Brent Kuhlman

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Wednesday of Advent 1                                             
2 December 2009           

St. Matthew 1:18-25  “Savior”

Joseph and Mary.  Engaged to be married.  Loads to look forward to.  A wonderful wedding.  Setting up a nice little house.  Starting a family.  Growing old together.  Spoiling their grandchildren.

But now there’s a problem.  What Joseph never expected.  The unthinkable.  Mary is pregnant.  Yes, that’s right.  She’s going to have a baby.  And Joseph is not the father.  That’s a huge problem.  There can be no wedding now.  For Mary, to all appearances, has already cheated on Joseph.  Committed adultery.  Before the wedding ceremony has even taken place. 

Joseph could make a big deal out of it.  Go ballistic.  Humiliate Mary publicly.  Turn her in to the religious authorities.  He could even insist on having her stoned to death for what appears to be her infidelity.  Instead, Joseph will fill out the paperwork behind the scenes.  He will quietly and mercifully end the engagement and marriage without any harm to Mary and start his life all over again.  That’s his plan.

But it’s not God’s plan.  And so more of the unexpected.  God dispatches an angel.  With a message for Joseph.  Appears in a dream and speaks the Lord’s communiqué:  “Joseph, we’ve heard that you’re heartbroken over Mary’s pregnancy.  Completely understandable.  And we sympathize.  We’ve also heard that you’ve got the divorce wheels turning.  Again, completely understandable.  Sorry to put you through so much trouble.  But here’s a great opportunity for you to trust the Lord in what appears to be something so tragic in your life.  Trust me it will be the best news you’ve ever heard.”

“So here’s the deal Joseph.  It all has to do with prophecy.  God’s into all that prophecy stuff.  You know, the prophecies you’ve heard from the prophets about the Messiah all your life while attending synagogue.  Well, Joseph, that time has come.  The baby growing in Mary’s belly is the Messiah promised of old.”

“Of course you’re not the father.  You couldn’t be.  The Holy Spirit is responsible.  Mary got pregnant through her ears.  The Holy Spirit-filled Word of God spoken to her by Gabriel the archangel is how this baby was conceived.  Mary’s still a virgin Joseph.  I know this is remarkable so I’ll say it again.  The Baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit through the divine words spoken into Mary’s ears.”

“This is God’s work.  God’s doing Joseph.  Only God could pull this off.  Now, what about the name?  Ah, the Baby’s name will be Jesus because Jesus means: ‘God saves.  “God is salvation.’  Perfect name!  Wouldn’t you say Joseph? The Savior has come.  Your people’s Savior!  He has come to save His people from their sins.  Do not fear.  Don’t go through with the divorce.  Mary needs you now more than ever.  Marry her.  She is the mother of the world’s Savior.  Your Savior Joseph.  Her Savior Joseph.”

Divine message ended.  Dream done.  And what a message indeed!  The promised Savior of the world has come.  Conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Soon to be born of the Virgin Mary.  A little baby growing in Mary’s womb.

Savior Jesus.  The Savior – of sinners.  Oh yes, you sin.  I sin.  Our sin is so bad that we don’t even realize how bad it is most of the time.  We don’t even see the perils.  We go around destroying our lives -- other people’s lives – all the while believing falsely that we’re doing just fine.  We trust in ourselves more than anything or anyone.  We’re so curved in on ourselves that we can’t even see it.  Our sin and our sinning are hellishly relentless.  Earning God’s red-hot wrath and hell’s eternal damnation.  Sometimes God’s Law reveals just how bad our situation is and our sinning just hits us and crushes us.  And we’re devastated.

But that’s what Jesus is for.  Baby Jesus has come to save sinners from their sins and the threatening perils that go with sin.  Jesus has taken all your sin.  That’s right.  He insists on taking it all in His Body.  And then answering for it.  Enduring the threatening perils of all your sin.  On the cross, Jesus, bears your transgressions and the world’s iniquities.  And as a result Jesus is damned.  He suffers the wrath, death and hell sinners deserve.

The Small Catechism puts it this way:  Jesus has redeemed me a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, death and the power of the devil.  How did He do it?  Not with gold or silver.  But with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. 

Redeemed.  Purchased.  Won.  Sinners from their sins.  You, me, Joseph, Mary, and all.  Now that’s a Savior.  Wonderfully and properly named..  “You will give him the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins.”   You are forgiven.  All because of Jesus.  He is the Savior.

In the Name of Jesus.  
 

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First Sunday in Advent “C”                                             
29 November 2009           

St. Luke 19:28-40

King Jesus.  Who For Us Men And For Our Salvation Came Down From Heaven King Jesus.  He, the King, comes to you.  To me.  To all.  Dead, damned sinners every one.  We don’t go to Him.  Can’t.  Won’t. 

And yet people by the tons try it.  Go it own their own.  Usually through religion and deeply religious acts.  Check out all the world’s religions.  They are all non-stop 24-7-365 efforts to climb the ladder up in order to reach God. And the recipes include special diets, special drinks, special meditations, special clothes, and all kinds of other religious paraphernalia.  The do-it-yourself religious gurus sell books by the millions and build extravagant kingdoms that rival or surpass the Trumps, the Gates, and the Buffets. 

But it’s a religion of rules, regulations, and policies.  Bottom line:  it’s all up to you.  You must go to God.  You must give yourself to God.  You must . . .  You must . . . You must . . .  And all that, no matter how religious, ends in the disaster of damnation – an eternity totally apart from God. 

The opposite of all this is King Jesus.  He sends His disciples.  He makes the preparations through them.  He needs and wants the colt.  Everything is His anyway.  “Why are you untying the colt?”  “The Lord needs it.”  Can’t object to that.  And so He rides.  On the road He makes royal.  He comes to Jerusalem as the promised Davidic King.

Not for Himself.  But for you.  He comes to Jerusalem.  To suffer and die.  Yes, King Jesus enters the city to rule.  To reign.  On the cross.  He stirs up His power and comes.  Right into Jerusalem.  So that through the protection of His bloody wounds you are protected from the threatening perils of your sin.  Perils of sin:  death and eternal damnation.  Eternal separation from God. 

King Jesus comes to the rescue.  He comes to save.  To do a Jerusalem.  To do a Mount Calvary.  All your sin:  His.  All His righteousness:  yours. 

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  He brings “peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”  He comes to die.  And through His death He bestows peace for sinners with God. What He does on earth, His Good Friday reign of forgiveness, counts for you in heaven.  He brings all glory to His Father in the highest by His lowly birth and His all humiliating suffering and death. 

But some, stuck on the 24-7-365 deeply religious religion of going to God by what they do or don’t do, object to King Jesus.  “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher rebuke your disciples.  Tell them to shut up.  All this praise of you as the king who comes in the name of the Lord and who brings peace in heaven and glory to God in the highest will ruin our religion.  We’ve invested our entire lives telling people what they have to do to get to God.  Some of the highest of our religious leaders have taught us that charitable deeds help us get where we’re going.  And if we give up cigarettes and alcohol for a day that’s even better.  Imagine if we gave them up for a week?  Or a month?  Just think how much closer we’d be to God.  But now you come along and tell us that heaven is cracked wide open through you!  That God has come to us through you!  And that all our good deeds and abstinence counts for nothing before God.  No thanks!  Now, we’ll tell you one more time.  Tell those disciples of yours to clam up or we’ll do it for you.'”  

King Jesus suffers Himself to be rejected.  And all kinds of religious types do reject Him.  Can’t stand a Jesus who does the salvation job all by Himself.  Who is God in the flesh.  Who comes into Jerusalem as the King of kings and Lord of lords.  Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. 

And if the disciples would not have confessed Jesus to be the Savior, then the very stones on the streets would have given witness to you and me.  Imagine that.  The cobblestones preaching Jesus!  Jesus would not have stopped them.  “I tell you, if I shush up my disciples, the stones will cry out.”

Disciples.  Stones.  You too.  Cry out, that is.  Right before the Lord Jesus of Jerusalem and the cross rides into your midst in the Sacrament of the Altar.  He comes.  He speaks.  And He gives what He says.  What He promises.  His Body.  His Blood.  Lording His death over you through His generous forgiveness.  Where He dishes out His royal forgiveness there is life and salvation.  All this is for you. 

We won’t be quiet about Him and the enormity of His giving.  “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”  For God comes to You.  To save you.  To claim you as His own.  His very own in lowly King Jesus. “May He strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all His holy ones” in the Lord’s Supper and on the Last Day.

Have a blessed and happy Advent.

In the Name of Jesus.