The Festival of Our Lord’s Ascension – Pr. Faugstad exordium & sermon
Festival exordium:
When I was younger, it was common for athletes who had just won a championship to be asked what they were going to do next. And the answer they gave was almost always the same: “I’m going to Disneyland!”
What about Jesus when He won the victory over sin, death, and the devil? Where would He go? His disciples might have wished He would say, “I am going to go appear to the Jewish Council that condemned Me,” or “visit Pontius Pilate’s headquarters,” or even “march to the palace of the Roman Emperor.” Who could stand against Jesus or deny His power now that He had conquered death itself?
But Jesus had already told them where He was going. Just before His crucifixion, He said multiple times, “I am going to the Father” (Joh. 14:28, 16:5). On the day of His resurrection, He told Mary Magdalene to tell the disciples, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (Joh. 20:17).
But what good would going to the Father do? Why leave the earth at His hour of victory? Jesus ascended to the right hand of His Father because the work the Father had sent Him to do was complete.
God the Father sent His Son to fulfill the law for us sinners—check!
He sent His Son to make atonement for all sin by offering His perfect life on the cross—finished!
He sent His Son to defeat death by rising in victory over death and the grave—done!
Everything necessary to win our salvation was accomplished by Jesus. So now He ascended to His Father.
He ascended to prepare a place for us in His Father’s house (Joh. 14:2).
He ascended so that His enemies would become His footstool (Psa. 110:1, Heb. 10:13), and He would become Head over all things to His body the Church (Eph. 1:22-23).
He ascended so that the Holy Spirit would be sent out to convert hearts and strengthen faith through the Gospel until the end of time (Joh. 16:7).
Jesus had many good reasons for returning to His Father. This was all part of the plan. Jesus’ ascension, His removal of His visible presence, was not a sad day. It was not a day of loss. The disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luk. 24:52), and we join them in rejoicing.
Let us rise to sing the hymn printed in the service folder, “O Wondrous Conqueror and Great”:
O wondrous Conqueror and great,
Scorned by the world You did create,
Your work is all completed!
Your toilsome course is at an end;
You to the Father do ascend,
In royal glory seated.
Lowly,
Holy,
Now victorious,
High and glorious:
Earth and heaven
To Your rule, O Christ, are given.
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Sermon text: St. Mark 16:14-20
In Christ Jesus, the King who reigns over all things and gives us the gifts of His grace, dear fellow redeemed:
The beginning and the end of today’s Gospel reading portrays the disciples in very different ways. Jesus first appeared to His disciples on Easter evening when they were huddled together in a tightly secured room. They were afraid of both the Jewish and the Roman authorities. If the authorities could do what they did to Jesus, wouldn’t Jesus’ followers be next?
Had they taken seriously Jesus’ words leading up to His crucifixion, they should have been excited about that Sunday. He told them multiple times that He would suffer many things in Jerusalem and would be killed, but on the third day He would rise. Sunday was the third day. Everything else Jesus said had happened. But in the disciples’ estimation, the thought of Jesus rising from the dead was a bridge too far. They might have thought to themselves: if He had the power to rise from the dead, why would He let Himself be arrested and killed in the first place?
The first message Jesus spoke to His disciples on that Sunday was, “Peace be with you” (Joh. 20:19). He wanted them to know they were still His disciples. He had not rejected them. But He did take them to task for denying His resurrection. St. Mark writes that “He rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen.”
Everything hinged on His resurrection. It verified that Jesus was who He said—the eternal Son of God. It gave meaning to His suffering and death—these were done to make atonement for sin. And it gave a clear message and direction for what the disciples of Jesus would do going forward. They would tell everyone about the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, that He died and rose to save the world of sinners.
This is still the mission and message of the church. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” He doesn’t restrict the proclamation of the Gospel to certain groups of people or certain places. He wants the message of salvation to be broadcast everywhere. He wants everyone to know that He “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).
People are converted and become members of His holy body by Baptism, and they remain in that baptismal grace by continuing to hear His Word (Mat. 28:19-20). Baptism alone does not guarantee that someone will go to heaven, because the faith worked through the water and Word of Baptism can be lost. Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe—whether or not they have been baptized—will be condemned.”
The key is to cling to Jesus’ saving Word. That is why Jesus had to rebuke His disciples. They weren’t listening to and trusting His Word. They were going by what seemed right to them. They were following their own reason. We are tempted to do the same today. We are tempted to go along with what the culture around us promotes, even when it is contrary to the Word of God. We do this because we don’t want to be singled out and targeted. We don’t want to be rejected by others when our beliefs don’t match up with the prevailing opinions around us.
But Jesus does not call us to fit in with the world. He calls us to be set apart. He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me…. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Mat. 16:24,26). Jesus gives us more than the world. The world is small and insignificant compared with what He has won for us.
If you sold your soul for everything desirable in the world, you would only have it for a short time, and whatever you had would be lost. Jesus gives you eternal treasures that will never be taken from you. Through His death to pay for your sins and His resurrection to overcome your death, He has restored the image of God to you that Adam and Eve lost in the fall. You are covered in His righteousness and credited with His perfection. You have the victory over sin, death, and devil. You have eternal life.
These are the gifts of the King. He has the authority to give them to whomever He wants. He chooses to give them to you, and He wants to give them to many others besides. After Jesus’ ascension, this became clear to His disciples. They understood that they would not be with Jesus like they were before, speaking with Him face to face and physically going wherever He went. But He promised that He would be with them “always, to the end of the age” (Mat. 28:20).
Jesus’ ascension did not mean He had deserted His chosen disciples or any who would come after them. It meant that His work that the Father sent Him to do was complete. His ascension also did not mean that He was going into retirement. Today’s reading makes that clear. He promised to work signs through those who spread the message of salvation, such as casting out demons, making them immune to deadly poison, and giving them the ability to heal. When His disciples went out preaching the message of salvation, we are told that “the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.
Those signs were given for the initial spread of the Gospel. You can read in the Book of Acts about the miraculous abilities He gave the apostles. But once the early churches were established, those special gifts of the Spirit diminished. Jesus does not teach us to focus on having unique spiritual gifts, which is all that some modern Christian churches want to talk about. Jesus instead teaches us to hold fast to the Gospel.
The mission of His Church is to speak His Word. We are simply messengers of the King. We don’t come up with our own message, something new to excite the people in our community. We faithfully speak what we have been taught. We give what we have been given. We comfort as we have been comforted.
It may seem to us at times that we need something more. We hear the message of Jesus’ death and resurrection so often that it might seem to lose its power. If it is powerful, why don’t we see more growth in our churches? But what the King does with His Word is not the business of His subjects. The authority behind the Word is not ours; it is His. By the same token, the pressure to get results is not on us. When the King sends out His messengers, when Jesus sends out believers, our duty is to proclaim what He has done, and He will see to it that the Gospel message accomplishes what He pleases (Isa. 55:11)
Just as the Lord was still at work with His disciples after His ascension, so He is still working among us. From His position at the right hand of His Father, He fills all things, particularly working for the good of His Church (Eph. 1:22-23). It is His absolution that you hear from my mouth. It is His Word that sounds forth from the pulpit. It is His holy body and blood you receive in the Sacrament of the Altar.
His grace given to you and the Holy Spirit working in you is what gives you the motivation and the strength to take part in “proclaim[ing] the gospel to the whole creation.” Just as Jesus’ resurrection turned His disciples from fear to faith and cowardice to courage, so it does the same for you. You are a messenger of the crucified and risen King, Jesus Christ, at whose name “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phi. 2:10-11).
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 painting by John Singleton Copley, 1775)
The Fourth Sunday in Lent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. John 6:1-15
In Christ Jesus, who came to give life to the world through His flesh and blood, dear fellow redeemed:
They had been free for one month. No longer were they under the harsh rule of the Egyptians. The LORD had led them out of Egypt by His servant Moses. He even opened up a path for them to walk through the Red Sea. But the people of Israel were dissatisfied. Their bellies growled with hunger, and they began to wish they were back in Egypt where at least they had something to eat. The LORD heard their cry; He had not forgotten His people. He said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not” (Exo. 16:4).
Every morning, there was dew around the camp. “And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground” (v. 14). The people were encouraged to gather as much of this as they could eat, but they were not to keep any until the next day. The exception to this was on Friday when they must gather twice as much, so that no collecting would be needed on the Sabbath day, the day of rest.
Whoever did not listen to the LORD and kept bread overnight any day but Friday, found that in the morning it had worms and stunk. This was to teach the people to rely on the LORD for food day after day. The people called the bread “manna,” which means, “what is it?” because they had never seen anything like it before. God gave them this bread for forty years until they came into the Promised Land of Canaan.
Nearly 1500 years later, the people of Israel followed Jesus into the wilderness by the Sea of Galilee. No one had ever done the signs He was doing; He healed the sick. No one had ever taught like He had; His teaching cut to the heart, but it also comforted. They were so focused on the things Jesus was doing that they had brought no provisions with them.
As the shadows lengthened, the twelve disciples came to Jesus and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves” (Mat. 14:15). Jesus had another solution. A boy shared with Him five barley loaves and two fish. He gave thanks for this gift and proceeded to distribute bread and fish to all who were gathered there—five thousand men with women and children besides.
They had never seen a miracle like this! And then the wheels started turning. This abundant food in the wilderness reminded them of something. They thought of Moses’ words: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Deu. 18:15). The people said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” They wanted to make Him their king, but Jesus quietly left them and went up the mountain by Himself to pray.
The next day, the resolve of the people had not changed. Full of anticipation, they located Jesus. But their conversation with Him did not go as they had hoped. Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (Joh. 6:26-27).
Jesus exposed the plans of the people that they were looking not for a Savior from sin but for a savior from hunger. If they wanted a Savior from sin, they should expect to find this in the One who performed all these wonderful miracles. But the people just wanted their physical needs satisfied, and following Jesus seemed like the way to accomplish this. They focused on the gift when they should have been focusing on the Giver.
This was true of the Old Testament Israelites also, but forty years of continuous manna from heaven taught them something. Before they entered the land of Canaan, Moses recounted the people’s journey through the wilderness. He said: “And [the LORD] humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deu. 8:3).
Our bodies certainly need food. That is how the LORD designed them even before the fall into sin. But we are not to live “by bread alone.” This means that our days and our lives should be occupied with more than the pursuit of daily bread. We learn in the Catechism that “daily bread includes everything needed for this life.” We also learn that it is God who gives daily bread, and we know by experience this is true. Each of us can say that God has given us earthly blessings far beyond our basic needs, just like the large amount of leftovers gathered up after Jesus fed the multitude.
But these earthly gifts can only do so much for us. They only go so far. Their usefulness is limited to our short life on earth. Jesus pointed out to the people that “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died” (Joh. 6:49). It was bread from heaven, but it did not bring with it the promise of eternal life. In the same way, Jesus could continue to produce for the people vast amounts of food from very little or even out of nothing, but what good would this do for their souls?
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (vv. 35,51). And how did the people react to this? They “disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” (v. 52).
Well, how could He? He had already told them: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life” (v. 40). Jesus, the Bread of Life, is consumed by all who believe the Gospel message. God’s gracious Word is the platter that serves up Jesus. His flesh and blood are the main course which satisfies the hungry soul.
But does your soul feel hunger pangs for Jesus? Are you more concerned about “the food that perishes,” or “the food that endures to eternal life”? This is a real struggle. You know very well when your stomach is empty. And you can see when your earthly goods need to be fixed or replaced. But it is not as obvious when faith is running near empty, or when your understanding about God and your perspective on life in the world needs to be fixed or replaced. If you go without food for twenty-four hours, your body lets you know; there is discomfort and pain. But you can go twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or seven days, a few weeks, or even a number of months without realizing that your faith is starving.
Faith is not some goal to reach, that once you have gotten there and know the facts—once you have faith—you don’t need to be concerned about keeping it. Faith needs to keep being fed. It hungers for the Bread of Life, for Jesus. If faith does not hear Jesus and receive Jesus and get filled up with Jesus, then it cannot last. But if faith is given a steady diet of Jesus through home devotions and the dispensing of the Word and Sacraments at church, the Lord promises that it will not expire. Your faith will be rejuvenated and strengthened just as your body is whenever you eat.
There is no better food for your soul than the food of Jesus. Your soul hungers for forgiveness and life because by nature you have sin and death. This sin is what tricks you into thinking that you have no pressing spiritual need, and that your pursuit of earthly riches is more important than anything else. But the world’s goods go the same way as the manna the Israelites sinfully tried to stockpile overnight. The world’s goods leave a bad taste in the mouth, and in the end they are worthless. The food, clothing, and home that you have are gifts from God. But they must never take the place of Jesus and His Word.
When Jesus comes to you through the Gospel, He counteracts the sin and death in you. He chokes the old Adam which is trying to choke you. He starves the death that wants to devour you. He has the power to do that because sin already did its worst against Him, and death already swallowed Him up in the grave. Neither was able to destroy Him, and He emerged victorious over sin, death, and hell. Whenever you consume Jesus by faith, whether by hearing His Word or by eating and drinking His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, you are partaking of His victory and filling yourself with His life.
For all who hunger and thirst for righteousness believing in His name, Jesus Gives the Food That Endures to Eternal Life. He gives you the food of Himself which never grows old, never spoils, and never runs out. This Bread of Life is the rich nourishment your soul needs—a holy food offered to you for this life and for the life to come.
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 “The Last Supper” by Juan de Juanes, 1503-1579)
The Sixth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Deuteronomy 6:4-15
In Christ Jesus, through whose saving work we have been united with the one true God, dear fellow redeemed:
At various times during His public work, Jesus spoke this phrase: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” That phrase should make our ears perk up. We should be asking the question: what does Jesus want me to learn and keep in mind? In our reading for today, Moses begins with the same message: “Hear, O Israel.” What should they hear? What should they pay attention to and remember? They should hear this: “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” And then, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
First of all, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” We worship one God, the God called Yahweh—I AM—, the name He told Moses to say to the people of Israel. This God is uncreated, infinite, eternal. He is omnipotent (almighty), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent. This one LORD and God is the only God. There are other made-up gods, other make-believe gods, but there are no other true gods.
This is why Moses warned the people, “You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you.” There were plenty of false gods in Old Testament times, just as there are plenty of false gods today. Humankind has been creating its own gods ever since the fall into sin. In Romans 1, St. Paul writes that fallen mankind “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things…. [They] worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (vv. 23, 25).
The devil and the demons tempt us to do this. These demons are not gods, but they are more powerful than we are. They try to trick us into thinking there are other gods, and that those gods can help us. So some people think “the gods” send them special messages through their dreams, through the stars, through tarot cards or ouija boards, or through certain individuals who claim they can connect with these powers.
Even we Christians who have been chosen by God as His own dear children can be taken in by these things. Maybe we want to find a supernatural way to punish those who have hurt us. We want to connect with the spirits of the dead. We want to know what will happen in our future. We want answers to deep questions or concerns or ways to find out other people’s secrets. The devil is only too willing to encourage this thinking which leads us away from God and His promises.
And if the devil does not succeed in turning us toward other gods, he tries another tactic. He seeks to confuse us about the true God. We are taught in the Bible that God is triune—one God in three Persons. That means God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have always existed and always will exist—three Persons of the same essence and power. As one God, the three Persons work in perfect unity. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
It is wrong to think of the Triune God in a hierarchical way, as though the Father were the most powerful, followed by the Son, and then the Holy Spirit. Or that the Son of God did not fully exist until creation or until He took on flesh in Mary’s womb. Or that the Holy Spirit is a motion or a force but not really a Person of God. In recent times, we hear people changing the terms for God by teaching that the Holy Spirit is feminine, or that God is not “Father” but “Mother.”
These attacks on God’s unchanging truth will keep happening until the end of time. But we must not be taken in by them. Our fear, love, and trust should be in the LORD our God only. That is the second thing Moses wanted Israel to hear: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” There is no part of you that should love anything besides God. All your heart should be committed to Him. All your soul should be bound to Him. All your might—every ounce of your power and the force of your will—should be applied to His truth and His service.
But if we are supposed to love God with every part of ourselves, how can we also love our neighbors, including our parents or siblings or spouse or children? Wouldn’t that divide our love? Well God doesn’t tell us to love our neighbors instead of Him. We show love for our neighbors because of our love for God. And He counts the love we show to others as love shown to Him (Mat. 25:40).
We wouldn’t know anything about love if we did not first learn it from God. Love did not begin in the world. It came from outside the world to us. It came from God. The apostle John writes, “for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God…. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1Jo. 4:7,9).
God the Father showed His love for sinners by sending His only-begotten Son to save us. The Son of God became one with us by taking on our flesh. He was “incarnate,” He was made man (Nicene Creed). He did this, so that He could live the life of perfect love on our behalf that God requires of us.
You might think this was easy for Him, since He is God. But Jesus in His state of humiliation did not make full use of His divine powers. He was able to feel weakness and pain. The author to the Hebrews writes that Jesus can certainly sympathize with us, because He “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15). His righteousness far exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees (Mat. 5:20). He fulfilled every tiny detail of God’s holy law (Mat. 5:18), so that perfect life of love could be credited to us.
And so it is! You and I have not perfectly used our ears in hearing and learning the Word of God. We have not perfectly honored the true God and loved Him with all our heart, soul, and might. But Jesus perfectly kept the Scriptures and obeyed His Father’s will in our place. He dedicated every part of Himself in love for us sinners. He did nothing out of selfishness and everything for our salvation, including sacrificing Himself on the cross as the payment for all sin.
This victory over sin and death is yours. You don’t have to earn it by being good enough or by proving your love for God and neighbor. It is yours as a gift from God through His Word. For many of you, perhaps all of you, this gift first came to you through the water and the Word of Holy Baptism, “through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Ti. 3:5). At the baptismal font, you were baptized in the name of the Triune God—“in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat. 28:19).
Through Baptism, the one holy God caused you to be united with Him. Baptism made you a member of the body of Christ. All that is His—His perfect love toward God and neighbor, His perfect life of righteousness—belongs to you and covers over you, so that God does not see your sin or count it against you anymore. St. Paul writes that you who have been baptized into Christ “must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11).
You live in God and for God. You are one with Him. Jesus prayed for this to His Father, and the Father heard His prayer, just as He hears every prayer in the name of His Son. Jesus said, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (Joh. 17:22-23). The one true God—the Triune God—loves you. He gives you every good gift from above (Jam. 1:17). No other god can do this for you, because there are no other gods.
So we gladly hear and learn the Word of the true God. We teach it diligently to our children. We talk about it in our homes and while we are out and about (including at camp). We meditate on the Word from morning to evening. We commit it to our memory, we wear it on our clothes, and we put it on our walls. There is nothing better than God’s gracious, life-giving Word. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
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 “Jesus in Prison” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)