Rev. Tucher

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier.

Do you understand who you are? You may be a father or a mother. You may be a shift worker or a teacher. You may be many things, but do you fully understand who you are? Paul did not understand who he was. He was a saint and a slave to God, yet he was also a sinner and a slave to sin. Was he a sinner or a saint? Paul was both. So let me ask you who you are? Are you a sinner or a saint? You are both. Martin Luther coined the phrase, Simul Iustus et Peccator, simultaneously saint and sinner. He was fond of talking about himself as saint and sinner at the same time. He knew in a most personal way the struggle of St. Paul. He, more than most, desperately struggled to control his every thought and action, but to no avail. It was only after he found the secret of God’s forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ that he could boldly confess he was saint and sinner, but living moment by moment in God’s forgiveness. Paul’s passionate struggle and search for an answer helped Luther and other heroes of the faith and is capable of helping us experience God’s good news for us today.

Paul realized in our text that that was exactly who he was: a saint and a sinner. It is a realization that all Christians can make, and should make, of themselves: throughout our lives as baptized children of God, we are, and always will be, simultaneously saint and sinner.

Some Christians miss the point of our text. They suggest that Paul is talking about his life before he was converted. Some Christians even make the assumption that after conversion, it’s possible to live without this tension. Paul is talking about his personal struggle after his conversion experience. He’s talking about the Paul who Jesus confronted on the road to Damascus. He’s talking about a Paul who had the courage to face councils and governors. He’s talking about a Paul who could give thanks and sing for joy, even in a prison cell. Paul, who was a hero of the faith, cried out, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle which was read earlier.

I have bad news to report this morning. This may come to a shock to people. I am a sinner. Yes, that’s right. Your pastor is a sinner. It’s not something that I’m proud of but it’s something that you need to know about me. Now, is there something that you would like to confess to me? Let me help. “I, insert name here, am a sinner.” I know that it’s difficult for all of us to say, but it’s something that we have to admit, not only to one another, but to ourselves. Once we admit that we are sinners, we can truly understand what God has given to us because of our sin: grace.

Though we have received grace, Paul asks a wonderful question to the Romans: “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” It’s a good question to ask. If you think about what Paul is saying, then it would be smart for a person to sin: the more that you sin, the more grace that you receive. If we use that line of thought, the less sin we commit, then the less grace we would receive. Who wouldn’t want a large measure of grace in their lives?

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier.

All too often, we hear the phrase, “I promise.” Sometimes those promises are kept, sometimes they are not. Sometimes those promises have the potential of being kept, while sometimes they do not. We promise young children that nothing bad will happen to them; yet the first time they fall and skin their knees, you have broken your promise. We are promised the world; yet in order for that promise to come to fruition, we must work at achieving those things of the world in order for them to be ours.

When one reads of the promises of God, there is never any doubt that what God promises will indeed take place. God, as far back as Genesis 3, gave to Adam and Eve, and all people, the first Gospel promise: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” That first Gospel promise was the promise of the Messiah, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Paul, in our text today, refers to the promise made to Abraham and his offspring “that he would be heir of the world.” The emphasis of the promise lies in the fact that this “did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” God did not and, in fact, could not make the promise, this great promise to Abraham or to his seed, by means of the Law. He did not attach this promise to Law; Law would have been the wrong vehicle. Law could never had made either Abraham or his seed righteous, and they had to be so in order to have this promise and to have it fulfilled in them, for if they had been left in an unrighteous state, they would have been no better than all the rest of mankind. Abraham and his seed had to be made righteous. They were and are made so by means of faith’s righteousness.

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon is the Gospel, which was read earlier.

Someone has said that worry is prayer in reverse. That makes sense. When we worry, we depend on ourselves, not on God, the giver of all good things. Jesus makes a connection between worry and prayer in our text. He’s just taught His disciples the prayer that we say at every Divine Service: the Lord’s Prayer. Now He expands on that, talking about what makes us anxious. As we listen to the Words of Jesus, we learn that when we take our anxieties to God and turn them over to Him, prayer puts worry into reverse.

The question we need to ask ourselves is why do we let worry drive us backward? It’s an easy question to answer. The answer is because we do not fully put our trust in God and His provisions for our lives. Some of us may be concerned about our daily needs, such as food and clothing. However, we should not be concerned about our daily needs, as these are provided for us by God daily. Luther, when explaining the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed writes the following: “He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.” There are those who face devastation in their lives, such as those affected by the tornado in Colorado last week. They are desperately seeking daily needs of food, clothing, and shelter; yet we know God will provide for them because He has said that He will.

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon comes from the Epistle, which was read to you earlier.

In just a matter of months, Americans will come together on a day that marks us as a nation: the 4^th of July, Independence Day. Why is the 4^th of July so important? Independence Day commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. On this day, more than any other, we identify ourselves with the nation of the United States of America.

The Old Testament Feast of Pentecost was one of the three annual harvest celebrations of the ancient Israelites. Grain in Israel is harvested in the spring, and on Pentecost the Israelites were expected to bring to the Lord the “firstfruits of the wheat harvest.” Pentecost was also one of the three great festivals for which every Israelite was to assemble in Jerusalem. It was a day like this that the Jews truly identified themselves as Jewish.

What did happen on that first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came to the Church in a very special way? In the tradition of the day, Pentecost was a kind of memorial day. Everybody got the day off from work. They gathered to celebrate the spring harvest and to remember the time in history when Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. Pentecost was a day to celebrate God’s direction and the purpose given to His people in His law and sustained in the fruitful harvest. This was the Jewish Festival of Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover feast.

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier.

In Luther’s Morning Prayer, we pray the following: “I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger….” We pray that for a reason and that reason is this: as Christians, we will be harmed and there will be danger. Peter recognized that in our text. Although the followers of Jesus could not be accused of wrongdoing by the unbelieving community, their faith in Jesus of Nazareth and the kindness and love which they strove to show everyone set them apart from most other people, but also set them up for ridicule and abuse from the community. How were the Christians to act toward those who falsely accused them of doing evil? How should they react in the face of questions and objections? Ask yourself how are you, as a Christian, to act toward those who falsely accuse you of doing evil? How should you react?

Jesus tells us how we are to react: “But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well….” Instead of trying to get even for evil done to us, instead of plotting on how to make the person pay for evil done to us, Jesus says that we are to turn the other cheek; we are not to seek vengeance for wrongs done to us.

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon comes from the Gospel, which was read earlier.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” “The lights are on, but nobody’s home.” “He’s not playing with a full deck.” These are just a few phrases people use to suggest that someone lacks a little something in the intelligence department.

When reading our text for today, we see that Jesus speaks in a figure of speech, “but they did not understand what he was saying to them.” All too often, we do not understand what is being said to us. However, that doesn’t change the message of the text. The words of our text are addressed to Christ’s entire audience: His disciples, the formerly blind man, the Pharisees, and the other Jews who happened to be there. The purpose of the entire parable was to point out to everyone the Pharisees’ sin of leading people astray, so that the people would avoid them, and to try to lead those same Pharisees to repentance. The entire text forms a beautiful picture of Jesus’ work for us as our Savior, being the one who truly gives us life in every sense of the word.

Jesus begins with a parable with which we are all familiar. The picture of the sheep and the Good Shepherd is used repeatedly throughout Scripture. A shepherd cares for the sheep and is willing to give his own life for the sake of the sheep. Why is that? Sheep are dumb animals. They will walk themselves off of a cliff if not watched. When a storm comes, they will cluster together, often suffocating one another because they are so close to one another. That is why sheep need a shepherd.

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from Gospel, which was read earlier.

“Peace be with you.” It was just an ordinary greeting, much like our greeting of “hello” or “have a good day.” Just an ordinary greeting, but on the occasion reported in our text, it had an extraordinary meaning.

The disciples were huddled together behind closed doors; afraid, scared because of the authorities. Would they arrest the disciples? Would they execute them because they had befriended the man who was killed for being a traitor and a heretic, this man Jesus? Now there was a rumor floating about that this man was alive again. Stamp out the rumor by rubbing-out the disciples; a sensible strategy. So now the disciples were huddled together in fear.

As the disciples huddle in fear, something miraculous happened. “Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” Then there follows in the text those incredible words: “When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord and recognized Him as Lord by the wounds and scars on His body! It must have been frightening, to say the least, when Jesus first appeared to them when the room was locked. Days earlier, Christ was arrested and killed. Now the body of Christ is missing. Some say that robbers have stolen the body, while others have seen the resurrected Christ. Because of the thoughts of some that the body has been stolen, it would only seem logical that it was the disciples themselves who stole the body. It could even be said that the disciples were the next on the arrest list for propagating the false teachings of Jesus. For that reason, they hid, much as you and I would hide.

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Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah! Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for our sermon this morning is the Gospel which was read earlier.

Darkness. Ask a child what they’re afraid of and more often than not, they’ll tell you that they are afraid of the dark. The darkness can elicit many feelings. You hear a strange sound in the dark and you wonder what is lurking. Your eyes play tricks on you, showing you things in the dark when they’re not really there.

On this particular day, a Sunday, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb of Jesus in the dark. She needs to feel that connection to her dead Savior. She is grieving at the loss of a loved one, just as we would. Somehow, when we stand at the grave of our loved one, we feel that connection.

That is the feeling that Mary Magdalene needed; connection to her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. However, when she arrives she cannot receive that feeling of being connected to Jesus because He is not there.

Many things have taken place in the last week. Christ has been betrayed, mocked, sentenced, crucified and has finally died in what seems like a matter of minutes. All that Christ stood for was now gone, hope buried behind a stone. Now after journeying to the tomb, Mary Magdalene sees that the stone is no longer in its final resting place. She dare not venture into the tomb because of the darkness, in fear of what may or may not be there. That is why she races to get Simon Peter and the other disciples. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning is the Gospel which was read earlier.

Death. It is all around us. At some point in our lives, someone we have known or someone we know has died or will die. At some point, even you will die. Benjamin Franklin, one of our “Founding Fathers” is quoted as saying “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Taxes aside, Benjamin Franklin is right: death is certain. This isn’t a concept that Franklin came up. This is reiterated throughout Scripture. Paul says in Romans that “the wages of sin is death.” As we see in our text for today, death has come for Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha.

Death is the ultimate result of sin. Sin separated us from God. Sin caused pain and hurt to enter into creation. As a final result, sin gave to us death, the ultimate separation from God. It separates us from His holiness, His perfection and His Word of truth.

At the loss of a loved one, we seek comfort. Some seek comfort in friends and family. Some seek comfort in the things of this world. For Martha, she sought comfort in her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. She tells him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” She knows that while family and friends can tell her that things will be okay, her brother is still dead. She knows that the world can bring her comfort in many things, but in the end, the world cannot bring back her dead brother. She goes seeking Jesus because she knows that He is the Christ, the Son of God. He gives her the assurance that she is looking for: “Your brother will rise again.” That is the assurance that Christ gives to each and every one of us: you will rise again.

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