Drowning Myself Whenever I Can

Though our country was born of rebellion against our divinely appointed monarch, his grace, George III, even as a result of sinful rebellion a government can come that God uses for his good purposes (to reward good and punish evil).  So I do thank God for all the blessings I have received through the United States of America.

However, were it July 4th, 1776, I'd probably be singing this:

God save our gracious King!
Long live our noble King!
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King.

Thy choicest gifts in store
On him be pleased to pour,
Long may he reign.
May he defend our laws,
And give us ever cause,
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the King.

Rev. Charles Lehmann + Francis Georg + Romans 8:31-35,37-39

 In the Name of + Jesus.  Amen.

 This morning we stand in a cemetery, next to the grave which will be Francis' resting place.  Sometimes we call a grave a final resting place, but that is not true.  Francis will not be here forever.  You see, even though death is the greatest enemy of us all it is also very weak.  But when you are standing at the graveside of a loved one, it is hard to see death's weakness.  Right now death seems very strong and very powerful.  And death has been trying to convince us of it's power ever since it first took hold in the Garden of Eden.

 In the centuries since that first day that sin entered the world, death has claimed billions.  Those of us who still live are constantly reminded of the hold that death has on us.  Our joints hurt.  Our muscles ache.  We cough.  Every physical malady we endure reminds us of what is coming.

 But all too often we allow ourselves to give death way too much credit.  We think of death as having far more power than it actually does.  Death is weak, dear friends.  It has no hold on you, and it has no hold on Francis.  That is the message of the readings from Scripture that we have heard this morning.

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Rev. Charles Lehmann + 2nd Sunday after Trinity + Luke 14:15-24

 In the Name of + Jesus.  Amen.

 Today's parable begins with what sounds like a pious declaration.  The man who is at table with Jesus says, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”  But what this man is saying is neither pious nor reverent nor wise.  This man is another in a string of people trying to entrap Jesus in what He's saying and doing.  Specifically, this man is ungrateful for what he has already received, and he fails to recognize who has given it to him.

 Imagine for a moment that you had just eaten Thanksgiving dinner with your family.  Imagine that while you were still at the table with your stomach so full that you couldn't even stand up, you said, “Man, I'm starved.  I think I'm going to hop in the car and see if Perkins is open today.”

 None of you would do that.  You know that it would be disrespectful to those who prepared the feast that you just enjoyed.  You know that it could cause them pain.  Instead you would thank all who prepared the food.  You might even mention something specific that you liked about the meal.  You would recognize the great gift you had been given and you would be grateful to those responsible for giving it to you.

 The man in today's Gospel reading is dining with Jesus.  The Lord and King of the universe who created and sustains all things has just eaten food and drunk wine at the very table where he is sitting.  The man is blessed beyond imagining.  Jesus is there eating with him.  God Himself is present.

 But the man doesn't have any idea what he has.  He says that he will be blessed if he eats bread in the kingdom of God.  In response to this Jesus says, “None of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.”

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smaal

"If then God be as man, let Him become also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from a father; therefore does He not beget one who shall become a father; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son.

Athanasius, Discourses Against Arius, ch 6, para. 21

"No one, for instance, would compare God with man, or again man with brutes, nor wood with stone, because their natures are unlike; but God is beyond comparison, and man is compared to man, and wood to wood, and stone to stone."

Athanasius, Discourses Against Arius, ch 13, para. 57

smaal

Here's the conclusion from my Epiphany III 2007 sermon, which was published in Lutheran Forum, Easter/Spring 2007, 53:

 

In 1522 an Islamic force of 400 ships under the command of Sultan Suleiman delivered 200,000 men to the Mediterranean island-city of Rhodes . Against this force, the Knights of the Order of Saint John, under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had, after reinforcements, only about 7,000 men-at-arms, including 650 Knights. 7,000 against 200,000.  The bloody and violent siege lasted six months, at the bitter cold winter end of which the 180 surviving Knights and the few others were allowed to leave Rhodes, retreated to Sicily, and eventually settled in Malta in 1530.  They left behind thousands of bodies of men, women, and children heaped into death piles of untold suffering.

Here we have no lasting city and we are promised no earthly victories.

This battle is the setting for Bo Giertz’s historical novel, The Knights of Rhodes.  In the beginning of the book, one of the Knights has a Muslim servant who answers questions from his master regarding Allah:  “He is exalted, higher than the heavens, incomprehensible, glorious beyond all understanding, impossible to grasp….  If we could understand him,” says the servant, “he would no longer be God.  And if he could become like us, he would not be God, either.  We would never dare to say that the Infinitely Exalted would have a son with a woman, that the Glory and the Divinity, the holy, inexpressible, whom we cannot find words for – that this one should be found in a miserable, sweaty, human body, which can get sores and colic, which must stuff itself with porridge and must relieve itself as we do.  This is blasphemy.  Therefore God gives us victory….”

At the end of the book, injured, near death, and far, far from home, another Knight, 18-year-old André Barel closes his eyes and folds his hands.  “A great peace comes over him.  He knew that he was not alone.  He knew this without needing to clothe it with words.  There was someone here who walked amidst the hospital beds, just like in the streets of Capernaum .   This one stopped and bowed down.  His breast, too, had a large wound.  His hands bled.  One could tell that he knew everything that those at home would never understand.  He, too, had experienced it:  cold and rain, filth and vermin, beatings and wounds, fear of death and defeat.  The God who had come down into all this, he was very near.  It was good to have such a God.”  Amen.

 

My quotations from The Knights of Rhodes are from Bo Giertz, Riddarna på Rhodos ( Göteborg , Sweden :  Församlingsförlaget, 2003) 45-46, 253.  This book has not yet been published in English, though Bror Erickson has completed a translation and is seeking a publisher.