Luther’s Exposition of the Joseph Narratives
The following are two sermons from 1993 generated from my study: “I Am Joseph!”: the Last Lectures of Luther on the Last Chapters of Genesis. The first from L.W VIII:25 and the sense that the spiritual height and depth are forfeited by a sensual, materialistic, and selfish life; and the second from the understanding that language is a medium of God’s creation.
Easter IV May 2, 1993
Lessons: Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a, 51-60
1 Peter 2: 19-25 John 10:1-10 Psalm 23.
Thy Crown and Thy Cross, They Comfort Me.
Today we have Good Shepherd Sunday. That is very appropriate in a week in which our little flock [Christ Lutheran Church in El Cerrito] found out that there is a new pastor in the wings, and when the members elect her, she will be your new pastor. What a joy that will be!
There is a parallel in the first lesson today – because the first congregation made an important step. All the disciples, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and everyone else at first was Jewish. That seemed fine, but for some reason, when it came to sharing, what possessions all held in common, the welfare was not getting to the Greek speaking widows and orphans quite as well as to the Hebrew speaking ones. Hmmmm. Perhaps there was a little discrimination there.
You’ll note that each of the deacons has a Greek name, and one of them does not only speak Greek, he is Greek, Nicholaus, not to be confused with St. Nick. The Jews held their breath as leadership was passing over to the Gentile Christians for the first time.
And in the same way, leadership passes over to women, and women pastors will receive their calls and bring glory to Christ, as much as these first Greeks brought glory. Stephen seemed to court martyrdom and became the very first martyr after Christ. And you know that in Greek, “Stephen” means, “crown”. “Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.”[1] (τὸν Στεφανον τῆς ζωῆς – the “stephen” of life. And the way the new leadership led the old, I think the women pastors of our churches are going to lead us into new dimensions of the meaning of Good Shepherds.
So the church back then took the next step in faith. You will be doing the same. And that will be the crown of your witness.
In a prayer and often during the week, I’ve questioned myself where a shepherd leads a flock now-a-days. I tried to question our seminarian in supervision. I struggled with it in prayer for the choir.
The 23rd Psalm is pretty clear. You lead the hungry lambs to good pasture, good green grass, to graze peacefully while having our needs met. You take the thirsty souls to still waters, where their thirst can be quenched. So shepherding and pastoring is about leading the people to where their needs are met.
But the psalm shows you how superficial that materialistic life is- although it is important because souls have to be revived, the righteous straight and narrow path needs to be taken for Christ’s name-sake, and then we have to hold hands when we are overcome by fear in the valley of the shadow.
Now at this point the place where you are led becomes more clear – because the psalm puts in a jarring image next, to awaken us to some new terrain, the Good Shepherd will lead us to.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Now that hook catches my leg and pulls me into line. What kind of comfort is that?
And you say: “No, that rod and staff protects me from the wild beasts, the wolves, the bears, the lions, so they don’t tear me up. So thy rod and thy staff they comfort me because I feel protected by them.”
But who says the wild beasts are outside trying to get in? What about the wild beasts in here, the wolf, the angry child, right here among the sheep? I mean the enemy within. You and me, we are the persons who refuse to be Christian.
It is here. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me! And that makes me change it to: “Thy crown and thy cross they comfort me.”
Because Christ, the Good Shepherd, leads us around the table of the Lord in the presence of my enemies. And makes me into a Christ[2] by anointing my head with oil: “Christ”, “Messiah” means the anointed ones.
And for you to become a Christ, your true self, the old person in you needs to die on the cross, and the old Adam and Eve, need to come to an end, and we shall rise up in a new life with Christ, crowned with many crowns. A “stephenos” will be upon each one of our brows as we are led into a Christlike existence. Catch your breath. Because the divine shepherd leads us into heaven. But – thy rod and thy staff, thy cross and thy crown, they comfort me.
To get to heaven you have to go through hell. How else is the wild beast in our heart changed into the tender and gentle lamb held in thy bosom of Christ?
When we are a hoard of rapacious, all-consuming animals – the cup won’t run over – we’ll knock it down and waste it all.
Perhaps it helps to look at our difficulty from another perspective. In Germany I was always considered an American, and in America, while growing up I was always considered a German. Back in Germany, they said that Americans were actors. Now, just imagine a whole society of actors. Life has flattened into the sparkle of entertainment. The sensual things are important – the eating, the drinking, the clothing, house and shelter – and the physical images, too of women and men and luxuries and toys. And these actors all live on the surface of life, but sheer violence rules in their hearts, where the soft and tender throbbing of a human heart should be.
Where can you lead actors in a world of make-believe, who have lost the grasp of realities, real relationships, avoiding the wretched suffering of this life, and are carefully sealed off from the truth, because that penetrates below the surface, where confusion and a lot of anger has to be shut in and controlled.
God loves us. And I don’t want to become another Stephen, I must quickly add, because not only the lay people are actors, the pastor is a good actor, too. But God loves us – and Christ, the Good Shepherd wants to lead us out of our acting into real living. Yes sirree! I came that they may have life and life abundantly.
But God needs to use tough love on us. God has to give us hell, so that we start one step at a time, start moving toward the lush meadows and sparkling streams of heaven to revive our
souls.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. When God blesses us with trouble, then all the acting we call life soon has to come to an end.
But then who will rush out of our closet – a violent beast? Or will a gentle lamb come out, with the cross over the shoulder, and appear in the radiance of the Lamb of God?
Thy cross, it comforts me.
This is Luther’s theology of the cross, of course. God reaches out to us with the opposite of what we expect, dumbfounding us. To lead us to heaven, God gives us hell. But that’s because God loves us, and doesn’t want us to end up in hell, but finally make our home in heaven. What good is going all the way through heaven in order to end up in hell?
Christ has a burning love for you and me, even if we are actors and don’t know how to become real. But the rod and the staff and the cross are our aid. Christ will chastise us, trouble us, leave us no way to turn, until we do a good spring cleaning on our hearts, and make it a decent place for Christ to live, and provide a decent place there for our neighbor, and have a heart ready to suffer faithfully unto death, trusting God alone, until we receive the crown of life.
Where will the pastor lead you? Where will the Good Shepherd lead me? If you see me running in the opposite direction – get the shepherd’s hook and pull me back in.
I have the image of the angel facing off Jacob of old. That angel would not move until Jacob changed. “I’ll not let you get around me.” The angel may have said. And Jacob had no alternative but to come to terms with his heart.
Let’s allow Christ to lead us back into our hearts, where streams of living waters flow. Let us wait patiently on the Lord, until his wrath passes over us, and wait there beyond sensual enjoyment, beyond material fixations, beyond active compulsions, beyond anywhere we can go into the place where Christ lives in our hearts in real life, centered life – into spiritual heights and depths only forgiven sinners dare go.
Amen.
Pentecost, 1993
May 30, 1993 Text: John 20:19-23.
Set my tongue on fire, O Lord, to sing your holy praises! AMEN.
Let’s do something different today. Let’s do a Bible study.
In Sunday School we did a sermon. Here we’ll do the Bible Study. I tried to read the Gospel lesson in Latin and Greek as well as English. Surprisingly enough, it was in the Greek that the text opened up to me.
That should not surprise me. After all, it is the original. And every language gives us a mental set, a world view that understands some things better than others. Every language has a character and has different strengths and weaknesses. Look how many words Greek has for love: ἀγάπη, (agapé), φιλία, (philia), ἔρως, (eros), and I even discovered a new one: φιλόστοργία (philostorgia), “heart-felt love.” German has many different words for knowledge and experience, English does not have, and in Hebrew “to know” means “to have sexual intercourse with” – so be careful whom you say you know!
They are gathered together for worship, and are very frightened. They had “phobia”, i.e., great fear, derived from the Greek word, φόβος, (phóbos). And they are singing, preaching, and praying, as we would worship.
Suddenly Jesus stands up in the Word. In their words, Jesus rises up and stands in the midst of them and becomes really present and says: “Peace be with you!”
In the course of their worship, Jesus came to them. Jesus stands up in the Word with all the power and authority by God given him.
Do we not know? Don’t you and I know God’s promise? Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of you! Jesus stood up in the “I am.” of the Word, and addressed the disciples with peace. ειρήνη, (Irene) in Greek, and שָׁלוֹם (Shalom) in Hebrew.
And the fear that squeezed the life out of them, became changed into an overwhelming joy at the sight of him. Yes, the fullness of joy overtook them. Like having squeezed through a dark and fearful tunnel, and then coming out into a spacious meadow flooded with sunshine, where you take a deep breath, and all the burdens of your heart melt, and you can run and jump and skip as carefree as a child, happy, glorious, at one with nature and God.
Jesus speaks to the disciples again, in their words, songs, prayers, preaching, and hearing: “Peace be with you!” It’s a double measure of peace given to them and to us now, so that it becomes too much for us to contain, so our hearts like a cup overflowing, have to share it with others.
A double measure of peace, because it is not the peace of the world, but the peace that fought death, sin, and the devil, and won the victory over the world. It is the peace that passes all understanding. The peace that kisses, embraces, and gets to “know” righteousness, in the rendez vous of steadfast love and faithfulness, where faith gushes up like a fountain from the ground, and righteousness is the new environment surrounding us from the sky. (Psalm 85) This is the double measure of peace, with which “the truth goes marching on,” yeah, the noble army of martyrs marching for the peace of their prince, Christ Jesus.
You see, during all the preaching and worship, Jesus suddenly spoke to them, standing up in the midst of their words, a being full of peace, blessing the speaker and the hearer. In the Holy Word, Jesus stands up in the midst of them and they rejoice in the Lord.
“Apestalken” (ἀπέσταλκέν in Greek) means “to send” and “apostle” can be seen to derive from that word. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you! That is the language of God. Disciples learn. By the breath of Jesus’ mouth, he changes them into apostles who are “sent.” He is sending them on the Holy Way. He is sending them into their passions and into their commissions in the great strategy that will accomplish the peace of salvation. That is their mission. They are sent.
Jesus breathed on them when he said this. Think of the old maps, which still outlined funny imaginary shapes to the geography of our continents. On them the imaginary head of an old man as the North Wind is pictured, blowing a blast of hoary frost. An angry Northeaster blasts a gale at a disconcerted sailing ship, making the sailors scramble to secure the vessel. It pictures the North, South, East and West winds that blow from the four corners of the world.
But these maps do not picture heaven, and it is from heaven that Jesus rises up and breathes a mighty rushing wind of God: receive the Holy Spirit!
You can’t see the wind – but you surely see its effects: the trees swaying, bending in the strength of its force. You can’t see the spirit – but you certainly see the people who have become changed. You see the movement of the peace of salvation it sets afoot. The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, prisoners are set free, the hungry receive food, the homeless their shelter, the distraught a sound mind, the reason and the cause for war and violence get the rug pulled out from underneath them, as enemies say: “What were we actually fighting about?” The wind of the spirit rushes over enemies making them friends.
In the Pentecost, 1986 sermon, I actually preached about a mighty rushing reconciliation that could take place between the United States and the Soviet Union by the power of the Holy Spirit. (I made a play on the words “Russian” and “rushin” wind.) Indeed it has since taken place.[3] But we need to get a double measure of peace that the breath of Christ set another movement to get on with the precious salvation, God has set afoot in this world through God’s Christ, the living Word, born in Bethlehem, dying on the cross, that we might hear the divine language, the language of God, the Word looking right into our eyes, and speaking love to our hearts.
The risen Christ sends us. The love of God sends us. The passion of Christ is a movement in which we participate, in which we share, so that leaning into the wind of the spirit, we obey God and carry out the mission of peace which God gives us the grace, energy, strength, and authority for.
Those Pentecostal burning tongues of holy fire placed on our heads, are not blown out by the wind of the spirit. Nay, they are fueled and strengthened. The tongue is the divine language of which Jesus gives us command, an authority that can open and unlock the gates of heaven, or slam them shut in the face of the world.
Those tongues of fire are Words of God, the shining Light of the World. They are you and I being changed into Christs, ready to enter the passion which will re-people the world with peace.
Let us lean in the wind!
Imagine one of those old movie scenes. Oh, how I hated them! A sailing vessel on a hot tropical sea. All wind stops. Not a breath to refresh the air. All the sails hanging limp. Not a soul stirring, a great boring nothing – and the sailors languish. In the movies I could not stand those scenes!
But there you have a snapshot – of the ship called the church. Many a vessel here. Christ Lutheran, Grace, That of the Cross, Resurrection, a whole fleet. We have gotten the words
right. But where’s the wind?
Let us pray for the mighty rushing wind of the Holy Spirit, to fill the sails of the church, so that these sorry people, these dreadfully lost, these people with hearts filled with anger and violence, can move again into gentle hearts of love – as the sail, now feeling a breath, now a flutter, now a gust, now gets filled by the Holy Spirit, and the steel trap of hell releases, and the door of heaven is thrown open – and we set sail once again on the mission upon which he sent us re-peopling the world with the salvation of peace! O Jesus! What language shall I borrow to thank Thee dearest friend! “Take my Word and love it! I’ll hear it. Rise up and speak my dearest friend!“
Let’s detach ourselves from things
and attach ourselves to God!
Set my tongue on fire, O Lord,
to sing your holy praises!
AMEN!
[1] Revelations 2:10.
[2] “Little Christ” I said back then. Tim Wengert corrected me and said, “We become Christs to one another.
[3] Alas, now in 2022 it is back to enmity once again. The world is too much with us [William Wordsworth] and what good is a map that doesn’t include heaven in it? [Oscar Wilde said “a utopia in it.”]
