Brent Kuhlman

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Second Sunday in Lent “C”                                             
28 February 2010           

St. Luke 13:31-35

“Hey Jesus!  Heard the rumor going around?  You haven’t?  Well, we’ll let you in on a little secret.  His Highness King Herod – he’s been conniving against you.  You seem to make him nervous.  Like some kind of threat.  We hear that his majesty would like to make you shorter by a head just like he did with John the Baptist!  We’d sure hate to see that Jesus.  So better high tail it out of here.”

Yeah, right!  Like the Pharisees cared!  They had been plotting to have Jesus rubbed out as well.  Jesus was a big problem for them too.  And they, like Herod, would love to get of this troubler of Israel Jesus!  Just like their fathers did with Jeremiah and all the rest of the prophets. 

But you just don’t come right out and say that YOU want Jesus eliminated!  You hide behind a Herod.  Pretend you’re Jesus’ friend while all the while you’re plotting His demise too! 

So Jesus replies:  “Go tell that fox Herod that I’ll continue to go about my business.  Cast out a demon or two here and there.  Heal a few people along the way.  But on the THIRD DAY I will reach my goal.  Oh, and let me remind you of a little secret that perhaps you’ve forgotten:  it is absolutely certain that no prophet dies outside of Jerusalem.”

Would you too hide behind his majesty King Herod?  Perhaps it’s someone else.  Something else.  You know, it usually goes like this:  “Nothing against you Jesus.  We just don’t care for that S.O.B. preacher.”  Or:  “Love you Jesus!  But that liturgy – BORING!”  Or:  “If it wasn’t for those unfriendly people in that congregation!”   

Do you pretend to be Jesus’ best friend while all the while plotting to get rid of Him?  Has Jesus become a problem for you?  Does He threaten the spiritual security you’ve built for yourself?  The quid pro quo religion that you’ve established for yourself?  Does He imperil the sinful thinking and living you love and just won’t let go of?  Does Jesus endanger your place as lord of your life?  Does the sound of His call-you-to-repentance-voice give you the heebie-jeebies?  “Repent?  Are you kidding me?  That’s the last thing on our minds.  Who does this Jesus think He is?  Why does He keep sending us preachers that call us to repentance?”

If that’s the way you are, how sad.  The holy city’s impenitence and yours drives Jesus to tears.  “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you kill off the prophets and stone to death those sent to you.  How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”  And then comes one of the most chilling and saddest sentences Jesus ever speaks in the New Testament:  “But you were not willing!” 

Unbelief breaks Jesus’ heart.  He takes it personally.  Would you bring Jesus to tears?  Are you not willing to hear Jesus speak to you through His Word?  Then be warned:  time for repentance is running out.  His sermon to Jerusalem was:  “Look your house is left to you desolate.”

But for you there still is time. The narrow way to salvation – the only way to salvation is Jesus WHO REACHES HIS GOAL ON THE THIRD DAY!  He dies.  He rises from the grave.  By that He answered for all your sin.  Even your unwillingness to repent.  You are reconciled to God through Jesus.  Jesus clucks after you His little chicks today. 

He would gather you in His wings – His wounded, bloody, arms and hands – to keep you safe from God’s wrath against unbelief on the Last Day.  Jesus has extended His wings/arms over you in Holy Baptism – in the word of Holy Absolution, and in the Supper where He gives you His Body and Blood.  All for the forgiveness of your sins.  That’s His promise. 

Now I beseech you brothers and sisters:  don’t try to be a tiny baby bird that stubbornly insists on going it alone apart from Jesus, His Good Friday and Easter Sunday, His Word, His church.  That will end in disaster.  Why?  Because the devil prowls around like a hungry lion.  And he would devour little lone ranger birds that stray from their mother hen’s protective wings. 

Jesus has one more thing to tell us this morning.  “I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”  That’s Palm Sunday.  When the Lord Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey as the people laid down their palm branches before Him.  And there He came to die.  As the Servant King.  And to rise ON THE THIRD DAY TO REACH HIS GOAL.  Salvation for you. 

And so as Jesus comes to you this morning riding into your midst through His Word of promise in the Lord’s Supper we welcome Him with repentant joy:  “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  And in the Sacrament Jesus hides us in His wounds.  He extends the benefits of His death and resurrection over you.  To gather you as little chicks under His outstretched wings.  And you are safe.  Forgiven.  Saved.  Happy hiding in Jesus and His arms that He stretched out on the cross for you and for your salvation.   

In the Name of Jesus.        
 

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Wednesday of Lent 1                                             
24 February 2010 

When You Pray Say:  “Hallowed Be Thy Name”                                                  

St. John 17:11-19

God’s holy name.  His name is most holy.  We don’t make it holy.  It is holy all by itself. 

Where God puts His holy name He promises to be there in order to bless you.  That’s Exodus 20:24. With His name He promises to be God FOR YOU!  To help you.  To be merciful to you.  To seek the lost.  To save the damned.  To raise the dead.  With His name He dares to interrupt and interfere in your life, cleanse you from your sin, raise you from the dead, and give you eternal life.  Did you notice how Jesus Himself prayed?  “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me . . .”

God graciously gave His name to Moses in the burning bush.  In the tabernacle in the wilderness wanderings.  In the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.  In the temple.  In the very Body of the Word made flesh – Jesus the Christ.  Yes, Jesus, the very embodiment and revealing of God’s holy name.  And in the divine service God gathers you around His Name.  Where two or three are gathered in My name – Jesus promises – I am with you.  With His Name God is by your side on the plain!  God for you!  Fighting for you!  Feeding you with His holy body and blood as He comes to you in the name of the Lord.     

Without His Name you could not pray to Him. You could not praise Him.  You could not thank Him.  Without God giving you His name all your worship is idolatry – no matter how beautiful, contemporary, cutting edge, transformational, liturgical or historical.  If He didn’t give you His holy name, you’d be naming idols to be your own gods – false gods that crack and break under the pressure you put on them.  

But God has given you His name! In holy baptism!  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  And so you belong to the Holy Trinity.  You are His.  And He is yours!  He gives Himself entirely and completely to you with His name!

God’s Name is holy!  By His holy name given to you – you are His holy people!  A holy and royal priesthood! 

The holy and royal priesthood prays.  So when you pray say:  “Hallowed be Thy name.”   That is to say, you beg God to let His name be kept holy among you! 

You’re asking that it be done with your lips and your lives.  Correct teaching.  God-pleasing actions.  How is God’s Name kept holy among you?  In two ways.  First, when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity.  And second, when you as God’s children lead holy lives according to God’s Word.

You, as the Father’s dear children, who bear His name on your foreheads and on our hearts, dare not profane it with your lips or with your lives. 

False teaching (of any kind) done in God’s name is the worst way to defile or profane God’s holy name.  Let me illustrate.  To contend in God’s name that the crucified and risen Jesus doesn’t save sinners desecrates God’s name.  To proclaim that what Jesus did on Good Friday isn’t enough to reconcile you to the Father, but that you must do something too, tarnishes – diminishes, God’s holy name. 

What if the pastor on Easter morning declares that Jesus didn’t bodily rise from the dead?  He lies!  Flat out deceives!  Same if you believe the lie.  Then God’s name is sullied among us. Ruined!  What if the pastor declares in God’s name that homosexuality is God’s pleasing?  And what if you believe it and defend it?  Then God’s holy name is degraded among us. 

Those are obvious examples.  But sinners are experts.  Skillfully twisting the Scriptures to say just the opposite of its clear meaning.  Advanced degrees are given, high church offices are bestowed, and worldly success is granted as God’s Name is blasphemed by false teaching.  By lies.  By deceit.

Do you know who Eva Brune is?  You probably don’t.  Well, she’s 55.  And she’s a Lutheran.  A practicing lesbian Lutheran.  Lives with her lover.  Proud of it.  “So what?” you say. Well, this past November she was consecrated as the bishop of Stockholm with the full support of the Swedish Lutheran Church.  You don’t dare speak out against such things in Sweden these days.  Because the authorities will put you in jail for such hateful thoughts let alone speech.  And all of this done in God’s name.  Another bishop, Walter Obare, the Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Kenya did denounce it.  He dared to do it.  So that God’s Name would be kept holy among the dear African Lutherans under his care.          

Pastors are afraid to warn their congregations against false teaching.  They’re under heavy pressure to compromise on the truth of God’s Word.  After all, warning against false doctrine is called impolite.  Overbearing.  Not a team player.  Some even call it:  “lording it over the people.”  And then you’re done for as a pastor. 

The opposite of all this is the preaching and teaching of God’s Word in its truth and purity.  We are not concerned with pure doctrine just for pure doctrine’s sake.  It’s about God’s Name being kept holy among us.  It’s all about God remaining God for His people.  About Him continually being God for us and for our benefit.  Remember Jesus’ prayer? “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me . . .” 

But openly wicked and evil lives, dear children of the Father, defile His name.  Treat it as something sacred not as something ordinary and throw away.  

Does your life look any different than the unbelievers around you?  Or do you, as a member of the holy and royal priesthood, proudly live as idolaters, adulterers, fornicators, drunkards, gluttons, slanderers, liars?  Are you too proud to confess your sin to Jesus?  Too conceited to receive the Lord’s forgiveness with His name?  Then His name is desecrated among you.  Or do you insist on answering for your sin without Jesus?  Without His absolution?  Or without His promise of forgiveness in the Sacrament? 

No wonder Jesus teaches, when you pray say, “Hallowed by Thy name.”  He teaches you pray it against yourself.  Against your sin and your old Adams and Eves.  It turns you inside out. To faith in Jesus who died for you.  And to a life of love for others.

Faith clings to Jesus’ name.  For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which you must be saved.  Jesus.  His name means:  Savior of sinners!  Sinners that profane God’s name with their lips and lives.  Savior of Sinners Jesus.  He came in the name of the Lord on Palm Sunday as you Savior King.  He hallowed His Father’s name for you.  With His lips and His life.  And with His death!  As He goes the way of the cross for you, He has you and your salvation uppermost in His mind and heart.  He prays for you: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me . . .” 

The Father answered His Son’s prayer for you.  And He is delighted to hear yours too.  He is your Father and you are His dear children.  He’s given you His name.  He sticks with His name that He put it on you to hallow it among you with you lips and lives.  

In the Name of Jesus.          
 

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