March 10, 2015

“And Jesus went up on the mountain, and called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him. And he appointed twelve, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons…” Mark 3:18 19

“When I preached my first sermon in the country upon my arrival in Pennsylvania, an aged man came up to me and said with amazed wonder on his face, “Dear Pastor, I felt just as though I was listening to the dear G*d in heaven Himself.” In the meantime I learned a little more about his life, and when, after the second service, he again declared to my face that it had been like hearing an angel from heaven, I took him aside and urgently besought him to leave off his sinful, disorderly life and surrender with his whole heart to the Lord Jesus, the true friend of repentant sinners, and thus find peace for his soul. I had hardly given him this advice when he burst out, “Who is this devil’s priest to give me advice? This is a free country!”
Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711 – 1787) “For All The Saints” volume III

“Who is this devil’s priest to give me advice?”…As a pastor, I don’t usually feel like a “devil’s priest” so much as I do a “clown” for Christ. Maybe you have found this to be true in your life – where you try to give advice to someone (who asked for advice) or you make a comment to try to encourage an individual or a group, and someone comes back at you with venom on their lips telling you, in essence, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” From the pulpit, I am a conduit for the message of Jesus Christ – and that is not a popular message many days. When we are committed to preach “Law and Gospel” (as Lutheran pastors are called to do), then we have a real challenge. First, we use the Law as Hammer and Mirror; the law drives us to the cross because without the cross we have no hope; and we allow the law to help us see ourselves as the sinful people we really are – the law is a mirror held up for us to see our true selves. Then, then my friends comes the word of Grace – the Gospel message from Jesus who, through the cross takes all of our sins from us and sees us as children of G*d.

So we have a choice in our proclamation. We can sell cheap grace by softening the message and deceiving ourselves into thinking we aren’t as bad as we really are. Or, we can lay it out as it really is – we are both sinner and saint – both without hope and grasping and clinging onto the only thing that gives us hope – the cross.

Yes, we live in a free country. And we are free to choose to proclaim and to be proclaimed too. But every once in a while we need to step out of ourselves to look into the mirror of repentance – which shows us what we need most – which is the Cross, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Dave