined Joseph being treated as less than human in Egypt and maybe even being killed and left in some unmarked grave. They did that to him. Like Cain who killed his brother Abel, they let their anger overcome them. And now they had to live with what they had done. But it was too much for them to bear. The burden of guilt overwhelmed them.
You know what this burden feels like because each of us has done things we regret, that we wish we could go back and change and fix. Knowing what a guilty conscience feels like is one reason why you should be ready to forgive those who have sinned against you. You know what a gift forgiveness is. You receive it each week in church after confessing your sins to God. You hear these words which have the power of God behind them, “By the authority of God and of my holy office I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
What a relief it is to know that every sin is forgiven by God! He holds none of them against you, even if you have fallen into the same sin again and again. He forgives you because Jesus paid the penalty for all sin on the cross. Even if someone you have sinned against tells you that he or she will never forgive you, God still forgives you. He has every right to hold your sins against you since you broke His holy Law, but He refuses to do this. The blood of His Son was sufficient to cleanse you of all your sins (1Jo. 1:7).
His blood was also sufficient to cleanse others of the sins they have committed against you. Sure, Joseph had the power to harm his brothers. But then he would have sinned just as they had. “Do not fear,” he said, “for am I in the place of God?” In the same way, you may have the power to harm someone, but are you in the place of God? The inspired letter to the Colossians says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (3:12-13).
We are not called to take revenge. We are called to be toward others as Jesus is toward us. We are called to be gracious. If we are saved by grace, by God’s undeserved love, then that is what we want to pass on to our neighbors. This is not a lesson we learn from the world. We live in a culture of political retribution, of diss tracks that win the highest music awards, of bad behavior that gets publicly outed but never publicly forgiven.
The way of Christ is counterintuitive. It is countercultural. It does not seek to “get what’s mine.” It seeks to give. That is what Jesus did. He came to give His perfect life in the place of every sinful one. He came to undo every wrong by His life of righteousness. He came to wipe away every transgression, every wrong, every hateful and hurtful action.
He came to free the world and every human heart from the desire to wound as we have been wounded, the desire to treat others the way they have treated us, the desire to get the payment we demand for the wrongs that were done to us. The revenge game has no winners, only losers. Joseph could have taken revenge on his brothers. But he did the bigger thing instead. He forgave.
He also acknowledged that the goodness of God was greater and stronger than their wicked intentions. He said, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” God turning evil into good does not justify evil, as though we should sin however we want, since God will work good out of it. Joseph’s brothers weren’t about to pat themselves on the back for being the ones to get their brother in Egypt to carry out this good work.
But it is comforting to know that God does this redemptive work, that He can and does turn our times of greatest pain and suffering into blessings. Maybe we will never clearly recognize those blessings, but we can trust that God will bring them about somehow. We know that even though we have meant evil against God in our sins, He turned everything for our good. He sent His Son to redeem us, so that we do not have to fear His wrath and punishment but rest in His unchanging grace.
Our hymn of the month teaches this, that we are saved by God’s free and boundless grace. He will not punish us eternally for our sins, no matter how terrible those sins were or how heavily they have weighed on our conscience. As stanza eight of the hymn says:
By grace to timid hearts that tremble,
In tribulation’s furnace tried—
By grace, despite all fear and trouble,
The Father’s heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure
If grace were not my anchor sure? (ELH #226)
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Crucifixion, Seen from the Cross,” by James Tissot, c. 1890)
The Baptism of Our Lord – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 1 Peter 3:18-22
In Christ Jesus, who was baptized into our sin, so we would be baptized into His righteousness, dear fellow redeemed:
The ark that Noah built was a very big boat! It was longer than a football field and about as tall as football goalposts from the ground to the tip of the posts. (If you have visited the “Ark Encounter” in Kentucky, you have gotten a sense at how big the ark probably was.) It was large enough to hold Noah and his family, two of every kind of animal, and the food and provisions they needed for the time they spent on the ark, which totaled about a year.
When the waters began to recede after completely covering the whole earth, Genesis 8 says that “the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (v. 4). Where exactly that is has been the focus of a good deal of research and a lot of expeditions that have failed to produce any evidence of the ark. As neat as it would be to find a big boat buried in the ice on top of some mountain, I think it would be better if Noah’s ark is never found. Why? Mainly for these two reasons: First, we don’t need physical evidence of the ark to prove that what the Bible says is true. And second, people would be tempted to view the ark as a sacred relic that possessed some kind of holy power.
This has happened all through human history. Churches around the world have tiny bones of the apostles and famous saints on display, which supposedly give spiritual benefits to those who visit them. Many places display pieces of Jesus’ cross (so many pieces said Luther in his day, that they could build a church with them!). Even in Old Testament times, the godly king Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had made at God’s command some seven hundred years earlier, because the Israelites were worshiping it (2Ki. 18:4).
The ark that God told Noah to build served its purpose. It brought His chosen people safely through water. Our churches have a sort of connection to the ark. The main part of the church where all of you sit is called the “nave.” It comes from the Latin word navis, which means “ship.” The Youth Convention theme some years back was semper in navi—“always in the ship.”
You are brought into the ship of the Church through water. You became a member of the holy Christian Church through the water and Word of Holy Baptism. This is what today’s reading from St. Peter’s First Epistle describes. By inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he ties together the salvation of Noah’s family through water, with your salvation through water.
Where you were baptized is not the most important thing, just as where the ark is now is not important. You can imagine how a family could attach too much importance to a church building or to a particular font, where parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were baptized, so that those things become more important than the power and promises of God through His Word.
It is not where you were baptized that is so important, but how you were baptized. If you were baptized with water “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat. 28:19), you received all the magnificent gifts of God in Christ. What gifts are those? Today’s reading says that Baptism is not “a removal of dirt from the body.” It is not about outward cleansing. You know as well as I do how quickly children get dirty again after they have been washed.
We can see the physical part of Baptism—the application of water. But we can’t see the spiritual part, which is “an appeal to God for a good conscience.” That is an interesting description of what Baptism does. Jesus instituted Baptism as an appeal for God the Father to give the baptized what Jesus won. This is something like a super rich person sharing his bank account information and telling you to go ahead and take it all!
Baptism gives you the goods—the best goods. It is an appeal for God to cleanse your guilty conscience and give you a good conscience. But why should He do that for you? Today’s reading says why: “Baptism… now saves you… as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” We make the claim that Baptism saves, and we have confidence that Baptism saves, because Jesus rose from the dead.
First, He “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.” He had to exchange His righteous life for our sinful lives and die in our place to pay for those sins. Without the shedding of His holy blood to atone for our sins, we would still have to answer for them. We would have to answer for every unholy thought, every mean word, every un-Christian action. But He did shed His blood to reconcile us with God.
God the Father showed that His Son’s sacrifice was sufficient for us by raising Him from the dead. Jesus came back to life on the third day, and before anything else, He descended into hell. He did not go there to suffer. His suffering was already complete, as He said on the cross, “It is finished.” Today’s reading says that “He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison” who “formerly did not obey.” Some have speculated that Jesus went to free the spirits from hell. But that would be inconsistent with the rest of the Bible, which says that there is no escape, no coming back, for the souls in hell.
About as much as we can say is that Jesus descended into hell to proclaim His victory over sin, devil, and death. Those “spirits in prison” now knew exactly who and what it was they had rejected, “when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared.” They ignored Noah’s preaching. They laughed at Noah’s ark. And they were all consumed by the waters of the flood and condemned to everlasting torment.
After His descent into hell, Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to many of His disciples. In one of those meetings, He told them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mat. 28:18-20a). Jesus was using His authority as the Conqueror of sin and death to send out His disciples to distribute His gifts.
Jesus still has that authority, and He still calls servants in the Church to distribute His gifts. Where His Word is purely preached and His Sacraments are rightly administered, Jesus promises to be present with His grace. He told those first disciples, and all the Church who would follow them, “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20b).
Jesus is here now, right here, today. He is here to bless you and comfort you with His gifts. Are you worthy of His presence? Are you worthy to have Him come to you? If your thought is “yes,” because you have been pretty good, that is pride. The proud have no need for a Savior, because they think they are fine on their own.
If your thought is “no, I am not worthy,” that could lead to despair. You might think about the harsh words you said to the people closest to you, the harm you have done to them. You might think of the bad choices you made, the things you have done in secret that burn your conscience, things you wish you could take back. You might think of how selfish you have been, how weak in faith, how you have ignored the needs of your neighbor.
In that state of mind, you might forget something very important, which is that you are baptized! As unworthy as you may feel, and as much as you have fallen short of the glory of God, He chose you. He sent His only Son for you. When He looks at you, all He can see is the righteousness of His Son that covers you. He sees the blood of His Son that cleansed you of all sin.
These gifts were poured over you at your Baptism, and they remain yours by faith in Jesus. You stay in your Baptism by repenting of your sins, even the ones you are stuck in, day after day. You hand your sins over to the Father and cry, “Forgive me, Lord! I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mar. 9:24). And He does forgive you, every day. As He said to His Son on His Baptism day, so He says to you today, “You are My beloved Son, with you I am well pleased” (Mar. 1:11).
Like the flood that washed away the wicked and lifted Noah and his family to safety, your Baptism has done that for you—washed away your sin and brought you salvation from God. The hymn the children just sang says it so well, “Sins, disturb my soul no longer; / I am baptized into Christ. / I have comfort even stronger: / Jesus’ cleansing sacrifice. / Should a guilty conscience seize me / Since my Baptism did release me / In a dear forgiving flood, / Sprinkling me with Jesus’ blood?” (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary 246, v. 2).
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from stained glass at Saude Lutheran Church)