The Commemoration of the Reformation – Sunday 27 October A✠D 2024
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 119:46;34:1-2, 11, 22;48:1, 12-13;48:14
✠ Lection: Revelation 14:6-7;Romans 3:19-28;St. Matthew 11:12-15
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.)
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the revelation to Saint John, chapter 14, the apostle saw in his vision an angel flying in the midst of heaven. An angel, a messenger, bearing the message of God in the midst of heaven.
The very place, if you look up to see the mid-heaven, the brightest place at which the sun shines at its midday. That is what the message that angels are given to proclaim, that all messengers given by God to proclaim, shines brightness in its brightest to the dark world. Yet God has not given the angels the good news to proclaim, but he has given it to the voices of fallen men, of low, lowly men, sinners, to proclaim this everlasting gospel.
He saw this angel, and John did in Revelation 14, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, the eternal gospel, the good news, the good news of God’s truth for all peoples, in all places, in all times. That is the message that all of God’s messengers are given to proclaim upon the earth among those in need of hearing word from God. Beloved, you have been called by the gospel, by the unadulterated, incorruptible, unbashful proclamation of the way, the truth, and the life that is Jesus Christ our Lord.
For no one comes to the Father but through him and through the salvation that he alone has won. You know the gospel, therefore know it well, and keep on in this life knowing it well. Make it your highest treasure, your very most prized possession.
Know that it is more than just Jesus loves you. For what good is Jesus loves you if the response is, meh, so what? What good is Jesus is Lord if the response is you’re at the wrong rally? Jesus loves you enough to die for your sins, meaning that there is evil in you and in all who dwell upon the earth just seeking to come out, to have its way. To deny this truth is to deny the very gift, to deny the very need of forgiveness of sins, and to deny such is to deny Jesus.
The gospel is far more, thanks be to God as he has intended it, than just Jesus loves you. Because he does not love you enough to leave you in your sins. The gospel not only saves, but it also informs the Christian.
It informs the Christian what you’re saved from, and it informs how you are to live in the midst of those on earth who will be judged for their wickedness. Wherever this truth is denied or distorted, so is Christ Jesus. Our Lutheran fathers in and after the Reformation believed this text in Revelation 14 to speak of Martin Luther as the angel.
I agree, not that it is only about him, but there are many beautiful layers of understanding to Revelation’s symbolism of how messengers of God are given that eternal gospel to preach to all who dwell in this deep, deeply dark and dreary place. In the face of the gospel of Christ being distorted, Luther, God’s messenger, said with a loud voice the equivalent of the words, fear God and give glory to him. For the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.
The good news that messengers of God are given to preach is broad and narrow. Most certainly, we need to hear that Christ died for sins, but there is so much more to God’s word and how that truth trickles down. It is broad in this way in that it warns the wicked of God’s impending judgment, and it warns believers of the wickedness that surrounds you and the danger of participating in it.
To grieve and blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to deny that Jesus is both God and Lord. Indeed, that he bled, died and rose again so that the sins of the world are forgiven in him alone. Again, the gospel is so much more because if Jesus is the truth, then all truth that is denied, ridiculed, attacked is an affront to him on high who made heaven and earth.
Thus, God sends his messengers out into the world today to say, to speak, to preach the same everlasting gospel with a loud voice, to warn when warning is needed, to preach the word in season and out of season. Yes, even in election season. Ironically, in this Lutheran church on this Reformation Day, as a Lutheran pastor, I admit that I agree with the Pope on at least one thing.
I will say this one thing. Others, yes, when he says Jesus is both Christ and Lord, I’ll agree there, but in his assessment of our landscape in which we dwell as the church militant in these days of which battle is real between good and evil, I agree with him when he says that we and we are making a choice for whom we vote for president in this country, that we are choosing the lesser of two evils. Beloved, do not be dismayed or fooled.
It’s easy to agree with Pope Francis in this regard, because the statement has always been true. It has been true in every election for president, for senator, mayor, what have you. For all men are liars, as the scriptures say.
So until Jesus gets on the ballot, we are always choosing the lesser of two evils, because we are electing sinners who dwell upon the earth to fill earthly offices. We are not on election day choosing pastors, bishops, angels. We are not choosing messengers of God who stand before us in God’s stead.
You have heard it said, and maybe even you believe it yourself, that pastors shouldn’t get political. Stay in your lane, pastor. Yet I say, why should God’s messengers concede any ground to the evil one through unspoken rules of silence regarding politics, things, and people that affect our way of life as Christians in a world that is seemingly hell-bent on destroying itself? If God desires and wills that you be warned that his people exalt Christ in everything that they do, then what say does a government that only has authority by God giving it have regarding whether you hear practical warnings from the pulpit about our nation, its trajectory, and how your faith is to guide your involvement in it? If you think that pastors, God’s official messengers, shouldn’t discuss politics, then you’ve been deceived by the voices that don’t want God to be heard.
And beloved, what voices would that be that do not want God interjected into the ways of the world, only the ones that want to destroy people by those means? Regarding whether Christians should vote or not, even on the basic level, indeed, our system is corrupted. There is cheating. There is dishonesty.
It is discouraging to know that our voting system is plagued by such. Your vote likely doesn’t count as a full vote because of these shenanigans, yet it still, by God’s mercy, counts. And any count is better than none.
Any voice is better than silence. It counts for good or for ill in how you choose as a child of the Most High to make your voice heard in how you vote. God is the one who has given this nation’s citizens a voice, a vote, which for most nations in the history of the world was not the case.
You were given your king or your queen or your dictator regardless of what you wanted or wanted to vote for. Monarchs, dictatorships, no voice, yet God still preserved his church even in those places. He will do the same regardless of what lies ahead for us.
Therefore, though not perfect, our election system in our constitutional republic still gives you as a citizen an opportunity to be a good steward of the voice that God has given you, that you are able to make heard by how you vote, but not your trust in princes nor in the son of man in whom there is no help, which means trust God even as you vote, regardless of the outcome, because his promise to work everything for your good is greater than the harm that any man or any woman may inflict upon you. Your God is greater. While also if God hasn’t trusted such a vote to you, then let that voice resound his truth in how it acts, in his goodness, not aligning yourself with blatant outright wickedness.
Voting is a part of a Christian’s life that is like all other parts that we take part in. As endless millions are spent in propaganda meant to stir up in you emotion-driven thoughts and decisions, as a Christian, you can neither check your mind nor your faith at the door, but must instead have scripturally driven and controlled thoughts and emotions with how you vote, self-control, reason set on heaven above, and what God Almighty says so that you make good and godly choices at the ballot box. As your angel, as your messenger, I am charged with preaching to you, who dwell on the earth, the everlasting gospel that Jesus Christ has redeemed you, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won you from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, not with a president, not with a senator, not with a policy of this world, but with his holy precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death, that you may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.
This is most certainly true in that life under him. I am also charged with giving you warning when wickedness tries to draw you away and to align you with it instead of the truth of Christ. All truth is his.
Let me make the warning clear as it comes to applying the word of God to your voting. In our two-party system, the democratic party, self-ascribed progressives, is by far the greater of two evils because it has indeed progressively grown darker and more wicked in its party-wide public platform to the extent that a Christian must deny clear teachings of the gospel itself to deny faith itself in order to vote democrat with a clear conscience. We pray for and vote for government leaders that they carry out their duties in godly ways so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
We pray for this, but there is no godly peace in a political party that howls at the overturning of Roe v. Wade, in a party that advocates publicly, boldly, for murder of the unborn to be legal up until birth. There is no godly peace in a political party that promotes sodomy and censors those who rightfully declare that homosexuality is a sin died for by Christ himself, indeed, yet is an abomination in the eyes of God, even though its own presidential candidate, Obama, just 16 years ago, held to the true definition of marriage between one man and one woman, only himself progressing, changing his stance from one that agrees with God Almighty to one that is the song of demons. There is no godly peace in a political party that aims to force girls to use the same bathrooms and locker rooms as boys, boys who are deceived about the bodies that God has given them.
There is no godly peace in a political party whose presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, who at a recent campaign event, responded with the words, oh, you guys are at the wrong rally, to two students who stood up and yelled out, Jesus is Lord. Beloved, that is the wickedness that is on full display. It is no longer hidden with some semblance of righteousness or sake of tradition that once, maybe, was in it.
Beloved, we have been called out of this wicked darkness. We have been called into a marvelous, everlasting light by the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ. We have been given the everlasting gospel that pervades its truth into every act and every aspect of our life.
For the sake of faith, for the sake of Christ our Lord, make godly, wise decisions as you walk a life that is continuously renewed by this sweet and everlasting gospel that is meant to shine bright in the face of a world gone mad. Worship him who made heaven and earth. Worship him in your pew.
Worship him at his altar. Worship him in your home. Worship him as you cast your vote.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, in Jesus’ name.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.)
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