SERM: Mark 10:2-16, Pentecost 19, LSB B proper 22

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

FORBEARANCE

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Gospel Jesus shows you God’s most basic feelings toward you. 
Stated another way, today Jesus demonstrates God’s mercy and FORBEARANCE toward 
you. Here is what happened:

Pharisees… asked [Jesus], “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He 
answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to 
write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, 
“Because of your hardness of heart he [Moses] wrote you this commandment.”

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel can be compared to a Fig Newton, or to one of those lollipops 
called a Tootsie Pop—crusty or hard on the outside, chewy in the middle. On the 
surface of this Gospel, Jesus is speaking about divorce. However, divorce is 
just the outside crust of the Fig Newton, so to speak, or the hard candy shell 
of the Tootsie Pop. There is a wonderful “chewy middle” in today’s Gospel. Like 
a Fig Newton or a Tootsie Pop, some really good stuff is waiting for you below 
the surface of this Gospel’s outer crust and shell.

CRUSTY ON THE OUTSIDE

That is why Jesus says here in today’s Gospel,

What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate… Whoever divorces 
his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces 
her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

These Words of Jesus fall harshly for many people, but not for everyone. For 
example,

•   Some people have not even yet married, much less divorced. For them, as 
for widows, Jesus’ Words about divorce seem might to be beside the point.

•   For happily married people, divorce is probably the farthest things 
from their minds.

•   Then, too: If a divorced person thinks of himself or herself only as a 
victim of divorce and not as a contributor to it, then today’s Gospel may sound 
like it was written for his former spouse and not him. 

CHEWY ON THE INSIDE, PART 1

Here is the thing: Jesus is not speaking ONLY about divorce in today’s Gospel. 
Divorce is merely the crusty outside of the Fig Newton or the hard shell of the 
Tootsie Pop. When Jesus exposes the chewy middle of today’s Gospel, no one will 
escape! Here is the first part of that chewy middle, so to speak, that will 
implicate you and me and everyone who ever lived: “Because of your hardness of 
heart.” 

Pharisees… said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to 
send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “BECAUSE OF YOUR HARDNESS OF HEART he 
[Moses] wrote you this commandment.”

“Because of the hardness of your heart…” With these Words, Jesus is getting 
every single one of us involved in today’s Gospel. Even if divorce is not an 
issue for your own personal life, look beyond the outward crust of this Gospel 
and see its chewy center. “Hardness of heart” causes divorce, to be sure. But 
“hardness of heart” creates many more hardships and calamities than that! For 
example:

•   “Hardness of heart” is why we Christians so quickly bite and kick one 
another at nearly every opportunity—both inside and outside of marriage. 
“Hardness of heart” not only comes between husbands and wives, but it also 
divides fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and neighbors, bosses 
and co-workers. “Hardness of heart” is why we choose to cut our neighbor off 
and walk away, rather than submit ourselves to the hard labor of keeping good 
rapport. This is what God has written:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that 
your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. 
You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel (James 4:1-2)

•   “Because of the hardness of heart…” These Words also explain why God 
mercifully withholds certain earthly blessings from us. This is what God 
Himself has also written: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, 
to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people!” (James 4:2-4)

•   Is it possible that “hardness of heart”—this disease that we all 
possess—is it possible that “hardness of heart” even limits or restricts some 
of the benefit we receive from our God here in worship? God might have had 
“hardness of heart” in mind when He wrote in I Corinthians, concerning His Holy 
Communion:

Let a person examine himself… For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning 
the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak 
and ill, and some have died (1 Corinthians 11:28-30). 

As you can see from these few examples, divorce is only the outward crust or 
shell of today’s Gospel. Below the surface of divorce, at its chewy center, 
Jesus speaks about the hardness of the heart. Jesus Words, “Because of the 
hardness of your heart” make today’s Gospel is a universal Gospel. Stated 
another way, the chewy center of today’s Gospel

SERM: Numbers 11:4-6, Pent 18, LSB B proper 21

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Old Testament, God’s people complained. These are the very 
same people whom God had powerfully and miraculously brought up out of Egypt, 
out of the land of slavery. These are the people whom God had carefully watched 
and vigorously protected night and day, every moment of their journey. In 
today’s Old Testament, the people who complain are the same people who held 
between their own teeth the very bread of heaven; bread faithfully and 
miraculously given to them by the hand of God Himself. “Now our strength is 
dried up,” God’s people complained, “and there is nothing at all but this manna 
to look at.”

Dear Christian friends,

Two places in the New Testament of His Bible, God explains to you why He wrote 
today’s Old Testament for you.

•   First God says in 1 Corinthians 10:11, “These things happened to them 
[that is, to the people of Israel]… for our instruction.” With these Words, God 
wants you to know that He wrote today’s Old Testament for your sake, in order 
to teach you something that is vitally important.

•   God also says in Romans 15:4, “Whatever was written in former days was 
written for our instruction, that … through the encouragement of the Scriptures 
we might have hope.” With these Words, God is telling you why He wants you to 
hear today’s Old Testament and take it to heart: God is going to give you 
ENCOURAGEMENT, STRENGTH, and HOPE through the what people have said here today: 
“Now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to 
look at.”

When God tells us that He wrote His Old Testament for our instruction, He is 
also telling us that He wants us to make a comparison, history for history and 
life for life. God wants us to compare ourselves to the people of the Old 
Testament, about whom God has written. God wants each of us to compare our life 
situation to their life situation; our struggles to their struggles; our doubts 
and fears to their doubts and fears; our continual sin and rebellion to their 
continual sin and rebellion. When God tells us that He wrote His Old Testament 
for our instruction, He wants us to hold in comparison the way He loved and 
nurtured and protected them and the way He equally promises to love and nurture 
and protect YOU and ME.

1. The people in today’s Old Testament are the same people whom God had brought 
up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. These people once lived in a 
bondage from which they could not escape; in a land of darkness in which they 
could feel no hope. But what did God do? It is written:

The Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians… Pharaoh’s 
chariots and his host He cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk 
in the Red sea. The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a 
stone (Exodus 14:30, 15:4-5).

“These things happened to them… for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The 
way God saved Israel from Egypt can be compared to the way God has likewise 
saved you and me from our own bondage. “You were dead in trespasses and sins” 
(Ephesians 2:10). “We all once lived [enslaved] in the passions of our flesh… 
by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). But what God do? It is written:

When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, 
not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own 
mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He 
poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior (Titus 3:4-6).

2. The people in today’s Old Testament are the same people whom God had 
carefully watched and vigorously protected night and day, every sandy footstep 
of their journey. God’s Old Testament people were not left abandoned. But what 
did God do? It is written:

He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like 
a heap. In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery 
light (Psalm 78:13-14). 

[God] in [His] great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar 
of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the 
pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go 
(Nehemiah 9:19). 

Can anything less be said of you? “These things happened to them… for our 
instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11). God the Son remained continually present in 
the Old Testament cloud of water vapor just as God the Son likewise remains 
continually present for you in the water of your Baptism. God promised—and God 
fulfilled His promise—that He would not forsake His Old Testament people in the 
wilderness. God the Son has likewise promised you—and thus far has proven 
true—“I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

3. “Now our strength is dried up,” God’s people complained, “and there is 
nothing at a

SERM: Mark 9:14-29, Pent 16, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

This sermon is somewhat experimental, in that I point to Jesus' active, rather 
than passive, obedience for our salvation.

I will not be offended by critique or protest.



The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

JESUS IS THE ONE WHO BELIEVES

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! When Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “All things are possible to the one 
who believes,” He is not talking about you and (thankfully) He is not talking 
about me. When Jesus says, “All things are possible for the one who believes,” 
He is talking about Himself. By calling Himself “the one who believes” in this 
Gospel, Jesus is giving the greatest possible benefits both to you and to me.

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel is like a museum or an art gallery. If you hurry through a 
museum or an art gallery, you will also miss seeing many important and 
beautiful things as you hasten by. Today’s Gospel is like a museum or an art 
gallery because, if we hurry, we will miss this Gospel’s beauty and grace.

Today’s Gospel is like a man or a woman at a sewing machine. Sometimes when you 
sew, you might lay down stitches where you think they should be, only to 
discover that you have sewed into the wrong direction. What to do? You must 
tear out the stitches and begin again. Today’s Gospel is like a man or a woman 
at a sewing machine because it would be easy to stich in the wrong direction, 
so to speak, when dealing with this Gospel. 

The father or a demon-possessed child came to Jesus, desperate for help: 

“Teacher,” the man said, “I brought my son to You, for he has a spirit that 
makes him mute. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy 
him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 

Jesus sounds surprised. “If you can!” He says. Then Jesus speaks life to this 
man—and to you and to me. Jesus says, “All things are possible for one who 
believes.”

PEOPLE OFTEN RUSH TO CONCLUSIONS!

Many times, when people hear Jesus say, “All things are possible for the one 
who believes,” they quickly conclude that Jesus is telling this poor, desperate 
father to have more faith. That would be like hurrying through a museum! When 
Jesus says, “All things are possible for the one who believes,” people often 
assume that our Lord is essentially saying, “Of course it is possible for Me to 
do heal your son, sir, if you will only believe that it is possible!” If we 
assume that Jesus is telling this man in today’s Gospel to have more faith, we 
would be sewing in the wrong direction. Stiches would need to be removed! 

Make no mistake about it: in many places throughout His Bible, God requires and 
demands that we believe. God wants us to believe! For example, 

•   Jesus said to Thomas in John chapter 21—and He equally says also to 
us—“Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 21:27). But that is John chapter 21. 
It is not Mark chapter 9, the Gospel for today.

•   In addition to Jesus’ Words to Thomas, you probably can think of many 
other verses where God speaks the same way, such as “By grace you have been 
saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:9) and “[you are] justified by faith” (Romans 
3:28).

There are many places throughout His Bible where God clearly requires and 
demands you and me and all people to believe! None of those places are not Mark 
chapter 9, the Gospel for today, where Jesus says, “All things are possible for 
the one who believes.”

GOD DISPLAYS JESUS’ PERFECT FAITH IN THIS GOSPEL

When Jesus says, “All things are possible for the one who believes,” He is NOT 
telling this desperate father in today’s Gospel to believe more. When Jesus 
says, “All things are possible for the one who believes,” He is talking about 
Himself. 

•   First, this desperate father says to Jesus, “If You can do anything, 
have compassion on us.” With these words, the man is clearly is placing all his 
hopes on Jesus’ abilities: If You can do anything, Jesus; if You are able, 
Jesus; if it is possible for You, Jesus. Again, this man is talking about 
Jesus’ abilities.

•   Then Jesus repeats word-for-word what the man already said to Jesus. 
“If You can?” By repeating the words this man spoke to Him, Jesus is also 
talking about Jesus’ own abilities, in the same way that the man was. When 
Jesus repeats the man’s words, “If you can,” Jesus is essentially saying “Of 
course I can! Of course I am able! Of course it is possible for Me to have 
compassion upon you and your son!”

•   Here is the beautiful thing: How is it that Jesus can do this thing for 
the man and his son? How is Jesus able to do this? How is it possible for 
Jesus? It is possible for Jesus to drive the demon away from this man’s son 
because—as Jesus Himself magnificently explains—“all things are possible for 
the one who believes.” That is to say, all things are possible for Jesus 
because Jesus believes. Again, Jesus is able to do all things because Jesus 
believes.

Jesus i

SERM: James 2:1-10, 14-18; Pentecost 15; LSB B proper 18

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

IF IT DOES NOT HAVE WORKS, FAITH IS DEAD

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Epistle, God’s apostle James famously says, “Show me your 
faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

Dear Christian friends,

Many people, including many Christians, think of God’s Ten Commandments in a 
narrow way. That is to say, many people think of God’s Ten Commandments as 
God’s list of things He forbids to do. 

This sort of thinking is absolutely correct, as far as it goes. God most 
certainly has given His Ten Commandments to you so that you will not do certain 
things. God wants you to use His commandments in the same way that you would a 
shopping list or daily to-do list, starting at the top with commandment #1 and 
working your way, every day, through to commandment #10. For example, 

•   God is not joking when He says to you, “You shall have no other gods.” 
When God says these Words to you, He is telling you to stop being an idolater 
and to put away your gods, no matter whom or what they may be. You have another 
god whenever you wish to trust or love something more than the one true God. 
God wants you to use His first commandment every day, inventorying your 
household gods, as it were—identifying those things that you love more than the 
one true God—and to stop loving them.

•   God also speaks with great earnestness and seriousness when He thunders 
in His commandments that you must never dishonor your father and mother 
(Fourth); that you must never harm or neglect your neighbor’s body (Fifth) and 
possessions (Seventh); that you must not despise or ignore God’s gift of 
marriage (Sixth). When God says these things to us, He makes a demand upon our 
behavior. When God says these things to us, He most certainly forbids certain 
actions and lifestyles among us. When God says these things to us, He is 
breathing the fire of judgment and condemnation for our sin—our sin choosing to 
do exactly what He has so clearly told us not to do. 

Most assuredly, God’s Ten Commandments are what He forbids us to do. As you 
heard today, God will hold you accountable when you do what you have been 
forbidden to do. God will hold your daughters accountable and He will hold your 
sons accountable when they also ignore God and do what He forbids. It is 
clearly written, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become 
accountable for all of it.” (If you can smell smoke, you might be in the fire.)

God’s Ten Commandments tell you what you must not do. God’s commandments 
constantly and unceasingly accuse you of what you have done. But that is NOT 
the whole story of what God’s Commandments do for you. As King David rejoiced 
millennia ago, “Your commandment is exceedingly broad [O Lord]” (Psalm 119:96). 
God’s Ten Commandments are deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky. God’s 
Ten Commandments stretch farther than the east can run from the west. God’s Ten 
Commandments barely get scratched on the surface when we narrowly think of them 
as God’s list of things He forbids.

“Your commandment is exceedingly broad [O Lord]! (Psalm 119:96) Today’s Epistle 
cracks open the door for us, so that you can begin to see some of the other 
things God’s Ten Commandments will do for you—even while they are constantly 
accusing you. Today’s Epistle might even allow us to think of God’s Ten 
Commandments as a source of daily blessing and happiness to us—even while they 
continually identify our sin. 

1. The first blessing of the Ten Commandments, mentioned in today’s Epistle, is 
the outward peace and unity that these commandments give to us Christians. 
Simply stated, we all get along better when we all observe and keep the Ten 
Commandments. Disunity and unhappiness spread like disease when even one or two 
of us choose to live as if the Ten Commandments do not matter.

Today’s Epistle illustrates this first blessing of God’s Ten Commandments by 
rebuking Christians who show partiality, or who pretend that some people in the 
congregation are worthy of more attention than others. In today’s Epistle, God 
points to His Ten Commandments as the way we show the same love and equal love 
to everyone. God says, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the 
Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.” 
These Words, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” are really God’s summary of the 
Ten Commandments (Mark 12:28-31). With these Words, God is pointing to the Ten 
Commandments, not only as a way of forbidding you to do things, but also as a 
way of showing you how best to love your neighbor. Your feelings of partiality 
will not cut it. Peace, unity, and happiness among the brothers will thrive 
when we each treat one another with equal affection for all, thus fulfilling 
“the royal
 law according to the Scriptures.”

2. The second blessing of the Ten Comma

SERM: Mark 7:14-23, Pent 14, LSB B proper 17

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

HEAR AND UNDERSTAND

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In the opening Words of today’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus says to you, to 
me, and to all people everywhere, “Hear Me, all of you, and understand.”

Dear Christian friends,

When Jesus our Lord says to you, “hear,” and when He says to me, “understand,” 
He is speaking commands to us. Jesus’ commands are NOT LIKE any of the other 
commands that other people in your life might speak to you! For example,

•   You children: suppose mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, should point 
their finger at your face and say to you, “Go clean your room” or “do not talk 
with your mouth full.” These are commands. When parents or grandparents speak 
such words to you, they are telling you something you must do. They know you 
are able to do it. They expect you to obey. 

Jesus’ commands are NOT LIKE the commands your parents or grandparents speak. 
When Jesus says to you, “Hear… and understand,” this is way better than when 
mom says, “Clean your room.” Parents expect you to obey their commands. Jesus 
knows that you have NO ABILITY to obey His commands.

•   You adults: When your employer says to you, “I want you to do thus-and 
such,” he is not making a suggestion. When the Internal Revenue Service says, 
“This is how much you owe,” it is not asking for a donation. When a police 
officer says, “Move your car over there,” you know where you must move your 
car. These are all commands. These all make demands and place requirements upon 
you. These all require your energy, your action, your input, your response.

Jesus’ commands are NOT LIKE the commands your employer or government might 
speak to you. Jesus’ commands do not require your energy, your action, your 
input, or your response. When the taxman or the boss gives you a command, he is 
telling you what you must do for him. Jesus does not do that. When Jesus 
commands, “Hear… and understand,” He knows you and I have NO ABILITY to “hear… 
and understand.” Jesus does not command things you must do for Him. Jesus’ 
commands are miracles that He performs for you.

When Jesus your Lord commands you, “hear,” He is performing a miracle for you. 
Jesus knows that you have no ability to hear, unless He performs for you the 
miracle of opening your ears!

Again, when Jesus me Lord commands me, “understand,” He is performing a miracle 
for me. I have no understanding. I have only darkness, only density, only 
concrete and granite. I have NO ROOM in my heart and mind for hearing and 
understanding the Words of Jesus. There is NO SPACE for the Words of Jesus 
inside me because I filled to overflowing with “evil thoughts, sexual 
immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, 
envy, slander, pride, foolishness.” (I would like to deny that these things are 
in me, but Jesus knows all things, even the hearts of men. I am so filled with 
deceit that I deceive even myself and I am such a fool that I will believe even 
my own lies.)

Because the cup of my sinful nature is continually overflowing; because my 
hostility toward God is unceasing (Romans 8:7); because my understanding is so 
darkened (Ephesians 4:18) and my neck so stiff (Acts 6:51), there is no chance 
that I will obey the commands of my Lord. Police officer, yes! Jesus, no! Not 
even God’s seemingly simple commands—commands like, “Hear Me… and 
understand”—not even God’s simplest commands will get any response from me! 
“Nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18). Not only do I 
lack the desire to obey Jesus’ commands, but I also lack the ability.

Jesus knows that I lack both ability and desire to obey His commands. Jesus 
knows that you have no capacity to “hear… and understand.” Jesus is fully aware 
that the only things that come out of you and out of me are those things which 
“defile a person.” You heard Jesus say it in today’s Gospel.

That is why Jesus’ commands are NOT LIKE any of the other commands that other 
people in your life might speak to you! That is why Jesus’ commands DO NOT 
REQUIRE your energy, your action, your input, or your response. That is why 
Jesus’ commands are miracles that He performs for you. Jesus’ commands shine 
light in the darkness, even while the darkness continually desires to overcome 
and extinguish the light (John 1:5).  
In the opening Words of today’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus says to you, to me, and 
to all people everywhere, “Hear Me, all of you, and understand.” When Jesus our 
Lord commands you, “hear,”—when He commands me, “understand,”—these commands 
are not even a tiny bit different than when Jesus: 

•   commanded the dead man Lazarus to come forth from his tomb (John11:43);

•   “rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’” (Mark 4:39);

•   said to the legion of demons in the country of the Gerasenes, “Come out 
of the man” (Mark 5:8)

When 

SERM: Ephesians 5:22-33, Pent 13, LSB B proper 16

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH AND
 GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR HER

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Epistle, God draws a connection between His gift of marriage 
and His gift of salvation. God uses marriage as an analogy or a picture of our 
salvation. God says,

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for 
her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water 
with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, 
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without 
blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. 
He who loves his wife loves himself. 

Dear Christian friends,

Every person here today—except for the youngest among us—every person here 
today has probably heard something about our nation’s ongoing debate over the 
definition of marriage. Should marriage be defined as the legal union of one 
man and one woman, or should other definitions be equally accepted, such as the 
legal union of two adult men, or the legal union of two adult women? (By the 
way, it is only a matter of time before new definitions of marriage get pressed 
beyond the current possibilities of man-man, or woman-woman.)

Some people would argue that it does not matter what you believe about 
marriage, so long as you keep your mouth shut and do not impose your beliefs on 
other people. You think what you want to think and do what you want to do—and 
you let me do the same.

Part of me likes that idea. If Christians could keep their mouths shut about 
marriage, we would be spared a lot of discomfort, at least in the short run. We 
would not need to suffer the insult of being called such things as backward or 
legalistic or fundamentalist or hypocritical.

Yes, hypocritical. Our nation’s debate over marriage exposes each of us 
Christians to accusations of hypocrisy—and the accusations are undeniable. How 
dare we speak in defense of marriage when we Christians ourselves so routinely 
assault marriage in our words and in our actions?

Hardly a Christian gathered here today has been untouched—unharmed—by the 
murderous scandal of divorce. But divorce is just the tip of the iceberg:

•   What about the things that so often set the stage for divorce—the 
selfish actions and the hurtful words; the unforgiven and bitter memories; the 
unresolved conflicts and the erosion of affection?

•   What about wandering eyes, even when no action gets taken? (Matthew 
5:28) For that matter, what about the destructive and grievous actions that get 
taken?

•   What about male chauvinism and what about feminism? These two equally 
terrible diseases are rooted deeply even in Christian hearts and minds. Answer 
me this: Why do so many Christian men chuckle nervously—and so many Christian 
women cross their arms or roll their eyes—when God flatly says, “Wives, submit 
to your own husbands as to the Lord?” It is because our thoughts and desires 
have been soiled with sin.

(As an aside: some of you may be thinking, “My marriage is in good shape. I am 
guilty of nothing.” Some of you others may be thinking, “Marriage has nothing 
to do with me. I am single or I am too young or my spouse has already departed 
this life.” What you need to be thinking is this: “We are the body of Christ. 
We are all in this together. My fellow sinners need me just as much as I need 
them. When one part of the body is injured, the entire body feels the pain. I 
personally might not have fallen in the specific manner that my fellow 
Christians have fallen, but we are all equally sinful, equally full of death, 
equally desperate for the forgiveness that Christ has earned on His cross. 
God’s Christians stand and fall together! God’s Christians confess the faith of 
the Church together!”) 

Because of our guilt concerning marriage (both personal and collective), we 
Christians seem to be in NO position to speak in defense of marriage. Yet SPEAK 
WE MUST. By all means, we should double and triple our efforts to preserve 
God’s gift of marriage among us! Without a doubt, we must confess and repent of 
the ways we ourselves have done damage to this highest and best relationship 
that God has created for our blessing! But even if we fail in our best 
efforts—as we so often fail in so many ways—we must nevertheless speak. 

•   We Christians must insist that marriage is a high and holy office—even 
when we ourselves end up misusing or destroying the marriage God has given to 
us.

•   We must confess that God gave us a good gift when He created 
marriage—even if our entire nation should plug its ears to such a confession of 
faith.

•   We must believe that God created marriage by joining a man to his 
wife—and we must hold this faith even when marriage finally gets defined as 
something other than one man legally united to one woma

SERM: Ephesians 4:17-5:2, Pent 11, LSB B proper 14

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The first sermon for Sunday, written earlier this week, became inapplicable in 
a single moment.

So I wrote this one.




The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

In Memoriam 
+ Bobby Arnold +

WE ARE MEMBERS OF ONE ANOTHER

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! God wants us to know, right there in the center of today’s Epistle, that 
“we are members of one another.”

Dear Christian friends,

Tragedy has struck our little flock this week. One of our number, a fellow 
sheep in our flock, a member of our body has unexpectedly and terribly departed 
to be with Christ. I am not going to say the name. You all know the name. If I 
speak the name, we will all probably begin to miss the point. 

Your Baptism into Christ is a two-sided coin.

On the first side of the coin, your Baptism gave you your true identity. Your 
Baptism did more than give eternal life individually to you and forgiveness of 
sins individually to you. Your Baptism also gave you your own personal identity 
as an adopted child of God. If you were a cow out on the range, your Baptism 
would be God branding your hide with the mark of His ranch and stapling an ID 
number into your ear. In Baptism God personally made you who you now are, and 
in Baptism God personally made our departed brother who he now is. Each and 
every one of you individually, through each of your individual Baptisms, “you 
were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). 

But your Baptism into Christ is a two-sided coin.

On the other side of the coin, your Baptism did more than give you your 
individual identity. Your Baptism also tore your individual identity away from 
you.

•   You were once a single strand of thread, but in Baptism God wove you 
together into a seamless garment “woven in one piece from top to bottom” (John 
19:23). Place your hand on the sleeve of your shirt. Roll the hem of your dress 
between your fingers. It is not a thread that you feel! It is cloth; many 
threads woven expertly together into one fabric. That is your Baptism.

•   You were once a single drop of water. In Baptism God the heavenly 
Father poured you into the font. On a hot and thirsty day, when you are parched 
and nearly gasping, see how far a single drop of water will take you! What 
truly will slake your thirst is not a single droplet, but countless droplets 
poured together into one refreshing “cup of water” (Mark 9:41). That is your 
Baptism.

•   You were once dead. In your Baptism, God did more than make you alive 
in Christ Jesus. In your Baptism, God grafted and surgically attached you into 
a living Body that can never die. The living Body of the Church cannot die 
because the resurrected blood of Jesus courses through her veins! Reach out an 
touch an hand next to you. Feel the pliable skin; notice the warmth of the 
fingers and the moisture of the palm. It is not an individual member that you 
hold in your hand. It is a body part; it is part of a body. It is continually 
nourished and well-supplied. It is alive because it is connected to something 
larger and greater than itself. That is your Baptism!

That is what God is telling you in today’s Epistle. “We are members of one 
another.” That is why I am not speaking any names here at the end of this 
tragic week. A thread has been torn from the fabric. The water level in the cup 
has been lowered. The body as suffered an injury.

Now is the time for each of us—as much as we are able—to be what God has made 
us in Baptism.

•   To the widows and widowers I say this: now that you have struggled to 
learn was it means to be widowed, help others as they must no learn that bitter 
lesson. “We are members of one another.”

•   Those of you who have given up your sons or daughters, sons-in-law or 
daughters-in-law, no matter what their age: “be kind and tenderhearted” to 
those who now suffered the same.

•   To all of you, I say this: God in your Baptism forgives you all your 
sins on account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. “Where there is forgiveness 
of sins, there is also life and salvation!” (Small Catechism, Sacrament of the 
Altar). Speak the life! Confess the salvation! God “comforts us in all our 
troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we 
ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4, NIV).

•   And come help your pastor tomorrow at noon. If there is any way you can 
make it happen, come help me tomorrow at noon, up in Sedalia. Most of the 
people who will be attending tomorrow’s funeral have one of two positions 
concerning God’s gift of Baptism: they either do not know about it, or they 
outright despise it. I am coming straight at them with our brother’s Baptism! 

o   You can help me be giving me a familiar face to look at. 

o   Tomorrow we will also sing the hymns of Baptism and eternal life. You 
can h

SERM: Galatians 3:27, Funeral

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

For a Lutheran man from a Baptist family...



Funeral Sermon for Robert Arnold

A Dashboard Hula Dancer with a Tissue on Top

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
One of Bobby’s favorite lines in God’s entire Bible is Galatians 3:27. Listen 
again to what God says in Galatians 3:27.

All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Dear Christian friends,

Most all of you probably know that Bob is a Lutheran. Bob has been a member of 
Grace Lutheran Church in Versailles, and one of my dear Christians, for most of 
his married life. What you may not know is that we Lutherans are 
head-over-heels in love with God’s gift and miracle of Baptism. We are simply 
gaga for Baptism!

We Lutherans are not like many other Christians in this way. Many other 
Christians think of Baptism, not as what God does for you, but rather, what you 
must do for God. They think of Baptism as the way they get to show God that 
they are willing to follow Him and trust in Him and commit their lives to Him.

We Lutherans simply do not think that way. We are hung up on certain Bible 
verses that explain Baptism as being God’s gift and miracle to us. For example, 

•   Titus 3:5 is a favorite verse among us, because this verse describes 
Baptism as “the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”

•   We continually repeat to ourselves and to our children those amazing 
and comforting Words that God wrote so clearly in 1 Peter 3:21, “Baptism… now 
saves you. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

•   Then we turn in our Bibles and we read in Acts 2:38, where God says 
that Baptism is “for the forgiveness of your sins.” When we read those Words 
from God, that Baptism is “for the forgiveness of your sins,” we Lutherans like 
to ask ourselves, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:22). Then we 
smile with joy as we think our way through to the answer: No one can forgive 
sins but God alone. Yet God so clearly says in His Bible that Baptism is for 
the forgiveness of your sins. That can only mean that Baptism is something that 
God Himself does for us! Baptism is God’s act of forgiveness, God’s gift, God’s 
miracle, God’s doing unto us. 

While we Lutherans have been sitting in our church pews, combing our way 
through these Bible verses where God speaks about His gift and miracle of 
Baptism, Bobby Arnold has been sitting right there in the pew with the rest of 
us! Bobby Arnold has shared—and he still shares—our joy and our amazement and 
our thankfulness to God for His wonderful gifts!

Hardly any Bible verse gave Bobby Arnold greater joy than these Words, written 
by God: “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with 
Christ” (Galatians 3:27). One day during our Adult Sunday School—Bobby sitting 
right there in the front pew—I drew a picture to explain what it means that 
Baptism clothes you in Christ, or wraps you up in Christ Jesus. I drew a little 
stick man on the board, and then I drew a blanket that went from the bottom of 
the man’s feet, up over the top of his head, and then back down to his feet 
again, totally covering him. Then I wrote the name “Jesus” on the blanket.

Using this image of a person totally covered with a blanket named Jesus, I 
explained to Bobby and to the others in the class that this is what God does 
for you when He baptizes. The divine miracle of Baptism so totally covers your 
sins and hides them under Jesus, that God the Father no longer can see them. 
Baptism so completely wraps you in the death and resurrection of Jesus (Romans 
6:3-4), that your own resurrection from the dead is just as sure and certain as 
Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Morning. “All of you who were baptized into 
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). That means, when 
God the Father looks at you, He sees the image of His Son—perfect, flawless, 
eternal, entirely holy and fully righteous in every way.

I illustrated Baptism for Bob by drawing a stick man under a blanket, and Bob 
fell so dearly in love with that picture that he never forgot it. In fact, he 
frequently talked about it. Many times during our church life together, even 
when we were discussing different topics, Bob would frequently remind me of 
that stick man under a blanket. Whatever the topic, Bob would immediately draw 
the connection to God’s miracle of Baptism. Bob would say, “That’s like the man 
under the blanket, right pastor?” Right, Bob!

This next part sounds silly, I know. I still want to tell you about it. This 
Baptismal image, this picture of a man under a blanket, so grabbed Bobby’s 
imagination that he and I began talking about what we each could do to have 
this image with us every day—Bob in his truck and me in my office. Because Bob 
was always behind the wheel of a truck—and here is the silly part—we decided 
upon a dashboard hula dancer. Not just any dashboard hula dancer, but a 

SERM: Mark 6:45-56, Pent 9, LSB B proper 12

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! And Happy Anniversary! On this day sixty-one years ago—July 29, 1951—the 
little Lutheran Mission here in Versailles officially became Grace Lutheran 
Church. Twelve charter members signed their names to our first constitution and 
our congregation was born.

Today’s Gospel is a particularly good Gospel for today. In today’s Gospel, 
Jesus “made His disciples get into the boat.”

Dear Christian friends,

Hardly anyone seems to have noticed. I checked the archives at the newspaper 
office. Relatively few residents of Versailles seem to have known what vitally 
important thing was happening in their midst on July 29, 1951—sixty-one years 
ago today. They all saw the front page news about Orville Williams winning the 
jalopy race up in Syracuse. A couple pages deep, they saw advertised a Western 
film called “Sugar Foot” starring Randolph Scott and playing at the Royal 
Theater. If they took the time to read the locals, they would have noticed that 
Mr. and Mrs. Gene Bartram made a weekend trip to Minneapolis to attend his 
uncle’s funeral.

No news about the Lutherans, as far as I can see. It was announced that the 
Missouri Lutheran Mission was meeting at its temporary location across from the 
east entrance of the fairgrounds, services at 9 AM—but that announcement ran 
every week. The same ad was still running three months later, still calling us 
the Missouri Lutheran Mission, not even seeming to know that our name is Grace.

Ask my opinion and I’ll tell you that our charter should have been front page 
news. But God knows better. Twelve people—twelve people joined by a common 
confession, held together by a single desire, dissatisfied with every other 
churchly form in town—a mere twelve people laid pen and ink onto a fresh 
constitution and Grace Lutheran Church was born. Racecars growled and movies 
flickered and all of life continued humming along in Versailles as if nothing 
ever happened.

What exactly did happen when those twelve people signed our first constitution? 
Nothing more and nothing less than this, using Words from today’s Gospel: 
“Jesus made His [twelve] disciples get into the boat.” We owned the property, 
but our church building had not yet been yet built in 1951. We were still 
meeting at our temporary location across from the east entrance of the 
fairgrounds, services at 9 AM, and these roof arches did not yet stretch 
themselves over our heads for quite some time. Nevertheless, you should look at 
this ceiling every week and thank God for what happened on July 29, 1951, when 
“Jesus made His [twelve] disciples get into the boat.” We regularly call this 
room our sanctuary, but the other, more ancient name for this room is the Nave. 
The word “nave” comes from the same Latin source as our English word “navy.” 
This room is our Nave and “nave” means “boat.” Our ceiling is even designed to 
look like a boat
 overturned upon us, complete with ribs and a sturdy keel. Each of these pine 
boards is anchored in July 29, 1951. “Jesus made His [twelve] disciples get 
into the boat” and hardly anyone noticed, but greatest acts of God are seldom 
noticed and never front page news. 

I wonder, who? Who in today’s crowded Gospel might have noticed and considered 
it important when “Jesus made His disciples get into the boat”? Baskets of 
bread and fish—leftovers from feeding 5,000 men—still were about. The crowd not 
only felt committed to following Jesus; it was continually rushing around, in 
search for another sensation of being with Jesus (Mark 6:33). No one except the 
disciples themselves could have cared too much when Jesus set their little boat 
adrift on choppy sea, having insisted and required that they get into the boat.

And that boatload of twelve had a hard time of it. “They were making way 
painfully,” says Mark, “because the wind was against them”—just as the wind has 
blown steadily against us for sixty-one years. Every year, at the closing of 
the books, we should sing praise to God that somehow our boat has stayed 
afloat. 

Just because it is our anniversary, we do not need to pretend that our journey 
has been easy. “They were making their way painfully because the wind was 
against them.” More than once, the storm has likewise torn at us while we bent 
our backs to our oars. Just last week we decided to spend a large amount of 
money that simply must be spent—the boat needs repair! Still more money must 
yet be spent on still more repairs and it seems safe to say that we will 
probably be making our way painfully again, with the wind against us. But in 
all our sixty-one years, how long have we ever held two dimes back-to-back, 
before needing to throw them both into the sea?

Still we float and we do not sink. Why do we float? Why don’t we sink? We float 
because “Jesus made His [twelve] disciples get into the boat.” We do not 

SERM: Ephesians 2:11-22, Pent 8, LSB B proper 11

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

Killing the Hostility
(Some Things are Better Dead)

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Epistle, God says 

“Christ Jesus…himself is our peace, who has made us both one.” So who are you 
to judge the man sitting next to you, or the lady across the aisle? You do not 
know that person as well as you pretend. You have no idea what load he or she 
carries through the week. You sin when you hold against that person the things 
that God has forgiven in Christ. When you feel slighted or angered by that 
other person, beware that you do no set yourself up to be that person’s god and 
judge! “Christ Jesus…himself is our peace.”

“Christ Jesus… has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” 
How would you or I dare to rebuild the wall that Jesus has broken down? Yet 
wall-building is exactly what happens when we harbor resentment and draw our 
conclusions and write one another off. Listen again: “Christ Jesus… has broken… 
the dividing wall of hostility.”

 “Christ Jesus… [created] in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making 
peace… killing the hostility.” Stated another way, God has made hostility dead. 
Some things are better dead!

Dear Christian friends,

God’s gift of salvation through Jesus is somewhat like a flower growing in your 
garden. Salvation is like a flower because of the many ways you receive 
happiness and blessings from one single thing. Flowers are not only beautiful 
to the eye, but also pleasing to the nose and soft to the touch. In addition to 
these gifts, some flowers also keep pests away; some provide food for the 
cheerful birds that appear at your back window, and nearly every flower will 
sweeten into honey when its nectar is collected by the bees. One object—one 
creation from God—yet many joys and blessings!

In the same way, you receive multiple gifts and blessings from God’s one act of 
salvation, when He crucified His Son Jesus on the cross for you.

All of your sins are forgiven, which means God now holds nothing against you. 
As you think about your past, forgiveness may see amazing to you. It certainly 
seems amazing to me. But this is what God wants you and me both to hear and 
believe: All sins are now forgiven in Jesus. God now holds nothing against you. 

Were forgiveness not enough, the curse of death has also been neutralized for 
you by Christ’s resurrection. Death is now nothing more for you than empty 
threat and idle talk. Death has absolutely no bearing on any part of your life. 
 

But God’s forgiveness of sins and eternal life are just the main gifts of 
Jesus’ salvation, in the same way that beauty and aroma just the main benefits 
of a garden flower. God has given many additional benefits to you through His 
one act of salvation, just as a single flower can bless and gladden you in ways 
beyond its sight and scent!

In today’s Epistle, God tells us about one of those many, additional gifts of 
salvation. Beyond forgiveness, beyond resurrection and life, our Lord Jesus 
Christ has also worked a miraculous change in the way you and I relate to one 
another. When God originally wrote these Words in today’s Epistle, He was 
mainly speaking about the ancient division between Jews and Gentiles. But the 
Jew-Gentile division only existed on account of sin. Sin is also the cause of 
all the divisions that now stand between two fellow Christians—two “fellow 
citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Because sin 
divides us in the same way that it once divided Jew and Gentile, God’s Words in 
today’s Epistle were written as much for our benefit as anyone else’s.

What has Jesus done, concerning the petty issues and grievances that divide us? 
God says in today’s Epistle that Jesus has KILLED our hostilities between one 
another! “For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken 
down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… thereby killing the 
hostility.”

“Killing the hostility.” Bring these three Words to mind—force these Words to 
mind—the next time you feel your sense of irritation rising toward your fellow 
Christian. Surely you can agree that you yourself are no flower!

Why would you hold your neighbor’s sins against him or her?

Why would you expect some other person—someone who is totally different from 
you—to like the things you like or want the things you want or do the things 
you do?

Why would you even presume to know where that person’s road takes him or her 
after they limp out of this sanctuary?

Unless you are God, do not pretend you have the power to raise the dead. Jesus 
has killed hostility. Some things are better dead!

Someone may ask, “What do you mean, pastor? Are we to ignore one another 
totally, so that we do not even rebuke one another and call one another to 
repentance?” By no means. You know very well that you are your brother’s keeper 
(Genesis 4:9), but why make it harder fo

SERM: Ephesians 1:3-14, Pent 7, LSB B proper 10

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost

PREDESTINED for Adoption and Inheritance

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Epistle, God speaks the Word PREDESTINATION two times. When 
God says something once, we ought to listen. When God says it twice, we ought 
to double our listening! First, God says you have been “predestined… for 
adoption though Jesus Christ.” Then God says you “have obtained an inheritance, 
having been predestined.”

Today’s sermon has three parts. The first part has to do with to whom God is 
speaking when He uses the Word PREDESTINATION—is it you or is it someone else? 
(Here is the early answer: God is speaking to YOU.) The second part of the 
sermon takes up what it means that you are “predestined… for adoption though 
Jesus Christ” and that you “have obtained an inheritance.” The third part of 
today’s sermon has to do with why it matters.

Dear Christian friends,

1: To whom God speaks when He uses the Word PREDESTINATION.

Each time God uses the Word PREDESTINATION here in today’s Epistle, He is 
speaking to you and He is speaking about you. God uses PREDESTINATION to speak 
about you because you have been baptized “in the name of the Father and of the 
Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). God calls you PREDESTINED because 
His miracle of Baptism has washed away your sins (Acts 22:16), so that you will 
never die (John 11:26). By Baptism you are PREDESTINED to resurrection and 
life, on account of Jesus’ own resurrection and life!

God does not use the Word PREDESTINATION on everyone. In particular, God does 
not call any unbeliever PREDESTINED. God only calls His own, dear Christians 
PREDESTINED. PREDESTINATION is a divine Word for you and for all Christians and 
for no one else. 

Why does God use PREDESTINATION to describe only you, but not the unbelievers? 
Because there are some words that simply do not apply and would never be used 
to describe certain things. For example, the Sun burns at about 10,000° F. 
Therefore, you would never use words such as “cold” or “icy” to describe the 
surface of the Sun. Instead, you would use good and fitting words, such as 
“hot” or “molten.” But you would not use these words “hot” or “molten” to 
describe Antarctica! Only certain words rightly describe certain things. 

In the same way, you would never describe yourself or any other Christian as 
“pagan” or “wicked” or “damned.” (Neither would God!) What Words rightly 
describe you, now that God has washed away your sins in Baptism? The words 
“hot” or “molten” rightly describe the Sun. In the same way, because you are 
the baptized of Christ, words that rightly describe you now include “saint” 
(Ephesians 1:1), “holy” (Romans 11:16), “redeemed” (1 Peter 1:18), “re-born” (1 
Peter 1:3), “forgiven” (Ephesians 4:32), and YES, “PREDESTINED.” You would use 
the words “hot” and “molten” to describe the Sun, but never to describe 
Antarctica. So, too, these Words—“holy,” “redeemed,” “re-born,” “forgiven,” 
“PREDESTINED”—these Words describe you and all Christians, but they do not 
describe any unbelievers! 

2: What it means that you are PREDESTINED.

Listen again to part of today’s Epistle, as God explains to you what you will 
receive from Him in the future, because He has PREDESTINED you in Baptism:

In love He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the 
purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace … In Him we have 
[also] obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the 
purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.

First, God says you have been “predestined… for adoption though Jesus Christ.” 
Then God says you “have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined.” 
According to these Words, you have been given a very certain and reliable 
future! 

•   With these Words, God promises you that you will one day be fully 
revealed as His dearly loved children. You are “predestined… for adoption 
though Jesus Christ.” Yes, you were already adopted to be the children of God 
when God baptized you (Galatians 4:4-7). You already possess complete 
forgiveness and the fullest outpouring of life and happiness that anyone could 
ever imagine. You simply cannot yet see any of these things with your eyes. You 
are now holy and perfect, even though you daily sin; you are now redeemed in 
Christ, even though you are still enslaved by habits and desires; you are now 
re-born and living eternally, even though your body will someday fall into a 
grave.

God gave you “adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5) in your Baptism, and yet still 
we all wait for “the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19). Stated 
another way, God’s adoption in Baptism has PREDESTINED us for the future, 
greater adoption, which God elsewhere calls “the redemption of our bodies” 
(Romans 8:23) and “the resurrection of the dead” (Matthew 22:31).

In today’s Epistle, God is assuring yo

SERM: Mark 5:21-43, Pent 6, LSB B proper 9

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

Jesus In the Synagogue

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Gospel, Jesus “came to His hometown… and on the Sabbath He 
began to teach in the synagogue.” Stated another way, Jesus came bodily into 
that place where the people of Nazareth gathered each week to hear the Word of 
the Lord, both read aloud and preached in their midst. 

Dear Christian friends,

There does not seem to be much Gospel in today’s Gospel. That is to say, there 
does not seem to be much good news about the forgiveness of sins and eternal 
life that each of you has now been given through Jesus’ death and resurrection. 
Yet while today’s Gospel seems somewhat absent of Gospel, there is plenty of 
clear warning and threat of judgment: 

•   First, there is the familiarity and contempt of the people of Nazareth, 
which God gives to us as an example and a warning. Nazareth’s native son was 
preaching and teaching in the synagogue. “And they took offense at Him.” It is 
as if the people said to themselves, “This man should not be speaking to us in 
this way! He is just a man, and we know Him well. He is no different than us 
and certainly no better! ‘Is this not the carpenter…?’”

These Words from God, “they took offense at Him,” are the first warning that 
today’s Gospel speaks to all Christians, including to your preacher. The 
warning is this: God does not intend for preaching to compliment you. Preaching 
is not designed to tell you how well you are doing. Preaching has but one 
purpose, and that is to focus all eyes and all ears upon Christ Jesus and Him 
alone. In order for God to show you a good picture of your Lord Jesus Christ, 
God must first show you a bad picture of yourself. In order for you to receive 
a good, healthy dose of the doctor’s medicine, you must first become aware of 
your disease. In order to benefit from the forgiveness that Jesus created for 
you through His death on the cross, God must first diagnose and warn you about 
your ongoing, continual need for forgiveness, because sin and death live within 
you. Nazareth “took offense at [Jesus]” because Nazareth did not want to hear 
such things. 

That is really where things fell apart at Nazareth. Jesus “came to His 
hometown… and on the Sabbath He began to teach in the synagogue.” Everything 
was fine until Jesus preached about Jesus. “And they took offense at Him.” You 
and I both should take a clear warning from this. May God guard us against such 
unbelief and self-centered scandal! You and I each must allow our Lord Jesus to 
say what He must say about us—we must allow our Lord Jesus to focus our 
attention exclusively upon Him—so that we indeed continue to receive the gifts 
of salvation and life that come only from Him. 

•   The second warning of today’s Gospel is this: a personal relationship 
with Jesus will do you very little good. Everyone in Nazareth had a personal 
relationship with Jesus. Everyone in Nazareth knew Him well, and on better days 
many could happily call Him friend. Yet Jesus “marveled because of their 
unbelief.”

This is another serious warning, not only for us but also for many of our loved 
ones and neighbors who so earnestly avoid coming to worship! Today’s Gospel 
does NOT emphasize knowing who Jesus is or having a personal relationship with 
Him. TODAY’S GOSPEL EMPHASIZES THAT WE HEAR THE WORDS OF JESUS AND BELIEVE. A 
simple claim to know Jesus or a claim to have a personal relationship with Him 
might place you in danger of the first of hell. Everyone in Nazareth knew 
Jesus! “And He marveled because of their unbelief.” May God protect and keep 
each of us against false rest upon a supposed personal relationship with Jesus. 
May God instead continually our ears to Jesus’ Words!

•   If the first two warnings were not serious enough for us, today’s 
Gospel adds yet a third. The third warning—for you and me both—the third 
warning is this: the preaching of Jesus’ Words TODAY, and administration of 
Jesus’ miraculous sacraments TODAY remain as vitally important for us TODAY as 
it was for the people of Nazareth in this Gospel. We know the Word remains 
vitally important for us—even when Jesus uses others to preach and administer 
it—because what happened in here in today’s Gospel:

[Jesus] called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them 
authority over the unclean spirits. And He said to them, “If any place will not 
receive you [as they have not received Me here in Nazareth] and they will not 
listen to you [as Nazareth will not listen to Me], when you leave, shake off 
the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out 
and proclaimed that people should repent. 

The last thing that any of us should want is for Jesus to marvel at our 
unbelief, as He marveled at Nazareth’s unbelif. That it why I said earlier that 
today’s Gospel contains plenty of clear warning and threat of j

SERM: Mark 5:21-43, Pent 5, LSB B proper 8

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

Jesus’ Ministry to Youth

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Gospel, Jesus raised someone from death. “She was twelve years 
of age.”

Dear Christian friends,

All across our church body, congregations are reporting that many teenagers and 
young adults quit coming to church after confirmation class has ended. All 
across our church body, we spend mountains of time, money and energy wondering 
out loud, “What can we do? How can we keep the young folks coming back and how 
can we make them feel included?” Many solutions get offered:

•   We organize large youth conferences, which give our young people a 
chance to meet other Christians their age and also to realize that their pastor 
is not the only nerdy guy with a black shirt and a bald head. 

•   We plan servant events, where young people can do important work, such 
as helping clean up the city of Joplin. These events help our youth to see that 
they are not the only people in the world, and that Jesus was right after all: 
“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

•   We write youth Bible Studies so that the young folks can discuss 
questions of the faith that they might not want to ask their parents or 
grandparents—that is, if we can manage to get them involved in a conversation.
 
•   We offer our youth “leadership training.” We do this because “the young 
people are the future of the church” (as the mantra goes).

Most of these things are good things. Part of me wishes that I could get more 
of our young’uns interested in such things (a difficult task, to say the 
least). But only part of me wishes to do this—and I am not sure if it is the 
pastoral part of me, or the part that is still stuck in tenth grade.
Another part of me seriously wonders whether we might be doing our teenagers 
and young adults some disservice by bending over backwards for them. Many of 
our efforts, falling over ourselves to give the younger generation a reason to 
stay, might actually be helping them to miss the point.

•   Conferences are great, but the exuberance and energy of a conference 
simply cannot be duplicated at home—especially in the liturgy of our worship. 
Sunday morning worship can even seem to be a bit of a let-down after a while. 

•   Servant events are good training in Christian works, but so is the 
everyday help you should be giving to mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, without 
whining and complaining. Stated another way, your neighbors in Joplin are not 
the only ones who need your generosity, your patience, and your attention. Your 
neighbors living with you in your house also need such gifts from you.

•   Special Bible studies for the youth are great, but they might give the 
impression that adult Bible studies are too sophisticated or too difficult for 
younger people; or worse, that the Sunday sermon is mostly for adults and not 
for children.

•   Leadership training? Leadership training builds upon the idea that “the 
young people are the future of the church” when JESUS IS ACTUALLY THE FUTURE OF 
THE CHURCH.

Speaking of Jesus, look at the way our dear Lord places youth ministry into its 
proper perspective here in today’s Gospel:

He… took the child’s father and mother and those who were with Him and went in 
where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” 
which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got 
up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were 
immediately overcome with amazement. 

This is a good Gospel for all of you who are young. This is also a good Gospel 
for everyone else who sits in these pews with you. This Gospel shows all of us 
the good and blessed way that Jesus does youth ministry (and He doesn’t even 
wear cargo shorts!). Especially for the young, today’s Gospel shows you the way 
Jesus wants you to look at yourself and even more so, this Gospel shows you the 
good things that Jesus does for you, even while you are young.

•   First, learn from this Gospel that young people are NOT the future of 
the church. (I do not even think most young people say such things about 
themselves, anyway. It is mostly old people who dream up such ideas.) If young 
people are the future of the church, then the church has no hope. You heard it 
yourself in today’s Gospel: “There came from the ruler’s house some people who 
said, ‘Your daughter is dead.’” (So much for youth leadership training!) 

The Future of the Church came and stood at this girl’s bedside, just as the 
Future of the Church likewise comes to you and stands near to you here in in 
this place. The Future of the Church says to this dead girl, “Arise!” because 
this young girl also needed the same resurrection and life that old people 
need. 

•   That is the second thing to learn about yourself and about Jesus in 
today’s Gospel: Youn

SERM: 2 Cor 13 and Mark 4, Pent 4, LSB B proper 7

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

Widen Your Hearts

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Epistle from 1 Corinthians, toward the end of the reading 
(verse 12), the Holy Spirit says to you and me and to all Christians, “you are 
restricted by your own affections.” But then, in today’s beautiful and 
priceless Gospel,

They took [Jesus] with them in the boat, just as He was. … And He awoke and 
rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, 
and there was a great calm.

Dear Christian friends,

In our church, we have a special liturgy for private confession of sins. (You 
can find it on page 292 of the Lutheran Service Book.) Not many people make use 
of this special liturgy, and that is a bit of a tragedy for several reasons. 

One bad result of not using the liturgy for private confession is that you miss 
out on praying some very expressive, very candid, very revealing words. When 
you pray the liturgy for private confession of sins, you end up saying—among 
other things—these words to God: 

I have not let [God’s] love have its way with me,
and so my love for others has failed (LSB, 292).

“I have not let God’s love have its way with me and so my love for others has 
failed.” Stated another way, “You [and I] are,” as God the Spirit says in 
today’s Epistle, “restricted by [our] own affections.”

The Holy Spirit’s point is NOT that we have no love for God or for one another. 
The Spirit says—and we dare not deny that it is true—the Spirit says that we 
each have set very definite limits to the extent of our love. Each of us has a 
fence we will not cross and a gate we will not open. Each of us will only go so 
far. There is only so much we will do for our neighbor and (astonishingly) 
there is only so much we will do for God. We stubbornly limit ourselves. That 
is God’s own verdict against us: You [and I] are restricted by [our] own 
affections.”

In order to focus the point a little more clearly, and perhaps to make it even 
more unavoidable, set aside those bigger sins that quickly come to your mind. 
Forget those regrettable times when you lose your temper or when you misspeak 
or when you simply become exasperated. Ignore any shameful habits or memories 
that still scandalize you. Think instead about the way you treat your neighbor 
in common, every day, run-of-the-mill situations. Think about how you treat 
your neighbor when you are in a good mood and feeling friendly:

Do you give with true generosity—Christian generosity—or do you base your 
generosity on how much you want to save back for yourself? I am right there 
when the wife or children need something from me, but send some guy to my 
office door, looking for gas money. I will go and buy him some gasoline, but 
only after I have made sure that I still have plenty of money for myself until 
the next paycheck. I am restricted by my own affections, and I cannot escape.

Are there people in your life—even some of your fellow Christians—to whom you 
give a thin smile and then you keep on walking? You elect not to show love to 
that person, you do not wish to show love toward that person because you find 
that person annoying or impossible. He talks too much; she simply refuses to 
listen; you do not seem to have anything in common. Take today’s Epistle to 
heart. God is saying in today’s Epistle that the problem might not actually be 
that other person. The problem might be you: “You are restricted by you own 
affections” and I am right there with you.

These may seem to be minor examples of our sin, but that is precisely the 
point. I am using minor examples to push you beyond the big examples of 
occasional sin that you can always think of in your life. I am using these 
minor examples to point out the continual disease that you and I each have 
constantly at work within us. 

Sin is not merely wrong action or failure to do the right thing. (You could 
change your behavior if you really wanted to do so.) 

According today’s Epistle, sin is not really even best described as our failure 
to love—even though “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8-10).

What is our sin—both yours and mine—according to today’s Epistle? Not failure 
to love, but calculated the LIMITATION we place on our love. “You are 
restricted by your own affections,” says the Lord. You and I  are boxed in, 
crowded, inhibited, held. What restricts us? Our own interests and our own 
concerns and what we really want to love—which is NOT God or neighbor. It is 
hard for me fully and completely to love someone else when loving myself 
requires so much of my time and attention.

I have not let His [God’s] love have its way with me, 
and so my love for others has failed.
There are those whom I have hurt, and those whom I have failed to help
My thoughts and desires have been soiled with sin (LSB, 292).

This is a bad place to be, and God’s Word happily makes our situation worse. 
Fir

SERM: Mark 3:20-35, Pentecost 3, LSB B Proper 5

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Third Sunday After Pentecost

Whoever Does the Will of God
Is My Brother and Sister and Mother

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes His family. Are you in His family? 
Jesus says you are in His family IF you do the will of God. Jesus says, 
“Whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother.”

Dear Christian friends,

The more you talk, the less likely people are to remember everything you say. 
If you tell someone eight or ten things to remember, that person might remember 
four or five of those things. If you tell someone ONE THING to remember, that 
person has a fairly good chance of remembering that ONE THING you said.

Today’s Gospel was written by Mark. Mark wants very much for you to know and to 
remember what is GOD’S WILL FOR YOUR LIFE. Mark so dearly wants you to know and 
to remember God’s will for your life that Mark wrote only one thing about God’s 
will in his entire book. The other Gospel writers—Matthew, Luke, and John—the 
other Gospel writers report in their books how Jesus said many things about 
God’s will. It almost seems as if Mark said to himself, “I want people to 
remember what is God’s will for their lives. Therefore, I will not tell them 
six or eight or ten of the things that Jesus said about God’s will. I will 
write down in my book only ONE THING my Lord said about God’s will.”

Today’s Gospel is that ONE THING Mark wants you to know and to remember about 
God’s will. According to today’s Gospel, God’s will for your life is that you 
listen to Jesus. In today’s Gospel, a crowd was gathered all around Jesus, 
sitting at His feet. Those people did not gather around Jesus in order to play 
dominos! Those people gathered around Jesus in order to hear Jesus speak. Those 
people gathered so that they could listen to Jesus. What does Jesus say about 
these people? He says, “These are My mother and My brothers!” Then Jesus adds, 
for your sake and for mine, “WHOEVER does the will of God, he is my brother and 
sister and mother.” So here is the simple line of thinking (a syllogism):

•   The people who were listening to Jesus are His mother and His brothers.
•   You are Jesus’ brother and sister and mother if you do the will of God 
(v.35).
•   Therefore God’s will for your life is that you listen to Jesus, just 
like those people who crowded into today’s Gospel.

God’s will for your life is that you listen to Jesus. A lot of people will 
argue and protest what Mark has written here! The other Gospel writers—Matthew, 
Luke, and John—the other Gospel writers might even want to straighten Mark out 
a bit!

•   You can almost hear Matthew say, “Wait a minute, Mark! More details are 
necessary. For example, God’s will also includes the setting aside of our human 
desires so that our heavenly Father’s desires may be accomplished among us” 
(cf. Matthew 6:10 and 26:42).

•   Luke might add, “Yes, Mark, and what about the results of listening to 
Jesus? Is it not also true that God’s will and desire is that we ‘bear fruits 
in keeping with repentance,’ as John the Baptist preached?” (cf. Luke 3:8)

•   John the Evangelist might offer Mark a gentle corrective, too: “Yes, 
Mark, listening to Jesus is God’s will—but not merely listening! The will of 
God is also that we believe the Words Jesus speaks!” (cf. John 6:29)

Mark would not disagree with anything these other Gospel writers might 
theoretically say in protest against his writing. Mark simply will not change 
his story! Mark knows that, the more you talk, the less likely people are to 
remember everything you say. If you tell someone eight or ten things to 
remember, that person might remember four or five of those things. If you tell 
someone ONE THING to remember, that person has a fairly good chance of 
remembering that ONE THING you said. So Mark writes down only ONE THING among 
the many things Jesus said about God’s will. According to Mark—according to 
today’s Gospel—God’s will for your life is this: Listen to Jesus.

•   In a larger sense, does God’s will include the setting aside of our 
human desires so that our heavenly Father’s desires may be accomplished among 
us? Absolutely! But maybe Mark chose not to tell you that—maybe Mark elected to 
describe God’s will only as listening to Jesus—because Mark knows that the 
Words of Jesus will do great and miraculous things for you. Not only do the 
Words of Jesus identify your sin and forgive you of your sin, but the Words of 
Jesus will also gently and lovingly bend your desires into conformity with 
God’s desires. Stated another way, when you listen to Jesus, Jesus’ Words will 
change you and transform you!

•   Doesn’t God desire that we “bear fruits in keeping with repentance?” 
(cf. Luke 3:8) Of course He does! But maybe Mark chose not to tell you 
that—maybe Mark elected to describe God’s will only as listening to 
Jesus—because Mark knows that

SERM: Introit Psalm 16:8-11, Trinity Sunday, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Feast of the Holy Trinity
I have set the LORD always before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen! Today’s Introit, which we prayed right after our confession of sins, is 
from Psalm 16.  Like all of God’s Psalms, Psalm 16 has the power to cheer and 
gladden the heaviest of hearts. This Psalm has the power to embolden and 
invigorate the most fainthearted or timid among us. Psalm 16 is God’s Power, 
and God’s powerful Psalm 16 will even 

lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight 
paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but 
rather be healed (Hebrews 12:12-13). 

God the Holy Trinity has given Psalm 16 to you, for you to pray. Without fear; 
in defiance of your weariness and your worries; throwing aside all your anger 
and resentment, you and all the baptized of Christ may confidently pray in this 
Psalm, 

I have set the LORD always before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Dear Christian friends,

All of God’s Psalms—from beginning to end—all of God’s Psalms speak about our 
dear Lord Jesus. After His death and resurrection for eternal life, Jesus 
Himself declared to His disciples, “Everything written about Me in… the Psalms 
must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44).

“Everything written about Me in… the Psalms.” These Words mean that, when you 
read and pray God’s Psalms, you are reading and praying “the good news about 
Jesus” (Acts 8:35). For example, 

•   When you pray in Psalm 23, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want” 
(Psalm 23:1), “the LORD” in that verse is your Lord Jesus in particular, “the 
Good Shepherd [who] lays down His life for [you, His] sheep” (John 10:11).

•   You could also read David’s Words in Psalm 41, “My close friend… who 
ate my bread, has lived heel against me” (Psalm 41:9). Because you know these 
Words are about Jesus—even though they were written hundreds of years before 
the birth of Jesus—you can see in Psalm 41 a prophecy of how your dear Lord 
Jesus would be betrayed by Judas Iscariot, Jesus’ “close friend… who ate [His] 
bread” (compare John 13:18).

•   Today’s Introit from Psalm 16 is also about Jesus. As God’s apostle 
Peter declared in Acts chapter 2, Psalm 16 is speaking about Jesus’ death and 
resurrection when it states, “You will not abandon my soul in Sheol [the place 
of death], or let your holy one see corruption” (Psalm 16:10, Acts 2:25-28).

Two amazing things happen when you read God’s Psalms, knowing that all the 
Psalms are all about Jesus:

1. THE FIRST AMAZING THING is this: the Psalms end up reporting surprising, 
even startling things about Jesus. Today’s Introit from Psalm 16 is a good 
example. If the Psalms truly are about Jesus (which they are) and if Jesus is 
the one speaking in verse 10—“You will not abandon my soul in Sheol, or let 
your holy one see corruption”—(which He is, Acts 2:25-28), then these Words 
from verse 8 also belong in Jesus’ mouth and upon Jesus’ lips:

I [Jesus] have set the LORD always before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I [Jesus] shall not be shaken.

It is somewhat surprising that Jesus would say such a thing! Every Sunday, in 
one creed or another (Apostles’, Nicene, and even Athanasian), we Christians 
confess that Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father. 

•   When we say that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, we are 
speaking the Christian faith faithfully, repeating only what God first spoke to 
us in His Scriptures (Ephesians 1:20-23). 

•   When we say that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, we are not 
imagining that Jesus is far away from us, locked in heaven and stuck on a 
chair. Rather, Jesus at the right hand of the Father simply means that Jesus 
now has all the Father’s power and authority; Jesus is the Father’s right hand 
man, so to speak; Jesus is the one to whom the Father looks for everything.

But look at that verse from Psalm 16! While we are confessing that Jesus is at 
the right hand of the Father, Jesus Himself is saying the opposite thing—not 
that He is at the Father’s right hand, but that the Father is at Jesus’ right 
hand:

I [Jesus] have set the LORD always before me;
Because He [the Father] is at my right hand, I [Jesus] shall not be shaken.

Here you have a little taste of the Holy Trinity, which feast we celebrate 
today. Just as Jesus is the one to whom the Father looks for everything, so 
also is the Father the one to whom Jesus looks for everything. Jesus is at the 
right hand of the Father; the Father is at the right hand of Jesus: what an 
amazing, unimaginable mystery! Two Persons, fully divine and all-powerful, and 
yet mutually dependent upon one another, together with the Holy Spirit! What 
God the Father says about Jesus, Jesus also says about the Father. Their love 
toward one another unsurpassed. Their devotion to one another is

SERM: Acts 1:12-26, Easter 7, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Seventh Sunday of Easter
He Was Allotted His Share in This Ministry
(Three Ways Judas Iscariot Can Help You)

Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) Today’s First Lesson reports 
what happened with Judas Iscariot, the betrayer who set the stage for our 
Lord’s death and resurrection. Judas died ugly, but there is more to Judas than 
a disgusting story. God could have allowed Judas’ name and memory to have been 
wiped away from the earth and forgotten for all eternity. But God did not. God 
wrote the story of Judas into His Bible for our blessing and benefit. Judas 
will help us.

Dear Christian friends,

THE FIRST HELP Judas gives us is a warning. Today’s First Lesson is from Acts, 
which was written by St. Luke. As you know, Luke also wrote a Gospel. Luke’s 
Gospel is all about repentance. Luke reports John the Baptist as “preaching a 
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3). Luke is also the 
only Gospel writer who records the fear-inspiring Words of Jesus, “Unless you 
repent, you will all… perish”—a message that Jesus emphasized by saying it 
twice. “Unless you repent, you will all… perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

The book of Acts is also about repentance (Luke 24:47 and Acts 1:8). Judas 
Iscariot seems to be a sermon illustration on repentance—or better, Judas 
illustrates what happens when you refuse to repent. Judas not only died ugly, 
but he also died needlessly. Judas died unrepentantly. That is to say, Judas 
died believing that Jesus’ love and forgiveness of sins were beside the point. 
Never allow yourself to be that way. Learn from Judas. Benefit from Judas.

In today’s First Lesson, Peter said concerning Judas, “He was numbered among us 
and was allotted his share of this ministry.” The Words, “He was numbered among 
us,” indicate that Judas had his full share of all God’s gifts, just as the 
other disciples did. Judas heard the same Words of forgiveness and life from 
Jesus that the others heard; Judas participated in the miracles of Jesus as the 
others did; Judas ate the same body-and-blood-given-for-the-forgiveness-of-sins 
that the other Christians around him likewise ate. Judas was also painfully 
aware of his sins (Matthew 27:4). Unlike all the other Christians around him, 
Judas simply refused to believe and accept that Jesus could ever forgive a guy 
like him.

Learn from Judas. Benefit from Judas. Never allow yourself to become so 
overwhelmed by the gravity of your sin that fool yourself. Never fall into the 
Judas-trap of thinking there is no hope for you. Judas foolishly thought his 
sin was greater than Jesus. Jesus is actually greater than Judas’ sin and 
greater than your sin. Jesus died even for Judas, just as He did for you. 
Jesus’s blood fully covered and hid Judas’ sins, just as yours were likewise 
covered. Neither Judas’ sins nor your sins are too much or too deadly for the 
Lord of Life.

THE SECOND HELP Judas gives is this: Judas shows you that a wicked pastor or 
preacher cannot stand in the way of God’s gifts to you. Stated in other ways, 

•   God’s forgiveness of your sins does NOT become invalid or weakened, 
even if that forgiveness should be announced to you by a pastor who is an 
unbeliever, or a pastor who needs to be forgiven. As you heard Peter say today, 
Judas “had his share in this ministry.”

•   Christ’s Holy Communion truly gives you His Body, His Blood, His 
forgiveness, and His life, even if the communion should be served by an 
unrepentant and unbelieving man. Remember that Judas was one of those twelve 
disciples who served miraculous bread to 5,000 men. Praise be to God! Judas’ 
hands touched and distributed that bread which Jesus took, blessed, broke and 
gave to His disciples in a Holy-Communion manner. Those whom Judas served still 
received a miraculous meal, even though Judas had served it.

•   Christ’s Baptism is truly a “washing of rebirth” (Titus 3:5, NIV), even 
if you might have been baptized by the hand of a wicked priest. Judas was fully 
included in these Words from St. John: “Jesus Himself did not baptize, but only 
His disciples [did]” (John 4:1). According to these Words, Judas baptized 
people into God’s gift of eternal life. By the power of these Words, we will 
not conclude that those whom Judas baptized did not receive God’s gift, just 
because Judas was doing it! God’s gifts are greater than the one who gives 
those gifts to you!

That is the comfort and benefit that Judas provides. “He had his share in this 
ministry.” That means you are fully forgiven, even if I myself should refuse 
the same forgiveness that I preach. “He had his share in this ministry.” That 
means God’s gifts to you are truly His gifts to you. God’s gifts are full of 
forgiveness, full of salvation, and full of life—and no one can stand in the 
way of these gifts, not even an unrepentant pastor! Judas “had his share in 
this ministry” because God will even use sinful men in His earnest desire to 
give you salv

SERM: Acts 10:34-48, Easter 6, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Sixth Sunday of Easter
God Shows NO Partiality

Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) Christ Jesus died for all 
people everywhere (including you and me). Christ Jesus rose from the dead for 
all people everywhere (including you and me). Christ’s death and resurrection 
make it possible for Peter to say in today’s First Reading, “God shows no 
partiality.” 

You do not want to believe it, I do not want to believe it, and yet it is 
eternally true: “God shows no partiality.” With these Words, God the Holy 
Spirit requires and demands great faith from us. “Let God be true and every man 
a liar!” (Romans 3:4, NIV) Let God be true and every experience a liar! Let God 
be true and every observation, ever deduction, and every other conclusion be 
made a liar! “God shows no partiality.”

Dear Christian friends,

If God Himself had not told us in His Bible that He “shows no partiality,” we 
would never believe it. Today’s First Reading from Acts 10 is not the only 
Bible passage that makes such a claim (See Acts 10:28 and Romans 3:29) but 
God’s Bible is the one and only place in the whole creation where you can even 
hear the message, “God shows no partiality.” Every other part of life—home and 
family life, work and business life, life under the civil governments, and even 
church life—EVERY other part of life will tell that God’s Words in today’s 
First Lesson are WRONG. Every other part of life actually preaches the 
opposite, that God indeed is partial to some people more than others. 

1.  Think about the relationships we have one with another. Most 
relationships suggest that God is in fact more partial to one person than He is 
to another—after all, God created these relationships! 

a.  For example, God commands us to honor our father and our mother (Exodus 
20:12). Not only does this commandment require us to believe that fathers are 
greater than sons, and mothers greater than daughters, but look at daily life! 
Fathers and mothers are held legally responsible for their children. Parents 
must nourish and provide for their children because the children cannot do 
these things for themselves. Yes, many parents make themselves low and spoil 
their greatness by sinning against their children and not serving the children 
as they ought. But human sin does not change the crown and the blessing and the 
greatness God Himself has given to one group (namely, parents) and not to the 
other group (that is, the children).  In many ways, God certainly seems more 
partial parents than to children!
 
b.  In the same way that parents are greater than children—by God’s design 
and command—employers are greater than their employees and government leaders 
are greater than the citizens. After all, you cannot fire your boss and you 
cannot take command of the military. God has given these places and offices to 
others. 

c.  Even church life suggests that God is partial because not every 
Christian is permitted to preach God’s Word or to administer His sacraments.

Simple observation of our human relationships—relationships created by 
God—simple observation suggests that God is more partial to some people than 
others, entrusting more opportunity and responsibility to some than He does to 
others.

2.  For more clear evidence in everyday life that God is indeed partial to 
some people more than other people, look inside your wallet or purse. “Every 
good gift… is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17), 
but more of those gifts seem to have fallen into your lap than into your 
neighbor’s. Or maybe it is the other way around: maybe you feel a little 
ripped-off or short-changed when you compare your situation to others around 
you. It certainly seems as though our heavenly Father indeed shows partiality 
and prefers some people more than others.

3.  Then there are the personal struggles in life—struggles that we all 
face at some time or other. Yes, you know that other people have bad 
experiences similar to you. However, when you look at those other people, they 
do not seem as bad off as you feel. Why does God make it easier for them to 
carry their crosses, but harder for you? Why do other people seem happy and 
able to cope, while you do not? Why do other people’s crosses truly appear to 
be “light and momentary” (2 Corinthians 4:17, NIV), while your cross simply 
will not go away? A partial and preferential God is exactly what the evidence 
of daily life would lead us to conclude.

Throw the evidence away. Curse the evidence on its way out the door. Defy and 
turn your back on the evidence. “Let God be true and every man a liar!” (Romans 
3:4, NIV) Let God be true and every experience a liar! Let God be true and 
every observation, every deduction, and every other conclusion be made a liar!

Grasp the Words of the Holy Spirit by the faith and trust that Holy Spirit has 
given to you through the Word. Believe NOT experience; believe what is written 
on t

SERM: 1 John 3:16-24, Easter 4, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Fourth Sunday of Easter
And Rite of Christian Confirmation for Tierra Franzisko and Aidan Rottmann


Stay Inside the Fence

Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) In today’s Epistle, God the 
Holy Spirit preaches to you, Tierra and Aidan, and this is what He says: 
“Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in Him, and He in them.” Of course, 
God the Spirit not speaking to you alone. He is speaking and preaching also to 
your parents, your grandparents and to every other Christian here who will 
listen and not ignore: “Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in Him, and 
He in them.”

When God the Holy Spirit speaks to you about keeping the commandments, He is 
NOT telling you how to be saved or how to gain eternal life. God has already 
saved you! You already have His gift of eternal life! God saved you on the day 
He baptized you, when He washed away your sins (Acts 22:16) and adopted you as 
His dearly loved child (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). When you were baptized, 
the forgiving blood that Jesus shed for you upon the cross became yours 
forever, and all your sins were given to Jesus. Forgiveness is now yours; 
salvation is now yours; eternal life is now yours; resurrection to happiness is 
now forever yours—and God’s Ten Commandments have given you NONE of these 
things! It was Jesus, NOT the Ten Commandments. Jesus has given you all these 
things and more! 

So the Spirit is NOT telling you how to be saved, or how to gain eternal life, 
when He preaches to you today, “Whoever keeps [God’s] commandments abides in 
Him, and He in them.” Rather, God is telling you in these Words that His Ten 
Commandments have now become a gift and blessing of your Baptism. 

I am going to repeat what I just said, because some people will think it sounds 
strange: God’s Ten Commandments are now a gift and a blessing to you because 
God baptized you.

Some of your fellow Christians—maybe some of your own family members—will think 
it sounds strange that I would call the Ten Commandments a gift of your 
Baptism. That is because many people think of God’s Ten Commandments as nothing 
more than a list of things God requires us to do. And by all means, God 
certainly requires us to obey His commandments! God not only requires us to 
obey, but He also threatens to punish everyone who ignores His commandments. 
For that matter, God will even punish people who say that they are Christians, 
and say that they have Jesus in their hearts, but then live every day as if God 
and His Words do not matter. That is why Jesus spoke to each of us the very 
serious warning, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the 
kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

Yes, God’s commandments tell us what He wants us to do. But the Commandments 
also do more than that. As you both learned in confirmation class, the Ten 
Commandments also show us our great, on-going need for Jesus. While they tell 
us what God wants of us, the commandments also show us how miserably we all 
fail in each and every thing God has said. Lord, have mercy! God forgive us for 
the sake of Your Son Jesus! Because the Ten Commandments do such a good job of 
showing us our sin, they help us to get ready for worship each Sunday (among 
other things). After a week of incurring guilt upon guilt by breaking the 
commandments—after a week of having other people break the commandments against 
us—what could be better than the cool water and green pastures of Sunday 
morning worship? 

•   Here Jesus confirms and repeats the promises He made to you in your 
Baptism, that you will be His beloved child forever—even when you do not feel 
very much like a child of God.

•   Here Jesus speaks His life-giving Word of forgiveness to you, never 
holding against you the ways you have broken the commandments—even when you 
fall back into breaking them again.

•   Here and only here Jesus serves His body and blood to you, given for 
the forgiveness of your sins: given this week, given next week, given yet again 
the week after that.

God’s Ten Commandments get you ready for these things. God’s Ten Commandments 
give you the gift of showing you your sin, so that you will wake up and 
recognize your need for your Savior. If you should foolishly ignore the Ten 
Commandments, reject the Commandments, or pretend the Commandments do not 
matter, then you will never turn your attention to God’s Word; you will never 
want to come to church; you will never desire to hear Jesus’ forgiveness and 
assurance and peace, all of which He gives here.

Listen again to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church: “Whoever keeps 
[God’s] commandments abides in Him, and He in them.” With these Words, the Holy 
Spirit wants you to know that His Ten Commandments do more for you than 1) tell 
you what He wants you to do, and 2) get you ready for Sunday morning. In 
today’s Epistle, God the Holy Spirit is telling you that the Ten Commandments 
also have the power (comp

SERM: 1 John 3:1-7, Easter 3, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Third Sunday of Easter
Purity

Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) God the Holy Spirit speaks 
about your risen Christ in today’s Epistle. The Spirit says to you and to me 
and to all Christians, “Everyone who hopes in Him purifies himself, as He is 
pure.” That is to say, everyone who hopes in Christ purifies himself, as Christ 
is pure. 

Dear Christian friends,

If you have ever had the urge to wash your hands before eating a meal or after 
handling money, then purity might be a topic of interest for you. 

If you would just as soon have your open-heart surgery performed in a 
sterilized operating room, rather than in your garage, then purity might 
interest you.

You wash your fresh fruits and vegetables before you eat them; you spray Lysol® 
on the bathroom fixtures; you boil tap water while the town’s fire hydrants get 
flushed; you use the little wet rag they give you at the Walmart to wash off 
the handle of your shopping cart: these are common, everyday steps you can take 
to avoid contamination; to avoid impurity. Stated another way, these are things 
you can do to work toward—and perhaps achieve—some aspect of purity in your 
life. 

What are you going to do with your brain? How do you plan to cleanse and purify 
that thing? For example:

•   What kind of soap will help you rub out the stain of your regrets? 
Think about some of those things in your past that you wish had never been. 
Once you gain experiences, you never lose them again. You can hide them under 
the rug of your memory, but you still know where to find them. You also know 
how black and contagious and guilt-ridden they are. Naiveté is like a fine wine 
glass or Christmas ornament: once it is shattered, it will never go back 
together again. 

•   How will you erase from your mind those things you wish your eyes had 
never seen? Certain images have been painted and engraved onto the walls of 
your mind and they cannot be whitewashed away. Mental pictures last for 
decades, and they can re-stab you with sorrow and remorse every time you see 
them. 

•   God says in His Bible that your tongue is a wild, unmanageable beast 
(James 3:7-8). Even if you should manage tame your tongue—as if that were at 
all possible—how can you stop the tidal wave of thought that your tongue rides 
upon? Telling your neighbor what you think of him is only half of the guilt; 
the other half of the guilt is that you ever thought it in the first place 
(Matthew 5:22, 28). When it comes to sin, your “brain bone” is connected to 
your “heart bone,” so to speak, and Jesus has clearly declared,

What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person 
[and makes him impure]. For out of the heart [YOUR HEART] come evil thoughts, 
murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are 
what defile a person (Matthew 15:18-20)

Suppose Jesus is right (He is). Suppose that your greatest impurities are those 
things that are already inside you, bottled up like magma inside a volcano and 
just looking for its chance to spew. If your greatest impurities—if my greatest 
impurities—are those things inside of us, then we have very few options for 
purifying ourselves: 

•   Some Christians hope to purify themselves by making a personal 
commitment. No longer will they sin! No longer will they dishonor God! No 
longer will they live impurely. But you know as well as I that people who make 
such claims deceive themselves and us “and the truth is not in [them]” (1 John 
1:8). As you probably already know by personal experience, commitments to stop 
sinning are about as effective as New Year’s resolutions. As you already know 
from the Scriptures, your ACTIONS of sin are the least of your problems, 
because of the impurity of sin that burns and stinks inside of you. You might 
commit yourself to stop eating cookies, but you cannot commit to no longer 
being a glutton; you might commit yourself to not showing your temper, but you 
cannot avoid the murderous dimensions of your anger; you might commit yourself 
to greater acts of generosity, but greed and self-service always watch and wait 
and seize their opportunity. Purity cannot
 be achieved through commitment. 

•   Because it is what lives inside a person that makes him or her impure, 
you will never be able purify yourself by staying away from impure people, 
either. Many Christians think that, if they intend to maintain purity in their 
lives, then sinful people should be avoided. Monks and Mennonites are somewhat 
similar in that line of thinking. God’s apostle Paul says it is hogwash. “You 
would need to get out of the world,” Paul declares (1 Corinthians 5:10).

There is one—ONLY ONE—way for us purify our heart and cleans our minds. Christ 
is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) God the Holy Spirit wants you to 
know that, in His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ your Lord has fully 
accomplished for you everything needful for

SERM: John 20:19-31, Easter 2, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Second Sunday of Easter
Peace To You

Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) In today’s Gospel, our 
freshly resurrected Jesus appears to His disciples and says to them, “Peace to 
you!” Three times our Lord repeats Himself to them, emphasizing the point: 
“Peace to you!”

Dear Christian friends,

Let’s begin by splitting hairs and straining gnats, so to speak: A very small 
word has been added to the translation of these Words from Jesus, “Peace to 
you.” As you read and heard in today’s Gospel, Jesus’ greeting of peace gets 
translated into English as, “Peace be with you” (ESV and others). This is not a 
terribly bad or unfaithful translation. Simply note that the little English 
word “be” has been added. More literally, Jesus only says, “Peace to you” or 
“Peace with you.”
 
The English translation has good intentions for adding that little English word 
“be,” but there seems to be much greater force in the wording: “Peace to you” 
or “Peace with you.”

•   By adding that English word “be,” the Words of Jesus might run the risk 
of sounding a little too much like a Hallmark® greeting card, or a wish. Think 
about the example of someone who is leaving on a long road trip: You might say 
to that person, “BE safe.” With those words, you merely express a wish or a 
desire. When you say the words, “BE safe,” you are either telling the person 
how to behave, or you are expressing a hope and desire that your loved one will 
remain indeed remain safe while traveling. You are not actually giving safety 
to that person with your Words.

•   By contrast, Jesus gives peace with His Words! Appearing to them in the 
power of His resurrection, Jesus does NOT wish peace upon His disciples in 
today’s Gospel, when He says to them, “Peace to you.” Jesus NOT merely 
expressing hope or desire that the disciples will somehow find peace or finally 
achieve peace. Jesus actually and literally GIVES His gift and miracle peace to 
His disciples each and every time He repeats to them, “Peace to you!” or “Peace 
with you!” Think of the example of a man who goes to the coatrack, retrieves 
his wife’s coat, and holds it out toward her, saying, “Your coat.” IN THE SAME 
WAY, Jesus came to His disciples in today’s Gospel and said to them, “Peace to 
you.” With these Words, Jesus holds peace out toward them like the man holds 
the coat toward his wife; Jesus lays His gift of peace upon them in the same 
way that the man would place his wife’s coat around her shoulders. 

That is why I want to split hairs and strain gnats, so to speak. I do not say 
that it is wrong or unfaithful to translate Jesus Words in today’s Gospel as 
“Peace be with you.”  I simply want you to taste and feel a bit more of the 
force or strength in Jesus’ Words, which that little English word “be” might 
partially hide: not so much “Peace be with you” as “Peace TO you” or “Peace 
WITH you.” 

“Peace TO you” is very good and beneficial FOR you because Christ is risen. (He 
is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) By coming, speaking, and GIVING peace to His 
trembling disciples in today’s Gospel, the resurrected Jesus is also showing 
you several things that will prove to be a great help to your faith. 

1. One minor benefit of today’s Gospel is that it gives you a way of thinking 
about your own pastor. Look at the condition of those trembling disciples. Not 
only were they feeling “fear of the Jews,” but each of these men was guilty of 
his own sin, having committed grave and serious sins against Jesus. Remember 
how St. Mark summarized the situation on Maundy Thursday: “They all left Him 
and fled.”

The same Jesus from whom these men had fled now came back to them. You heard 
how the disciples felt joy and relief in today’s Gospel. Not JUST happy to see 
Jesus, part of the disciples’ joy and relief came from the fact that Jesus 
immediately announced the forgiveness of their sins. “Peace to you” is simply 
another form of “I forgive you.”

Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace… with you.” When he 
had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were 
glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace… with you.”

Perhaps you do not find this amazing, but I certainly do: in today’s Gospel, 
those who given the job of speaking forgiveness ALSO RECEIVE for themselves the 
very forgiveness that they preach! 

•   Stated another way, these disciples are sinners whom Jesus now sends 
out to sinners. Disciples, pastors, preachers of the church: they need for 
themselves the very same forgiveness from God that they must give to others.

•   The forgiveness from Jesus that you hear me speak and proclaim to you? 
It is the same forgiveness I deeply need, continually need, repeatedly need 
from Jesus. White robes do not display my holiness; white robes are simply the 
sack that holds the worms. What sin afflicts and tortures you that does not 
also afflict and torture me? There is no such thing!

SERM: Jude 24-25, Good Friday

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

This is my last sermon in this series.

May the dear Lord Jesus, our God, be glorified in it.

Amen.



The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

Good Friday

To the Only God, our Savior


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Tonight Jude speaks praise to God our Father through His Son Jesus Christ:

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless 
before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, 
before all time and now and forever. Amen

Dear Christian friends,

We should not get the wrong impression when Jude speaks praise to “the only 
God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We might draw the disastrous 
conclusion that, because Jude praises “the only God THROUGH Jesus,” therefore 
Jesus must not be God. We should NOT think from Jude’s Words that “Jesus Christ 
our Lord” is not also “the only God, our Savior.”

Jude is doing a very important thing for us when He praises “the only God, our 
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” With these Words, Jude draws our 
attention to the human nature and body of our Lord. Stated somewhat differently:

•   Jude is NOT denying that Jesus Christ is “the only-begotten Son of God, 
begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God 
of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father” (Nicene 
Creed). Jude is NOT denying these things.

•   Jude is simply turning our eyes and our ears toward Jesus Christ, “who 
for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the 
Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us 
under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried” (Nicene Creed).

I cannot emphasize this enough, and none of us is able to study this too 
closely or ponder it too deeply: whenever the Scriptures sound as though Jesus 
is less than God—as it sounds in tonight’s reading, where Jude praises “the 
only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord”—whenever the Scriptures 
make it sound as though Jesus is less than God, we should take it as a hint and 
clue that Jesus’ HUMANITY is being discussed. As our fathers confessed before 
us,

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man. He is God… 
equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with 
respect to His humanity (Athanasian Creed).

“… less than the Father with respect to His humanity”: That is the sort of 
image Jude brings to mind for us tonight, when he praises “the only God, our 
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” With these Words, Jude is not denying 
the divinity of God the Son. Rather, with these Words, Jude is:

•   Pointing to “Jesus Christ our Lord” as the ONE and ONLY pipeline and 
hallway through which we may even dare to draw near and speak to God. Jesus is 
the one through whom we fearlessly ascribe to God “glory, majesty, dominion, 
and authority, before all time and now and forever.” Jesus’ humanity, His body, 
and Hus blood make it possible for us to speak to God without fear. This is 
because Jesus GAVE His humanity and His body and His blood upon the cross for 
us and for our salvation, richly forgiving all our sins and removing God’s 
wrath from above our heads. Trust Jesus’ body! Depend upon His blood!

•   Emphasizing that God the Father still works through Jesus Christ our 
Lord “to keep you from stumbling” on account of “certain people [who] have 
crept in unnoticed,” as Jude warns at the beginning of his letter. Jesus’ body 
and Jesus’ blood will protect you from those “who pervert the grace of God into 
sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ [Himself].” Stated 
another way, Jesus’ body and blood are what God has used to build a strong wall 
and sturdy support for you, in order to “keep you from stumbling.” Rely upon 
Jesus’ body! Hope in His blood!

•   Also emphasizing that Jesus Christ’s Body and Blood now keep you 
continually blameless, even when you inevitably find yourself guilty of sin. It 
is “through Jesus Christ our Lord”—in particular, it is through His human body 
nailed to the cross and through His blood poured out for many—that God will 
“present you blameless before the presence of His great glory with great joy.” 
Rejoice in Jesus’ body. Sing praise to God on account of Jesus’ blood!

When you do, you add your voice to Jude’s voice, who praises “the only God, our 
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jude speaks about Jesus, born of Mary; 
Jesus, who suffered under Pontius Pilate; Jesus who hangs on the cross, 
suspended there in order to display for us God’s greatest “glory, majesty, 
dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

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SERM: Jude 17-25, Maundy Thursday

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

Maundy Thursday

Waiting for the Mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s Epistle, Jude teaches us—he implores us—to wait “for the mercy of our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” Amidst every struggle and temptation, in the face of any 
danger and all fear, wait “for the mercy of our Lord Jesus.” The “mercy of our 
Lord Jesus Christ… leads to eternal life.”

Dear Christian friends,

In a simple, yet masterful way, Jude clearly preaches to us tonight that “the 
mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” is a double, twofold blessing for our lives. 

1. The first blessing is that “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” is yours and 
mine right here and right now. With one single word in tonight’s reading, Jude 
makes it abundantly clear that you and I have each already been given God’s 
mercy; that we now possess God’s mercy. Jude declares that we already have 
God’s mercy, right here and right now, when he calls us the beloved of God: 
“You must remember, BELOVED,” Jude says. “BELOVED, build yourselves up,” Jude 
says.

When he repeatedly calls us “beloved,” Jude is not referring to his own feeling 
or disposition toward us. Jude uses this Word to describe God our heavenly 
Father’s feeling and disposition toward us. The word “beloved” here in 
tonight’s reading harkens all the way back to the very beginning of Jude’s 
letter. When he started writing, Jude described you and me and all Christians 
in this way: “To those who are called, BELOVED IN GOD THE FATHER, and kept for 
Jesus Christ.” 

•   “Beloved in God the Father”: Jude wants us to remember that phrase from 
earlier in his letter when he repeats to us tonight, “You must remember, 
BELOVED” and “BELOVED, build yourselves up.” In these Words, we are not Jude’s 
beloved; we are the beloved of God!

•   “Beloved in God the Father”: That is a perfect way to describe “The 
mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ,” which is yours and mine right here and right 
now! You are “beloved in God the Father” because Christ Jesus manifested God’s 
love for you in His suffering and death. You are “beloved in God the Father” 
because “the blood of Jesus His Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). 
You are, right now, “beloved in God the Father” because in your Baptism “you 
were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

2. Jude also wants us to know that “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” is not 
merely God’s present disposition or feeling toward us. “The mercy of our Lord 
Jesus Christ” is also our guaranteed future! That is why I earlier said to you 
that Jude wants us to think of “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” as God’s 
double, twofold blessing for our lives. Not only does Jude call us “beloved,” 
right here and right now, but Jude also instructs us to WAIT “for the mercy of 
our Lord Jesus.” 

No one waits for something that has already arrived. We wait for things yet to 
be received. When he tells us to wait “for the mercy of our Lord Jesus,” Jude 
wants us to know that there are ever greater mercies from Jesus still coming to 
us in the future! At the very least, the “mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” will 
multiply our joy on the Last Day, when we stand “blameless before the presence 
of His glory with great joy.” But the prophets also promised that God’s mercies 
would be new for us every morning: “Great is Your faithfulness [O LORD]!” 
(Lamentations 3:23). Because of the every-morning newness of God’s mercy, we do 
not need to think only of the Last Day as we wait “for the mercy of our Lord 
Jesus.” Even tomorrow morning, God shall pour out anew the mercy of Christ upon 
us!

•   The mercy of Christ will ever increase for us, so that we may be 
continually restored when we become “those who doubt.”

•   The mercy of Christ will patiently pour new for us, repeatedly and 
steadfastly snatching us “out of the fire.”

•   The mercy of Christ shall to lead us to eternal life, even while we 
live out our days in these corrupted bodies; these “garments stained by the 
[sinful] flesh.”

Beloved of God, wait “for the mercy of our Lord Jesus.” Amidst every struggle 
and temptation, in the face of any danger and all fear, wait “for the mercy of 
our Lord Jesus.” God’s mercy is yours right here and right now. Indeed, God’s 
mercy has been yours eternally from the first drop of water that landed upon 
you in Baptism. So, too, God’s mercy will ever be renewed for you here at the 
altar, in the body and blood of your merciful Lord Jesus Christ. God’s mercy 
shall remain yours always, and you shall stand “blameless in the presence of 
His glory.”

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless 
before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, 

SERM: John 8:30-31, Funeral

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Funeral Sermon for Vera M. Staudenraus

We Started in a Hole in the Ground

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. On the day she confessed and confirmed the Christian faith, Vera was 
given this confirmation verse from St. John’s Gospel:

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, “If you abide in My Word, you 
are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you 
free” (John 8:31-32).

Dear Christian friends,

1. “We started in hole in the ground.” As some of you know, Vera was a charter 
member of this congregation, which formed on July 29, 1951. Not long after the 
congregation received its charter, the good people of Grace Lutheran Church 
began digging the foundation for this building. After the foundation was laid, 
a temporary roof was built over the foundation—forming a temporary 
sanctuary—while construction moved forward on the parsonage. While the 
parsonage was being built, worship services were celebrated in the church 
basement—or, as Vera chuckled about it, “We started in hole in the ground.”

Vera told me, “We started in a hole in the ground,” back in 2002. The day she 
said it was the day I also knew how her funeral sermon would go. There are 
hardly any better words to describe each Christian’s eternal life—yours, mine, 
Vera’s—there are hardly any better words to describe the eternal life given to 
us by our God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Like Grace Lutheran Church in 
Versailles, MO, each of us—you, me, Vera—each of us likewise “started in a hole 
in the ground.” Stated another way, and quoting the apostle Paul from Ephesians 
2, “[We] were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).

We were dead, but God in Baptism made us “alive together with Christ” 
(Ephesians 2:5). Life for God’s Christians does not end with the arrival of 
death. NO! Death for God’s Christians ends with the arrival of life—the life of 
Christ, crucified and resurrected for your forgiveness; the life of the Holy 
Spirit, who miraculously washed each of us with rebirth in our Baptisms (Titus 
3:5-6); the life of God the Father, who exhales the very power of creation upon 
us when He gives us baptismal “birth from above” (John 3:3). I say it again. 
Life for God’s Christians does not end with the arrival of death. “We started 
in hole in the ground,” but those days are over! Death ended with the arrival 
of Christ’s life, miraculously given to us—to you, to me, to Vera!

2. Do not be fooled by what you see here. Vera only looks as though she has 
died. That is only the appearance of things. Because God the Father has already 
raised His servant from the death of her sins, Vera now lives a life that 
cannot die. Because God the Son shed His precious blood for Vera’s forgiveness, 
Vera now stands before her Christ in righteousness and purity. Because Holy 
Spirit drew Vera into the truth, so that she may abide in the truth, Vera now 
has been set free. Jesus’ promise—to you, to me, to Vera—Jesus’ promise in 
Vera’s confirmation verse has been fulfilled for Vera: “the truth [HAS] set you 
free”, Vera! (John 8:31)

3. In addition to telling me about the earliest days of our congregational 
life, when “we started in hole in the ground,” Vera also once told me about her 
younger years, living down by the lake. There were no full time pastors 
available back in those days. Circuit-riding pastors would come around when 
they were able, but it was not an every-Sunday schedule. When the preacher rode 
in, someone would start ringing the church bell and the hills would echo with 
its sound. “Whenever you hear the sound,” Vera told me, “you stop what you are 
doing and go to church.”

This story about responding to the bell is a great part of Vera’s past, but it 
also paints a good picture for Vera’s future! It won’t be a bell. It will be “a 
cry of a command, with eh voice of an archangel, and the sound of the trumpet 
of God” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Church bell or trumpet, the result is the one 
and the same: “Whenever you hear the sound,” Vera told me, “you stop what you 
are doing and go to church.” Vera’s sleep in the grave will only be temporary. 
When she hears the sound, Vera will once again stop what she is doing—just like 
she did in the old days! Vera will stop sleeping when she hears the sound, and 
Vera will go to church! “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven… and the 
dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). 

Do you know what this means for you and me and Vera? It means that “we will 
always be with the Lord… [For now,] encourage one another with these Words” (1 
Thessalonians 4:17-18).

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SERM: Mark 14:1-15:47, Palm/Passion Sunday; LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Palm/Passion Sunday

She Has Anointed My Body Beforehand for Burial

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Many people encounter Jesus in today’s lengthy Gospel. ONLY ONE PERSON 
actually listened to Him and took to heart what Jesus said. God will use this 
one person as a way of giving you several great blessings in your own life, 
especially as you repeatedly join this one person and listen to Jesus.

While He [Jesus] was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as He was 
reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure 
nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over His head. 

Dear Christian friends,

THIS WOMAN AT BETHANY IS THE ONLY ONE WHO LISTENS TO JESUS IN TODAY’S GOSPEL

1. The chief priests and the scribes were not listening to Jesus. “The chief 
priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest Him [Jesus] by stealth” 
(14:1). You might say the chief priests and scribes only wanted to hear things 
they may hold against Jesus, as if they were reading Miranda Rights to Him: 
“Anything You say can and will be held against You, Jesus!”

2. Simon the leper’s guests (14:4) were not listening to Jesus. Forget about 
the death that Jesus kept talking about; that is, the death that would soon 
spell forgiveness and life for the whole world (1 John 2:2). What about the 
ointment of pure nard? “This ointment could have been sold… and given to the 
poor”—as if giving to the poor is the main point of Jesus’ Words.

3. Judas Iscariot (14:10) was not listening. Judas already heard everything he 
wanted to hear, and now took matters into his own hands.

4. Was Peter listening to Jesus? Like the chief priests and scribes, Jesus’ 
Words certainly entered Peter’s ears. Also like these others, Peter refused 
Jesus’s Words. Peter wanted to focus upon his own supposed courage:

“Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will 
deny Me three times.” But he [Peter] said emphatically, “If I must die with 
you, I will not deny you.” And they all said the same (14:30-31). 

5. “And they all said the same.” None the disciples were listening to Jesus, 
either. Like everyone else in today’s Gospel, the disciples refused to listen, 
both to the Scriptures that prophesied their abandonment (Psalm 38:11, 
Zechariah 13:7) and to the Christ who preached God’s Scriptures to them! 

6. Pilate appeared to listen (15:1-5), but Jesus knew Pilate better than that. 
Because Jesus knows what goes on inside all people (John 2:25), Pilate was an 
opened book for Jesus. Pilate gave the impression of wanting to listen when he 
asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” (15:2), but God cannot be mocked 
(Galatians 6:7). Seeing through Pilate, Jesus “made no further answer” (15:5).

7. Apparently, even God the Father plugged His ears to the voice and Words of 
our Lord: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (15:34).

Among all the people who are named this narrative of our Lord’s suffering and 
death, only one person listened to Jesus.

While He [Jesus] was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as He was 
reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure 
nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over His head. 

JESUS’ WORDS PRODUCED A GOOD AND BLESSED RESULT INSIDE THIS LISTENING WOMAN.

Jesus has good reasons commending and praising this woman’s act when He says, 
“What she has done will be told in memory of her.” This woman is the ONLY 
PERSON in today’s Gospel whose actions reflect and mirror the Words of Jesus, 
rather than opposing and denying the Words of Jesus!

•   As Jesus carefully explained, this woman did not act on her own when 
she poured out ointment upon His head. Rather, this woman acted as a result of 
the powerful and miracle-producing Word that had been preached to her. “She has 
anointed My body for burial,” said Jesus. Where everyone else was ignoring 
Jesus’ several sermons about His impending crucifixion and death, this woman 
was listening! Where everyone else was pursuing their own agenda, either trying 
to kill Jesus for all the wrong reasons or attempting to prevent His death 
because they refused to believe its necessity, this woman’s poured-out oil 
proclaiming, “I have heard Your Words, Lord. Indeed, You must die. Without Your 
death, I cannot live.”

•   “She has anointed My body for burial,” said Jesus. Faith miraculously 
sprang forth in this woman’s heart and mind—faith produced by the Words Jesus 
had first preached to her—and faith produced its good work within her. “Why was 
the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold… and 
given to the poor.” Stated another way, the foolishness of what Jesus preached 
(1 Corinthians 1:21) miraculously produced the equally foolish action of faith: 
“She broke the flask [of pure nard, very costly] and poured it over His 
[Jesus’] head.”

JESUS’ WOR

SERM: Jude 17-23, Midweek Lent 4

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

The Fifth Midweek Service in Lent

Keep Yourselves in the Love of God

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Tonight, Jude would have us do a more than “contend for the faith that was once 
for all delivered to the saints.” Jude wants us to be certain that we protect 
ourselves: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray 
in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.”

Dear Christian friends,

Repentance is a strange and wonderful thing in God’s Scriptures.  In many Bible 
passages, repentance sounds like a command or requirement God places upon us. 
Jesus Himself has said, “Unless you repent, you will perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

The strange and truly wonderful thing about repentance in God’s Scriptures is 
that, even though repentance sounds like a command, repentance is actually a 
gift that God creates for you and gives to you through His Word. This is why 
the earliest Christians rejoiced, “God exalted [Jesus]… to GIVE repentance to 
Israel” (Acts 5:31), and “to the Gentiles also God has GRANTED repentance” 
(Acts 11:18).

Strange thing! Wonderful thing! God Himself gives to us the same thing He 
requires and demands from us! When God commands you and me to repent, it is 
somewhat like Jesus’ own command to the dead man Lazarus, “Come out [of your 
tomb]” (John 11:43). Jesus ordered the dead man to do something, but then the 
miraculous and divine power of Jesus’ Words accomplished the very thing He 
commanded: “The dead man who had died came out” (John 11:44).

The same thing happens when God commands us to repent. God commands and 
requires our repentance, but then He also creates our repentance for us by the 
very Words He speaks to us in the command.

Jude knows the power and miracle of God’s Word. That is why Jude speaks about 
your repentance as though it were something you must accomplish for yourself: 
“But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the 
Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.” 
 
•   “Build,” “keep,” “pray”: these are all spoken as commands to you. But 
God’s Words accomplish FOR you the things they require FROM you!

•“Build,” “keep,” “pray”: we should think of these things as what GOD 
does FOR US through His powerful and miraculous Word—even when that Word is 
spoken to us as if it were a command.

1. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith.” How shall 
we “build ourselves up”? We do NOT build our faith by committing ourselves to 
do better! Faith is NOT something we conjure up within ourselves. Faith is NOT 
our personal commitment to trust and follow Jesus. Faith is NOT a muscle that 
we tease into greater strength or endurance! 

Faith is what God does. Faith is the miracle that results from hearing God’s 
Word (Romans 10:17). Faith is the apple that gets produced by the green and 
living tree of God’s Word. Faith is the infant child that suckles at the breast 
of God’s Word. Faith grows and “builds up” only by the power of the divine Word.

When Jude calls for our repentance by saying, “Build yourselves up in your most 
holy faith,” Jude is telling us to renew our attention to God’s Word! God’s 
Word both gives and increases our faith. God’s Word guards us against our “own 
sinful desires,” among countless other things. God’s Word guarantees to keep us 
safe and secure against anyone who “creeps in unnoticed… who perverts the grace 
of our God into sensuality and denies our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.”

2. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the 
Holy Spirit.” How shall we “pray in the holy Spirit”? We do NOT pray in the 
Spirit by closing our eyes to the Word or by babbling in some incoherent 
substitute for speech, as the Pentecostals spew and rave. We pray in the Spirit 
by focusing our attention upon the Words of the Spirit, which are contained 
exclusively in the pages of the Holy Scriptures. We pray in the Holy Spirit by 
patterning our words after the Spirit’s Words and by imitating in our 
prayers—to the weak degree we are able—those prayers the Spirit Himself has 
written in His Scriptures.

Again, when Jude calls for our repentance by saying, “pray in the Holy Spirit,” 
Jude is simply calling for us to renew our attention to God’s Word! In 
particular, Jude calls us to regard God’s Word as the source of our prayers. 
“Certain people creeping in” will pray any-which-way they want! God’s Word and 
God’s Word alone makes it possible for cold and unnoticing hearts such as yours 
and mine to “pray in the Holy Spirit.”

3. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the 
Holy Spirit; keep yourselves in the love of God.” How shall we keep ourselves 
in the love of God? We keep ourselves in the love of God by 1) “building 
ourselves up in the most holy faith” and 2) “by praying in the Holy Spirit”! 
Stated another way, 

SERM: Jude 14-16, Midweek Lent 4

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

The Fourth Midweek Service in Lent

Following Their Own Sinful Desires

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s reading, Jude thunders against those “certain people [who] have crept 
in unnoticed… who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our 
only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Among other things, Jude denounces them 
for “following their own sinful desires” and “showing favoritism to gain 
advantage.”

Neither you nor I would feel a happy result if I were to thunder against 
“certain men,” as Jude does here. Nevertheless, there is an earnest call to 
repentance for us—together with our fellow Christians—here in Jude’s Words.

Dear Christian friends,

Every few years, the good people of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod commit 
great and grievous sins against certain pastors among us. We sin against these 
pastors, these dear fellow Christians of ours, by nominating and electing them 
to the offices of District President or Synodical President.

> Please do NOT misunderstand:

·   I am NOT saying that these presidential offices are intrinsically evil, 
or that we should not have presidents in our church body. I am saying that you 
and I—together with our fellow Christians—we have revised these offices into 
something evil.

·I am NOT flatly comparing our presidents to those “certain people who 
crept in unnoticed.” I am warning you and all who will listen: These offices—as 
we have foolishly revised them—these offices now present nearly insurmountable 
temptations to the good and honest Christian men who fill them. These 
overwhelming temptations are what have made these offices evil. 

·   I am NOT talking about other people in some other place, such as St. 
Louis. I am talking about you and me. Jude warns ALL Christians about 
“following… sinful desires” and “showing favoritism to gain advantage.” That 
means Jude’s warnings are spoken personally to us, to THIS CONGREGATION and to 
ALL who gather at this pulpit. Stated another way, I am just as open to 
temptation as anyone else here. I am just as ready to follow “sinful desires” 
and just as quick to spot my chance “to gain advantage” as any other person in 
our church body!

1. On the surface, we made innocent progress toward revising the offices of 
president into evil institutions. There was a time when church our presidents 
were also full time theologians, filling church pulpits and theological 
classrooms. Devoting themselves primarily to the preaching and teaching of 
God’s Word, our presidents crammed their administrative duties into their 
already busy schedules. Because of this, they suffered more than enough stress 
and even mental breakdowns, but at least God’s Word was continually in front of 
their faces. 

Not so today. When we made our presidents full time, we essentially wrenched 
the Word of God away from them. Our presidents are terribly busy, but not with 
the preaching and teaching of the Word. They love the Word; they cram time into 
their schedules to read the Word; they even get chances to preach the Word—but 
they are not primarily occupied by the Word. We have given these men too many 
other duties and responsibilities, forcing the Word away from their faces. A 
man can only do so much in a week!

After we made our presidential offices full time jobs, we added to the problem 
by paying executive salaries. We gave these salaries because we wanted to make 
our presidents comparable to other business executives. This was very much like 
ancient Israel’s desire to have a king comparable to the kings of the 
Canaanites (1 Samuel 8). With these executive salaries, we placed before our 
presidents the temptation of reelection. A man can get used to a salary of 
100-plus thousand dollars. He might feel tempted to soft-pedal his disciplinary 
duties and downplay some of the theological challenges posed to him, if he 
hopes to be reelected.

That is not all. We contributed to the evil by making our presidents 
responsible for the financial health of the institutions they serve. Stated 
another way, these men are (at least partially) responsible for district or 
synodical income, as well as theological oversight. Now we have gutted the 
presidential office. Now a president can only say so much or go so far in 
calling his people to repentance. If he makes his people too angry, thousands 
of dollars in income could be lost.

Then there is the problem of our own sin. At nearly every convention of 
district or synod, we cede more power and more responsibility to our 
presidents. We do this mostly because of our own laziness and disinterest in 
the affairs of our church body. One thing then leads to another: by continually 
increasing presidential power, we also increasingly entice our presidents into 
“following their own sinful desires” and “showing favoritism to gain advantage” 
with less and less accountabilit

SERM: Jude 8-13, Midweek Lent 3

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

The Third Midweek Service in Lent

Relying On Their Dreams

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s reading, Jude points to God’s Scriptures as our only shield and 
defense as we “contend for the faith” against those who  “pervert the grace of 
our God.”

·   First, Jude warned us not to cut anything away from God’s Scriptures. 
Jude did this by saying, “I want to remind you, although you once fully knew 
it.” 

·   Now Jude warns us not to add anything to the Scriptures, either. Those 
“certain people [who]… crept in unnoticed” were adding to God’s Scriptures by 
“relying on their dreams.” As Jude said, “these people also, relying on their 
dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.”

Dear Christian friends,

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, is an appealing fieldtrip destination, 
even for many Lutheran schools. The slogan on the museum’s website is “prepare 
to believe.” In addition to showing you exciting things, such as the actual 
size of Noah’s Ark and what the Garden of Eden might have looked like, the 
Creation Museum also wants to present you with geological evidence to support 
what you believe about the creation. Here is the deal the Creation Museum can 
offer you: They will show you a fossil and a thick layer of silt; you “prepare 
to believe.”

“Prepare to believe.” This slogan is telling you that, if you are given the 
right amount of visual evidence and other proof, you will finally be able to 
believe. You can become convinced to embrace creation as the true explanation 
for how our world came to be. Just look at the evidence. The evidence demands a 
verdict.

When we shuttle our Lutheran schoolchildren off to the Creation Museum, we deny 
the power of God’s Word. When we bring guest speakers into our schools to show 
us the evidence for creation—speakers who usually reject God’s miracles of 
Baptism and Holy Communion, but who have lots of exciting proof for creation—we 
again deny the power of God’s Word.

We deny the power of God’s Word when we pretend that we can build our faith 
upon those things that we see with our eyes and touch with our hands. Forget 
that God has said, “Faith is… the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 
11:1). The supposed evidence for creation is persuasive and compelling! The 
supposed evidence is helpful and exciting and it gives our children our reason 
to believe!

No. The supposed evidence for creation labors against our children’s faith. The 
supposed evidence for creation will destroy their faith in the same way that 
the devil’s lie of evolution will destroy their faith. The supposed evidence 
for creation is just subtler in dealing its deathblow. “By faith we understand 
that the universe was created by the Word of God” (Hebrews 11:3). “Faith is… 
the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). “Hope that is seen is not 
hope” (Romans 8:24).

The supposed evidence for creation threatens faith because “faith comes by 
hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Christ does 
not speak through the supposed evidence. Christ speaks through His Scriptures. 
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the 
prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son” (Hebrews 1:1). 
Aorist verb; once and for all; conversation is over! Thus says the LORD:

·   “You shall not add to the Word that I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). 

·   “Everything I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not 
add to it” (Deuteronomy 12:32).

·   “Do not add to His [God’s] Words, lest He rebuke you” (Proverbs 30:6).

This is exactly what the supposed geological evidence for creation hopes to do, 
adding to God’s Scriptures even in the name of Christianity. The evidence 
claims to give you a reason to believe. The museum’s slogan is “Prepare to 
believe.” In reality, the evidence only offers you false comfort and 
counterfeit consolation. 

Yet isn’t this desire for proof the very thing that you and I feel tempted to 
do every day of our lives? There is a reason why this Creation Science stuff is 
so popular among Christians! False comforts and counterfeit consolations are 
like heroin for our sinful, fallen nature. You and I might be running off to 
Petersburg, KY, so we can prove creation. Nevertheless, the sinful nature, 
alive within us, would love

·   to replace God’s spoken promises of forgiveness and peace with inward 
feelings of happiness or sensations of peace and satisfaction. That way, we can 
inwardly feel that we are saved, rather than believe on the basis of God’s Word 
and Baptism that God promises to save us.

·   hear God’s voice whisper inwardly to our hearts and our minds, rather 
than speaking to us exclusively through the Scriptures. That way, I can know 
God’s personal will for my life, as if the Ten Commandments were not enough!

·

SERM: Exodus 20:1-17, Lent 3, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

Taking the Name of the LORD

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! In today’s Old Testament, God the Father commands and promises, “You 
shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not 
hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” 

·   As you heard, God speaks a warning to you in these Words: “the LORD 
will not hold him guiltless who takes His [the LORD’s] name in vain.” 

·   God also speaks a rich and wonderful promise to you: “You shall not 
take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” That is to say, when God gives you 
His Name—when you have upon yourself the powerful “name of the Lord your 
God”—it shall never be in vain. God’s name shall never fail you or withhold its 
blessing from you.

Dear Christian friends,

1. As every confirmation student knows—or at least has heard—God’s Second 
Commandment forbids the sins of the tongue. Perhaps you have memorized at some 
point in your life: What is the Second Commandment? 

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. 

What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, 
swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every 
trouble, pray, praise and give thanks (Small Catechism, Second Commandment). 

That is a very good start, especially for teaching small children, but God’s 
Second Commandment goes far beyond the sins you commit when you lie or deceive 
or when you fail to pray as you ought. Sins of tongue and mouth are just one 
small detail of the much larger painting. Listen to the commandment again. God 
does not say, “You shall not SPEAK the name of the Lord your God in vain.” God 
says, “You shall not TAKE—you shall not pick up, you shall not lift up, you 
shall not carry or bear—the name of the Lord your God in vain.”  These Words 
paint a bigger picture!

·   Yes, God certainly forbids that we misuse His name with our tongues. 
God does not wish for us to take His name into mouths and then to spit His name 
out before the world in a vain or inglorious way by cursing, lying, etc. Such 
uses of God’s name dishonor the name of our God among us!

·   Yet God also forbids that we CARRY and WEAR His name vainly. “The LORD 
will not hold guiltless him who TAKES—picks up, carries, bears and wears—His 
name in vain.”

2. In order to see the bigger picture concerning the Second Commandment, listen 
to how God taught the priests (Aaron and his sons) to bless to the people. 
First, God gave the priests specific Words they must say:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you 
shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you 
and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace’” (Numbers 6:22-26)
 
Then, after telling the priests what Words to say, God when on to explain what 
happens to you when the priest speaks these Words: “So shall they [the priests] 
PUT MY NAME UPON the people of Israel” (Numbers 6:27). Did you catch that? When 
you hear the Words—“the Lord bless you and keep you,” and so on—God’s name is 
getting laid upon you like a blanket or a cloak. With those Words, God’s name 
gets set upon your head like a hat, or handed to you to bear and to carry as 
you would your drivers’ license or photo ID. “So shall they [the priests] PUT 
MY NAME UPON the people.” 

“PUT MY NAME UPON the people of Israel.” It is as if God said, tell the people 
of Israel—tell all God’s people of every time and place—“You shall not take the 
name of the LORD your God in vain.” God’s name shall not be powerless for you. 
You shall not pick up and carry, you shall not wear or bear God’s name 
uselessly, because “the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in 
vain.”

By all means, think about the sins you commit with your tongue.

We SHOULD fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, 
lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise 
and give thanks (Small Catechism, Second Commandment). 

Do not stop there! Think also about your Baptism, where the good and gracious 
name of God was given personally to you, and where you were baptized into “the 
NAME of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). In 
the Second Commandment, God forbids us to take THAT name—the name given in 
Baptism—in vain. Stated another way, God forbids us to live as if we were never 
baptized.
 
This Commandment is God’s warning to those who would dare to baptize their 
children and then disappear from worship, not bothering to teach their children 
the Christian faith. “The LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name 
in vain.” Tell your loved ones: the Lord will remember those who take His name 
in Baptism but then want nothing more to do with Him. But then al

SERM: Exodus 20:1-17, Lent 3, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

Taking the Name of the LORD

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! In today’s Old Testament, God the Father says to you and to all 
Christians of every time and place, “You shall not take the name of the LORD 
your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name 
in vain.” 

·   There is a harsh and terrible warning for you in these Words: “the LORD 
will not hold him guiltless who takes His [the LORD’s] name in vain.” 

·   There is a rich and wonderful promise for you here, as well: when God 
gives you His Name—when you have upon yourself the powerful “name of the Lord 
your God”—it shall never be in vain. That is to say, God’s name shall not fail 
you or withhold benefit and blessing from you.

1. As every confirmation student knows—or at least has heard—God’s Second 
Commandment forbids the sins of the tongue. Perhaps you have memorized at some 
point in your life: What is the Second Commandment? 

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. 

What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, 
swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every 
trouble, pray, praise and give thanks (Small Catechism, Second Commandment). 

That is a very good start, especially for teaching small children, but God’s 
Second Commandment goes far beyond the sins you commit when you lie or deceive 
or when you fail to pray as you ought. Sins of tongue and mouth are just one 
small detail of the much larger painting. Listen to the commandment again. God 
does not say, “You shall not SPEAK the name of the Lord your God in vain.” God 
says, “You shall not TAKE—you shall not pick up, you shall not lift up, you 
shall not carry or bear—the name of the Lord your God in vain.”  These Words 
paint a bigger picture!

·   Yes, God certainly forbids that we misuse His name with our tongues. 
Stated another way, God does not wish for us to take His name into mouths and 
to lift it up or speak it out before the world in a vain or inglorious way, 
cursing, swearing, using satanic arts, lying, and deceiving. Such uses of God’s 
name dishonor the good name of our God among us!

·   Yet God also forbids that we CARRY and WEAR His name vainly. “The LORD 
will not hold guiltless him who TAKES—picks up, carries, bears and wears—His 
name in vain.”

2. In order to see the bigger picture concerning the Second Commandment, listen 
to how God taught the priests (Aaron and his sons) to bless to the people. 
First, God gave the priests specific Words they must say:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you 
shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you 
and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace’” (Numbers 6:22-26)
 
Then, after telling the priests what Words to say, God when on to explain what 
happens to you when the priest speaks these Words: “So shall they [the priests] 
PUT MY NAME UPON the people of Israel” (Numbers 6:27). Did you catch that? When 
you hear the Words—“the Lord bless you and keep you,” and so on—God’s name is 
getting laid upon you like a blanket or a cloak. When you hear those Words, 
God’s name gets handed to you to bear and to carry as you would your drivers’ 
license or your photo ID. “So shall they [the priests] PUT MY NAME UPON the 
people of Israel.” 

“So shall they PUT MY NAME UPON the people of Israel.” Tell the people of 
Israel—tell all God’s people of every time and place—“You shall not take the 
name of the LORD your God in vain.” You shall not pick up and carry, you shall 
not wear or bear God’s name uselessly, because “the LORD will not hold him 
guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

By all means, think about the sins you commit with your tongue.

We SHOULD fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, 
lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise 
and give thanks (Small Catechism, Second Commandment). 

Do not stop there! Think also about how little you think of your Baptism, where 
the good and gracious name of God was given personally to you, and where you 
were baptized into “the NAME of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). In the Second Commandment, God forbids us to take THAT 
name—the name given in Baptism—in vain. Stated another way, God forbids us to 
live as if we were never baptized.
 
This Commandment is God’s warning to those who would dare to baptize their 
children and then disappear from worship, not bothering to teach their children 
the Christian faith. “The LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name 
in vain.” That is to say, the Lord knows and the Lord remember those who take 
His name in Baptism but then want nothing more to do with Him. But 

SERM: Jude 5-7, Midweek Lent 2

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

The Second Midweek Service in Lent

You Once Fully Knew It

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s reading, Jude calls upon all Christians, including you and me, “to 
contend for the faith that was once delivered for all to the saints.” Jude show 
us HOW to contend for the faith by pointing us to God’s Word—to our Sunday 
School lessons, in particular—reminding us of things we once fully knew. First 
Jude says, “I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it.” Then Jude 
summarizes those lessons he thinks we should have learned in Sunday School: the 
Exodus from Egypt, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and so on. 

Dear Christian friends,

You might have heard in the news how the Evangelical Lutheran Church in 
America—the ELCA—now welcomes openly homosexual pastors. What you might not 
have heard is the beginning of the story. How it might be possible for a 
Christian church body to get to such a point? Here is the beginning of the 
story: The ELCA took its first steps toward homosexual ordinations when it 
stopped believing its Sunday School lessons. 

The rejection of God’s Bible begins in what seems like an innocent manner:

·   Begin by throwing out the history of creation, Genesis 1-2. Because 
evolution supposedly represents true science (a devilish lie), then Genesis 
therefore cannot possibly be history. Creation must be thought of as a myth. 
Genesis is really just a human book—and a somewhat obsolete one at that.

·   After you have torn creation away from God’s Scriptures, kill the Book 
of Jonah. No one can survive three days in a fish, where it is impossible to 
eat, drink, or breathe. Plus, think of the digestive juices! Jonah must be the 
result of someone’s colorful imagination, not the writing and handiwork of God.

Once you throw away one or two of God’s Bible stories, nothing will prevent you 
from eventually rejecting—in the name of Christianity—everything else in God’s 
book! God does not forbid the ordination of women—Paul was just a culture-bound 
chauvinist. Sodom and Gomorrah was not a condemnation of homosexuality—Sodom 
and Gomorrah burned because the people lacked generosity and hospitality. God’s 
Bible might even be totally irrelevant to church life today. 

Throw away God’s Bible stories and you can shape your Christianity into 
anything you personally want it to be. Throw away God’s Bible stories, and 
certain people will not fail to creep in unnoticed. They will finish the job 
that you began. They will “pervert the grace of God into sensuality and deny 
our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” and you will end up allowing them to do 
so. After a while, not even the resurrection of the dead will matter!

To be fair, Jude has not written his letter to those who have thrown away God’s 
Scriptures. Jude has written his letter to those who must yet contend for the 
faith against those who have thrown away God’s Scriptures in their own circles. 
Jude has written his letter to us.  

·   We should not think of the ELCA and shake our heads in shock or dismay. 
We should take a lesson from the ELCA and think of our own Lutheran 
Church-Missouri Synod.  We should think of our own congregation and the dangers 
to which we expose ourselves and our families, the moment we turn our attention 
away from God’s Scriptures. Then we should bow our heads in sorrow and in 
repentant prayer. “I want to remind you,” says Jude, “although you once fully 
knew it.”

·   We should not turn up our nose toward those who have rejected God’s 
Scriptures. We should stick our own noses ever deeper into God’s Book! In 
addition to our faithful reading—as individuals and as a congregation—we should 
continually beg with King David, “Open my eyes, O Lord, that I may behold 
wondrous things out of Your Word [Torah]” (Psalm 119:18).

·   Look at the ELCA and see there a picture and portrait of your Missouri 
Synod’s own future. If you think such things cannot happen to us, then go talk 
to those who regularly send resolutions to our conventions, calling upon us to 
discuss to the possibility of women’s ordination. Talk also to the convention 
committees who ever allow such resolutions to see the light of day.

·   Look at the ELCA and see there a portrait of your own congregation’s 
future, if we do not remain ever vigilant in the living and power Scriptures of 
God! As Paul declared, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he 
fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12)—that includes the good men and women of Grace 
Lutheran Church and their swaggering pastor!

Jude wants us to know that God’s Scriptures are our one and only defense—even 
when we look around and do not see any danger present (as if that were 
possible).Jude wants us to know that God’s Scriptures are our  once and only 
defense against those who sneak about and “pervert the grace of God into 
sensuality and deny our onl

SERM: Mark 8:27-38, Lent 2, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

A Good Cross

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! In today’s Gospel, Jesus

began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected 
by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after 
three days rise again.
 
Then Jesus turns to the crowd and declares, “If anyone would come after Me, let 
him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”

Dear Christian friends,

Question: Was Jesus’ bloody death on the cross a good thing or a bad thing?

Part of you might intuitively or instinctively want to say that Jesus’ cross 
was a bad thing. Get over how you feel. Set aside your regret over the fact 
that Jesus’ death necessary is necessary because your sin. Ignore whatever 
Peter-like sense of justice you might be feeling, which might make you want to 
protect Jesus or protest that He should not spill His blood for people like you 
and me. Listen ONLY to God’s Scriptures and answer the 

Question: Was Jesus’ cross a good thing or a bad thing?

If you never have a single Scripture passage other than today’s Gospel, God’s 
Word answers, YES! Jesus death is a VERY good thing!

·   God Himself has said, “The Son of Man MUST suffer many things.”

·   God Himself has rebuked those who would stand between Jesus and His 
cross, “Get behind Me, Satan!”

·   God insists that His Words and His actions and His plans are always 
good. It is not good when someone dares to stand in the way of what God Himself 
shall do: “For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, [Peter,] but 
on the things of man.”

We have no choice. There is but one answer because our Lord Jesus will accept 
no other answer: It is an exceedingly good thing that “Son of Man must suffer 
many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes 
and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

The problem with today’s Gospel is that it is not as simple as Jesus’ cross, 
all by itself. Jesus turns up the heat on us. Jesus will not leave the question 
focused upon His own cross, but He points to your dearest and closest loved 
ones as they prepare to hang upon their crosses, too. “If anyone would come 
after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”

Set aside for a moment the cross that you personally feel you are carrying. 
(There is a good chance you already spend plenty of time thinking about that 
cross.) Instead, think about the cross you must watch your parent or your 
brother or you son carry. Choose your dearest loved one. Think of that person’s 
harshest and heaviest cross. Answer the 

Question: Is your dearest loved one’s cross a good thing or a bad thing?

Listen ONLY to God’s Scriptures and force yourself into your answer! “If anyone 
would come after Me,” declares Jesus, “let him deny himself and take up his 
cross and follow Me.”

Part of you might intuitively want to say that your loved one’s cross is a bad 
thing. Get over how you feel. Your feelings will fool you. Your feelings will 
make you think that your loved one should try to avoid or escape the cross. Do 
not put yourself into Peter’s shoes, where your loved one might be compelled to 
say to you, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the 
things of God, but on the things of man.”

If Jesus’ is truly a good thing, as we believe it is, then we must believe that 
the crosses borne by Jesus’ followers must indeed be good things, too. “If 
anyone would come after Me, let him… take up his cross and follow Me.”

·   Don’t you want your dearest loved ones to be counted among the 
followers of Jesus?

·   How will your mother ever learn to trust in Jesus and Jesus alone, 
unless your mother first learns that she cannot trust herself? Your mother 
needs her cross!

·   How can the good and gracious will of God be done in your son’s life, 
unless God first shatters and scatters your son’s obstinate will for him? Your 
son needs his cross!

·   How can your brother trust Jesus for daily strength and forgiveness 
while he still feels strong in himself? Your brother needs his cross!

·   How can your husband resurrect to eternal life without first dying? 
Your husband needs his cross!

And you must watch. Love requires it. In today’s Gospel, love required Peter to 
step out of the way. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by 
the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three 
days rise again.” With this cross in particular, forgiveness of sins and 
eternal life are at stake, for you and for all people.

In the same way, love will also require you to step out of the way and allow 
your dear loved ones their crosses—just as they must likewise step out of the 
way and allow you to carry your crosses. 

·   Love does NOT require us to ignore one another’s crosses. In the same 
way that many people paid at

SERM: Jude 1-4, Midweek Lent 1

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

The First Midweek Service in Lent

Contend for the Faith

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s reading, Jude calls upon all Christians, including you and me, “to 
contend for the faith that was once delivered for all to the saints.” Why does 
Jude want us to contend for the faith? Because “certain people… pervert the 
grace of God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

Dear Christian friends,

1. Do you know that, in our Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, we are not allowed 
to “contend for the faith that was once delivered for all the saints?” Our 
synodical bylaws have been revised to prevent it. Suppose you or I were to go 
to one of our fellow congregations or its pastor and say, “Hey, what is this 
strange new thing you are doing?” We would be the bad guys. We would be the 
ones whom people think are acting lovelessly. We would receive the rebuke. 
“Pastor Rottmann is attacking me. Grace Lutheran is an unloving bunch. They 
haven’t followed synodical guidelines, but dare to question what we are doing.”

Because it is unacceptable for anyone to “contend for the faith” against those 
who “pervert the grace of God into sensuality,” lots of strange things can now 
happen in our midst! Some of these strange things have been happening for so 
long, they no longer even seem strange!

·   A congregation may advertise a special event for re-dedicating yourself 
to Baptism. They are so interested in getting you excited about your Baptism 
that they will even give you a chance to re-enter the water and get wet a 
second time. Such congregations “pervert the grace of God into sensuality.”

·   Pastors, possessed by the spirit of Pentecostalism, may conduct worship 
in such a way as to make the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the 
sacraments totally moot. They also “pervert the grace of God into sensuality.”

·   Boards, committees, and service organizations in our synod may promote 
guest speakers who believe an unscriptural and who reject our Lutheran 
confession of faith. We are supposed to welcome these false teachers with 
opened arms. We are supposed to look beyond their false theology and focus only 
on their successful methods! Such speakers—and those who promote them—“pervert 
the grace of God into sensuality.”

All of these, and many others like them, deny the power of God’s Word. When you 
deny the Word, you also “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

According to what St. Jude has written to me here in his letter, I must repent. 
I must repent of not calling others to repentance. Jude tells me that I must 
“contend for the faith.” I have been hunkering down lately, keeping my mouth 
shut. Jude wants me to exert myself in the contest, like a runner would race or 
a wrestler would grapple. I have been avoiding the gym, so to speak. Very 
recently I skipped a conference because the guest speaker smelled like an 
American Evangelical (essentially a Baptist who doesn’t admit that he’s a 
Baptist.). We were all supposed to love the guy because he went to one of our 
Concordia universities, or something. Such guests really just undermine our 
faith and the faith of our children.

I was wrong for skipping. I should have attended that conference, contending 
“for the faith that was once delivered for all the saints” and losing friends 
in the process. I wasn’t. Lord, have mercy!

2. Do you know that your faith and my faith are both continually under attack? 
I am not talking about the devil. I am talking about the “loving” attacks made 
by our friends and neighbors. I am talking, for example,

·   about those who reject and hate our faithful practice of closed 
communion. They cannot bring us a Bible verse to show us our error. They only 
denounce us and wait until we supposedly soften up. Essentially, they want us 
to “pervert the grace of God into sensuality.”

·   also about those fellow Christians of ours who totally ignore those 
parts of God’s Word that seem inconvenient to their lifestyle. You know how it 
is that many of our own family members believe themselves to be exempt from 
God’s commandments or some other aspect of God’s Word! They, too, “pervert the 
grace of God into sensuality.” And they do so while we silently watch.

·   about those tense situations in family arguments or conflicts, when 
people feel as though they can say absolutely anything they that comes to mind, 
no matter how nasty, just as long as no one quotes a Bible verse. After all, 
Bible verses are for Sunday morning, not for family warfare! Sensuality. 

All of these, and many others like them, deny the power of God’s Word. When you 
deny the Word, you also “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

According to what St. Jude has written to us here in his letter, you and I both 
must repent. We must repent of not calling others to repentance! Jude says we 
mus

SERM: Mark 1:9-15, Lent 1, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
(The Temptation of our Lord)

Immediately
(A Beeline to the Cross)

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Two times in today’s Gospel, St. Mark spells out the word “immediately” 
(Greek: euthus). First, Mark says at Jesus’ Baptism, “IMMEDIATELY He [Jesus] 
saw the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.” Then Mark uses the same word 
again to describe what happened next: “The Spirit IMMEDIATELY drove Him [Jesus] 
into the wilderness.” 

Dear Christian friends,

If we were reading any other New Testament Gospel—Matthew or Luke or John—this 
word “immediately” might get passed over or dismissed as inconsequential. It is 
dangerous to regard ANY word in God’s Scriptures as inconsequential! Even so, 
Matthew and Luke and John all seem to use this word “immediately” in what you 
might call a common or ordinary way. At least, these three writers do not seem 
obsessed with the word.

If you read Mark’s entire book, you will see that Mark seems bent on writing 
the word “immediately” as many times as possible. Here is a comparison for you: 
Matthew uses the word “immediately” seven (7) times in his book; John a mere 
three (3) times; Luke only once. Unlike these others, Mark carefully writes the 
word “immediately” forty-two (42) times in his book—and Mark has the shortest 
Gospel of them all!

Many theologians and Bible scholars bypass this detail. They shrug and say that 
Mark simply has a favorite word. I do not think we should be so quick to turn 
the page. These things were written down for our instruction (Romans 15:4, 1 
Corinthians 10:11). Every reading of every verse in God’s Bible should be like 
tasting a new meal at suppertime: it would be good to chew for a minute before 
we spit anything out. 

As you heard, Mark uses the word “immediately” twice in today’s Gospel, both 
when the Spirit descended upon Jesus and then when the same Spirit drove Jesus 
into the wilderness.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in 
the Jordan. And when He came up out of the water, IMMEDIATELY He saw the 
heavens opening and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove… The Spirit 
IMMEDIATELY drove Him out into the wilderness.

The rest of Mark’s forty-two “immediatelys” follow onward from here. Mark’s 
“immediatelys” lead you through his Gospel like signposts would lead you down a 
trail. Follow the trail to the end, you will see that Mark uses “immediately” 
for the last and final time in chapter 15, where Jesus finally gets handed over 
to Pontius Pilate, in order to be crucified.

Early in the morning the chief priests with the elders and scribes and the 
whole Council, IMMEDIATELY held a consultation, and binding Jesus, they led Him 
away and delivered Him to Pilate (Mark 15:1, NASB). 

Here is what we should do: We should think of Mark’s first use of the word 
“immediately”—there at Jesus’ Baptism—we should think of that first use as 
being like a fencepost or the pole of a clothesline. Then we should think of 
Mark’s last “immediately”—when Jesus was handed over for crucifixion and 
death—we should think of that last “immediately” as the next fencepost or the 
opposite clothesline pole. All of Mark’s other uses of “immediately” hang in 
between. All his other “immediatelys” are like the fencing or the clothesline 
that runs between the two poles. 

Stated another way, Mark uses this word “immediately” as a way of drawing a 
straight line for you between Jesus’ Baptism and His crucifixion for your sins. 
By his extraordinary use of the word “immediately” in his Gospel, Mark is 
creating a sensation of speed and focus and urgency for you. From the moment 
Jesus is baptized for your sins, He is totally focused on His crucifixion for 
your sins. To be sure, many things happen to Jesus in the time between His 
Baptism and His crucifixion. Nonetheless, Mark uses “immediately” to stretch a 
taut and straight line between Jesus’ Baptism and His cross. “Immediately” 
keeps Jesus moving forward. “Immediately” shows us Jesus pressing onward and 
onward with single-minded devotion. With Mark’s “immediatelys,” Jesus makes a 
beeline toward His cross, His death, and His resurrection for your eternal 
life. Nothing can deter Him.

Nothing can deter Jesus from helping you, not even His own temptations. Mark’s 
first use of this word “immediately”—Mark’s first fencepost, so to speak—is at 
Jesus’ Baptism. Mark’s second use of the word is at Jesus’ temptation: “The 
Spirit immediately drove Him [Jesus] into the wilderness.” 

Here at His temptation, Jesus has headed down the wire, so to speak. Here Jesus 
has begun His beeline to the cross. While Jesus endures His own temptations, He 
keeps focused on that final “immediately” of the cross, where He shall give you 
your greatest defense against YOUR temptations.

“The Spirit immediately drove Him [Jesus] into the wilderness. And He was in 
the wilderness forty days, b

SERM: Jude 1-25, Ash Wednesday

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Book of Jude for Lenten Repentance

Ash Wednesday

Called, Beloved, and Kept

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
For our midweek Lenten worship, we will hear the book of Jude. Repeatedly. Add 
to your weekly hearing of Jude by taking up this book for your own Lenten 
reading. After you have read it, read it again. Roll Jude’s Words in your mind, 
because these Words are the Words of God Himself. Measure yourself by Jude’s 
Words and find yourself wanting.

As you heart Jude explain, he wanted to write us a letter “about our common 
salvation.” Something more important arose. Rather than writing what he wanted 
to write, Jude found it necessary “to write appealing to you for the faith that 
was once for all delivered to the saints.” Jude has not written us a 
rose-colored letter of Easter hymns and resurrection joy. Jude has written us a 
letter of warning; a letter of rebuke; a letter by which Jude calls all God’s 
Christians to repentance and regret. Jude has written a letter for Lent.

At the beginning of tonight’s reading, Jude says three important things about 
you and about all God’s Christians. These three things will provide you with 
special and repeated comfort during this dark season. In particular, Jude says 
that you “are called,” that you are “beloved in God the Father,” and that you 
are “kept for Christ Jesus.”

Jude also speaks good Lenten comfort to you at the end of his letter, where he 
describes your God as the One “who is able to keep you from stumbling and to 
present you blameless before the presence of His glory.”

Called; beloved; kept by the One who is able to keep you: These words will be 
our sole consolation during these repentant, self-examining, and sorrowful days 
of Lent.

·   These Words from God, spoken to you by Jude, will be like divine 
fireflies that blink salvation’s light throughout our Lenten darkness.

·   These Words of forgiveness and forbearance are the buoys and life 
preservers that will keep us afloat in this forty-day sea of Lenten repentance 
and sorrow. 

·   These small, musical notes of muted joy will tide us over until we sing 
the new song of Easter Resurrection and life. 

In the body of his letter, Jude seems to be speaking about other people—not 
Christians, but people who have crept in among the Christians and have 
corrupted the pure teaching of the Word. Jude seems to be speaking about other 
people, but he is really speaking about us. In particular, Jude is speaking 
about our self-motivated willingness to tolerate falsehoods and lies—both in 
ourselves and in others.

Jude will say some harsh things to us these next several Wednesdays in Lent. No 
matter how harshly he speaks, you must always bear in mind to whom Jude speaks. 
Jude is speaking to you. Stated another way, Jude is speaking “to those who are 
called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ.” Stated yet 
another way, Jude will be speaking these forty Lenten days to those who have 
already been thrown into God’s basket, so to speak. Jude is speaking about 
those who by Baptism now belong to God, the very God ”who is able to keep you 
from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory 
with great joy.”

Because he has written us a letter for Lent—a letter that calls us to 
repent—Jude has felt no need to saturate his writing with Gospel promises and 
assurances. With the Words called, beloved, and kept, you have pretty much 
heard all the Gospel you are going to hear from Jude. 

But these Words are more than enough food from God. These Words will not fail 
to nourish us during our Lenten fast, while we wait in the darkness for Easter 
dawn. Submit to Jude’s rebuke. Don’t defend yourself against it. Simply cling 
to those Words that already describe you: Called; beloved; kept by the One who 
is able to keep you.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless 
before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, 
before all time and now and forever. Amen.

___
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SERM: Mark 9:2-9, Transfiguration, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Baptism of Bill Gronhoff,
Poured out for him on the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord

This is My Son

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! In today’s Gospel, Peter and James and John stand as witness while God 
the Father proclaims from heaven, “This is My beloved Son.”

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel is a very good Gospel for anyone’s Baptism, but this is an 
especially good Gospel for today’s Baptism in particular. Today our fellow 
Christian Bill Gronhoff will be baptized. It may seem surprising to you that 
Bill will be baptized today, especially since he has been a Christian for many 
years, he is an adult member of this congregation, and he has communed with 
since the day he arrived here.

Here is the thing: there is a very good chance that Bill was never baptized. 
Bill grew up thinking that he had been baptized as an infant, but there is only 
one person who ever told him that he had been baptized. That one person might 
have had a reason not to tell Bill the whole story. So Bill and I both have 
searched for Bill’s baptismal record. Bill was born in Germany, but his 
childhood church in Germany can find no evidence anywhere that he had been 
baptized. (Germans never have anything better to do than to keep records). Add 
to that the fact that no baptismal certificate for Bill can be found anywhere, 
and no other witnesses can speak to the case. While Bill certainly might have 
been baptized, we have no way of knowing. We have no certainty. We need to know 
and be certain. Bill needs to be certain that he is baptized and so do you. 
Bill will be baptized today.

Everyone here present must keep two things very firmly in mind:

1.  Bill is NOT being re-baptized today. God says NOTHING about re-baptism 
in His Scriptures. (Not even in Acts 19.) Those Christians who have dreamed up 
the idea of re-baptizing simply have put words into God’s mouth! God says very 
clearly and unmistakably, “There is… one Lord, one faith, one Baptism” 
(Ephesians 4:4-5). Bill Gronhoff’s Baptism is today. February 19, 2012 is now 
the official day that God the Father formally and legally adopts a new son. Who 
knows what may or may not have happened to Bill as a child? It is untraceable 
and unknowable and, as far as Christ and His Church are concerned, 
non-existent. Yes, Bill is a Christian—he has been for many years. Today he 
receives the paperwork to prove it.

2.  You are witnesses of these things. In today’s Gospel, Peter and James 
and John stand as witness while God the Father proclaims concerning Jesus, 
“This is My beloved Son.” In the very same way, you now stand as witness here 
today, while God proclaims those same Words to Bill through Baptism: “This is 
My beloved Son.” Mine. 

Whenever God baptizes one of His Christians, it is a good day for all God’s 
Christians. Baptism days are good days for all of us, and not merely because 
God allows us to witness here the miracle HE PERFORMS in our midst. Baptism 
days are good days for all of us because God’s Word stirs up for us the memory 
of our own Baptism. What God does for the newly baptized, God has likewise also 
done for you. The MANY things God has done for the baptized, God has done for 
you:

·   Baptism has washed away all your sins (Acts 22:15). 

·   Baptism has given you God’s gift of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:15, Titus 
3:5-6).

·   Baptism has wrapped you in Jesus (Galatians 3:27).

·   Baptism has given you the certainty of a resurrection exactly like the 
resurrection Jesus Himself was given (Romans 6:3-5).

Today’s Gospel now opens up for you yet another gift and benefit that God the 
Father gives you in Baptism. What is that gift and benefit? Your Baptism was 
God’s public announcement—God’s advertisement to the world—that you are now His 
child. In today’s Gospel, using Words that echo Jesus’ own Baptism, God the 
Father now proclaims to His official witnesses, “This is My beloved Son.” In 
the same way today, at Bill Gronhoff’s Baptism, God the Father is likewise 
proclaiming to you “That guy is My beloved son.” In the same way also for you, 
when you came to the font, God also proclaimed to everyone who would listen, 
“This is My beloved son.”

Today’s Gospel does more than show you that Baptism is God’s public 
announcement to the world that you are His child. Today’s Gospel will also help 
you understand why such a public announcement is so necessary and beneficial 
for you:

1.  I do not know if anyone has mentioned this to you lately, but you do 
not look very much like a child of God. You sin almost as much as I do. (Yes, I 
know I do not look very much like God’s child, either; I’m trying to get over 
feeling bad about that.) Bill has been sick all week—he was looking neither 
holy nor perfect when I last saw him. We do not look very Christian, and the 
evidence is not difficult to collect: No matter how much you try not t

SERM: Mark 1:40-45, Epiphany 6, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

When God Hides Behind a Tree

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Our Lord Jesus Christ shows pity, compassion, and mercy two times in 
today’s Gospel. Jesus’ first act of pity is the clearest and easiest to see. It 
has to do with healing that leper: “MOVED WITH PITY, He [Jesus] stretched out 
His and touched [the leper] and said to him, ‘Be clean.’”

Our Lord’s second act of pity and mercy in today’s Gospel is not so easy to 
spot as the first. Nevertheless, this second act is actually greater than the 
first. Certainly Jesus’ second act of mercy will give you a greater blessing in 
your own personal life than the first. The leper could not keep his mouth shut, 
but “began to talk freely about it [the healing] and to spread the news.” So 
our Lord again acts with pity and mercy, as St. Mark tells us: “Jesus could no 
longer openly enter a town, but was out in desolate places.”

Dear Christian friends,

Here is the central thought of today’s sermon: Jesus shows you mercy and 
compassion in today’s Gospel by hiding behind a tree. That is to say, Jesus 
acts for your life and salvation staying “in desolate places,” making Himself 
inaccessible and hard to find. The same pity that moved Jesus to heal the leper 
now also moves Jesus to conceal Himself. In today’s Gospel, many people felt as 
though they had desperate needs that only Jesus could meet. They were “coming 
out to Him from every quarter” with their prayers and requests. Moved with 
pity—not merely for them but also for us and for all people everywhere—moved 
with pity, Jesus kept His band on the run. 

There is never a time when your Lord Jesus fails to show you His grace and 
mercy! There is never a time when Jesus gives you something less than the very 
best! There is never a time when Jesus is unmoved by pity toward us. Everything 
Jesus does is for our blessing. What our God gives or withholds is always good 
because God Himself is good. We Christians must insist and we must believe 
that, when Jesus hides Himself behind a tree, He hides there because we need 
Him hidden there. 

Jesus hiding in the woods probably did not feel like a very great blessing for 
those “people [who] were coming out to Him from every quarter.” Perhaps you can 
picture in your mind what the scene must have looked like: a man hacks his way 
through the brambles and weeds while pulling his protesting, demon-possessed 
brother along behind him; several people wearily struggle together as they lift 
their paralyzed neighbor over rocks and logs; a young widow makes very slow 
progress because her small children cannot keep up. They all feel desperate, 
but they might not all find Jesus. He was out in the desolate places, avoiding 
them.

Jesus avoids them, but not because He feels no pity or compassion toward them. 
Pity and compassion for them have move Jesus to avoid them. Jesus has a much 
bigger picture in mind for these dear people and also for us. Jesus has 
something in mind for His suffering followers that they themselves cannot yet 
see. They can only see as far as their suffering. “People were coming out to 
Him from every quarter” because their hardships preoccupied their minds and 
dominated their lives.

The people could only see as far as their own, personal suffering, and you know 
exactly what that is like. I know what it is like, too. When I experience my 
own hardships—hardships that I know are different than yours—these hardships 
totally occupy my mind in the same way that your hardships totally occupy your 
mind.

·   When you are in pain, all you want is for the pain to go away.

·   When you feel imprisoned by depression, sorrow, or grief, all you want 
is an escape.

·   When your house is in chaos, you only want peace; when your nights are 
sleepless, you only want rest; when your load is heavy, you only want to lay it 
down.

The same sorts of needs and burdens that motivate your prayers are those things 
that also sent the people in today’s Gospel out into the wilderness, where 
their Lord and yours was demonstrating His pity and compassion by hiding behind 
a tree. We might even go so far as to say, by hiding Himself in the desolate 
places, Jesus has forced these people to stop focusing on their burdens and to 
focus their attention solely upon Him, seeking Him out! 

Jesus avoids them. Jesus does not avoid them because He feels no pity or 
compassion toward them. Jesus has a much bigger picture in mind for these dear 
people and also for us. In not many chapters after today’s Gospel, Jesus will 
attend Himself to far greater enemies than our illnesses, our afflictions, or 
our other hardships:

·   Soon after today’s Gospel Jesus will attack and destroy the very cause 
of our illnesses and diseases by attacking and destroying death itself. Jesus 
will destroy death by His own death and His subsequent resurrection. Yes, prior 
to to

SERM: Mark 1:29-39, Epiphany 5, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Whole City Gathered At the Door

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! In today’s Gospel, while Jesus visited the home of Simon and Andrew, 
“the whole city was gathered at the door.”

Dear Christian friends,

When Mark says, “the whole city,” he is referring to the city of Capernaum, 
which sat on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Archaeologists say that the 
population of Capernaum was about 1,500 people. That means there were plenty of 
people in town whom you would not have liked too much. Certainly, there were 
also many people whom you would have liked and enjoyed being around, but you 
know what life is like in a relatively small group of people:

·   Some are a little too rough around the edges for your taste or 
preference;

·   Some are downright offensive and rude with their words or actions;

·   Some people say the wrong things to you; even worse, they fail to say 
anything at all, especially when you need them to speak;

·   Some people hurt your feelings or anger you, or they seem to treat 
others more respectfully than they treat you;

·   Some people routinely make bad decisions and appear to have all the 
wrong priorities, no matter what good advice you would have liked to give, or 
perhaps already gave;

·   Some strike you as irresponsible or selfish or necessary-to-avoid for 
countless other reasons. 

All of the above were gathered at that doorway in Capernaum. While Jesus 
visited the home of Simon and Andrew, “the whole city was gathered at the 
door.” The good, the bad, and the ugly joined together in one place, 
shoulder-to-shoulder, and Jesus sat in the center of their complete and 
undivided attention.

“That evening at sundown they brought to [Jesus] all who were sick and 
oppressed by demons.” Whole and healthy people were certainly there also, 
watching, listening, believing, and receiving their own benefits from being 
with Jesus. Jesus poured out grace and mercy in great abundance, giving to each 
according to his or her need. “He healed many who were sick with various 
diseases, and cast out many demons.” Jesus undoubtedly preached the Kingdom of 
God, with all of its rich forgiveness, to everyone who had gathered there. 
After all, Jesus Himself explains at the end of today’s Gospel that the 
preaching of the kingdom is the reason why He “went throughout all Galilee.”

Jesus sits in the house of Simon and Andrew. Grace, mercy, and forgiveness of 
sins all shine brightly in the darkness, even beaming out of its doorways and 
windows. Jesus in this Gospel is like the bulb on your back porch that draws 
the moths out of the darkness and gathers them into the light: “the whole city 
was gathered at the door,” friends sitting with enemies, polite sitting with 
uncouth, reputable with disreputable, wise with foolish, generous with selfish. 
No one has any time—and in that moment, no one has any interest—in focusing on 
the strengths or weaknesses of those other people who gather. “The whole city 
was gathered at the door” and everyone was focused upon Jesus: Jesus’ Words; 
Jesus’ miracles; Jesus’ riveting presence among them. While Jesus is there, who 
really has time for the pettiness and the banality of everyday judgment and 
disgust? Who has time to nurse a grudge, when the Great Victim of all grudges 
sits present?
 Who wants to resent old wounds while the Healer of the Nations is reaching out 
His hand? Who would dare to withhold forgiveness from someone else while 
forgiveness itself showers down upon you in Jesus’ Words and gifts, soaking you 
like rain upon parched ground?

Peace reigns while Jesus is present. “The whole city was gathered at the door.” 
All eyes are upon Him, all ears bent toward Him, and nothing else matters.

There is no single Word written anywhere in God’s Bible that is meaningless. 
There is no sentence that is merely a passing comment or a useless detail. It 
was for us and for our salvation that God’s Gospel-writer Mark took pains to 
say in today’s Gospel, “the whole city was gathered at the door.” With these 
Words, was Mark really only talking about the city of Capernaum and its 
plus-or-minus 1,500 inhabitants? What happened in today’s Gospel sounds very 
much like what happens in our worship every Sunday: here in this place, Jesus’ 
Words and Jesus miracles must remain the sole focus of our attention. “The 
whole city was gathered at the door.” If you ask me, these Words sound like a 
description of a Christian congregation, perhaps even the one that sits perched 
at the corner of Dekalb and Burke Streets in Versailles. 

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SERM: 1 Corinthians 8, Epiphany 4, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sorry to be so glum. Paul made me do it.



Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Brother for Whom Christ Died

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Today’s Epistle from 1 Corinthians 8 rubs like sandpaper on the skin. 
Here God’s apostle Paul states, “Take care that this right of yours does not 
somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” Paul also warns that, if you 
wound your brother’s conscience, “you sin against Christ.” Today’s Epistle 
might force you to conclude that offense is inevitable; that no Christian can 
guard himself so closely as to never offend someone else. Lord, have mercy!

Dear Christian friends,

For more than one reason, this is a difficult and unpleasant reading:

1. The first difficulty, and probably the easiest difficulty to overcome, is 
the distance between Paul’s specific topic in today’s Epistle and everyday life 
here in Missouri. On its surface, today’s Epistle concerns “food offered to 
idols.” The meat at the grocery store in Corinth was first sacrificed to false 
gods. Cows, goats and chickens were killed in the pagan temples, their blood 
was poured out upon idolatrous altars, and then their meat was taken to the 
market to be sold. What was a hungry Christian in Corinth supposed to do?

·   On one hand, the meat was not a problem, even though it had been 
sacrificed to an idol. “We know that an idol has no real existence,” Paul says. 
You have been forgiven all your sins in Jesus’ blood and death. Were that not 
enough of a gift, God has also set you free from every curse and from all fear. 
God’s Christians may live freely with regard to such questions as what they 
eat. Toss the meat on the grill and eat with a good conscience!

·   On the other hand, what will my Christian brother think, especially the 
one who has not yet fully comprehended the utter freedom that is ours in 
Christ? The Corinthian meat is free from condemnation. Still, by eating it you 
might “somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” Someone—even someone you 
do not notice watching you—someone might be offended by you. So, as Paul so 
gallantly concludes here, “If food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat 
meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”

We Christians in Missouri simply do not face the same difficult question with 
our groceries. That is partly why today’s Epistle is difficult: the issue on 
its surface seems irrelevant and somewhat disconnected from our everyday lives.

But this first difficulty is relatively easy to overcome. Simply peel back a 
layer or two. Looking beyond the question of food and notice what lurks 
underneath. The second difficulty is not so easily beaten. Under the specific 
situation of food sacrificed to idols there is a much larger question: What 
impact will your personal behavior have on your fellow Christian?

2. Now the unpleasantness begins. The second difficulty with today’s Epistle is 
how this Epistle makes us Christians feel. If you have a pulse and a heartbeat, 
if you have an ounce of Christian faith within you, then this Epistle will 
likely make you wonder about the negative impact your own personal actions have 
had upon others—even actions you never could have dreamed were offensive to 
someone. This Epistle might even make you wince with chagrin and regret. There 
is NOT much here in 1 Corinthians 8 that brings us comfort and consolation in 
the name of Jesus.

·   Mostly, this Epistle gives us a reason to thank God for the weekly form 
of our worship. In the liturgy, we hear a clear proclamation of forgiveness and 
we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus, given and shed for you, no matter what 
Bible passages are assigned for the day.

·   Indeed, Paul lightly touches upon God’s grace when he describes Jesus 
as the one “through whom we exist.” Paul mentions in passing, “if anyone loves 
God, he is known by God,” but these are not necessarily comforting thoughts. It 
is really more broth than stew, so to speak.

Only those who plug their ears can escape the condemnation Paul speaks here. 
The basic demand of this chapter is completely impossible! It is well and good 
for Paul to say, “If food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest 
I make my brother stumble,” but where will it end?

·   If the robe I wear in leading worship causes a visiting Christian to 
stumble, shall I no longer wear a robe?

·   Shall we change our godly and scriptural practice of closed communion, 
just because some of our Christian guests feel offended by it? As Paul says, 
“Not all possess this knowledge.”

·   If I attempt to laugh and joke with a fellow Christian, only to have my 
humor taken the wrong way, shall I never express happiness again?

·   Even with my best intentions and in my finest moments (which are few), 
how can I guard my speech and behavior so closely that no fellow Christian will 
ever misunderstand and take offense?

Paul is MORE t

SERM: John 1:43-51, Epiphany 2, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Come and See

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! In today’s Gospel, Philip says to Nathanael, “Come and see.”

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel is a very sweet, very touching Gospel. Today’s Gospel has the 
power to make you feel happy and thankful toward God, even if you have had a 
lousy week. Even if it should not attract your attention in any other way, 
today’s Gospel at least announces to you this one strange and remarkable fact: 
our dear Lord Jesus is more than able to use each of us in drawing others to 
the Christian faith, despite who we are and how easily we mess things up.

Jesus shows us a picture of us in today’s Gospel by showing us a picture of 
Philip, His dear disciple. The common ground you and I have with Philip is 
this: Philip stays focused upon himself, just like you and I, despite our best 
efforts, invariably and repeatedly focus our own attention upon ourselves. 

Please try not to be insulted when I say that you are self-absorbed. I am 
self-absorbed, too. Every human being conceived in the history of the 
world—every human being, that is, except for our Lord Jesus Christ—every human 
is and was self-absorbed. We should not deny what we cannot escape. That brash, 
narcissistic person who loves himself too much? He is essentially the same as 
the person who so hates himself so much that he is willing to harm himself. 
Both of those people—the self-lover and the self-loather—are incurved upon 
themselves. Both of those people focus too much upon their own bellybuttons. 
Both of those people—the self-lover and the self-loather—both of those people 
form two extremes and you and I each live somewhere in between.

Far better Christians than you or me have failed to escape their 
self-absorption. Not even Philip, one of God’s hand-selected apostles, can 
escape his self-absorption. Lord Jesus tolerates and overlooks it nevertheless!

That is why today’s Gospel is such a blessing for us, and why we each can feel 
genuinely happy and thankful to God on account of what we have heard:

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, 
“Follow Me.” … Philip found Nathanael and said to Him, “We have found Him of 
whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son 
of Joseph.”

Did you catch Philip’s self-absorption? Like you, like me—for that matter, like 
everyone who has ever decided to follow Jesus—Philip takes the credit for 
himself. “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. HE FOUND PHILIP.” But 
what does Philip say to Nathanael, concerning Jesus? “We have found Him.” 
Philip was subtle. He was outside of Jesus’ earshot and Nathanael certainly did 
no know any better. Why shouldn’t Philip gain an advantage for himself? Why not 
make himself seem as though he had great spiritual insight and wisdom, as if 
Philip could see things that no one else could see? “We found… Jesus of 
Nazareth,” says Philip, but in truth, Jesus of Nazareth had found him! It has 
been written, “HE FOUND PHILIP.”

You have heard more than your share of people talk about how they “found Jesus” 
or “asked Him into their heart” or “committed themselves to following Him.” 
Today’s Gospel suggests that, when people talk that way, they are really 
talking more about themselves than they are about Jesus, “the Lamb of God who 
takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Today’s Gospel might even make 
fun of such claims as “I have decided to follow Jesus.” After all, before 
Philip talked about finding Jesus, Jesus first found Philip!

But even more than that, today’s Gospel shows us how we are all together in the 
same boat. Because of our good and godly practice if infant Baptism, where God 
Himself acts first instead of us, you and I do not usually talk about having 
“found Jesus” or “committing ourselves to Him.” Just because we do not talk 
that way, it does not mean we are not guilty of own forms of self-absorption! 
You and I simply prefer to be self-absorbed in different ways, not all of them 
subtle!

Philip was self-absorbed before us. “We found Him!” But look at the sweet, 
precious portrait of Jesus that Philip’s self-absorption has painted of us:

1. Jesus “found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow Me.’” Stated another way, Jesus 
made Philip a Christian and He gave Philip the gift of eternal life, all while 
knowing how Philip would remain self-absorbed! Jesus carries to His cross all 
the sins of entire world—including those persistent, devilish sins that remain 
imbedded under our skin and entwined around our self-centered hearts even after 
His Word has begun a good thing in us. If Jesus can see all the way through 
that other guy in today’s Gospel—Nathanael sitting under the fig tree—than 
Jesus can also see through Philip. Jesus sees Philip, in whom there is guile, 
and He nevertheless says to Philip, “Follow Me.”

This is good news for yo

SERM: John 1:6-8, 19-34; Epiphany 1; Winkel

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Begging your pardon, I mostly wrote this sermon for myself, because I needed to 
hear it.

ER


January 10, 2012

Sedalia Circuit Pastors’ Conference, Tuesday following 
The First Sunday After the Epiphany, 2012


Jesus Was Baptized for Your Preaching

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. This week we celebrated the Baptism of our Lord, the great day on which 
the quintessential preacher could finally preach, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”

Dear Brothers John,

I am not certain how emphatically I would like to state this, but I almost 
think the Historic Lectionary’s silence concerning the Baptism of our Lord 
makes the entire series unusable (at least for my pulpit). We users of the 
three-year series heard St. Mark last Sunday, and there is hardly any end to 
Mark’s baptismal theology, but today I commit the liturgical sin of using St. 
John’s Gospel to preach our Lord’s Baptism to my brothers. Last Sunday’s 
preaching was for a different crowd, anyway, and I do not wish to serve you 
their meal. With sincere love for you, and with complete empathy for how busy 
you are, I plead with you, brothers: At our circuit pastors’ conferences, we 
should be writing sermons for sermon writers and we should be preaching for 
preachers. St. John the Evangelist might have written his entire Gospel 
especially for us preachers. No other Gospel writer so clearly draws the 
connection between Jesus’ Baptism and our
 preaching. Maybe we should nickname Epiphany 1 the preachers’ holy day.

John the Baptizing One identifies the connection between Jesus’ Baptism and our 
preaching when he points and proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb.” In order to make 
that connection for us, John the Baptizing One first needs to put us into 
position, so to speak. In order that we might take notice and understand and 
receive the blessing of this connection between Jesus’ Baptism and our 
preaching, John positions us for this blessing by repeatedly saying of Jesus, 
“I myself did not know Him.” We will come back to that in a few moments. We 
must first deal with John’s sense of loneliness, because that is probably the 
easiest place for each of us to climb into this Gospel and realize how it is 
that each of us pastors stands with John in the Jordan River.

“I myself did not know Him” These same words from John also point to John’s 
sense of loneliness and isolation—the same loneliness and isolation you also 
feel during your bleakest moments in the pastoral office. Prior to the Baptism 
of our Lord, John must have felt “like a flagstaff on the top of a [remote] 
mountain, like a [solitary] signal on a hill” (Isaiah 30:17). You know that 
lonely feeling. Prior to the Baptism of our Lord, John stood alone, even in 
midst of the crowd. You’ve stood alone in that crowd, too. You have stood alone 
with John, not on account of your life’s circumstances or your personal 
choices, but on account of the message you yourself have been sent out to the 
river to preach. The Eternal Son of God was there on the riverbank with 
John—“One stands among you,” says John—but John himself could not yet 
explicitly identify where exactly was this Christ of whom he preached. “I 
myself did not know Him.” All John
 had is all that you have and I have: a word written on a page and a 
sacramental act placed into his hands. 

I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of 
the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah said. … I baptize with water, but among you 
stand One you do not know [that is, recognize or perceive].

Prior to the Baptism of our Lord, John could not satisfactorily answer some of 
the theological questions that were raised to him. People did not merely ask 
why John preached as he preached. They wanted John validate his preaching and 
his office: “Why are you baptizing [and preaching], if you are neither the 
Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” Essentially, these people wanted to know, 
“Who do you think you are, that you would dare to speak and act this way?” (The 
same question might occasionally be on the minds of some people in your pews.)

John sounds as if he did not fully know what to say. “I am the voice of a mouth 
I cannot yet identify.” John knows the Christ is there present, standing 
somewhere there in the mud, oozing grace and forgiveness from every incarnate 
pore. John hears and John believes his own preaching, which promises, “Among 
you stands One you do not know [recognize or perceive].” John just cannot see 
with his eyes what he has heard with his ears. In those days prior to Jesus’ 
Baptism, John simply cannot yet point to Jesus of Nazareth and say, “Look, it 
is the Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” John can 
only admit his limitations and declare his 
purpose-that-felt-like-it-was-no-purpose and endure his sensation of loneliness 
in his task: “I am the voice… I myself did not know Him.” In the midst of 
John’s most articulate preaching

SERM: Isaiah 30:15-18a, New Year's Eve, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

New Year’s Eve

How to Live With Regret

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In tonight’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, God teaches us how it is 
possible to live with regret. You might not yet be in a place where you are 
able to listen. God will wait. As you heard at the end of this reading, “The 
LORD waits to be gracious to you.”

When you are finally ready to listen—that is, when you have ridden far enough 
“upon horses [and] swift steeds,” so to speak—God will show you the Christian 
faith in a whole new way. Though your cup of regret will inevitably fill, God 
shall not fail. He will continually pour out for you new joy and increasing 
benefit through the promise He speaks here: “In returning and rest you shall be 
saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.”

Dear Christian friends,

It almost seems pointless for me to say this, but I will say it anyway: You 
will end up regretting many things in your life. You will regret things done to 
you, but even more so, you will regret things you do.

It seems pointless to say such a thing out loud because many us have already 
experienced so much regret in life that we do not need to be told about it. 
Others have not yet tasted enough regret to take seriously what I say. I say it 
anyway: You will end up regretting many things in your life.

1. Some of us—mostly the older ones, but not only them—some of us already have 
a face full of regret. We have been injured, and we have inflicted injury. We 
did not listen, and now we wish we had. If we knew back then the pain and 
regret that entwine us right now, we might have done things differently. 
Experience is the finest of all teachers.

2. Some of you simply do not believe me and cannot take it to heart when I warn 
you about regret your life. You understand the words, but their depth of 
meaning is lost on you. You might already some bad experiences, but regret has 
not yet bowled you over and laid you flat on your back. You still have horses 
to ride, so to speak. For your own sake—for the love of God—do not ride too far 
or for too long! Give your ears and bend your heart to what God is saying in 
tonight’s reading. In this reading, God called out to His people, but some were 
not yet ready to listen. “No!” they said. “We will flee upon horses” and “We 
will ride upon swift steeds.”

If you are not yet filled with enough regret to turn and listen to the LORD 
your God, you may at least trust—and perhaps even pray—that He will finally 
knock you off your horse.  

You were unwilling, and you said, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore 
your pursuers shall [likewise] be swift. [Regret will pursue you] till you are 
left [alone] like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a [solitary] 
signal on hill. 

When people ride hard “upon swift steeds,” so to speak, that is really just 
their very human way of dealing with their regrets. If you keep moving fast 
enough, you will not have time to think about what has already happened. If you 
keep crashing yourself forward, you will not need to look the wreckage that 
spins behind you.

The LORD God, the Holy One of Israel, wants you to know that your equine 
attempts to deal with you regret will not work. 

You were unwilling, and you said, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore 
your pursuers shall [likewise] be swift. [Regret will pursue you] till you are 
left [alone] like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a [solitary] 
signal on hill. Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you.

Regret is a horrible thing. Regret is a lonely thing. No, it is NOT absolutely 
necessary for your life to overflow with regret, but there is a good chance 
that you will saddle up and refuse to have it any other way. Many of the people 
sitting with you have done so before you.

God is unfailingly merciful. As you heard Isaiah say, “The LORD waits to be 
gracious to you.” By God’s grace, your regret will deliver certain benefits to 
you—or at least position you to receive these benefits. When regret finally 
bowls you over and when the LORD God sees fit to knock you from your horse, you 
will end up flat upon the ground with the rest of us. God has simply knocked us 
off the horse first, and we, too, have landed with a painful thud. People 
cannot say much when the wind has been knocked out of them. Your silence will 
allow God to speak. 

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you 
shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

With these Words, God is telling you how it is possible for you to live with 
your regrets. With these Words, God is NOT telling you that you deal with 
regret by:

·   living differently than you once lived. Yes, it is continually 
necessary for each of us—even pastors—to change our ways and to treat people 
better than we have previously treated them. But we do not live rightly with 
regret by merely changing

SERM: Hebrews 11:1-12:2, Advent Midweek III

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Third Midweek Service in Advent

With Angels and Archangels
and All the Company of Heaven

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Two weeks ago, John’s mother Elizabeth helped us to prepare for Holy Communion 
by teaching us to ask her amazed question, “Why is this granted to me?” (Luke 
1:43) Last week, the prophetess Anna (Luke 2:36-38) did more than remind us 
that “fasting… is indeed fine, outward training” (Sm. Cat.). Anna showed us 
that the “bodily preparations” of aging and grief also do a fine job of making 
us hungry for the Body and Blood of our Lord.

In tonight’s reading from Hebrews, we learn Communion preparation from every 
Christian who has gone before us, both Old Testament and New. 

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having 
seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were 
strangers and exiles on the earth. 

Dear Christian friends,

It would be good and beneficial for you to separate in your mind the idea of a 
HOLIDAY and the idea of a HOLY DAY. Yes, many people will tell you that HOLIDAY 
and HOLY DAY mean the same thing. Yes, the word HOLIDAY was made by pushing the 
two words, HOLY and DAY, together into one word. 

Still, it would be good for you to separate HOLIDAY from HOLY DAY in your mind. 
First, this distinction between HOLIDAY and HOLY DAY will help you cope with 
the negative feelings that so many people experience this time of year. Even 
more than that, this distinction between HOLIDAY and HOLY DAY will help you 
immensely as you prepare for your every-Sunday communion.

Here is my suggestion to you: use the word HOLIDAY to describe celebrations and 
happy things that occur outside these walls; use the word HOLY DAY to describe 
our life here in this sanctuary, where Holy Communion is served.

Here is why I suggest this distinction to you:

1.  As you know, a death in the family tends to ruin HOLIDAYS, because 
everything is emptier now. Yet that same death in that same family will make a 
HOLY DAY only sweeter and dearer. After all, we celebrate Holy Communion on the 
HOLY DAYS, and in Communion we sing praise “with angels and archangels and all 
the company of heaven” (Preface). “The company of heaven” includes those who 
have died in the faith (thus ruining our HOLIDAYS). As you heard in the 
reading, “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” That is to say, all 
those who died in the faith before us now surround us like a cheering crowd in 
a football stadium. They crash the field, so to speak, at Holy Communion. We 
cannot see, hear, or touch our dead loved ones when we commune. Praise be to 
God, they likewise cannot see, hear, or touch us and thus become aware of our 
misery. But they are there. They are always with Jesus, and Jesus draws near to 
us to serve us His body and
 blood in Holy Communion. (Personally, Holy Communion grows more central to my 
life each time I bury someone I love.)

2.  HOLIDAYS give people a chance dredge up the past, and usually the past 
is better left buried in the muck of history—family history or otherwise. Jesus 
forgives all sins, but mothers-in-law might not. God the Father has cast your 
sins as far as the East is from the West, but your resentful children or your 
estranged wife might be out collecting them up again. By contrast, HOLY DAYS 
might be rooted in the past—such as the Christmas Incarnation or the Easter 
Resurrection—but HOLY DAYS intend to direct our eyes toward the future. Rich 
with forgiveness and brimming with promise, God gives us HOLY DAYS so that we 
are able to “lay aside every weight and the sin which clings so closely,” as 
you heard in tonight’s reading.

3.  HOLIDAYS easily disappoint. (For example, perhaps you have felt the 
pinch of not being able to do as much for your loved ones this Christmas as you 
would like.) The HOLY DAYS assure you that the best gifts are yet to come, but 
for you and your fellow Christians in your house. Stated another way, HOLY DAYS 
help us to wait, as our fellow saints waited before us:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having 
seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were 
strangers and exiles on the earth. … Therefore God is not ashamed to be called 
their God, for He has prepared for them a city.

4.  HOLIDAYS come once per year, and that is more than enough. HOLY DAYS 
arrive every week, and sometimes more than once. As our fathers confessed, “In 
our churches [the liturgy of Holy Communion] is celebrated every Sunday and on 
other [HOLY DAYS]” (AP XIVV.1). HOLY DAYS are good news for you, because they 
assure you that your Lord Jesus is never in short supply for you. HOLY DAYS 
mean that Jesus comes to you and lives with you in the weekly grind of you 
life, and not merely on the mountaintops of annual HOLIDAY celebrations. HOLY 
DAYS feed faith into you, and as you he

SERM: John 15:1-17, Midweek Advent 4

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Fourth Midweek Service in Advent

Already You Are Clean

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! So 
far in our Advent Midweek worship, Elizabeth (Luke 1:41-45), Anna (Luke 
2:36-38), and the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) all taught us 
important things about preparing ourselves to receive the Holy Communion. Their 
suggestions and example can only take us so far. Tonight these fellow saints 
must fall silent. Tonight Jesus speaks. Jesus Himself prepares us for Holy 
Communion, not by telling us what we must do, but by telling us what He has 
already done for us: “Already you are clean,” says Jesus, “because of the Word 
I have spoken to you.”

Dear Christian friends,

To what might we compare our communion preparation?

·   Perhaps our preparation can be somewhat compared to what a child 
experiences on the day of her birth. The birth process requires a lot from her, 
and she falls into exhausted sleep after she is born, but what did the child 
really do during her delivery? Mother gives birth to child. For all of her 
effort and strain, the child does nothing. Momma does it all.

·   Again and in a similar way, our preparation for Holy Communion might be 
compared to surgery. In the same way that childbirth is exhausting for the 
infant, surgery is likewise exhausting for the patient, no matter what the 
patient’s age. But again, the patient has really done nothing. Perhaps there 
were a few preparatory exercises, such as medications or the self-discipline of 
taking no food or water before the surgery, but surgery is done TO YOU. Doctors 
and nurses must do all the work, and you must allow it. 

As it is with childbirth and with surgery, where others do the most important 
part of the work for you, so it is with your preparation for Holy Communion: 
“Fasting and bodily preparations are indeed fine, outward training,” and these 
preparations require something of your own involvement. But your contribution 
is really quite small. Your contribution is comparable to an infant’s 
contribution to her own birth or a patient’s contribution in his own surgery. 
As you approach to receive the body and blood of your Lord, someone else has 
already done the bulk and the majority of the preparatory work for you. Simply 
finish the sentence you have memorized:

Fasting and bodily preparations are indeed fine, outward training, but that 
person is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words, “Given 
and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins” (Small Catechism).

Stated another way, “Already you are clean because of the Word that [Jesus has] 
spoken to you.”

In this reading from John 15, Jesus describes you as branch that has been 
miraculously grafted and connected into a vine. “I am the vine,” He says, “you 
are the branches. … Apart from Me you can do nothing.”

·   The branches of a grapevine always have continual flow of health and 
life, supplied to them from the vine. There is never a time that a grapevine is 
not supplying life to its branches. Even in the cold of winter, after the fruit 
has been harvested and the leaves have shriveled away, the branch continues to 
live on account of the vine to which it is connected.

·   Jesus wants you to think the same way about what He does for you. “I am 
the vine, you are the branches.” There is never a time when your eternal Vine 
is not giving His goodness to you. There is never a time when your merciful 
Vine is not drawing away your sin and replacing it with the nutrient of 
everlasting life. There is never a time when you are not 100% God’s beloved 
child, 100% forgiven of every sin, and 100% fruit-bearing in every fiber of 
your being.

There is also never a time when you are not 100% ready, 100% fully prepared, 
for God’s gift of Holy Communion. 

In Holy Communion, you receive again the gifts you have already received. 
“Already you are clean,” says Jesus, “because of the Word I have spoken to 
you.” The Word that Jesus has spoken to you has done its good work in you: this 
Word has worked the divine miracle of faith within you, so that you may 
approach in faith, believing the Words you have heard spoken from the altar, 
“Given at shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.” 

·   Your Sunday morning devotion time frequently gets trampled by a family 
argument that erupts as soon as everyone rolled out of bed;

·   You try to focus your thoughts on what you are about to receive, but 
your mind wanders like a child in a shopping mall;

·   You are angry at the pastor;

·   You would like to fast with Anna, but your somewhat fragile health 
makes you worry that you will create a problem for yourself if you do;

·   You must wrestle a child while at the communion rail and so hastily eat 
your Lord’s Supper that you cannot take the time for Elizabeth’s incredulity:

·   You know you should give more thought to communion preparation, but 
there lots o

SERM: Luke 1:28-38, Advent 4, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT

THE LORD WITH YOU

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. A VERY strange thing has happened in today’s Gospel. The divine messenger 
Gabriel visited Mary, and Mary “was greatly troubled.” Mary was not “greatly 
troubled” in the sense that she was irritated or anguished or shrieking. Mary 
was greatly troubled in the sense that she felt confused or perplexed, 
mystified or bewildered. “What does this mean?”

The strange thing is that Mary did not feel confused or perplexed by the 
appearance of a messenger from heaven. Mary felt confused and perplexed by the 
sermon this messenger preached to her: “The Lord is with you.”

By the way: the divine message to Mary is the very same divine message you 
likewise hear every Sunday when it is declared to you, “The Lord be with you.” 
Perhaps you should add a little bewilderment or perplexity of your own as Mary 
tries “to discern what sort of greeting this might be.”

Dear Christian friends,

When he announces, “The Lord is with you,” Gabriel uses the same exact words 
that you hear in every liturgy: “The Lord be with you.” I know these phrases 
sound different: Gabriel’s words are translated, “The Lord is with you,” and 
the liturgy is translated, “The Lord be with you”; the one phrase contains the 
verb “is” and the other phrase has the verb “be”; but you can safely ignore the 
verbs. Neither “is” nor “be” occurs in the original language. Gabriel only says 
to Mary, “The Lord with you.” These same words in that same form came into our 
liturgy during the most ancient days of Christian worship. We call it the 
salutation. With Mary as with you, the divine messenger’s message is one and 
the same: “The Lord with you.”

GIDEON HEARD “THE LORD WITH YOU” CENTURIES BEFORE MARY DID

In order to understand why Mary would feel so perplexed at these Words—and 
perhaps to gain a little perplexity of your own—we should first return to God’s 
Old Testament. Long before Gabriel said, “The LORD with you” to Mary, even long 
before the birth of mighty King David, the angel of the LORD first appeared to 
a young nobody named Gideon. Gideon lived during rough and difficult days. 
Midianite raiders continually harassed God’s people. These were days of combat; 
days of loss and hardship; days of scrape and struggle; days during which 
Gideon thought God had left town: 

Now… Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the 
Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The 
Lord with you, O mighty man of valor.”

Now listen to Gideon’s response to the divine messenger. Gideon did not take 
the time for perplexity. Gideon got straight to the point: 

Gideon said to him [the angel], “Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then 
has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonderful deeds that our 
fathers recounted to us? (Judges 6:11b-13a) 

There are two important things that we can learn from Gideon and his hearing of 
the divine sermon, “The Lord with you.”

·   First, God wants you to know that He is with you, even when you life 
feels as though He is not with you. “Please, sir,” Gideon said, “if the Lord is 
with us, why then has all this happened to us?” God’s Word had been spoken to 
Gideon! God’s Word declared and promised and assured Gideon, “The Lord with 
you.” God’s Word says what is faithful and true, even if everything that Gideon 
sees in his life seems to say the opposite thing. “The Lord with you.” With 
these Words, Gideon’s angel was essentially saying to him, “Forget the fact 
that you have no food; ignore the dead bodies of your relatives, killed by 
Midianite raiders; curse to hell your loneliness and your helplessness and your 
despair. Close your eyes to what you see around you and listen to My Words, 
Gideon: ‘The Lord with you.’”

·   Then a second thing happened to Gideon when he heard the sermon, “The 
Lord with you.” Beyond speaking assurance and comfort to Gideon, the words “the 
Lord with you” now gave strength to Gideon’s arm and courage to Gideon’s voice. 
By the divine power of the messenger’s message, he who once thrashed wheat in 
lonely hiding now rises up to thrash the Midianites as captain of the armies of 
Israel.  “The Lord with you.” By the power of the divine Word spoken to Gideon, 
“Midian was subdued before the people of Israel and they raised their heads no 
more” (Judges 8:28).

AS WITH GIDEON, SO WITH THE CHRIST

Mary has a pretty good reason to feel “greatly troubled”—confused and 
perplexed—more by the messenger’s message than the messenger himself. Mary had 
just heard a greeting that carries with it the stupendous power of God! Yes, 
the words, “the Lord with you,” were a common greeting for God’s people to 
speak to one another. But Gideon shows that when the messenger of the Lord 
speaks by the authority of the Lord, “the Lord with you” carries divine power 
to the ears of those who h

SERM: Luke 2:22-40; Advent Midweek 2

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Midweek Theme: Preparing for Holy Communion



The Second Midweek Service in Advent

Fasting and Bodily Preparation

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s reading, the widow Anna limps around the temple day and night, 
“worshipping with fasting and prayer”—watching and waiting for the Christ to 
visit and comfort her.

Dear Christian friends,

In order to prepare themselves to receive the Holy Communion, many of our 
parents and grandparents joined Anna in her fasting. On those sparse Sundays 
when the Communion was finally served, many of our ancestors began their day of 
worship by not eating their usual morning meal. They wanted the Body and Blood 
of our Lord Jesus to be the first food that broke their fast. Many would spend 
their breakfast hour, not with spoon in hand, but with a hymnal or a Bible or a 
prayer book opened in front of them. 

For them, fasting was not about the mimicry of Old Testament Law, as some cults 
and some misled Christians foolishly do today. Like us, our parents and 
grandparents were the New Testament people of God. By fasting, our parents 
voluntarily engaged themselves in what Luther called a child’s exercise (LC V). 
They were, after all, children in the same sense that we are.  

Nor did fasting amount to their holiness or create their holiness. By fasting, 
our parents wanted the emptiness of their bellies to illuminate and identify 
the emptiness of their souls. They wanted bodily hunger and thirst to push them 
beyond the surface of the bathroom mirror, so they could see and admit their 
“hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). Holy Communion was to be 
served that day. Soon enough, at the altar, their “hunger and thirst for 
righteousness… shall be satisfied.” For the moment, there in the Sunday morning 
sunrise, it was enough for our parents and grandparents to wait. 

Long before them, Anna waited with them. In the same way that they waited for 
the coming of Christ in Holy Communion, Anna likewise waited for the coming of 
the Christ in His mother’s arms. Anna waited, “worshipping with fasting and 
prayer.” I do not know how many Christians among us today continue to wait with 
Anna in our ancestral tradition of a Sunday morning, pre-Communion fast. I am 
afraid to ask; for a number of reasons I really do not want to know the answer. 
You have been educated to believe that “fasting and bodily preparation are 
indeed fine, outward training” (SC VI), even if you have developed the habit of 
ignoring your education. Anna does not ignore hers.

There were two, separate forces exerting themselves on Anna’s body. The first 
was the force and power of her fasting, in which you may or may not see fit to 
participate. That is your business. Anna deliberately imposed the fast upon 
herself, and it would be up to you—you alone—if you joined her in your own 
self-impositions.

No one avoids the second force exerting itself on Anna’s body, helping her to 
prepare for the coming of Christ. Hers was a “bodily preparation” over which 
she had no control and against which she had no defense. Your bodily 
preparation is one and the same. Anna “was advanced in years, having lived with 
her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until 
she was eighty-four.” Anna’s bodily preparation for the coming of Christ was a 
double-edged sword: the same sin and death that had widowed her was also the 
sin and death that forced her to shuffle and limp toward her own grave.

Whether or not you see fit to join Anna in her fast, prepare for yourself for 
Holy Communion by looking at your body and your life. Anna “was advanced in 
years.” No matter what you might think about your own, physical frame, the 
reality of your strength or beauty or vitality is less than you see. Anna “was 
a widow until she was eighty-four.” Regardless whether you wish to join our 
parents and grandparents in their unfed Sunday morning preparations for Holy 
Communion, at least prepare yourself for Communion by reminding yourself of 
what you lost when they died. “Fasting and bodily preparation [such as aging 
and grief] are indeed fine, outward training” because these things so 
graphically illustrate what we are not, what we have not, what we cannot. These 
things prepare us for Holy Communion because in Communion we receive the Christ 
who is, the Christ who has, the Christ who can and who does.

Perhaps we should think of grief as an emotional or spiritual form of growing 
old. Perhaps we should think of our arthritis, our gout, and our graying hair 
as physical forms of grief. Grief and aging are both wonderful ways to focus on 
and long for the coming of our Christ, whether it is Anna’s longing for the 
Christ who comes in His mother’s arms, or ours for the similar coming of Christ 
in Holy Communion. Whether carried by Mary into the temple or delivered in 
bread and wine here at this rail, we all get the same gift: to us 

SERM: Mark 1:1-8, Advent 2, LSB B

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

THE SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Listen again to how St. Mark begins his divine book: “The beginning of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” These Words may be rightly 
applied, not only to our Lord Jesus, but also to you and to me and to the 
infant Hunter Bredeman, who was baptized into Christ today. In the same way 
that Mark has written, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God,” today is also “The beginning of the Gospel of Hunter Bredeman, the son of 
God.” So, too, on the day of your Baptism: “The beginning of the Gospel of 
[your name here], the son of God.”

Dear Christian friends,

You might want to turn in your bulletin to page 5, where the Gospel of the Day 
is printed, so you can see how Mark’s important Words fall into place. As you 
look at that page, ask yourself the

·   QUESTION—According to Mark’s book, what exactly is “the beginning of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”? 

·   Here is Mark’s ANSWER: “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and 
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Note it carefully and mark it well! Jesus’ Gospel—that is, the Gospel 
concerning Jesus; the Gospel about to Jesus; the Gospel belonging to Jesus—this 
Gospel News begins with a guy baptizing people and then preaching about 
Baptism. “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. … John 
appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance 
for the forgiveness of sins.” Baptism is the beginning of the Gospel.

Yes, Mark stuck a quotation from Isaiah between the words “the beginning of the 
Gospel” and the words “John appeared.” But that quotation is not the beginning 
of the Gospel. That quotation from Isaiah is simply telling you that you should 
not feel surprised at what Mark is telling you. The Isaiah quotation is showing 
you that God had earlier promised that Baptism would be “the beginning of the 
Gospel.” After all, John is “the [promised] voice of one crying in the 
wilderness.” And “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a 
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

This connection Mark makes between “the beginning of the Gospel” and Holy 
Baptism is nothing less than meat-and-potatoes for everyday life. This 
connection allows you to look at your own personal life in same way that you 
look at the life of your Lord Jesus, about whom Mark writes in the rest of his 
book. Think about the Words, “the beginning of the Gospel.” If something has a 
beginning, it also has a middle and an end. By drawing his connection between 
“the beginning of the Gospel” and Baptism, Mark is positioning you to compare 
the beginning of Jesus’ life to the beginning of your life; the middle of 
Jesus’ life to the end of your life; the end of Jesus’ life to the end of your 
life.

AS FAR AS MARK IS CONCERNED, LIFE BEGINS IN BAPTISM

One of the most beautiful things about Mark’s writing is that he does NOT do 
what Matthew and Luke did. Matthew and Luke take tell about the conception, 
birth, and infancy of Jesus. Mark does not bother with all that. It is not that 
Mark rejects the Virgin Birth of Christ. Jesus’ birth and infancy are simply 
immaterial to Mark’s point. Mark wants to focus on Baptism as “the beginning of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

If Baptism is the beginning for the story about Jesus, why shouldn’t we think 
of Baptism as the place of where each of our stories—each of our personal 
Gospels—begins, as well? Hunter Bredeman was born a couple weeks ago in some 
hospital somewhere north of here. Those details do not matter, as far as Mark 
can see. What matters is:
 
·   “the beginning of the Gospel of Hunter Bredeman Ramey, the son of God,” 
formally and eternally adopted into the family of God by Holy Baptism on 
December 4, 2011, at Grace Lutheran Church in Versailles, MO. 

·   what St. John elsewhere calls “birth from above” (John 3:3); birth of 
“water and the Spirit” (John 3:5); birth “not of blood nor of the will of the 
flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

Mr. and Mrs. Ramey, today’s Gospel allows us to think that you have done a 
really good thing by bringing your infant son to the baptismal font. Today’s 
Gospel seems to think that baptizing should come before preaching or teaching 
about Baptism. Mark does not say that John came, preaching about baptism and 
baptizing. What does Mark say? “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and 
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” In other 
Words, get the child into the water! After that, spend the rest of your life 
explaining and proclaiming to the child what just happened to him!

BAPTISM FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

In a few weeks, when we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, Mark 
will tell us more about Jesus’ Baptism in particular. For toda

SERM: Luke 1:26-49, Advent Midweek 1

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Midweek Sermon Series = Preparing for Holy Communion

"Incredulity" is the best word I could think of, even though it is totally 
inadequate.


The First Midweek Service in Advent

Perhaps Some Incredulity?

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! In 
tonight’s reading, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth expresses amazement and incredulity 
that the mother of her heaven-sent Lord and Christ should arrive for a visit. 
“Why is this granted to me,” Elizabeth asks, “that the mother of my Lord should 
come to me?”

Dear Christian friends,

Some years ago, when our congregation began its now-beloved practice of 
every-Sunday communion, not everyone liked the idea. One of my colleagues, a 
dear brother in this circuit, was especially bothered by our supposed 
innovation. This pastor’s chief argument against weekly communion was that 
God’s people would not take the time properly to prepare for the miraculous 
feast God has given. Back in the days when our parents and grandparents 
communed four times a year—or more recently, once per month—Holy Communion was 
a big event. Careful preparation went into it. Christians examined their lives 
and announced their intentions to the pastor the night before the Sacrament was 
served. If you serve communion every Sunday, my colleague argued, then your 
Christians will grow lazy. Your Christians will loosen their preparations and 
approach the holy altar of our Lord as casually and blithely as they approach 
the local restaurant buffet. 

My colleague was right. Even without asking how you yourself might prepare or 
fail to prepare for Holy Communion, I know my colleague was right. Christians 
grow lazy almost as quickly as their pastors do. When God’s gifts are abundant 
among us, it usually does not take long for us to grow bloated and insensible, 
both to the gift and to our ongoing need for it. If you doubt this is true, 
just ask the ancient Israelites.

My colleague’s proposed solution to our insensitivity and ungratefulness was to 
withhold the gift. Do not commune every Sunday. Prevent the people from 
receiving the gift for a while, so that they will more fully appreciate the 
gift when it is finally given.

While my colleague’s approach might solve the problem of an overfed attitude, 
it seems unsafe. Inasmuch as much as your communion is a gift from above, God 
also tells you that every breath you inhale into your lungs is likewise a 
divine gift (Job 33:4, Isaiah 42:5, Acts 17:25). Shall I periodically squeeze 
your throat so that you may appreciate breathing all the more when I relax my 
hand?

Rather than avoiding God’s gift for appreciation purposes, it might be wiser 
for us to devote our lives to receiving God’s gift rightly—not matter how often 
the gift might be available to us. Holy Communion IS a big event, and it should 
be treated as such. Every-Sunday communion requires every-Sunday preparation.

Hardly anyone in the Bible can give you with a better example for communion 
preparation than Elizabeth. When Mary arrived for a visit, Elizabeth gaped with 
wonder and awe, “Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should 
come to me?” Elizabeth was not expressing doubt or unbelief with this question. 
She was expressing pious incredulity—that is, awe amazement that boggled her 
mind.

Then Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months. Think about the happiness you 
feel when your loved ones arrive for a visit and first get out of the car. 
Hugs, laughter, maybe some tears. During a three-month visit, the emotion of 
that first moment starts to fade. Yet Elizabeth was not rejoicing because she 
rarely saw Mary. Elizabeth was rejoicing because the Incarnate God 
Himself—fully human and fully divine—the Incarnate God Himself had drawn near 
to her. Fully human and fully divine, God was now wrapped in something 
Elizabeth could see: the Virgin Mary. Stated in more familiar terms, the body 
and blood of our Lord were now in, with and under the body of His Mother. Even 
after the giddiness of reunion had passed, while Mary was simply living 
day-to-day in Elizabeth’s house, it is not too difficult to think that 
Elizabeth often repeated that same question under her breath: “Why is this 
granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to
 me?”

A similar question will help us with our every-Sunday communion preparation. 
Like Elizabeth, you and I could rightly ask, in nearly the same words, “Why is 
this granted to me, that the bread and wine of my Lord should come to me?” 
Every Sunday, not matter what emotions you may or may not feel as you approach 
the altar, the question may remain: “Why is this granted to me, that the bread 
and wine of my Lord should come to me?” After all, what really is the 
difference between a) Mary in that prenatal moment and b) the bread and wine of 
Holy Communion?

·   In both cases, God Himself draws near, both in Mary’s womb and in bread 
and wine.

·   In both cases, forgivene

SERM: Matthew 25:14-30; Pent 22; LSB A proper 28

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Today’s Gospel is a parable that ends with a warning that you and I and 
every Christian will do well to take to heart: “To everyone who has, more will 
be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even 
what he has will be taken away.”

So are you a Have or a Have Not? Asked another way, will you be welcomed “into 
the joy of your master,” or will you join this parable’s “worthless servant” in 
“the outer darkness… [where] there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”?

Do not rush into your answer!

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel does not ask you to question whether you have been given God’s 
fabulously rich gift of salvation. You are the baptized of Christ. In your 
Baptism, Christ Jesus Himself poured out upon you all the rich benefits of His 
salvation, earned for you by His cross and death. Stated another way, Christ in 
your Baptism give to you a rich treasure that far exceeds those gifts that were 
given to the three men in today’s Gospel. They were only given money! You have 
been given forgiveness of sins, and with it, eternal life! 

Today’s Gospel does not ask you to question whether you have been given God’s 
fabulously rich gift of salvation. Today’s parable asks you to think about what 
you have done with the gift of salvation God has given.

He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he 
made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents 
more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid 
his master's money. 

Jesus tells you these Words so that you will examine yourself. Jesus wants you 
to question yourself, saying, “Forget about the talents of gold these men 
received! What have I done with the far richer gifts—the baptismal gifts of 
forgiveness and salvation—that I have been given? Have I made good use of my 
Lord’s grace and generosity, or have I lived in fear?

At this point, a little honesty would go a long way. As much as you would 
undoubtedly like to say you have done well with your master’s rich gifts, you 
know better than to lie to Jesus. Your position might not be so extreme as the 
third guy in today’s Gospel, the one who “dug in the ground and hid his 
master’s money,” but you have not doubled the investment, either. Everyone 
present here is so far away from these first two servants in this Gospel—both 
of whom made fantastic use of the gifts they had been given—everyone present 
here is so far away from these first two servants in this Gospel, that we would 
be wise, each of us, to evaluate our lives and make some major changes. 

Praise be to God! Alleluia! Jesus is speaking today’s Gospel to us TODAY, while 
it is still daylight and before the night comes, when no one can work (John 
9:4). Jesus is speaking today’s Gospel to us today, so that we have time to 
make our changes of life and to do better than that “worthless servant… [who] 
dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.”

Your position might not be so extreme as the “worthless servant” in today’s 
Gospel, but that guy will nevertheless help you understand why you have failed 
to double the investment, so to speak; that is, why you have not done better 
with the rich and immeasurable gift of grace and salvation that your God has 
given to you. The servant who hid his master’s money tells his entire story 
with these words: “I was afraid.” Listen to again this servant’s self-defense. 
For the most part, it is a pile of excuses and accusations the master, as if 
the master had done this servant wrong in giving the gift: 

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew 
you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you 
scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the 
ground. Here you have what is yours.”

Doesn’t this manure pile of excuses sound very similar to the way our 
forefather Adam likewise attempted to defend and excuse his own sin while still 
in Eden? “The woman whom YOU gave to be with me, SHE gave me the fruit of the 
tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12). The only words that really mattered in the 
world’s first confession of sin are these: “And I ate.” The rest of Adam’s 
words were merely evasion and smoke. 

In the same way, when this “worthless servant” explains himself in today’s 
Gospel, he blows a lot of smoke and gas:

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew 
you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you 
scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the 
ground. Here you have what is yours.”

In this dung heap, only three words matter: “I was afraid.” With these Words, 
God has written into His Bible the explanation why you and I likewise have 
failed to do well with the rich

SERM: 1 Thess 4:13-18; Pent 21/All Saints; LSB A proper 27

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost
(Observing the Feast of the All Saints)


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Today’s Epistle grows dearer to me—as it likely grows dearer also to 
you—every time we bury a fellow Christian:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that 
you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him 
those who have fallen asleep… Encourage one another with these Words.

With these Words, God does not forbid our grief. Grief is inevitable. Those of 
you who have experienced it also know that grief never goes away in this life. 
Tears dry up; strong emotions pass; memories sweeten with time; but grief never 
goes away. Simply be sure that you do not grieve as others do, who have no hope.

Dear Christian friends,

 
Carol Pendergraft; 
Harold Sommers; 
Lorena Holtzen; 
Bee Morris; 
Gene Ahern; 
Joseph Engels; 
Mary McGinnis; 
Loy Palecek; 
 
 

 
As many of you undoubtedly know, these are a few of the fellow Christians we 
have lost over the past decade. But they are more that. They are also the 
ingredients of our grief. Certainly we each could add other names to the mix.

All Saints’ Day is their day. Today we remember and we pray thanks for the 
Christian faith our God gave to them, so that they “will always be with the 
Lord.” All Saints’ Day is OUR day. Today we discipline and chastise ourselves 
in the Christian faith that our God has given to us, so that we will not 
“grieve as other do, who have no hope.”

 
Alice Sommers; 
Kelly Ramey; 
Lois Wittrock; 
Doris Tracy; 
Eirane Holsten; 
Merlin Brinson; 
 

Their funerals were hard, even frightening, but the funerals were not the 
hardest part. Christian funerals are steeped and saturated with the Living 
Words of Christ. In those Words, our Lord’s sweet promises of resurrection and 
life dull the bitter taste of death. The best Christian funerals move our 
attention away from our dead and they redirect our eyes toward the living Lord 
Jesus Christ, that is, toward the One who gave His body as a purchase price the 
bodies of those whom we love and must lay to rest. 

Their funerals were hard, but not the hardest part. From where I stand, the 
visitations are the hardest part. Visitations are not usually about the 
comforts of Christ. Most of the time, visitations are about the comforts that 
people give to one another. Sometimes the people who attempt to comfort us 
simply do not know the right things to say. They mean well. They try. But when 
they try to comfort us without the Words of Christ, they inadvertently tempt us 
instead. In particular, they tempt us to grieve as though we have no hope. 

Just think about some of the hopeless, Christless words you hear at funeral 
visitations, all of them spoken with sincerity and love. Think of how these 
words tempt you to grieve as though you have no hope:

·   Sometimes people say, concerning our dead, “He or she will live on in 
our hearts.” No. If my grandmother or your wife lives on in our hearts, than 
neither my grandmother or your wife have any hope. Thanks be to God! Our 
Christian dead live in a much holier, much more permanent place than our hearts 
or our memories. Our dead now live before the face of God, “before the throne 
and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:10).

·   Sometimes people say, concerning our dead, “He or she looks good. The 
funeral home did a good job.” No. The best cosmetics in the world still cannot 
hide death. Our dead do not look good. They look different in a way that is not 
good. Our dead will not look good until they hear “a cry of command, with the 
voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.” One that 
day—the last, great day of the Lord’s appearing—on that day we will ALL look 
finally good and none of us a moment before.

What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in 
dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. … Just as we have 
borne the image of [the First Adam] the man of dust, we shall also bear the 
image of [Jesus] the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 49).
 
·   Sometimes people say, as they point to the bodies our dead, “He or she 
is no longer there. The body is just a shell.” No. The body is not just a 
shell, and salvation does not consist of escaping the body! The salvation Jesus 
won for you and for your dead is the miraculous cleansing of the sin-corrupted 
body. Jesus’ blood has washed you free of every sin that diseases and pollutes 
the body. Jesus’ resurrection promises you and your Christian dead a 
resurrected body, free of “every weight, and sin which clings so closely” 
(Hebrews 12:1). The bodies of our dead were not merely a shell. The bodies of 
our dead were the cre

SERM: Matthew 23:1-12, Reformation, LSB A proper 26

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
(Observing the Feast of the Reformation)


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In some Gospel readings, Jesus’ Words are simple and easy to understand. 
Today’s Gospel is not one of those Gospels. This is a strange and disconcerting 
Gospel: The same God who had earlier commanded, “Honor your father” (Exodus 
20:12), now says today, “Call no man your father on earth.” Jesus Himself sent 
men out into the world to teach (Matthew 28:20), but today He says to those 
same men,

But you are not to be called rabbi [“which means teacher,” (John 1:38)] for you 
have one teacher, and you are all brothers. … Neither be called instructors, 
for you have one instructor, the Christ.

Dear Christian friends,

Today we celebrate Reformation Day. The Reformation did a lot of good things 
for us Christians, not the least of which was to clarify the relationship each 
Christian has with his or her pastor.

·   The Roman priesthood had come to regard itself as a spiritually 
superior class of men, much like the scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus condemned 
in today’s Gospel. Jesus’ indictment against the Pharisees in this Gospel reads 
as if it could have been a prophecy against the priests of the medieval papacy: 
“They preach,” says Jesus, “but they do not practice.” 

·   In Medieval culture, all people were divided into three classes: those 
who fought (the nobility), those who farmed (the peasantry), and those who 
prayed (the priesthood). If you happened to be one of those who fought or one 
of those who farmed, then your religious duty was to keep your mouth shut and 
obey those who prayed. “They die up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them 
on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with 
their finger.

The Reformation undid all that nonsense. The Reformation emphasized for you, 
not that your pastor is your gatekeeper to eternal life, but rather, your 
pastor is one part of the way God the Father Himself repeatedly showers down 
upon you the blessings of eternal life.

In order that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and 
administering the sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and the 
sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit was given, and the Holy 
Spirit produces faith when and where it pleases God (AC V; Tappert, 31).

“How can they to hear without someone preaching?” asks Paul (Roman 10:14) For 
that matter, how can Christians eat a Holy Communion that has not been served, 
or wash away their sins in a Baptism that has not been administered? For this 
reason, “the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments 
was instituted.” Or, as Paul says in another place, “[Christ] ascended on high… 
and He gave gifts to men. … He gave… the pastors and teachers” (Ephesians 4:8, 
11).

Some children of the Reformation took our Lord Jesus literally in today’s 
Gospel, where He says, “Call no man your father on earth” and “You are not to 
be called rabbi [or] instructor.” One man, a radical man named Andreas 
Carlstadt, was so serious about taking Jesus literally that he vehemently 
insisted on being called nothing but “good neighbor” or “Brother Andreas.” But 
Brother Andreas went too far, dumping more than just the language of the 
Church. Andreas also rejected infant baptism, destroyed church art, threw away 
vestments, and finally helped to create a new form of Phariseeism to replace 
the old.

Must we really think that Jesus in today’s Gospel is forbidding you to use the 
word “father” with reference to the man from whom you sprung? Probably not. 
Jesus created fathers and gave them to us. Why would He now forbid us to put 
the letters f-a-t-h-e-r together into a word?

It is better for us to read the commands, “Call no man your father on earth” 
and “You are not to be called rabbi [or] instructor” in light of how Jesus 
condemns the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel. These men hoped to stand 
between God and the people. These men set themselves up as fathers and 
instructors, not in the sense of giving God’s good gifts to the children, but 
in the sense of being the source and decision-maker for who gets what. This is 
a good Gospel for us to hear on Reformation Day because this Gospel emphasizes 
that no one—not your father, not your instructor, not your pastor—no one stands 
between you and the Christ who redeemed you with His holy precious blood and 
His innocent suffering and death.

·   Next week we celebrate my eleventh anniversary in this pulpit. Stated 
another way, I have been this congregation’s rabbi and teacher for more years 
than any other man. In your finer moments, you might even feel willing to admit 
that you have learned from me. Jesus in today’s Gospel warns you to look at 
your rabbi and instructor rightly: not as the source of your faith but as the 
empty vessel and the fellow beggar whom

SERM: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Pent 19; LSB A proper 25

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

I Am the LORD

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Old Testament God gives us a little list of things we must not 
do—things we are each forbidden to do—to our neighbor. 

You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or 
defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You 
shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand 
up against the life of your neighbor.

After speaking His list of things-you-are-forbidden-to-do-to-your-neighbor, God 
adds the Words, “I am the LORD.” Then God speaks a second list of 
things-you-are-forbidden-to-do-to-your-neighbor, as if the first list were not 
more than enough to send us all to hell. 

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly 
with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take 
vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall 
love your neighbor as yourself.

As He did before, God ends this second list in the same way He ended the first 
list. God says to us again, “I am the LORD.”

Sometime today, read this entire chapter, Leviticus 19. When you do, you will 
see that God’s pattern of repeating the Words, “I am the LORD,” does not merely 
occur here in these few verses for today’s Old Testament. Leviticus 19 is a 
sermon on the Ten Commandments, which God spoke to Moses so that Moses could 
turn and speak it to you and to me. (As you heard in the opening words of 
today’s Old Testament, “The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to all the 
congregation of the people…’”) Every so often during His sermon, God pauses and 
repeatedly adds the Words, “I am the LORD.” In this one chapter—Leviticus 
19—the LORD your God repeats Himself no less than fifteen times. “I am the 
LORD,” He says “I am the LORD. I am the LORD.” Surely you can agree that, if 
our God should repeat Himself to us fifteen times in such a short space as one 
chapter, He must not want us to miss the point! He is the LORD.

“I am the LORD” as Hammer and Nails

This is a very good lesson for us Christians to hear. First, God teaches us in 
spades how we shall and shall not treat our fellow Christians. Yes, we have 
neighborly obligations to everyone has placed into our lives, Christian or not. 
Nevertheless, God narrows the topic for us in today’s Old Testament. Today He 
calls the neighbor “your brother” (v. 17) and “the son of your own people” (v. 
18). These phrases emphasize that God wants us to regard our fellow Christians 
to be our neighbors first and foremost.

·   The person next to you in the pew is the one to whom you must show no 
partiality and toward whom you must not act unjustly. God forbid that you ever 
take one of these neighbors to court! The LORD has spoken, and He will not turn 
a blind eye toward those who ignore Him. 

·   These are the ones concerning whom you must never speak an unkind word, 
and over whom you must seek no advantage. How would you dare you remain angry 
or keep a grudge toward your fellow Christians here—especially those with whom 
you live? God forbids it, and He is the LORD. 

·   What gives you the right to raise your hand or to swing your foot in 
retaliation when one of these neighbors sins against you? God has given you 
responsibility for the love and care of that neighbor. He is the LORD and He 
leaves you no options. In the same way that you must pay your taxes or be 
punished, so also God in today’s Old Testament requires you to “love your 
neighbor as yourself” or be punished. He is the LORD.

Today’s Old Testament is from Leviticus 19. The entire chapter is a sermon on 
the Ten Commandments, which God preaches in such a way as to give you no 
excuse. If you simply listen to the bare commandment from Exodus 20—“Honor your 
father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12) or “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) 
or “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15)—if you listen to the bare commandment, 
you might be able to fool yourself into thinking that you can do a fairly good 
job of keeping them. For example, you have never killed in cold blood. You have 
never perjured yourself in court. When you hear the bare wording of the Ten 
Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, some Christians might feel inclined to say, 
at least in a general way, “All these I have kept from my youth” (Luke 18:21).

Leviticus 19 and today’s Old Testament make the commandments unavoidable. Here 
God brings the Ten Commandments home to roost upon your guilt and mine alike. 
Today’s Old Testament is just a taste of how God uses His Commandments to turn 
up the heat on all of us. When you go home today and read the rest of Leviticus 
19, God will show you many more examples of how unavoidable His Ten 
Commandments really are. The repeated Words, “I am the LORD,” make it easier 
for us to smell the roast. The repeated

SERM: Matt 21:33-46, Pent 16, LSB A Proper 22 -- Revised

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The entire second half of this sermon has been reworked.

Please delete the previous draft of this sermon as too juvenile, even for my 
pulpit. 

ER


Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Are YOU Talkin’ to ME?

Theme: The sermon is about you. 
You need NOT to concern yourself with whether it might also be about someone 
else.


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. After Jesus preaches a sermon in today’s Gospel, telling His Parable of 
the Vineyard, St. Matthew adds a little explanation about the impact and result 
of Jesus’ preaching. “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His 
[Jesus’] parables, they perceived that He was speaking about them.” 

This is an amazing thing: Jesus never once says to the chief priests and the 
Pharisees, “Hey, this sermon is about YOU!” Nevertheless, upon hearing the 
powerful Word of God preached to them, “the chief priests and the Pharisees … 
perceived that He [Jesus] was speaking about them.” Jesus was speaking against 
Pharisees’ sin and He was calling the chief priests to repentance, so that they 
themselves would receive the personal benefit and blessing of Jesus’ 
forgiveness of their sins. There were probably other people listening to Jesus’ 
sermon that day, since it was preached in open public at the temple in 
Jerusalem (Matthew 21:23). Those other people did not matter, as far as the 
chief priests and the Pharisees were concerned. The Word of God was confronting 
them. “They perceived that He [Jesus] was speaking about them.”

Dear Christian friends, 

Every once in a while, the absolute best thing you can do for yourself and for 
your neighbor is to totally ignore your neighbor. This does not happen all the 
time: God your heavenly Father requires and demands that you pay very close 
attention to your neighbor; that you guard and protect your neighbor in every 
way imaginable; that you supply to your neighbor whatever he or she may lack, 
not matter what it may be; that you especially regard your Christian neighbor 
as your brother—and that you be your brother’s keeper (Genesis 4:9).

Nevertheless, every once in a while—maybe even once a week—the absolute best 
thing you can do for yourself and for your neighbor is to totally ignore your 
neighbor. When Jesus is talking to you—in the same way that He was talking in 
particular to the chief priests and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel—when Jesus 
is talking to you, the best and most loving thing you can do for your neighbor 
is to keep your neighbor out of the conversation. 

As you may already know, when I mention “Jesus talking to you,” I am NOT 
referring to some Pentecostal, demonic, supposed whispering of Jesus into your 
heart and mind. When I say, “Jesus is talking to you,” I am referring to the 
Word Jesus proclaims personally to you in here worship, both in the absolution 
and in the sermon:

·   In the absolution, Jesus speaks personally to you because He wants YOU 
to know that YOUR sins are forgiven. What He is likewise saying to others at 
the same moment is not the concern. The Word of forgiveness for YOU is the 
whole point of your worship attendance.

·   The Scriptures teach us to believe that the sermon is much more than 
brotherly advice. We believe the sermon—faithfully preached from the Word—the 
sermon is nothing other than Jesus’ own Words spoken personally to you (Small 
Catechism, Third Commandment), even if you must listen Jesus’ Words spoken to 
you from the lips of Baalam’s donkey. Even though I voice the sermon to you, 
the sermon is certainly not about me speaking, and it most certainly is not 
about me speaking to your neighbor. Faithfully grounded in the Scriptures of 
God, the sermon is nothing other than Jesus talking to you.

When Jesus is talking to you—just as He was talking to the chief priests and 
the Pharisees in today’s Gospel—when Jesus is talking to you, the best and most 
loving thing you can do is to keep your neighbor out of the conversation.

Now I am going to repeat myself about both of these, the absolution and the 
sermon, with a little more detail for each:

The General Absolution is About You, Not about Your Neighbor

When you hear the absolution at the beginning of the service, “I forgive you 
all your sins” Jesus wants you to think He is speaking directly to you and 
about you, just as “the chief priests and the Pharisees … perceived that He 
[Jesus] was speaking about them” in today’s Gospel. 

·   When you hear your neighbor next to you say, “I a poor miserable 
sinner,” you might sometimes feel the urge to yell, “Dang right you are!” Keep 
your neighbor out of the confession-and-absolution conversation.

·   Again, when you hear Jesus say to your neighbor in the absolution, “I 
forgive you all your sins,” you might feel the urge to protest. “Are You sure 
You want to do that, Jesus? He didn’t tell you everything!” Keep your neighbor 
out of the conversation.

In today’s Go

SERM: Matt 21:33-46, Pent 16, LSB A proper 22

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Rough draft.

ER


Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Are YOU Talkin’ to ME?


Theme: The sermon is about you. 
You need NOT to concern yourself with whether it might also be about someone 
else.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. After Jesus preaches a sermon in today’s Gospel, telling His Parable of 
the Vineyard, St. Matthew adds a little explanation about the impact and result 
of Jesus’ sermon. “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His [Jesus’] 
parables, they perceived that He was speaking about them.” 

This is an amazing thing: Jesus never once says to the chief priests and the 
Pharisees, “Hey, this sermon is about YOU!” Nevertheless, upon hearing the 
powerful Word of God preached to them, “the chief priests and the Pharisees … 
perceived that He [Jesus] was speaking about them.” Jesus was speaking against 
Pharisees’ sin and He was calling the chief priests to repentance, so that they 
themselves would receive the personal benefit and blessing of Jesus’ the 
forgiveness of their sins. There were probably other people listening to Jesus’ 
sermon that day, since it was preached in open public at the temple in 
Jerusalem (Matthew 21:23). Those other people did not matter, as far as the 
chief priests and the Pharisees were concerned. The Word of God was confronting 
them. “They perceived that He [Jesus] was speaking about them.”

Dear Christian friends, 

Every once in a while, the absolute best thing you can do for yourself and for 
your neighbor is to totally ignore your neighbor. This does not happen all the 
time: God your heavenly Father requires and demands that you pay very close 
attention to your neighbor. That you guard and protect your neighbor in every 
way imaginable; that you supply to your neighbor whatever he or she may lack, 
not matter what it may be; that you especially regard your Christian neighbor 
as your brother—and that you be your brother’s keeper.

Nevertheless, every once in a while—maybe even once a week—the absolute best 
thing you can do for yourself and for your neighbor is to totally ignore your 
neighbor. When Jesus is talking to you—in the same way that He was talking in 
particular to the chief priests and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel—when Jesus 
is talking to you, the best and most loving thing you can do for your neighbor 
is to keep your neighbor out of the conversation. 

As you may already know, when I mention “Jesus talking to you,” I am NOT 
referring to some Pentecostal, demonic, supposed whispering of Jesus into your 
heart and mind. When I say, “Jesus is talking to you,” I am referring to the 
absolution Jesus proclaims to you in here worship, in which all your sins are 
now forgiven; I am also speaking about the Sunday sermon, which we believe is 
nothing other than Jesus’ own words spoken personally to you, delivered to you 
from the lips of Baalam’s donkey. I repeat: When Jesus is talking to you—just 
as He was talking to the chief priests and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel—when 
Jesus is talking to you, the best and most loving thing you can do is to keep 
your neighbor out of the conversation.

The General Absolution is One-to-One, Jesus-to-You

When you hear the absolution at the beginning of the service, Jesus is speaking 
about you and to you. “I forgive you all your sins.” With these Words, Jesus 
wants you to realize and to believe that He is speaking about you personally, 
in the same way that “the chief priests and the Pharisees … perceived that He 
[Jesus] was speaking about them” in today’s Gospel. 

·   When you hear your neighbor next to you say, “I a poor miserable 
sinner,” you might sometimes feel the urge to yell, “Dang right you are!” Keep 
your neighbor out of the confession-and-absolution conversation.

·   There again, when you hear Jesus say to your neighbor in the 
absolution, “I forgive you all your sins,” you might feel the urge to protest. 
“Are You sure You want to do that, Jesus? He didn’t tell you everything!” Keep 
your neighbor out of the conversation.

Among all the people who were probably listening to Jesus preach in the crowded 
temple in today’s Gospel, “the chief priests and the Pharisees … perceived that 
He [Jesus] was speaking about them.” In the same way, when the forgiveness of 
sins is announced in a general way to all, with many people listening, Jesus is 
nevertheless speaking personally to you.

In the Sermon, Jesus is Likewise Speaking to You

The same thing goes for the sermons you hear. On some Sundays, you might 
sometimes feel as though I have been watching you all week, looking for 
preaching material. On other Sundays—perhaps more Sundays than not—you might 
feel as though my 16½ minutes in the pulpit sort of wasted your time. Today’s 
Gospel does not indicate whether or not the chief priests and the Pharisees 
found Jesus’ sermon to be applicable, interesting, or even remotely relevant to 
everyday life. All toda

SERM: Phil 2:1-4, 14-18; Pent 15; LSB A Proper 21

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Significance of Insignificance

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Epistle from Philippians chapter 2, St. Paul is not so much 
talking about the unbelievers in your life as he is the Christians. Paul is so 
serious about the way you treat your fellow Christians—and about the way you 
allow your fellow Christians to treat you—that he speaks in the form of a 
command: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more 
significant than yourselves.” Today’s focus is upon that second and main part 
of what Paul has commanded: “In humility count others more significant than 
yourselves.” That is, consciously, carefully weigh the facts and come to the 
conclusion that each of your fellow Christians is more important than you in 
every way; that they are above and beyond you; that they are superior to you. 

Dear Christian friends, 

Most of you have learned from your childhood, the divine command to love your 
neighbor. As you already know, Jesus has called love for neighbor the second 
greatest commandment, second only to love for God Himself:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and 
with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is 
like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments 
depend all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37-40).

Jesus also makes it clear to your love for your neighbor is nothing less than 
your love for God; that your treatment of your neighbor is nothing less your 
treatment of your God, that no one can honestly say, “I love God” while 
harboring anger and hatred toward his neighbor (cf. 1 John 2:9). Jesus makes 
your love for your neighbor equal to your love for God when He says to you, “As 
you did it or did not do it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did 
it or did not do it to Me” (Matthew 25:40, 45).

In today’s Epistle, speaking to you in Paul’s sermon to the Philippians, Jesus 
adds a little spice to the stew. Once again, he is speaking about your 
Christian neighbor in particular when he says to you, “In humility count others 
more significant than yourselves.” With these Words, Jesus pushes your love for 
neighbor beyond mere task of treating your neighbor a certain way. With these 
Words, Jesus makes your love for neighbor something more than a good attitude 
in your heart toward your neighbor. “In humility count others more significant 
than yourselves.”  With these Words, Jesus requires you to be entirely 
dependent upon—and completely defenseless toward—your neighbor’s love for you. 
Stated another way, Jesus wants you to love your neighbor so much that you 
trust your neighbor likewise to love you. Stated yet another way, while you are 
counting your fellow Christians more significant than yourself, Jesus wants you 
to hope and to trust
 that your fellow Christians will likewise count you to be more significant 
than themselves. 

“In humility count others more significant than yourselves.” Come to the 
conclusion that these others around you are more important than you in every 
way; that these others are above and beyond you in importance for your life; 
that these others are superior to you. Very un-American, I know, yet 
exceedingly Christian! I am hard-pressed to think of a way that God could speak 
His law to us in harsher terms:

·   Some Christian employers will scrape more skin off your back than they 
ought, then they will throw you to the curb when you are no longer useful. Do 
not fear. They will render their accounts to God. For your part, “Count others 
more significant than yourselves.”

·   Even though he is a Christian, your husband still sometimes acts like a 
jerk. Not to worry: the living Word of God is at work on him, too. While you 
are waiting for your husband to be the man he ought to be, “Count others more 
significant than yourselves.”

·   Your older brother or sister constantly acts like the pope of your 
house. They rarely give you a break, but remain devoted to getting the biggest 
and best piece of the pie. Like you, that person also needs to grow up. While 
you wait, “Count others more significant than yourselves.”

·   Some Christians in your life continually require more from you than 
they will ever give you in return. Perhaps there are Christians who will even 
take advantage of you. “Count others more significant than yourselves.”

There are at least three gifts Jesus is giving to you when He says to you in 
today’s Epistle, “In humility count others more significant than yourselves.”

·   First, Jesus is showing you your disease, so that you will seek the 
cure that only He can provide through the forgiveness of all your sins. When 
Jesus says, “In humility count others more significant than yourselves” He is 
showing how truly impossible it is for you or me or for any other

SERM: Matt 18:21-35, Pentecost 12, LSB A Proper 19

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

FORGIVENESS AS SELF-PRESERVATION

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Gospel, Jesus does not allow you to think of forgiveness as an 
option, as if you have any kind of right or authority to choose whom you 
forgive and whom you do not. No, Jesus makes forgiveness your duty and 
obligation—and it does not matter how hurt you feel, how deeply angry you are, 
or how little your neighbor deserves your forgiveness. Get the job done! 
Forgive and be done!

Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? 
[asked the king.] And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until 
he should pay all his debt. So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of 
you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. 

Dear Christian friends,

A mother says to her young son, “Stay out of the street! I will boot your 
backside into next week if you even go near to that street!”

Why would any mother say such a harsh and threatening thing to her child? Does 
she give such a command because she hates her child, or because she wishes for 
her child to live in fear? Of course not! The mother probably loves her child 
more than she loves her own life, even when she speaks harshly to him. The 
mother wants so dearly to care for her child and protect her child from all 
harm, that she lays a heavy law upon the child, spoken in severest terms: “You 
will regret going near the street!”

There is a good chance the child has no clue what danger and pain awaits him in 
the street. All he knows is his mother’s law, and since the street seems like 
such a good place to play, his mother’s law seems harsh and unreasonable—maybe 
even impossible to keep. The child cries because his mother will not allow him 
to play in the street, but momma is not the least bit softened or moved by his 
tears. “Stay out of the street! If a passing car does not kill you, I will!” 

Your God has never once spoken a commandment to you that was not for your own 
personal blessing and benefit—even when He speaks harshly and demandingly. For 
example:

·   The first and greatest commandment—“You shall have no other gods” 
(Exodus 20:3)—this first commandment is really all about you. Your God commands 
you to have no other gods because He alone has power to be the sort of God you 
need in your life. He alone will preserve and protect you eternally, ruling 
over you in mercy and in love. All others that would claim to be your god shall 
only exploit and destroy you. The one true God commands you to have no other 
gods so that you may live.

·   Take the third commandment as another example: “Remember the Sabbath 
day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8). With these Words, God commands and 
requires you to be devoted to hearing His Word and faithful in receiving His 
Holy Communion. God commands your worship, not because He is worried about 
taking attendance on Sunday morning, but because His Word and His 
sacraments—ONLY His Word and His Sacraments—continually provide you with divine 
life, apart from which you shall die. 

·   In the same way, all the commandments of the Second Table are as much 
about you as they are about your neighbor.

o   “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12); “You shall not 
murder” (Exodus 20:13); “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14): These 
commandments are all about God taking care of your physical body and life. 

o   “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15); “You shall not bear false 
witness” (Exodus 20:16); “You shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17) These 
commandments are all about God taking care of your possessions and reputation 
until your last hour comes. 

God is kind of like a mother that way. In the same way that momma lays down the 
law for her child in the harshest of terms, in order to preserve and protect 
her child, so also shall your God lay down the law for you—even laws you may 
find too difficult and unacceptable. God speaks His laws and He gives you His 
commands in order to preserve and protect you. 

God says to you in today’s Gospel, in very clear terms, YOU SHALL FORGIVE YOUR 
NEIGHBOR. Not only shall you forgive, but also you shall not cease forgiving. 

Peter came up and said to [Jesus], “Lord, how often will my brother sin against 
me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not 
say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”

Jesus commands Peter and He commands you to forgive your neighbor a ridiculous 
number of times. There are no options for Peter and there are no options for 
you. Cry, weep, and rant if you wish. Your protests about how your neighbor 
does not deserve your forgiveness will fall on deaf ears, just as a child’s 
tears and pleas to momma—that he be allowed to play in the street—will likewise 
go totally ignored.

Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy o

SERM: Matt 18:1-20, Pent 12, LSB A proper 18

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

WHEN YOUR BROTHER SINS AGAINST YOU

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Jesus says to you and to me in today’s Gospel, 

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and 
him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 

If each of us can somehow manage to listen to Jesus and take these Words to 
heart—if you and I both can stop sidestepping what Jesus tells us here and 
actually do what His Words command us to do—our homes will become much happier 
places; our friendships will become much closer friendships; our congregational 
life will become a much dearer fellowship of believers. The question you need 
to ask and to answer for yourself today is this: Will you listen to Jesus and 
take His Words to heart? Jesus says to you, 

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and 
him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 

Dear Christian friends,

Sin is a terrible power and destructive force in everyday life, both in your 
life and in mine. Sin does more than punish with death and threaten with hell. 
One of the here-and-now, devastating effects of our sin is that it divides and 
separates us here-and-now. Sin isolates and cuts Christians off one from 
another, banishing its victims to lonely exiles of anger and regret. Sin has 
the power to divide and separate us, even while we gather together at the 
family table or sit side-by-side in the Sunday pew, leaving too many things 
unsaid.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants you to know that things do not need to be that 
way for you, for your family, or for your congregation gathered here. (Yes, for 
all of our congregational peace and harmony, sin nevertheless continually 
operates as a divisive force among us.) Jesus wants you to know that, rather 
than being separated and driven apart by sin, you and I now have divine 
power—power to use even sin to our collective advantage. Call it the power of 
forgiveness; call it a clear perspective on what is truly real and important; 
call it a memory that has been washed clean of resentment, anger and pain in 
the daily flow of your Baptism: Jesus wants you Christians—that is, you 
brothers, as He calls you in today’s Gospel—Jesus wants you brothers to know 
that you now have the power to make sin something that gathers, rather than 
separates. Because of Jesus and His great, forgiving love for us, our 
ever-present sin can now draw me closer to you,
 you closer to me, and us closer to those around us. Jesus speaks this power to 
you in today’s Gospel when He says to you, “If your brother sins against you, 
go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you 
have gained your brother.”

JESUS IS SPEAKING PERSONALLY TO YOU, NOT SOMEONE ELSE

As you listen to these Words of Jesus, you could easily fool yourself into 
thinking that these Words are actually more applicable to other people, and not 
so much to you. When you think that way, you sin. For example,

·   You could say that other peoples’ sins are not your concern; as long as 
they leave you alone, you do not care what they do. By all means, we must bear 
with the weaknesses of the weak, we must be slow to judge and quick to place 
the best construction on the actions of others. But forbearance should not be 
confused with ignoring or neglecting your brother, and your brother’s public 
and unrepentant sin most certainly involves you. You are all the body of Christ 
together, each accountable to one another. No, you cannot live someone else’s 
life for him or make other peoples’ decisions for them. Nevertheless, when your 
Christian brother falls public, unrepentant sin, he is doing damage to you and 
to your reputation: the unbelieving world will draw its conclusions about 
you—and about the entire Church—based on the unrepentant actions of one brother 
in your midst. 

·“No, I am too old or too young to get involved. I also do not want to 
ruin my friendship with this person. Showing my brother his sin needs to be 
someone else’s job.” If I should respond to Jesus’ Words in that way, saying 
that I do not want to get involved, then I am not much different from the 
person who walks down the street and ignores the woman or child who is getting 
attacked in broad daylight. Each of us is only able to love according to our 
individual abilities, of course, but no one gets exempted from the command to 
love! When you say to yourself that it is someone else’s task to “go and tell 
[your brother] his fault,” you are really saying that is someone else’s task to 
love your neighbor and not your own.

·   You might say to yourself, “My brother’s sin really is no big deal. 
These days, everyone lives like that. It is not like he has killed somebody.” 
Ask yourself: do you really want to tell Jesus that sin is no big deal? That 
would be like sayin

SERM: Romans 11:3-12:8, Pent 10, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

Nonconformity

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Amen. In today's Epistle, God's apostle Paul wants us to know that none of us 
is the free thinker or independent person we would like to think we are. Forces 
outside of us are constantly pressing our minds and our thoughts. Paul warns 
you about these forces, and he also declares how God continually will save you 
from these forces, when he says to you in today's Epistle, “Do not be conformed 
to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Dear Christian friends,

In February 2010, Time ran an interview with the world-famous rock musician 
Ozzy Osbourne. In that interview, Ozzy made a suggestion that might be the most 
beneficial thing ever to proceed from his mouth: “[Today] kids have tattoos 
everywhere. … If you want to be somebody special now, don't have a tattoo, 
because everyone's getting them, you know” (Time, February 8, 2010).

(No, this is not a sermon about tattoos. I do not care whether you have one or 
not.)

On a related note, Good Morning America recently reported that, in order to 
fight the rising costs of manufacturing, clothing retailers are now using less 
material in their products. In order to keep you buying their lower quality 
clothing, retailers are advertising that this move toward less material is all 
part of a new fashion trend.

(No, this is not a sermon about clothing. As long as you have all the necessary 
parts well covered, with no slogan or picture that causes people to wonder 
whether you are a Christian, I do not care what you wear.)

Deep Inside We’re All the Same

Both of these examples—Ozzy Osbourne and cheaply made clothing—both of these 
examples illustrate how your brain operates. Simply stated, we each do certain 
things because someone else is doing them. Like everyone else on the planet, 
you and I both possess an inner desire to be the same as, or at least similar 
to, other people around us. Conformity is the name for it. We all want to be 
accepted by others, especially our peers. Few of us want to stick out like a 
sore thumb. The fashion industry knows that, if it can get a handful of people 
to buy into the idea that cheaply made clothes are the new trend, many more 
people will soon follow. After all, Ozzy was right: “Everyone's getting 
[tattoos], you know.” All the individuals eventually look the same.

·   At first glance, children and teenagers seem particularly susceptible 
to this inborn desire to conform, but as we all know, they rarely wish to 
conform to their parents' or grandparents' desires. Children want to conform to 
the way other children look and act. Mind-boggling, I know, but we all have 
been there—or will be soon.

·   Don't feel too embarrassed, teenagers. For all our supposed wisdom, 
your parents and grandparents still feel the same pressure and desire to 
conform, in order to be accepted by their peers. That is partly why they find 
this sermon so agreeable so far. It is also why they feel the need to “Keep up 
with the Joneses,” as the saying goes. We all share the same disease. 
Conformity is just as dangerous for us as it is for you. 

·   Many of us want to think that we are each a free thinker. Part of the 
American ideal is that we each be independent and freethinking. We all think 
alike that way. 

Speaking about things that only God Himself could have revealed, Paul in 
today's Epistle opens up our brains and lays bare what is really happening when 
we each feel the desire to conform. Far from being free-thinking, far from 
being the decision-makers we want to think we are, Paul warns us that our 
brains are continually being pressed like cookie dough into a mold. Paul does 
not say, “Do not conform yourself to this world,” as though you or I play a 
completely independent role in our desires to conform. Paul says “Do not be 
conformed to this world.” The verb “be conformed” is passive, which means 
someone or something else is doing it to you. “Do not be conformed to this 
world.” Paul is saying, “Do not allow yourself to be pushed around or herded 
into a group by the unbelieving world. Do not let yourself be pressed into the 
mold or form that the world is always attempting to press you into. Do not 
submit to the pressure that the
 unbelieving world continually exerts upon you.”

If someone in the Walmart parking lot were to grab you and attempt to push you 
into his car, what would you do? In order to protect your body from harm, you 
would probably kick and scream, scratch and claw for all you are worth. Why 
wouldn't you want to put up the same fight when the world attempts to press you 
into conformity with its own ideals, thoughts, priorities, and desires? If we 
would resist with all our strength the bodily injury that could come to us in 
the Walmart parking lot, how much more should we resist the injury that comes 
to our minds when the wo

SERM: Mattt 15:21-28, Pent 9, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

LORD, HELP ME

Theme: Your feelings and your faith are totally incompatible.


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. 

·   If you have ever felt that God has ignored your most earnest 
prayers—not merely saying “no” to your requests, but totally ignoring your 
prayers, today’s Gospel is for you.

·   If you have ever felt that God has treated you coldly or cruelly, that 
He has backhanded you by allowing you to experience the things you have 
experienced, today’s Gospel is for you.

·   If you have ever felt that you just want God to make you feel better, 
today’s Gospel is most definitely for you. 

A Canaanite woman cried out to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!” 
Acting as though He was deaf, Jesus “did not answer her a word.” When He 
finally does respond, He sounds cold and heartless and un-Jesus: “It is not 
right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel teaches a lesson that you and I and every Christian must learn 
and re-learn continually throughout the days of our lives. We must learn and 
re-learn the lesson in today’s Gospel because of the lying voices in our own 
heads and hearts—voices that continually want to entice and seduce us away from 
the true faith. Today’s Gospel is very important for us because this Gospel 
teaches us to draw a sharp line of distinction between our emotions and our 
faith. Our feelings are like a spy or a thief; our feelings are masters of 
disguise, continually attempting to masquerade as faith. (Really, your feelings 
will only replace your faith and actively seek to destroy your faith.) Today’s 
Gospel very clearly teaches us that “feelings and faith are not compatible with 
one another” (Luther). We must make every effort—on a daily basis we must make 
every effort—to keep our feelings and our faith carefully separated from one 
another.

JESUS-AT-THE-SERVICE-COUNTER

This woman is a very good example for you and for me because she does not allow 
her feelings and emotions to bowl her over or drive her away from Jesus. 
Imagine how you would feel—and how you would respond—if Jesus were the guy at 
the service counter in the auto shop. What emotions would arise within you if 
you were to approach the Service Guy and say, “Sir, I need your help,” but 
Jesus-at-the-Service-Counter does not even seem to hear your voice. When you 
finally do get Him to look in your direction, He flatly says to you, “I am not 
here to help you.” How would you feel? If you are anything like me, and like 
most of our fellow Americans, you would probably rise to the occasion. At the 
very least, you would want to take your business elsewhere. You might even chew 
on a few ears while headed toward the door. Not only do you want good, quick, 
and cheap attention from Jesus-at-the-service-counter, but you also want to 
leave there feeling good
 about yourself, like maybe you did that guy a favor by coming to him.

Not so with this woman in today’s Gospel! If this woman were at that same auto 
shop with you and also ignored by Jesus-at-the-Service-Counter, she would NOT 
have taken her business elsewhere. When she heard the words, “I am not here to 
help you,” this woman would have calmly replied, “What do you mean, you are not 
here to help? You are sitting at the service counter, aren’t you? You have the 
hat and the shirt and the paycheck sticking out of your back pocket. Of course 
you are here to help me! Helping me, in fact, is why you are here! I am 
completely certain that you will now get up, go get what I need, and bring it 
to me. Take your time, if you wish! I am simply going to ask you again, and 
keep asking you, until you do.”

Remarkably and admirably, this woman in today’s Gospel has separated her 
feelings from her faith. Jesus forces her to separate her feelings from her 
faith, first by ignoring her, and then speaking coldly to her. But this woman 
will not take her request elsewhere. Jesus and only Jesus has what this woman 
needs. She will not allow her feelings to drive her away from the one place 
where her need can be met. The disciples even want you to notice this woman’s 
persistence: “Send her away!” they beg. “She is crying out after us [and she 
won’t quit]!”

JESUS’ PROMISES ARE FIXED AND IMMOVABLE

Learn from this woman, especially if you have ever felt that your God has 
ignored your most earnest prayers, or if you have ever felt that your God has 
treated you coldly or cruelly, or especially if you have ever felt that you 
just want God to make you feel better. Learn from this woman that “feelings and 
faith are not compatible with one another.” Join this woman every day, not 
basing you faith upon how you feel, but rather, basing your faith upon who 
Jesus is and upon the promises He has spoken to you. 

She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And He answered, “It is 
not

SERM: Romans 9:1-5, Pentecost 7, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
At the baptism of Alayna Marie Muller

My Kinsmen According to Baptism

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Epistle, St. Paul wrings his hands with sorrow. He mourns and 
laments his Old Testament brothers and sisters in Christ. God had given them so 
many gifts, but they threw God’s gifts all away. 

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart… for the sake of my 
brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites! To them 
belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the 
worship and the promises! To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, 
according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. 
Amen.

Dear Christian friends,

Among those who do not share our ancient practice of infant baptism—that is, 
those among who reject infant baptism and refuse access for their children to 
this miracle of God—many do not hesitate to throw stones at us. One of their 
favorite and handiest stones to throw is what sometimes happens in our Lutheran 
churches after a child is baptized.

What sometimes happens in our churches after a child is baptized? Nothing!

More than one Christian parent in our confession—more than one person who 
claims the name Lutheran and the Scriptural practice of infant baptism (Acts 
2:38-39) that goes with that name—more than one of these Christian parents does 
not follow through. They do not follow through with the full life of baptism 
that our Lord Jesus both promises (John 3:5-6) and commands (Matthew 28:19-20) 
in His Scriptures. They baptize but they do not do not learn and they do not 
teach baptism.

More than one Christian fails to teach the children of the Church that:

·   Baptism is a never-ending, everyday miracle that makes you able to 
admit your sin and trust in Jesus’ forgiveness, which He earned for you;

·   Bible stories are more than mere stories; that Bible stories are true 
food and drink for the nourishment of the baptized, both young and old;

·   Regular worship—hearing the Word and repeatedly receiving God’s 
miraculous gifts of forgiveness and life—regular worship is absolutely 
essential for baptismal faith to remain healthy and active and even alive;

·   The Christian faith is much more than getting baptized as an infant and 
then disappearing until confirmation or marriage or death. 

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of 
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all 
that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).
 
With these Words, Jesus clearly states that disciples get created through 
baptism AND teaching. With these Words, Jesus marries, unites, binds together 
baptism AND teaching, giving us the two-pronged approach He wants us to use 
when raising the children of the Church. 

More than one Christian parent in our ranks does not follow through. Do not be 
one of those parents, Jason! Desiree! Jerad, Suzi, and Renee: You have dared to 
be this child’s godparents and baptismal sponsors. Form a solid wall and hedge 
around her! Guard and protect her from any temptation her parents might feel 
not to teach her this faith into which she has now been baptized. Hold Jason 
and Desiree’s feet to the fire of their own baptisms (Mark 3:11). Use every 
power that you have to help and to ensure that they hold Alayna Marie’s feet to 
the fire of hers.

People are watching. Those who reject God’s miracle of infant baptism are 
watching and they are ready to throw their stones. They notice our neglect and 
misuse of baptism and they hold it against us. “You Lutherans teach, do you, 
that baptism is just like magic? A child can get sprinkled and that is it? 
Automatic entry into heaven, huh? I know many people who were baptized as 
children (some of them members of your own congregation, Pastor Rottmann) they 
live like unbelievers and they never give any indication at all that they are 
Christian! Are we supposed to think that your practice of infant baptism will 
save them while they so clearly reject God’s Word and Spirit? From the look of 
things, Baptism must not have saved them!”

Mark this well: Baptism does not fail Christians; Christians fail baptism!

·   The recipient of a great inheritance might be rich, but he will never 
receive the benefit of his riches if he ignores or abandons his money and never 
makes use of it. In a similar way, your baptism will give you no benefit if you 
will not use it—especially if you not use is as your daily reminder and sign 
and assurance that God your heavenly Father forgives you all your sins for the 
sake of Christ Jesus.

·   A child may be adopted, but that child will never know the benefit of 
his adoption and family if he should run away from his new home as soon as he 
is able. In a similar way, baptism is how God adopted you to be His 

SERM: Romans 8:18-27, Pent 5 Proper 11, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

ALAS, EDEN!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Epistle, God’s apostle Paul compares his present experience in 
life with the future, resurrection life God has promised and given to you 
through His Son Jesus. “For I consider the sufferings of this present time are 
not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us,” declares Paul. 

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 
for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him 
who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its 
bondage to decay.

Dear Christian friends,

·   After enough days super-hot weather, some people might think they have 
grounds for justifiable homicide if you ask them that well-known and 
oft-repeated question, “Is it hot enough for you?”

·   I once drove past a farm in Missouri named “Piece of Eden.” The name 
suggests that the owner thought his farm approximated God’s original Eden in 
the book of Genesis. From the look of things, the original Eden might have 
contained a large number of rusted-out automobiles. 

·   A fellow pastor recently told me about a childhood camping trip, during 
which his sister saw a bear. She immediately grabbed for a stick to throw, 
hoping to scare the bear away. She did not end up with a stick, but a snake. 
The bear ran away on account of the shrieking.

Miserable and dangerous weather; rust and decay; animals that frighten and even 
harm us: Paul includes all of these things and more in today’s Epistle when he 
speaks about “the sufferings of this present time.” In addition to the 
persecution God promises His Christians will suffer (1 Peter 4:14-16), in 
addition to the ongoing temptation and sin that you feel waging a war within 
your own body (Romans 7:21-25), in addition to the devil’s constant prowl and 
earnest desire to devour you (1 Peter 5:7), God also wants you to know that the 
very dirt beneath your feet now works against you. As it is written here, “the 
creation was subjected to futility,” to frustration (NIV), to pointlessness, to 
nothing to show for our labors. Simply stated, this creation in which we live 
will ultimately bring us nowhere. Yes, God uses the creation to feed and 
sustain us for a while, but “the grass withers, [and] the flower fades” (Isaiah 
40:7). You can do your
 best to build a giant building or an expansive railway system or an immense 
city or a giant headstone for your grave. Time and weather will eventually win. 
Time and weather will eventually destroy. Not even empires that span entire 
continents can hold up against the corrosion of the creation. 

As today’s Epistle explains, God did this on purpose. Your Creator willingly 
threw His entire creation into “bondage to decay.” God has press-ganged the 
weather into mercenary service, so to speak, so that it will be merciless in 
its heat, savage in its raging, and deadly in its power. God enslaved sunlight 
and rust and bacteria, forcing these things continually to tear down and to 
break apart everything you attempt to build and to keep. God is not the least 
bit bothered by the fact that snakes freak you out. He planned it that way and 
He wants it that way. “For the creation was subjected to futility… [and] its 
bondage to decay.”

God the Father enslaved and subjected and imprisoned His creation for you and 
for your benefit. God did this so that His creation will NOT help you. In 
particular, God subjected the creation to bondage so that the creation will NOT 
help you reach what Paul calls today “the freedom of the glory of the children 
of God” and “[our] adoption as sons” and “the redemption of our bodies.” Rather 
than helping you reach your freedom and adoption and redemption, God’s creation 
waits alongside you. The creation earnestly yearns with you for these things to 
be given to you. As today’s Epistle explains, “The whole creation has been 
groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

There are all kinds of good reasons why God the Father would so lovingly 
subject the creation to futility, so that it cannot and will not help you reach 
“the freedom of the glory of the children of God” and “[our] adoption as sons” 
and “the redemption of our bodies.” Here are some reasons why the creation’s 
“bondage to decay” is such a good thing for you.

1. God wants you to have real and genuine faith in His promises, especially 
those promises of “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and 
the life everlasting” (Apostles’ Creed). This faith—this hope—is what Paul is 
speaking about in today’s Epistle when he stated, “in this hope we were saved.” 
But then Paul goes on to explain why everything in the creation has to stay bad 
for us: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” 
Stated another way, God subjected the creation to f

SERM: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Pent 4, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Good Soil

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Today’s Gospel is Jesus’ famous Parable of the Sower. 

A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and 
the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they 
did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth 
of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, 
they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and 
choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a 
hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.

Dear Christian friends,

Jesus calls you and He calls me “good soil” in today’s Gospel. “As for what was 
sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the Word and understands it.” You 
and I both have indeed heard the Word and we have understood it. (At least, we 
have heard and we understand as far as our human minds are able to comprehend 
the divine mysteries God has revealed in His Word.) If you believe in Jesus—if 
you are truly a Christian and not an every-Sunday pretender to pew—then you are 
good soil, plain and simple. “Seeds fell on good soil” says Jesus, “and 
produced grain.”

·   The seed of the Word did not land upon the hard places of your heart 
and mind, snatched away by the devil before it could implant itself within you. 
“This is what was sown along the path,” and perhaps you know people who have 
heard and yet have refused to believe. I certainly know such people, and I know 
that they are not you and they are not me. Yes, we are each guilty of not 
taking God’s Word seriously enough. Yes, we are continually tempted by hardness 
of heart, that is, lack of love for God and for neighbor. Nevertheless, neither 
you nor I are not the trampled and hardened soil along the path, with no good 
seed of God’s Word anywhere to be found. The devil has not been allowed to 
snatch the good Word of God away from us. To think otherwise would be to regard 
ourselves as unbelievers, and that is simply not true. 

·   You might know some people who seem enthusiastically Christian for a 
short time, but then suddenly disappear from our pews. Jesus explains in this 
parable that such people are like “rocky ground… they do not have much soil.” 
Then Jesus explains, “This is the one who hears the Word and immediately 
receives it with joy [but] he immediately falls away.” I regularly meet such 
people. They darken our doorway for a while and they frequently express their 
desire to become members of the congregation as soon as possible. I encourage 
them to develop the habit of worship with us for a few weeks before they begin 
confirmation—sort of trying on the clothes before they buy, so to speak—but in 
a few weeks’ time such flash-in-the-pan visitors are gone again. By comparison, 
I see you here all the time. You see me here all the time. Most of us have been 
looking at one another for years. By God’s grace and mercy, we have not fallen 
away. We are not
 stony soil with “no depth,” where the seed of God’s Word has “no root.” 

·   “As for what was sown among thorns,” says Jesus, “this is the one who 
hears the Word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches 
choke the Word, and it proves unfruitful.” None of us would dare to deny a 
little bit of weed in our lives. Each of us has our own dandelion temptations 
and crabgrass sins, which we would be wise to admit and never to deny. Praise 
be to God! We still believe, even when severely tempted. Praise be to God! His 
Word mercifully raises us up, even when we deliberately fall. The seed of God’s 
Word has somehow, miraculously kept root in your soil and mine, even when 
crowded on all sides. We still faithfully return here to our Sunday-morning 
taste of heaven, even when the rest of the week has been hell. Amid care and 
deceit and other torments, the precious plant of the Word has NOT been choked 
away from us. 

Hardened soil; rocky soil; thorn-infested soil: Since you and I both are so 
clearly none of the above, by the grace and mercy of God alone, we have no 
choice. We must count ourselves as good soil. “For what was sown on good soil, 
this is the one who hears the Word and understand it. He indeed bears fruit.” 

We probably should not allow our self-infatuation to grow, simply because we 
are called “good soil” in today’s Gospel. Cow manure makes pretty good soil. 
Jesus does not tell this parable so that you would take a longer, more adoring 
look in the mirror. The point of this parable is not to suggest that 

·   you are somehow different than all other people, simply because you 
have the Word growing within you. No, as the song goes, “the same black line 
that was drawn on you was drawn on me.” Your body will rot just as easily as 
everyone else’s will. 

·   you were somehow 

SERM: Matthew 10:25-30, Pentecost 3, LSB A proper 9

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Abler exegetes than I might argue that I have pushed neepyos too far. Not sorry 
for that. 

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

Legal Minority

Theme: Baptism is not just for little children! Baptism turns you into a little 
child, that is, a legal minor who cannot be held responsible for his or her own 
actions.


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Gospel, Jesus prays,

I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these 
things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 
yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. 

When Jesus says “little children” in this Gospel, He is using a Greek word that 
does not speak about a child’s age or size, as would “infant” or “adolescent” 
or “teenager.” When He says “little children” here, Jesus is using a single 
word that means “legal minors” or “people unspoiled by experience” or “people 
unable to be held responsible.”

“Little children”; legal minors unspoiled by experience and unaccountable for 
their own actions: This is truly a magnificent Word from God, one that will 
comfort you and console you, no matter what you have experienced in your life. 
Jesus calls you and every Christian “little children” in this Gospel. With this 
Word, Jesus wants you to know and never to doubt that your heavenly Father now 
considers you a minor, unspoiled by experience and unable to be held 
responsible for what you have done. Perhaps we should even think of this Gospel 
as a baptismal Gospel, because it gives you a very such good way of thinking 
about your Baptism:

1.  In Baptism, God continually washes away from you the soil of your 
life’s experiences, along with whatever wisdom or maturity you might foolishly 
think you have accumulated over time.

2.  In Baptism, God changed your status. He made you into a legal minor in 
the court His own divine Law. By the power of your Baptism you are now someone 
who cannot be held responsible for his or her own actions. SOMEONE ELSE now 
bears that responsibility FOR YOU: Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the 
sins of the whole world, even yours.

How To Be Certain that You Yourself are a “Little Child” in this Gospel

I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these 
things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 
yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. 

Jesus says two words in this Gospel that are absolutely essential for you, if 
you are to see yourself as one the “little children”—one of those legal 
minors—He is speaking about. The two essential words for you are “these 
things.” Listen again: “I thank You, Father… that You have hidden these things 
from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.”

What are “these things” that God the Father has hidden from the wise and 
revealed to little children legal minors? In order to know what Jesus means by 
the words “these things,” you have to go backward a short distance in Matthew’s 
Book. Just prior to today’s Gospel, Jesus had been complaining about the way 
the most people regarded both John the Baptist and Jesus Himself. John and 
Jesus are the “these things” in today’ Gospel.

·   “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John 
the Baptist,” said Jesus (Matthew 11:11). Yet most of the people who listened 
to John’s preaching considered themselves to be wise and understanding. Because 
they thought themselves so wise and understanding, these people did not believe 
John was a prophet. They thought John had a demon (Matthew 11:18).

Who believes that John was a prophet? According to today’s Gospel, “little 
children” do. Those people who are yet unsoiled by experience and unable to be 
held accountable for their own actions—they believe John was a prophet. “I 
thank You, Father… that You have hidden these things from the wise and 
understanding and revealed them to little children.”

So here is the first test that you can use to see if you are one of the “little 
children” in today’s Gospel: Do you believe John the Baptist was a prophet sent 
from God? Only “little children” believe such things. If you believe John was a 
prophet, you therefore may be confident that you are one of the “little 
children” in today’s Gospel.

·   As they treated John, the so-called “wise and understanding” likewise 
treated Jesus. They did not believe Jesus is the Son of Man, the Promised 
Christ prophesied of old. Just prior to today’s Gospel, Jesus complained that, 
because “the Son of Man came eating and drinking… they [the so-called wise and 
understanding] say, ‘Look at Him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax 
collectors and sinners!” (Matthew 11:19)

Who believes that Jesus is the Son of Man, the Promised Christ sent from God 
the Father? According to today’s Gospel, “little children” do. Those people who 
are yet unsoiled by experience and una

SERM: Matthew 10:34-42, Pentecost 2, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

The Second Sunday after Pentecost


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 

Today’s Gospel is a terribly difficult Gospel. Most Christians want to think 
the only best about those people whom God has placed into their lives. Most 
Christians want to think of their homes as places of refuge and peace. Most 
Christians want to think of their families—no matter how near or far they 
live—most Christians want to think of their families as a source of strength 
and comfort, especially in times of difficulty and tumult. Why should anyone be 
allowed to drive a wedge between my dearest loved ones and me? Human or divine, 
who should dare to disrupt that close connection between you and your family 
(or those whom you have come to love as though they are your family)? What kind 
of God would come to this earth with the expressed purpose and desire “to set a 
man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a 
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law”?

Jesus is that God. YOUR Jesus—the One Whom you love and the One to Whom you 
pray—He is that God. Jesus does not want you to think that He came to bring 
peace to the earth. “I have not come to bring peace,” He says, “but a sword… 
And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.” 

So much for “the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay!” (LSB 364.1) King Herod 
the Great knew that, when the Baby Jesus grew up, the Man Jesus would create a 
problem (Matthew 22:13). The problem Jesus’ birth created for King Herod is 
essentially the same as the problem Jesus willfully creates for you and for me 
in today’s Gospel. The only difference is the location of the throne: Herod did 
not want Jesus to sit on the throne in Jerusalem, King over Israel. As for you 
and me, do we really want Jesus to be Lord and King and God for us?

·   Part of each Christian certainly does. That baptized, sanctified, fully 
cleansed part of each Christian wants nothing more than for Jesus to be Lord 
and King. You say that you love Jesus and I believe it because I love Him, too. 
You say that you want to have no other God than Jesus and I know that what you 
say is true because you are hearers of God’s miraculous Word. Through the 
Word—the Word preached and the Word served in Communion—through the Word God 
the Holy Spirit has taken up His residence within you. God the Spirit has given 
you His miraculous gift of faith in this Jesus whose death has cleansed you of 
all your sins. Without doubt and beyond all question, part of each Christian 
loves Jesus and wants Him to be Lord and King and God for us. This part of you 
and me that Paul calls “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is what the 
Small Catechism describes as the new person who emerges and arises from Baptism 
“to live before God
 in righteousness and purity forever.”

·   That new creation is not the only part of you and it is not the only 
part of me. Do we really want Jesus to be Lord and King and God for us? Part of 
us most certainly does not! That part is the old evil flesh, “the body of sin” 
(Romans 6:6) still living and working within each of us. I myself do not want 
Jesus to be my God. I actively search for idols to worship and adore. You do, 
too. Jesus knows we do this. Jesus also knows that there is no better place for 
us to select a another king and a new god than from among the ranks of those 
people in our lives whom we love the most. 

Knowing who we are—knowing our natural tendencies and our inescapable 
desires—Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel, 

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to 
bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and 
a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 
And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

With these terrible-sounding Words, Jesus is speaking to you with only the most 
tender of love and with the deepest affection. With these Words, Jesus is 
lovingly cutting away from you the objects of your idolatry: your family or 
those people whom you have come to regard as family. Jesus does not want you to 
have any illusions about what SHALL be most important to you when you have 
Jesus as your God. Jesus is not even asking you to choose between Him and your 
dearest loved ones, no matter how near or far they may be. Jesus is making the 
choice for you and He is making the choice for me because He knows that neither 
you nor I have the ability to choose. 

Perhaps you have one of your idols sitting with you today. Go ahead and take a 
look. Perhaps your favorite gods live somewhere across the state or the 
country. Inventory your memories. Think of the shoulders you laid your head 
upon as a child, or the hands that work endlessly yet today in order to care 
for you. Consider the happiest moments of your life along with the people who 
created those happy moments with you and for you. Give a

SERM: Revised John 7:37-39, Pentecost, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Portions of incoherence have been removed...



Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

Drink


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
(Amen.) In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants you to know that He speaks His Words for 
the sake of thirsty people. His Words are intended and meant for thirsty 
people, in order that their thirst may be satisfied. First Jesus says to you, 
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Then Jesus promises you, 
“Out of [your] heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Dear Christian friends,

Thirst is one of the great benefits of hot and humid weather. Your body needs a 
regular supply of water in order to remain strong and healthy and to function 
well. Without water, you die. 

People do not always recognize their own thirst, though. Some scientists even 
suggest that a feeling of thirst is one of the last symptoms you feel when you 
are getting dehydrated. When the weather is cool and breezy, when you do not 
even break a sweat while you are out mowing the lawn, water is easily 
forgotten. Why drink when you are not thirsty? 

That is why thirst is one of the great benefits of hot and humid weather. 
Thirst brings to your attention your on-going need for water. Thirst is a gift 
and blessing from God. Without thirst, you would not drink; without drinking, 
you cannot survive.

Jesus speaks about thirst in today’s Gospel, but it is not the thirst of the 
body. Jesus speaks about a much greater thirst when He declares to you, “If 
anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” This is the thirst of the soul, 
“the hunger and thirst for righteousness” about which Jesus earlier spoke in 
the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:6). This is the thirst about which David prayed in 
the Psalms: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O 
God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2a). This is the 
thirst that God Himself turned into His boast and His glory when He said 
through His prophet Isaiah, 
When the poor and needy seek water, and their is none, and their tongue is 
parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them… I will open rivers on the 
bare heights and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the 
wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water (Isaiah 41:17-18).

“If anyone thirsts,” declares Jesus, “let him come to me and drink.” Thirst is 
more than a benefit of hot and humid weather. Thirst is likewise one of the 
great benefits of the conflicts and the hardships of our lives. Do you think 
that it is without purpose that you struggle and sorrow as you do? 

·   God loves you! God is 100% perfectly happy with you because you have 
been wrapped and swaddled in the glistening perfection of God’s Son Jesus. 
Knowing that God is delighted with you in Christ, why would you think that your 
life’s hardships might be expressions of God’s anger or judgment against you?

·   God has so securely vested you with the promise and certainty of 
Christ’s resurrection (Romans 6:3-4) that you now can boast with confidence, 
“The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 
13:6). Knowing the resurrection is your future, why would you allow yourself to 
feel uncertain about the future, and why would you so desperately want to feel 
like you need to keep control of your present? We will all rise up from the 
dead to live with Christ in righteousness and purity forever. In a certain 
sense, what happens to us between now and then almost doesn’t matter.

·   Is your loneliness a signal that God has abandoned you? Are your 
feelings of guilt a signal that the cross of Christ is not quite so powerful as 
you first believed? Are your repeated, habitual sins a sign that you might not 
have been given as much of God’s Holy Spirit as other Christians appear to have 
been given? No, No, and NO!

What can we say about the burdens you and I now experience, or the harsh things 
we wish we never experienced? Jesus is allowing us to grow thirsty. That is 
all! Jesus is allowing us to grow thirsty. When we are not thirsty, we do not 
drink! When we do not drink, we cannot survive! “If anyone thirsts,” declares 
Jesus, “let him come to me and drink.” There is nothing Jesus wants more to do 
for you than to give you drink. You can bet that Jesus will love you so 
faithfully and so generously as to allow you your thirst!

In the early 1530s, more than a decade after the Lutheran Reformation had taken 
full swing and had spread throughout Germany, Martin Luther noticed what 
terrible things happen when Christians no longer feel thirsty. 

When the Word was first proclaimed twelve or fifteen years ago, the people 
hearkened to it eagerly. …  People remarked: “Thank God, we now have water to 
drink!” At that time they were thirsty, and the Gospel doctrine tasted good to 
them. We drank of it; that was a precious teaching. But now we are sated and 
tired of the drink. Therefore God wil

SERM: John 7:37-39, Pentecost, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

Drink


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
(Amen.) In today’s Gospel, Jesus wants you to know that He speaks His Words for 
the sake of thirsty people. His Words are intended and meant for thirsty 
people, in order that their thirst may be satisfied. First Jesus says to you, 
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Then Jesus promises you, 
“Out of [your] heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Dear Christian friends,

Thirst is one of the great benefits of hot and humid water. Your body needs a 
regular supply of water in order to remain strong and healthy and to function 
well. Without water, you die. 

People do not always recognize their own thirst, though. Some scientists even 
suggest that a feeling of thirst is one of the last symptoms you feel when you 
are getting dehydrated. When the weather is cool and breezy, when you do not 
even break a sweat while you are out mowing the lawn, water is easily 
forgotten. Why drink water when you are not thirsty? 

Thirst is one of the great benefits of hot and humid water. Thirst brings to 
your attention your on-going need for water. Thirst is a gift and blessing from 
God. Without thirst, you would not drink; without drinking, you cannot survive.

Jesus speaks about thirst in today’s Gospel, but it is not the thirst of the 
body. Jesus speaks about a much greater thirst when He declares to you, “If 
anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” This is the thirst of the soul, 
“the hunger and thirst for righteousness” about which Jesus earlier spoke in 
the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:6). This is the thirst about which David prayed in 
the Psalms: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O 
God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2a). This is the 
thirst that God Himself turned into His boast and His glory when He said 
through His prophet Isaiah, 
When the poor and needy seek water, and their is none, and their tongue is 
parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them… I will open rivers on the 
bare heights and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the 
wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water (Isaiah 41:17-18).

“If anyone thirsts,” declares Jesus, “let him come to me and drink.” Thirst is 
one of the great benefits of hot and humid water. Thirst is likewise one of the 
great benefits of the conflicts and the hardships of our lives. Do you think 
that it is without purpose that you struggle and sorrow as you do? 

·   God loves you! God is 100% perfectly happy with you because you have 
been wrapped and swaddled in the glistening perfection of God’s Son Jesus. Why 
would you think that your life’s hardships might be expressions of God’s anger 
or judgment against you?

·   God has so securely vested you with the promise and certainty of 
Christ’s resurrection (Romans 6:3-4) that you now can say with unblinking 
confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” 
(Hebrews 13:6). So why would you allow yourself to feel uncertain about your 
future, and why would you so desperately want to feel like you need to keep 
control of your present?

·   Is your loneliness a signal that God has abandoned you? Are your 
feelings of guilt a signal that the cross of Christ is not quite so powerful as 
you first believed? Are your repeated, habitual sins a sign that you might not 
have been given as much of God’s Holy Spirit as other Christians appear to have 
been given? No, No, and NO!

What can we say about the burdens you and I experience, or the harsh things we 
wish we never experienced? Jesus is allowing us to grow thirsty. When we are 
not thirsty, we do not drink! When we do not drink, we cannot survive! “If 
anyone thirsts,” declares Jesus, “let him come to me and drink.” There is 
nothing Jesus wants more to do for you than to give you drink. You can bet that 
Jesus will love you so faithfully and so generously as to allow you your thirst!

In the early 1530s, more than a decade after the Lutheran Reformation had taken 
full swing and had spread throughout Germany, Martin Luther noticed what 
happens when Christians no longer feel thirsty. 

When the Word was first proclaimed twelve or fifteen years ago, the people 
hearkened to it eagerly. …  People remarked: “Thank God, we now have water to 
drink!” At that time they were thirsty, and the Gospel doctrine tasted good to 
them. We drank of it; that was a precious teaching. But now we are sated and 
tired of the drink. Therefore God will have to forsake us and let us die of 
thirst, for He remains only with those who feel their wretched condition (AE 
23, 269).

Jesus says to you in today’s Gospel. “Come to Me and drink.” With these words, 
Jesus is lovingly and mercifully telling you why you struggle in so many ways 
through life. Jesus wants you to feel your thirst. He wants you recognize your 
thirst for

SERM: Acts 1:12-26, Easter 7, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Let Another Take His Office


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
(Amen.) In today’s First Reading, God the Holy Spirit speaks about Judas 
Iscariot, who betrayed our Lord Jesus unto death. The Sprit says, “Let another 
take his [Judas’] office.” With these Words, the Spirit teaches us to draw a 
careful distinction between 1) the office (that is, position and 
responsibility) that God created, and 2) the individual person who fills the 
office that God created. “Let another take his office.” With these Words, the 
Spirit does more than speak judgment against Judas’ failure in his office. With 
these Words, the Spirit gives you and me a way of thinking about our everyday 
lives, in particular, our relationships to one another. 

Dear Christian friends,

What Does the Word “Office” Mean?

This word “office”—especially as it is used here in today’s First Reading—this 
is not the sort of word many Americans use every day, even though there are 
office all around us that play important roles in our everyday life. When we 
use the word “office,” we usually a room where people do work, as in, “Your 
book is in my office” or “I will be out of the office today.”

In today’s First Reading, where it is written of Judas Iscariot, “Let another 
take his office,” the Spirit is not referring to a room or building where Judas 
used to go to work. Judas’ office was that special position of authority and 
responsibility that had been given to him by our Lord Jesus Himself. Judas had 
been given the office of apostle (Luke 6:16-16). 

·   Judas had been given special authority, in the same way that our city 
of Versailles has given certain men and women the special authority to be 
police officers. Not anyone is allowed to be a police officer, but the city of 
Versailles has specially selected and vested certain people with authority to 
be police officers and to act in the name of the city. Judas’ had been given 
the office of apostle. Judas’ authority was not to arrest people, as the city 
police have authority, but Judas’ authority was to forgive sins in the name of 
Jesus (Luke 5:24, Acts 1:8).

·   Judas had been given specific responsibility, in the same way that the 
Voters of Morgan County have given specific responsibility to specific people, 
that they educate the children of county. Not just anyone may teach, but 
teachers must first be trained, and then given the responsibility to teach. In 
the same way, Judas had been trained by Jesus, the teacher of all teachers. 
Jesus also gave Judas the responsibility to teach when Jesus gave him the 
office of apostle. As Peter explains concerning Judas in today’s First Reading, 
“He was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” 

·   Judas failed his office and abandoned his office. More than that, Judas 
refused to repent and to return to the office Jesus had given. “Let another 
take his office.” Let another have the place given to him by God. Let another 
exercise the authority Judas had dropped and take up the responsibility Judas 
had shirked. “Let another take his office.”

What if I Dislike or Despise the Person Who Holds the Office?

Today’s First Reading does more for you than tell you the history of how the 
disciples coped and moved forward with their work after Judas abandoned his 
office. Today’s First Reading also gives you a way of coping with the people in 
your life. This reading also gives you a way of moving forward in your life, 
especially as you relate to others around you. Judas the Betrayer of Jesus 
teaches that we must always draw a careful distinction between the office and 
the person who fills the office. 

What I mean is this: Judas showed himself to be a man unworthy of his office. 
Indeed, Judas shows himself to be a man consumed by evil and worthy of disgust. 
But should we think badly of Judas’ office—that of an apostle? Should we 
conclude from the despicable actions of one apostle that all apostles should be 
despised? Of course not! The office of the apostle—that is, the position and 
responsibility of declaring eyewitness testimony concerning Jesus—this is a 
high and holy office, even when filled with a traitor. Can we not say the very 
same thing about the other offices God has given to us?

Think about the many offices—that is, the many positions of authority and 
responsibility that God has created for us and for our good! In each case, we 
must faithfully distinguish between 1) the high and holy office and 2) the 
sinful, fallen person who fills the office. For example,

·   You who are married hold the office of husband or the office of wife. 
These are good and holy offices, even when sinful people fill these offices. 
Some husbands and some wives neglect or abandon their offices by the way they 
treat their spouse. Should adultery or divorce make us think that marriage is 
evil? Of course not! We must disti

SERM: 1 Peter 2:2-10, Easter 5, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
(Confirmation Day)

Growing Up in Your Salvation


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
(Amen.) In today’s Epistle, God the Holy Spirit compares His living and 
nourishing Word to milk: “Like newborn infants,” says the Spirit, “long for the 
pure spiritual milk.” The phrase “spiritual milk” can be translated 
differently. The Greek word for “spiritual” in this verse can also mean, “of 
the Word.” That is to say, “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the 
Word” (NASB). In today’s Epistle, God the Holy Spirit wants you to know that 
“pure spiritual milk” is the milk of His Word. The “pure spiritual milk” is 
that Word the Spirit speaks to you in every Bible passage and every sermon; the 
Word the Spirit once poured onto you in Baptism and still continually stirs up 
within you by the ongoing power of Baptism; the Word that the Spirit carefully 
and deliberately serves into your mouth in Holy Communion. Dear Christian 
friends, this
 is what the Holy Spirit says to you and to all the Churches in today’s 
Epistle: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure milk of the Word”—the living 
and nourishing Word that makes you “grow up into salvation.”

“The pure milk of the Word.” Beyond all doubt, “the Holy Spirit is the simplest 
writer… in heaven and on earth” (Luther). What could be more simply stated, 
even for the youngest and most tender Christians among us? This comparison 
between milk and the Word of God requires no effort for you to understand it. 
You do not even have to be a believer to get the point of these Words! Everyone 
knows what milk is. Everyone has seen an infant child. Join together these two 
simple things, milk and child, and you have the basic point of today’s Epistle, 
no matter where you live in the world, what language you speak, or what is your 
native culture. Hardly anything in all creation so simple, so easily 
understood, as an infant child who needs a mouthful of milk. 

That is how God the Spirit wants you to think of yourselves, Christians, no 
matter how old you are or how long you have been filling a pew: “Like newborn 
infants, long for the pure milk of the Word.” 

1. Check the verb there! The Spirit does not say to you that He wants you to be 
interested in the Word; He does not say that you should think of yourself as 
occasionally thirsting for the Word; most especially, the Spirit does not speak 
as though you may ignore the Word for large periods of time, now that you have 
heard it and learned it and think you know it. No, the Spirit clearly says to 
you today, “LONG for the pure milk of the Word.” Desire the Word. Crave the 
Word. Yearn for the Word. Believe yourself to be like a newborn infant in 
danger of starvation when you do not have opportunity to hear the Word preached 
to you, or to eat the Word served to you in Holy Communion, or to sing the Word 
in the liturgy and the hymnody of the Church. “Long for the pure milk of the 
Word,” says the Spirit. Treat the Word—its preaching and its Baptism and its 
Holy Communion—treat the Word as though you cannot live without it… because you 
cannot. 

In today’s Epistle, God the Spirit is saying something vitally important for 
all Christians, but especially important for you who today confirm the faith. 
When the Spirit says, “Long for the pure milk of the Word,” He is saying 
something to you directly opposite most of the other voices you hear in your 
everyday life. Not many will regard it as necessary and essential for your life 
to crave and to yearn for the Word so earnestly as the Spirit says to you here.

·   Not many of your friends at school think you should regard the Word as 
pure milk, which you need to hear and to eat as often as possible. 

·   You may have some family members who tell you that hearing and eating 
the Word is really not all that important and who prove their point by rarely 
coming to worship.

·   Even more, do you remember how we talked about the old sinful nature in 
our confirmation classes? You and I both have it, as do your parents, your 
friends, and everyone here with you today. Your old sinful nature will lie to 
you. You could make yourself think—just as others would like you to think—that 
the Word of God is not so necessary as milk. You might not even like milk too 
much, but that would just prove the point.

God the Spirit wants you this day to turn your back and to ignore 
anyone—including yourself—anyone who dares to say that the Word of God is not 
so very important for your life. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure milk 
of the Word.” There is a good a reason for you to long for this milk, too: “by 
it… you grow up into salvation.”

2. Most people do not like to be told to grow up. Most people feel offended to 
be called “immature” or “juvenile” or “too young.” One of the great, ongoing 
disasters of Confirmation Day is that many Christians mistakenly think that, 
now t

SERM: Luke 24:13-35, Easter 3, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

2. If you are one of those people who feel as though you must constantly pull 
others back in order to get yourself ahead, today’s Gospel is for you. This 
Gospel is your call to repentance; it is God’s demand that you change the way 
you treat the other, supposedly “lesser” people in your life. Learn today from 
the Road to Emmaus that your Lord Jesus might possibly prefer to walk and to 
talk with the very sort of people you feel compelled to push aside, to 
marginalize, or to use as a stepladder for your own advancement. 

1. If you are one of those people who gets pushed aside, marginalized, or used 
as a stepladder, today’s Gospel is for you. If you feel as though the events of 
your life have flattened you, or forgotten you, look at Cleopas and look at his 
friend. Maybe that friend was left unnamed so you would have a place to write 
your name: “Jesus Himself drew near and went with them.”

·   Jesus, put to death on a cross, whose dying now gives you forgiveness 
and life;

·   Jesus, whose bitter suffering ran more deeply than your suffering could 
ever possibly run, precisely so that He could understand and empathize with 
your suffering

·   Jesus, who wants you to know that the shadows disappear when the Sun 
rises in the morning. Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) If the 
darkness would not, could not remain for Christ, then the darkness shall not 
and dares not to remain for you.

3. Maybe you don’t feel so marginalized as all that, and maybe you don’t step 
on other people to get ahead. Good for you on both counts. Today’s Gospel is 
still for you, and here is how you can see its connection to your life: go 
visit the cemetery today after worship. Do not go to the graves those whom you 
know, but go find those graves that have been there a very long time. Look at 
the names on the headstones of the forgotten dead, if there names even can 
still be read. That is your future. That is my future. A handful of people may 
remember me and they may remember you for a few decades after we have died—but 
the memory will end eventually. You and I both will enter that faceless tide of 
humanity gone past. We will not even be a memory. We will each be a name on a 
headstone, and further details will require extensive research. 

That is what makes today’s Gospel also for you, as well as for everyone you 
know. “That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus” and we 
know that one of the two was named Cleopas. That is all that will be remembered 
about either one of these faithful disciples of our Lord, but that is also 
enough. When you meet these men in eternity, they will not talk about the 
careers that they built or the houses in which they lived or the fine families 
they managed to raise or the memories they left behind. When you meet these men 
in eternity, Cleopas and his friend will talk about how Jesus used the 
Scriptures to give these men the miracle of faith; they will talk about how 
Jesus Himself nourished them  “in the breaking of the bread,” which is just 
Luke’s way of talking about Holy Communion (Acts 2:42). 

You will be able to say the same thing! Big or small, strong or weak, prominent 
or behind-the-scenes—here is the one and only claim to fame that will do you 
any good: the risen Lord Jesus gives you His miracle of faith by the power of 
the Scriptures, and the risen Lord Jesus nourishes you with “the breaking of 
the bread.” Nothing else really matters because Christ is risen! (He is risen, 
indeed! Alleluia!).

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SERM: John 11:17-27, Funeral Sermon

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Funeral Sermon for Edna P. Sigman

Even Now

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior 
Jesus Christ. Amen. Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) In 
today’s Gospel, Martha says to Jesus—she says to the One who holds power over 
death and resurrection—“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 to 
You.” Jesus answered her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel takes place before Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension into 
heaven. During those days, which we call the days of Jesus’ humiliation, our 
Lord Jesus was present only in one place at one time. If Jesus was in Jerusalem 
and you wanted to see Jesus, either you had to travel to Jerusalem or He had to 
travel to you. If you had a sick loved one in Bethany, and Jesus wasn’t in 
Bethany, then you had to send word to Him, asking him to come (John 11:1-3).

Now, Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!) After He defeated death 
by entering into death for you and for Edna, Jesus Christ rose and Jesus Christ 
ascended to the right hand of God the Father almighty. Jesus’ ascension is 
important for Edna and for you because, as Paul explains, Jesus did not go away 
from us when He ascended. Rather, Jesus “ascended far above the heavens, that 
He might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10). That is to say, Jesus stopped being 
present in one place at one time and now Jesus Christ the God-Man is present in 
every place at every time. Jesus is right now equally near to you at every 
moment, as He is to me, to the farthest reaches of the earth, and even to our 
departed sister Edna. You cannot see Jesus, you cannot inwardly feel Him, and 
He will only communicate to you through His Word and His sacraments—but Jesus 
Christ is now with you always and He will never apart from you. That is the 
gift of Jesus’
 ascension. 

Edna signed her own paperwork when she was admitted into hospice care. Hospice 
care is a good and noble profession—those who work hospice are probably 
stronger than other people—but hospice care is the clear sign that death is 
near. Hospice is like the changing leaves of autumn, which signal the approach 
of winter. Hospice signals the approach of death. Hospice is the court of last 
resort, so to speak; it is that which gets done when nothing more can be done. 

Martha said to Jesus, “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 to 
You.” When Edna signed her hospice paperwork, she was NOT saying with Martha, 
“Lord, if You had been here.” The Lord was with Edna and is with Edna, just as 
He always has been with her by the power of His ascension. 

Edna was NOT saying with Martha, “Lord if You had been here,” when she signed 
those hospice forms. When she placed her signature on the forms, Edna WAS 
saying with Martha, “Even now, Lord. Even now I know that whatever You ask from 
God, God will give it to You. Even now, in the inevitability of what is about 
to happen to me; even now, when there is nothing left to be done; even now, 
when it is too late. Even now.”

When Martha said “Even now” to Jesus, Jesus answered her, “Your brother will 
rise again.” Edna likewise said “Even now” to Jesus by signing her hospice 
paperwork. Jesus answer to Edna is the same as the answer He gave to Martha, 
with only a small shift in emphasis. “YOU will rise again, Edna.”

·   Jesus did not say, “You will rise again” to Edna by whispering into 
heart or by speaking inwardly in her mind.

·   Jesus said, “You will rise again,” to Edna in baptism over nine decades 
ago, when Rev. Schriener poured water on the infant Edna—not yet three weeks 
old—“in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” Matthew 
20:19).

·   Jesus repeated His “You shall rise again” to Edna in every worship 
service since, in every hearing of the life-giving Word, at every reception of 
Jesus’ body and blood in Holy Communion. “You will rise again, Edna; You will 
rise again, Edna; You will rise again.”

Martha kept confidence in Christ, even when it was too late. “Even now,” Martha 
prayed, “I know that whatever You ask from God, God will give to You.” Like 
Martha, Edna also kept confidence in Christ, even when the hospice paperwork 
was signed, even when it was too late. The outward shape of letters in Edna’s 
signature might have spelled out the shape of her name, but the meaning of the 
signature was Edna’s confession of faith: “Even now.”

Your Lord’s promise to Martha is your Lord’s promise to Edna and it is your 
Lord’s promise also to you: “Your sister will rise again.” Why? Christ is 
risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!)


___
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SERM: John 1:17-2:10, Good Friday

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Good Friday

I REMEMBERED THE LORD


Theme: Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom and 
point me to the skies… In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me. 


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Buried and entombed in the belly of the great fish, Jonah remains 
confident in God the Father’s promised act of deliverance. “When my life was 
fainting away, I remembered the LORD,” Jonah said. “I am driven away from Your 
sight, yet I shall look again upon Your holy temple.”

Dear Christian friends,

With our sanctuary repainted, and before we start hanging everything back onto 
the walls again, it might be a good time for us to pause for a moment. We 
should think about and discuss the different ways we might decorate this room 
in which we receive the gifts of our Lord’s Good Friday crucifixion. 

In particular, we might discuss whether we could add to our sanctuary a 
crucifix, that is, a cross with our Lord Jesus Christ hanging upon it. Empty 
crosses, such as we already have here, are fine church appointments. Many 
Christians associate an empty cross with the resurrection of our Lord, and that 
is a good thing.

But the resurrection, as you know, is only part of the story. In a certain 
sense, the resurrection could also be called the resolution to the story; the 
post-climax dénouement, to speak in literary terms. The resurrection is merely 
the result and the outcome and the proclamation of the one truly profound 
event, namely, the death of God. The resurrection is really not much more than 
God’s big, neon sign, pointing you to the cross. 

You may feel surprised that the resurrection is not the most important or 
profound miracle of Holy Week. However, it is not as though resurrections had 
never happened prior to our first and greatest Easter Sunday. Lazarus (John 
1143-44), Jonah (Matthew 12:40-41), the son of the widow at Nain (Luke 7:11-15) 
and the Israelite thrown into Elisha’s tomb (2 Kings 13:21) all show that 
anybody can rise from the dead, given the right opportunity. 
Not anybody can die on a cross for the sins of the whole world. Only God can do 
that and it happened only once. “The word of the cross… is the power of God” (1 
Corinthians 1:18). The blood Jesus shed on the cross has purified and cleansed 
you of all your sins (1 John 1:7). Paul does not concern himself with preaching 
the Christ having been resurrected. But what does Paul say? “We preach Christ 
crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

God’s prophet Jonah clearly believes in the resurrection from the dead. This is 
why, even in the waning moments of his life, Jonah confidently says, “I shall 
look again upon Your Holy Temple,” and “You brought my life up from the pit, O 
LORD my God” and “What I have vowed I shall [yet] pay.”

Jonah not only believes in the resurrection, but he also believes in the 
source, the power, and the author of the resurrection. Stated another way, 
Jonah believes in the crucifixion. This is why Jonah also prays, “When my life 
was fainting away, I remembered the LORD.”

·   “I remembered the LORD.” These Words speak Israel’s hope. These Words 
confess faith in the divine promise that extends all the way back to Eden, 
where God swore to crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:23). Jonah might 
not have known that God would die specifically on a cross, but Jonah hoped in 
the crucifixion, just as certainly as you do. Jonah hoped in the crucifixion 
because Jonah knew that, when Eve’s offspring crushed the serpent’s head, the 
serpent would turn and crush his heel.

·   “I remembered the LORD.” These Words express Jonah’s confidence that 
the resurrection will take place because God will act in a way that causes and 
enables the resurrection. Jonah says, “Salvation belongs to the LORD!” and the 
crucifixion of Jesus is the LORD’s great act of salvation. “For God has not 
destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who died for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:9)

·   “When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD.” These Words 
make me want to carry a crucifix with me at all times, so that when I sit by 
the bedside of a dying Christian, I can hold before his or her eyes the dying 
body of Christ, the fountain and source of this Christian’s resurrection and 
life. I think you and I both should wrap around a crucifix the hands and 
fingers of those who are near death, so that the resurrection promise will be 
again impressed upon them while life is “fainting away.”

And I think we should consider a crucifix for our sanctuary. It does not have 
to be high above the altar, even though that would be a good place for it. The 
crucifix could be a much smaller size, perhaps placed below the larger empty 
cross we already have placed above the altar. Or, the crucifix could be our 
processional cross. Or, we could hang a crucifix on the side of the pulpit. Who 
knows? Maybe God’s Christ

SERM: Matthew 26:1-27:66, Palm/Passion Sunday, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Palm/Passion Sunday

What the People Need is a Way to Make Them Smile
(It ain’t so hard to do if you know how)

Theme: Memorized hymns are an extremely powerful tool for you, both for your 
own strength of faith and for the way you show love to your neighbor.


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Gospel, the disciples do not know how to help their dear Lord 
Jesus as He moves forward into suffering and death. These men cannot prevent 
what is about to happen. They can barely understand what is about to happen. 
The disciples do not know what to say concerning what is about to happen. When 
they try, they just end up sticking their feet into their mouths. So what do 
these men do? The disciples rely upon the liturgy and hymnody of the Church to 
speak their faith in God: “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the 
Mount of Olives.”

Dear Christian friends,

One thing I love about this congregation is its willingness to sing. Yes, I 
know some tunes are more difficult than others; I know that fifteen stanzas 
seems like a lot of singing for one hymn; I know that some of you do not feel 
as though you can sing and others of you do not even open the hymnal to try. 
Nevertheless, I love this congregation’s willingness to sing. It is happiness 
for me when I sometimes feel as though I must yell the communion blessing so 
that I may be heard above the distribution hymns.

As much as I love this congregation’s willingness to sing, I think you should 
try to do better. You should be attentively reading the words of the hymns, 
even when the tune moves up or down out of your vocal range. You should 
regularly memorize the stanzas of important hymns, continually practicing them 
in the car and in the shower so that you do not forget them again. You should 
have hymnals in your home and at some set point during the day you should sing 
with your household—even if you live alone.

Today’s Gospel tells you why: “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to 
the Mount of Olives.”
·   We can say with certainty that these guys did not sing, “Prop Me Up 
Beside the Jukebox When I Die,” or some other song from the radio.

·   Based upon the context of today’s Gospel, with its Last Supper and its 
Sacrifice-to-End-All-Sacrifices, we can hopefully also agree that the disciples 
were not singing any happy-clappy, toes-a-tappy little ditties.

·   These men sang the Christian faith. These men sang the closing hymn of 
the Passover liturgy. Quite possibly, they sang from book of the Psalms, that 
is, the ancient church’s hymnbook, which spoke about the Christ (e.g., Psalm 
2:12) and His death (Psalm 40:6-8) and His resurrection (Psalm 16:9-10).

·   When they sang a hymn, these men sang the Words of God back to their 
God. They comforted their Lord Jesus in His human nature with the same comforts 
that they themselves had first received from Him and from His Word (2 
Corinthians 1:3-4).

Listen to what Luther had to say about adding music to God’s Word, especially 
to the psalms:

The Book of Psalms is a sweet, comforting, lovely song, because it sings and 
preaches the Messiah, although one usually just reads or recites the words 
without notes. Nevertheless, the use of notes or music, as a wonderful creation 
and gift of God, helps greatly to produce this [comforting] effect, especially 
when the people sing along (What Luther Says #3098).

Or, to quote the Doobie Brothers, “What the people need is a way to make them 
smile. It ain’t so hard to do if you know how.”

You know how, Christians, just as our Lord’s disciples knew it before you:
 “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” What 
Jesus needed was a way smile, even in the growing darkness. The disciples gave 
that smile to Jesus “when they had sung a hymn.” It wasn’t a giddy smile; it 
wasn’t a happy smile, as if nothing monumental was about to happen; it might 
not even have looked like a smile.

The disciples gave Jesus the smile that comes as a result the hearing of God’s 
Word. The disciples gave Jesus the smile of resurrection certainty. They gave 
Jesus a way to smile with certainty that this looming horrible ordeal would not 
be the last of it for Jesus. They sang a hymn.

That is why you can do better with your singing, Christians! That is why we 
should wake the neighbors with our Sunday morning song. That is why the hymnody 
of the Church should be woven into your minds and daily stuffed into your 
children’s ears and even hummed under your breath while you are at the library.

It can be difficult to memorize Bible verses. Supplement your memorization with 
hymn stanzas. The hymns are written to rhyme and rhyming makes everything 
easier to remember, especially when a musical tune is attached. Think of the 
great blessings and benefits that will come to you when you do:

·   First, you will have something to say to your friend

SERM: Jonah 1:17-2:20 and Matthew 26:26-29, Maundy Thursday

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

WHAT I HAVE VOWED I WILL PAY


Theme: Death will not deter Jesus from fulfilling the vow He spoke to you: “I 
tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when 
I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”



 Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Buried and entombed in the belly of the great fish, Jonah remains 
confident in God the Father’s promise of resurrection and life. Jonah’s 
confidence in the resurrection makes him able to insist that he also will keep 
his own promises. This is how Jonah concludes his prayer to God, “But I with 
the voice of thanksgiving WILL sacrifice to You [O LORD]; what I have vowed I 
WILL pay.”

Dear Christian friends,

In the old days, a man’s word was his bond and his vow. At least, that is what 
the graybeards will tell you. Those days—if they ever existed—are now over. 
Today we have mastered the art of breaking any and all vows:

·   Contracts are now flippantly entered and flippantly broken. A contract 
is your vow that you will faithfully pay for what you purchase. Break your 
contract and you have broken your vow.

·   Personal checks are now useless in many places because so many people 
have written checks fraudulently, breaking their vow of payment even while they 
sign their name.

·   Marriages are easily broken, despite the legal vow spoken by a man and 
a woman in the presence of legal witnesses.

·   Confirmation students frequently turn away, forget about, and break 
their confirmation vow almost as soon as the vow has been spoken.

·   As a rule of thumb, not even a trustworthy person can be trusted 
because too many others have already proven untrustworthy and have already 
broken too many vows.
Where can you find someone who means what he says? Who can be relied upon 
without doubt to fulfill the vow he has spoken to you?

Take a look a Jonah because Jonah is pointing you toward Jesus. Jonah has been 
swallowed up by death and yet Jonah remains confident that he will live again. 
When Jonah lives, he will fulfill his vow. Jonah does not say exactly what vow 
he has spoken, but it does not really matter. Jonah prayed,

I am driven away from Your sight [O LORD];
Yet I shall AGAIN look upon Your holy temple.
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever
Yet You brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
I with the voice of thanksgiving WILL sacrifice to You;
What I have vowed I WILL pay.

Jonah is a prophet. That means Jonah speaks God’s Words. Even in the hours of 
his death, Jonah is speaking prophetically. Jonah is voicing the Words of 
God—even the Words of Jesus, who was yet to be born. Jonah prays in the form of 
a psalm, and all God’s psalms are about Jesus. Jonah’s words are Jesus’ Words, 
and in Jonah’s mouth Jesus declares from the pit of death, “What I have vowed I 
will pay.”

No, we do not know exactly what vow Jonah made that he insists that he will yet 
pay once his life has been brought up from the pit. We have not heard Jonah’s 
vow, but Jesus spoke His vow plainly and clearly in the hour of His death: 

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and 
gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And He took a 
cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all 
of you, for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for 
the forgiveness of sins.

Then comes Jesus’ vow, which He speaks, as it were, from the belly of death: “I 
tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I 
drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom.”

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever
Yet You brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.
I with the voice of thanksgiving WILL sacrifice to You;
What I have vowed I WILL pay.

Where can you find someone who means what he says? Who can be relied upon 
without doubt to fulfill the vow he has spoken to you? Take a look at Jesus. In 
Holy Communion Jesus promises you His body and His blood for the forgiveness of 
your sins. At His first Holy Communion Jesus vowed to you that He will always 
be present with you here at this meal. “I tell you I will not drink again of 
this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in My 
Father's kingdom.”

Note: We do not need to think that the Father’s kingdom is someplace far away 
from us, up in heaven or far into the future. No, the Father’s kingdom is where 
His Son Jesus is. The Kingdom of God drew near when Christ walked 
flesh-and-blood upon the earth (Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:14) and the Kingdom of God 
likewise draws near where the body and blood of Christ are. 

So Jonah speaks a vow in the hour of his death, fully confident that his 
resurrection will enable him to complete and fulfill what he has vowed to do. 
In the same way, on the night He was betrayed, your Lord Jes

SERM: Jonah 2:20-3:20 & Matt 28:16-20, Midweek Lent 5

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

This is probably the last sermon on the topic, unless I end up returning to 
Jonah for Holy Week.

ER

Sermon for Midweek of Lent 5

IN THE STEAD AND BY THE COMMAND


Theme: The preaching of repentance moves inevitably forward after Jesus/Jonah’s 
death and resurrection.


In a certain sense, our earliest Lutheran forefathers did not care whether your 
pastor is a Christian or an unbeliever. Our forefathers did not feel cold 
disregard for the pastor’s salvation. They simply emphasized that a pastor’s 
unbelief or unworthiness cannot rob God’s Word of its power. “Unworthy 
[pastors] still represent the person of Christ and do not represent their own 
persons,” our forefathers said. Jesus declared to those preachers whom He sent 
out into the world, “The one who hears you hears Me” (Luke 10:16). Based on 
these Words of Jesus, our earliest Lutheran forefathers confessed,

When they [pastors] offer God’s Word, when they offer the Sacraments, they 
offer them in the stead and place of Christ. Those words of Christ [in Luke 
10:16] teach us not to be offended by the unworthiness of the ministers (AP 
VII.28).

If God’s Word remains powerful upon the lips of those who lack faith, the same 
Word will remain powerful upon the lips of those who lack love for their people 
or heart for their task. Jonah held no love toward Nineveh, but look what 
happened when he preached within her walls: “The people of Nineveh believed 
God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to 
the least of them” (Jonah 3:5). These Words speak great assurance, both to 
those who hear God’s Word and to those who preach it. These Words bring divine 
comfort personally to you and personally to me:

·   These Words teach you that your faith and salvation do not depend upon 
your pastor’s ability to use God’s Word. Your faith and salvation depend upon 
the ability of God’s Word to use your pastor, despite your pastor. It is not 
hard to think that Jonah might have lacked enthusiasm or vigor when he 
preached—or perhaps his preaching was entirely too vigorous, especially in its 
application of God’s Law. Did Jonah roar frightfully, or did he speak in 
monotone, hoping no one could pay attention long enough to get the point? Good 
news for you: Jonah’s delivery had nothing to do with the power of the Word: 
“The people of Nineveh believed God.”

·   Good news also for me: Jonah’s delivery had nothing to do with the 
power of the Word. The earliest Lutherans stated, “Practical and clear sermons 
hold an audience” (AP XXIV.50) but sometimes the sermon seems neither practical 
nor clear. And that is the preacher’s fault. And God’s Word remains powerful 
and beneficial for the congregation nevertheless. “The people of Nineveh 
believed God.”

Jonah’s Gospel follows this basic pattern: 

1.  Jonah died; 

2.  Jonah rose from the dead; 

3.  Jonah preached repentance to Nineveh; and 

4.  Nineveh was saved by the power of the divine Word Jonah preached.  

Jesus has promised, 

No sign will be given… except for the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as 
Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will 
the Son of Man be three days and tree nights in the heart of the earth” 
(Matthew 12:40).

The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ proceeds in the same basic pattern as 
Jonah’s Gospel. Like Jonah,

1.  Jesus died;

2.  Jesus rose from the dead;

3.  Jesus today preaches repentance to the world through those whom He 
still sends out into the world. “The one who hears you hears Me” (Luke 10:16). 
“Those words of Christ teach us not to be offended by the unworthiness of the 
ministers” (AP VII.28).

4.  Like Nineveh, you also have been saved from sin and death by the power 
of the divine Word Jesus still preaches. You are saved, despite the sin of 
those men whose lips and hands Jesus chooses to use.  

___
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SERM: correction: Jonah 1:17-2:10

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

I wrote the wrong passage when I posted the sermon for Midweek 4

ER
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SERM: Jonah 1:17, 2:10-3:10 and Mark 15:33-39, Midweek Lent 4

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Midweek of Lent 4

FATHER, INTO YOUR HANDS…


Theme: God the Father hurled His Son into the deep by nailing Him to the cross.


Artists will sometimes depict our Lord’s crucifixion in ways that intend to 
emphasize an important point for you. For example,

·   Some medieval artists depicted Christ crucified on a grapevine, in 
order to show you that the wine you drink in Holy Communion is also the blood 
Jesus shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

·   To make the same point, the artist Albrecht Duerer (1471-1528) depicted 
angels surrounding Jesus on the cross. These angels hold communion chalices to 
collect the blood from our Lord’s hands, feet and side.

·   Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) wanted to connect the crucifixion to your 
Baptism. Cranach did this by depicting himself standing near the cross while 
blood spurts from Jesus’ pierced side onto Cranach’s head.

Some artists depict our Lord’s body so horribly torn and bloodied that their 
artwork is difficult to look upon, much less enjoy. But these crucifixions are 
not the most jarring. Hardly any crucifixion scenes are more disturbing than 
those that depict God the Father holding the beam of the cross in His hands 
while His only-begotten Son hangs upon it, suffocating to death. 

Read any of the four Gospels and you will see that Pontius Pilate and his Roman 
soldiers crucified Jesus. In his Pentecost sermon, Peter pointed to the Jews of 
Jerusalem, holding them responsible for the death Jesus (Acts 2:36). While 
neither you nor I were present on that dark Friday, each of us must admit to 
our own share of the responsibility, since “Christ Jesus came to save sinners” 
(1 Timothy 1:15). 

We are all small actors on an infinitely larger stage.

God the Father “so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16). “The 
LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). “God made Him who 
knew no sin to be sin for us” 2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV), so that “the deepest 
stroke that pierced Him was the stroke that justice gave” (LSB 451.2).

So artists depict the Father holding the cross while His Son suffers and dies. 
Even worse, some artists have portrayed God the Father grasping His Victim, 
pinning Jesus into His divinely-ordained place, allowing the Son no possibility 
of escape (e.g., Bassano’s Holy Trinity).

Who is Jesus?

·   Jesus is Isaac, bound with ropes and waiting patiently upon his 
father’s altar, acquiescing himself to his father’s sacrificial knife (Genesis 
22).

·   Jesus is Absalom: hanging, helpless, pierced for the sake of the 
kingdom by his father’s most reliable assassin (2 Samuel 18:9-14).

·   Jesus is Jonah, who prays to the LORD his God from the belly of the 
fish, “YOU cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas… all YOUR waves 
and YOUR billows passed over me.”

Yet the One who delivers death to His Son is also He who also gives all things 
life. Neither Jesus nor Jonah will despair of the Father’s goodness, even in 
the hour of greatest affliction. Jesus and Jonah both know that God the Father 
has brought them into the bottomless void. There in the darkness, Jesus and 
Jonah both remain unwavering in their trust. Jonah prays Words that speak the 
certainty and assurance of faith—faith in the resurrection. The Words of 
Jonah’s prayer are not good only for himself and not dependable for only his 
crucified Lord Jesus. Jonah/Jesus’ Words good and dependable also for you, 
especially when you also sink beneath the waves: 

I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and He answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice… 
I said, “I am driven away from Your sight; Yet I shall again look
upon Your holy temple.” 
I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet You brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. 
Salvation belongs to the Lord!


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SERM: John 4:5-26, Lent 3, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent

A Family Reunion


Theme: Jesus became your big brother when you were baptized. No one knows more 
about you than He.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Gospel, Jesus sits by a well and sees straight through the 
woman who comes there to draw water.

Dear Christian friends,

In many cases, there is hardly anyone who knows you better than your family. 
Yes, there may be some parents who do not pay attention very well, and as a 
result, that do not know very much about what is going on with their children; 
yes, there are children who have become masters at living double lives, seeming 
to be one person with their parents and an entirely different person with their 
friends; yes, or some families that have been wrecked and some have never 
learned how to communicate very well.

Even so, there is in many families no place to hide. No one has seen more of 
the nitty-gritty in your life than your mother or your brother. No one 
witnessed more of you at your worst than your father or your wife. While such 
intimacy can be a great source of amusement during family reunions and a 
wonderful comfort in moments of family, it also exposes you to danger. The 
closer you are to your family, the greater potential for injury:

·   When people know about your past, they can hold it against you when 
they get angry at you in the present—even if they are your closest loved ones. 
Very likely, you use the past against your family, and they have used it 
against you. Just think about those family arguments (or better, family wars) 
that drag all the skeletons out of the family closet. “You always run and hide 
during family crisis, leaving me holding the bag.” “Cousin Hank is such a drama 
queen that he always makes things worse than they are.” “Every time Aunt Sally 
brings her children over for a visit, I need to repair something in my house.” 
“Brother Billy was selfish when we were children and he hasn’t changed a bit.” 
“I don’t talk to Sister Sue any more because she did thus-and-such thirty years 
ago and never said she was sorry for it.” 

·   The past is always with you when you are with your family. Even when 
you are not at war, these people can easily be constant, living reminders of 
things you would rather forget. Here is a common example: A divorce that took 
place decades ago will inevitably come to mind every holiday season, as the 
children try to figure out whether the grandkids should see grandma at 
Thanksgiving and grandpa at Christmas, or vice versa. 

Listen again to part of today’s Gospel. As you do, give thought to your family 
and think about the potential for personal injury that is part of being in a 
family:

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered 
Him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have 
no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not 
your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I 
perceive that You are a prophet.”

Jesus is a prophet, but He is not so much speaking as a prophet in this Gospel. 
Jesus is speaking more like this woman’s closest family member. Jesus is 
speaking like a brother. When you are with Jesus, as with any other close 
family member, there is no place for you to hide. 

By speaking so intimately and so directly with her, Jesus places this woman 
into a very troubling spot, an exposed spot that might possibly lead to 
ridicule or condemnation. Most likely, this woman has been such a spot before. 
Not many people come to the well during “the sixth hour,” that is, hottest part 
of the day. This Gospel reads like this woman was trying to avoid people. (She 
probably wasn’t too popular with some of the people in town, and she was 
probably way too popular with the others.) When you avoid people, you can avoid 
the past and all of the pain that it brings you in the present. 

But you cannot avoid your family, and there sat Jesus beside the well when a 
woman of Samaria came to draw water. 

“Go, call your husband, and come here.” 
“I have no husband.” 
“You are right”

St. John’s Gospel is all about baptism. Last week you heard Jesus explain to 
Nicodemus, 

Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Truly, truly, I say 
to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom 
of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit… You must be born again (John 3:3, 5-7).

Stated another way, Baptism is your birth into God’s family, the family of the 
Spirit. “That which is born of Spirit is spirit.”

If last week’s Gospel showed you how you become part of God’s family, this 
week’s Gospel shows you the kind of family you get when you are baptized. You 
get Jesus as your older brother, and Jesus knows absolutely everything about 
you, even those things you would

SERM: Jonah 1:9-17 and John 11:45-53, Midweek Lent 3

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Midweek of Lent 3

JUXTAPOSITION


Theme: It is good that One Man should die for the sake of the people.

Juxtaposition. It may not be a word you hear everyday, but it has a common, 
everyday meaning. When you juxtapose two objects, you are simply placing them 
side-by-side. Writers, painters, designers, builders: many people use 
juxtaposition—many people place two objects side-by-side—in order to show you 
things that you might not otherwise notice or realize by looking at the two 
objects separately and by themselves.

Here is an example of juxtaposition: Think about a grapevine growing on a 
trellis. (Nothing fancy about that.) Now think of a crucifix, with Jesus is 
nailed hands and feet to the cross. (Again, a common image.) Now juxtapose the 
two. Picture your Lord Jesus crucified on a grapevine (as artists often did in 
the Middle Ages). Jesus was not literally crucified on a grapevine. When these 
two images get juxtaposed—when the blood of the cross is placed near 
wine-producing grapes—this shows you something. The juxtaposition of a crucifix 
and a grapevine illustrates how the blood of the cross and the 
blood-joined-to-wine in Holy Communion are one and the same, “poured out… for 
the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

Juxtaposition. When you juxtapose the prophet Jonah and our dear Lord Jesus, 
placing these two men side-by-side, astonishing similarities emerge: 

·   Both of Jonah and Jesus sleep in a boat during a storm, awakened only 
when the experienced sailors on board seek their help.

·   God marks both Jonah and Jesus as guilty, as the one upon whom God’s 
wrath must fall. Jonah was identified by casting lots; Jesus by a descending 
dove.

·   Both Jonah and Jesus face death in the water. Jonah gets thrown into 
the sea and Jesus wades into His Baptism, where He takes upon Himself and 
begins carry the sin of the world.

Now push the juxtaposition a step further. Compare the treatment Jonah received 
from the sailors and the treatment Jesus received from the Jewish Council. It 
already sounds bad enough when we hear Caiaphas say out loud what we all know 
and feel in our hearts: “It is better for you that one man should die for the 
people.” But this declaration is made worse when we juxtapose the Jewish 
Council with the sailors in Jonah’s boat.

·   The Jewish Council was working desperately, trying to find a way to put 
Jesus to death.

·   The sailors in Jonah’s boat worked with equal desperation, trying to 
find a way to keep Jonah alive.

[Jonah] said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will 
quiet down for you…” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, 
but they could not.

·   How is that for juxtaposition? Jonah finds brotherly, self-sacrificing 
help from the hands and the backs of strangers. Jesus “came to His own, and His 
own people did not receive Him” (John 1:11) so Jesus gives His hands and His 
back for them. 

You might not like the sound of it (I have not met many Christians who do), but 
Caiaphas is undeniably right: “It is better for you that one man should die for 
the people.” The juxtaposition of Jonah and Jesus forces us to admit that 
Caiaphas is right. “The men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could 
not.” Why could they not? The storm of divine fury was simply too great. Jesus 
cannot escape the judgment and wrath of God any more than Jonah can. Jonah must 
be thrown into the water, or the entire ship will be lost. Jesus must likewise 
be nailed to the cross. Bother are now guilty. Both must give up their lives or 
many other lives will, of necessity, be lost. Both must be swallowed up. “It is 
better for you that one man should die for the people.” Jonah or Jesus: the one 
traded for the many. Jesus declared that “no sign will be given… except for the 
sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:39) but that one sign is more than
 enough: 

“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great 
fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and tree nights in the heart of the 
earth” (Matthew 12:40).


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SERM: Jonah 14-10 and John 1:29-36, Midweek Lent 2

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Midweek of Lent 2

THE LOTTERY


Theme: When Jesus was baptized, God identified Him as the Guilty One.


Suppose we held a little lottery here amongst ourselves tonight:

·   We could start our lottery by having the head of each family come 
forward and draw for his or her entire household. (All the single people in the 
congregation gather together as a family and one representative could draw for 
the whole group.) Who knows? Maybe your family would win.

·   Young or old, everyone in the winning household would then have his or 
her name placed into a second drawing. Each member of this winning household 
could then draw to determine who is the individual winner of our lottery. Maybe 
you win. Maybe your young child wins.

·   We could all then gather around the individual winner of our lottery 
and stone that person to death (from Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery,” [1948]).

Did you feel a sensation of horror at my last suggestion? How much more 
horrified or nauseated would you feel if you watched our lottery unfold, 
knowing from the very beginning that you be the winner? (In this case, we 
should probably call the winner the loser.)

All the sailors gather around Jonah in the storm-tossed boat, all the sailors 
prepare to cast their lots, but Jonah already knows the outcome of the game. 
Jonah will win, and having won, Jonah will lose. “Come, let us cast lots, that 
we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us,’” they said, but Jonah 
already knows who should be held accountable, who MUST be held accountable. 
“They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.” Jonah enters the water on account 
of his sins. Having won the lottery—having been thus identified by God—Jonah 
will be thrown into the sea; baptized into death.

Keep track of Jonah’s three-step sequence of events: First Jonah sleeps in the 
boat; second, Jonah gets identified by God; third, Jonah enters the water. Keep 
this three-step sequence in mind while you listen to what John the Baptist says 
about Jesus. Jesus also won a lottery, knowing from the very beginning the 
outcome of the game that would identify Him for death:

[John] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who 
takes away the sin of the world! … I myself did not know Him, but He who sent 
me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and 
remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have 
borne witness that this is the Son of God. … Behold, the Lamb of God!”

Our Lord Jesus follows the same three-step sequence of events that Jonah 
followed, except in reverse order. It is almost uncanny: for Jonah it was 
sleep, identification of guilt, and then entry into the water. For Jesus, it is 
the direct opposite: 

·   First Jesus enters the water—the water of His Baptism. There He gathers 
up all Jonah’s guilt along with your guilt and mine, too.

·   Second, Jesus wins the lottery, so to speak. Jesus gets identified as 
the Guilty One, “the Lamb of God who is now bearing the sins of the world.”  
Jesus’ baptism could be compared to the casting of lots in Jonah’s boats 
because in both cases, God picks the winner. Just as God identified Jonah the 
culprit through the casting of lots, God likewise identified Jesus the culprit 
through the descending dove. “This is He.”

·   Finally, long after His Baptism, Jesus sleeps while His disciples 
despair (Matthew 8:24-27), just as Jonah’s shipmates despaired. 

It is almost as if Jesus were walking backward, so to speak, through Jonah’s 
life. When you look at Jesus in this way, as if He were walking backward 
through the life of His wayward prophet Jonah, you get more than a picture of 
the Messiah who does all things well. Jesus does not merely come to cover over 
our sin or set aside our sin. Jesus comes to reverse the terrible results of 
our sin. Jesus comes to rewind our lives, so to speak, undoing and erasing all 
of the disasters we have created in our lives. By going backward through 
Jonah’s life, Jesus takes us back to the very beginning, prior to Jonah’s 
rebellion and sin. In so doing, Jesus our Sin-Bearer and our Guilty One and our 
Lottery Winner allows us to think that His forgiveness of our sins is so 
perfect and so complete that He is will likewise fix and overcome even the 
damage that we ourselves have done. 

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SERM: Psalm 91 (Introit), Lent 1, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

Psalms on a Clothesline

Theme: The Psalms apply to you—all promises in God’s Scriptures apply to 
you—because you are the baptized of Christ, whose hope is firmly rooted in the 
resurrection of all flesh.


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Introit from Psalm 91, God makes a solemn promise: “He will 
command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their 
hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” That 
is nice to hear, but to whom is God speaking? Do you and I have any business 
applying this promise to ourselves, or is the promise spoken to someone else?

Dear Christian friends,

Yesterday, as a way of helping my fellow pastors, I officiated a funeral for a 
lady who was a member of our sister congregation in Kansas City. Standing 
graveside, we prayed Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. …
The Lord is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. 
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 
The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life (vv 1-2, 5-7). 

It probably does not sound surprising to you that we would pray such Words at a 
funeral because most of you have attended Christian funerals before. The Words 
are familiar. But put yourself into the shoes of the passerby, or the 
unbeliever who is attending a Christian funeral for the first time. Such a 
person could easily chuckle at such Words and take them as proof that our 
Christian faith really amounts to nothing at all. How can you say that the Lord 
is watching over this person whom you are now burying? How is it possible for 
you to say, “the Lord will keep you from all evil”? Death is evil and this 
woman has died and your Lord did nothing to prevent it!

Any Christian would answer such protests quite easily: 

·   Yes, this woman from Kansas City has died and is now buried, but God 
her heavenly Father is by no means finished with her! Every promise that God 
spoke to this woman when He baptized her will yet be fulfilled in the 
resurrection on the Last Day. 

·   Yes, she has died, but the evil of her death has been removed by her 
Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection, which means she will never die.

·   The LORD has indeed kept her life. This Christian lady is now securely 
at rest and at peace in heaven with her Lord Jesus and His heavenly Father. Her 
body will be raised and glorified soon enough.

We can rightly apply the promises of Psalm 121 to this lady from Kansas City 
for two reasons: because of her Baptism and because God promises to raise all 
the dead on the Last Day. If Baptism and the Resurrection of all Flesh could be 
compared to two posts planted in the ground, then Psalm 121 is pinned to the 
clothesline that stretches between the posts.  

I am telling you about Psalm 121 and its application to those Christians who 
have died so that you can have a foundation for understanding Psalm 91 in 
today’s Introit and its application to you Christians who are yet alive.

He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On 
their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

To whom is God speaking? Do you and I have any business applying this promise 
to ourselves, or is the promise spoken to someone else? Tread carefully 
Christian! If you think about your life’s experiences while you hear these 
Words, you might be tempted to head in the wrong direction. 

·   If you flatly say, “These Words apply to me! I personally claim them as 
my own!” then you might still end up with some explaining to do. If these Words 
indeed apply to you, how do you account for the physical injuries you have 
suffered in your life? If you have ever sustained any sort of injury at all—if 
you have even once stubbed your toe—you might have a hard time convincing 
people that God’s angels hold you up in their hands.

·   Some Christians—including many pastors—might say, “Psalm 91 does NOT 
apply to you or to me. These Words apply to our Lord Jesus Christ and Him 
only.” That certainly is one approach, and it is given support by the devil in 
today’s Gospel, but that approach does not give very much day-to-day comfort to 
you and to me. At face value the whole “protection of angels” thing did not 
even work out that well for Jesus. He might not have literally struck His foot 
against a stone, but plenty worse was dished out to Him. 

Remind yourself of Psalm 121 prayed for those who have died. “The LORD will 
keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.” Baptism and the Last Day 
Resurrection make it right for us to apply the promises of Psalm 121 to 
Christians who have died. If Baptism and the Resurrection of all Flesh could be 
compared to two posts planted in the ground, then Psalm 121 is pinned to

SERM: Jonah 1:1-6 and Matthew 8:24-27, Midweek Lent 1

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for Midweek of Lent 1

COPYCAT


Theme: By reenacting Jonah’s journey, Jesus alerts His disciples that God’s 
wrath is now upon Him.

Jack the Ripper is London’s most famous murderer. He committed his crimes more 
than a century ago, and yet still today, his name is known all over the world. 
Jack the Ripper is so famous that many other murderers have wanted to pattern 
themselves after him, in order to share his notoriety. These copycat killers 
want you to think of Jack when you think of them. These copycats want to their 
name to be closely associated with Jack’s name, so they choose the same sort of 
targets Jack chose and they murder in the same manner Jack murdered. 

And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being 
swamped by the waves; but He was asleep. And they went and woke Him, saying, 
“Save us, Lord; we are perishing.”

What exactly was happening when Jesus climbed over the gunnels of the boat and 
curled up to sleep? Theologians and Bible scholars often use this story from 
Jesus life as a way of pointing to His divinity, and in particular, His power 
over the forces of nature. Why should the Lord of Creation feel afraid of a 
storm? There is no reason not to take a bit of a nap when you are able calm 
wind and wave any time you wish, merely by speaking a Word. 

Jesus’ trip upon the sea displays more than His divinity. By getting into the 
boat and sleeping during a violent storm, Jesus acts like a copycat killer, so 
to speak. Jesus deliberately emulates and copies the famous and well-known 
prophet Jonah, who likewise slept in raging seas.

·   In both cases, with Jonah and with Jesus, the men in the boat turned to 
a landlubber for help. Peter, Andrew, James and John are not only experienced 
sailors, but they know how to work together in these familiar waters. In the 
same way, the sailors in Jonah’s boat knew exactly what to do, “and they hurled 
the cargo… into the sea to lighten it.”

·   In both cases, with Jonah and with Jesus, the sailors feel indignant at 
what they see when they come to the prophet for help. “What do you mean, you 
sleeper?” declared Jonahs’ captain. “Save us, Lord; we are perishing,” cried 
the disciples—and St. Mark even has them asking Jesus, “Do You not care that we 
are perishing?” (Mark 4:38).

·   Of the four Gospel writers, St. Matthew especially loves to depict 
Jesus as though He were re-tracing the steps of God’s Old Testament people and 
living the same life that they lived. For example, Matthew is the one who said 
that the baby Jesus was whisked off to Egypt and then brought back into the 
Promised Land so that prophecy could be fulfilled which said, “Out of Egypt I 
have called My Son” (Matthew 2:15). So, too, when he described how Jesus slept 
in the boat, Matthew copied the Word from the book of Jonah that describes how 
Jonah slept in the boat (ekatheuden). 

And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being 
swamped by the waves; but He was asleep. And they went and woke Him, saying, 
“Save us, Lord; we are perishing.”

These parallels with the book of Jonah are no accident! When Jesus climbs into 
the boat and goes to sleep, He is not merely setting the stage to display His 
divinity! Jesus is retracing Jonah’s steps. Jesus is acting as Jonah acted. In 
the same way that copycat killers emulated the horrible crimes of Jack the 
Ripper, Jesus here emulates Jonah’s crimes—and He does so for your sake.

Jesus is copycatting Jonah for your sake because

·   Jonah ran away from saving a great many people. By retracing Jonah’s 
steps, so to speak, Jesus does rightly what Jonah did wrongly. Jesus shows 
Himself willing to do that which Jonah was unwilling to do. 

·   Jesus wants you to think of Jonah when you think of Him (Matthew 
12:38-41). Jonah bore God’s wrath onto the sea. By copying Jonah, Jesus is 
showing you that He also is bearing God’s wrath, not only through the sea but 
all the way to the cross and the grave!

·   Jonah suffered God’s anger so that Nineveh could be saved. By mirroring 
Jonah so carefully, Jesus is showing you that He suffered also God’s anger—He 
suffered for your sake, so that you, like Nineveh, may be saved.

___
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SERM: Matthew 17:1-9, Transfiguration, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Transfiguration of our Lord

Christ in the Liturgy
Or
How to Read the Sermon on the Mount

Theme: Did you not enjoy the sermon? Shucks. Try again next week. In the 
meantime, Christ is nevertheless giving you ALL His gifts in the Christian 
liturgy.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Gospel, Jesus comforts and gladdens His disciples by being 
with them. First, Jesus shines in their presence with such divine brightness 
and warmth that Peter rejoices, “Lord, it is good that we are here.” Then, 
after the disciples were terrified by the voice from the cloud, “Jesus came and 
touched them, saying ‘Rise, and have no fear.’” With His Words and with His 
actions, Jesus brings His Christians comfort and peace.

Dear Christian friends,

The Sermon on the Mount Sounds Like Law and Condemnation

For the last several weeks, the Gospel for each Sunday has come from Jesus’ 
Sermon on the Mount. Taken at face value, each of these Gospel readings has 
been brutal, to say the least:

·   It began five weeks ago, on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, when 
we heard the Beatitudes. Among other things, Jesus said to us, “Blessed are the 
pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). If you feel certain that 
your heart will never be pure enough for you to see God, you can at least take 
comfort in the knowledge that my heart is more impure than yours. 

·   The next Sunday, on Epiphany 5, we heard Jesus say, “Let your light 
shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your 
Father in heaven.” These Words are fraught with condemnation, especially when I 
think about all the negative things people routinely see in me. My not-so-good 
works quite possibly outweigh the good works people get to see and I am not 
sure that my impatience, my anger, and my self-righteous indignation do all 
that much to give glory to my Father in heaven.

·   The Gospel for Epiphany 6, again from the Sermon on the Mount, only 
made matters worse. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw 
it away… and if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it 
away” (Matthew 5:29, 30). If my sin could be solved with the amputation of only 
a hand and an eye, I would certainly do it. But sin is much bigger than that, 
and before long I would have to cut off my two hands, two eyes, two ears, my 
tongue, my feet, my head and my heart as well. That might be too much to ask, 
Jesus.

·   Two weeks ago, Jesus destroyed any chance for me to redeem myself: 
“You… must be perfect,” He said, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 
5:48).

·Last week was just the icing on the condemnation cake: “Do not be 
anxious about your life,” said Jesus. “Which of you… can add a single hour to 
his span of life?” said Jesus. “Do not be anxious about tomorrow,” said Jesus 
(Matthew 6:25, 27, 34). Has Jesus watched the news lately?

Jesus’ Transfiguration Will Help You Identify the Gospel in His Sermon on the 
Mount

I am reminding you of the Gospels from the past five weeks—all of them drawn 
from the Sermon on the Mount—because today is the Transfiguration of our Lord. 
The Gospel for today will help you to understand what was happening to you 
while you were hearing all those frightful, condemnatory things from the Sermon 
on the Mount these past weeks. In today’s Gospel,  

Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will 
make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He 
was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice 
from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; 
listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and 
were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no 
fear.”

There are several important parallels between today’s Gospel that takes place 
on this mountaintop and the sermon our Lord previously preached on a 
mountaintop. These parallels will help you immensely as you struggle to read 
and to hear, not merely the Law, but especially the Gospel in our Lord’s Sermon 
on the Mount. 

·   First parallel: In both cases, a heavenly voice speaks to you. Here at 
the Transfiguration, it is the frightful voice of the heavenly Father speaking 
from the sky. At the Sermon on the Mount, it was the voice of your heaven-sent 
Lord Jesus—no less divine, but equal to the Father with respect to His 
divinity. Jesus did not frightfully boom from heaven during the Sermon on the 
Mount, as the Father does here in today’s Gospel—but surely you can agree that 
Jesus said some horribly frightful things there. (Who wouldn’t feel afraid by 
such divine commands as “Blessed are the pure in heart” and “You… must be 
perfect,” and “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it 
away”?)

·   Second parallel: In both cases, God want

SERM: Jonah 2:10-4:11 & Matt 12:38-41, Ash Wednesday

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

I am preaching the book of Jonah for my midweek services in Lent.
Ash Wednesday's reading will be the final portion of the book, as indicated in 
the subject line, and the subsequent services will take up Jonah from the 
beginning.


Sermon for Ash Wednesday

A SILK PURSE FROM A SOW’S EAR

Theme: The image of Christ in Jonah is nearly unrecognizable when Jonah refuses 
the office he has been given by God—yet Christ does not run away.

Some men simply are not good fathers. They either abuse their children or 
neglect them. Even men who are good fathers—men who are truly dads in the best 
sense of the word—even these men have acted or reacted toward their children in 
regretful ways. Sometimes fatherly rebuke is harsher than it needs to be. 
Sometimes the punishment is greater than the crime. Sometimes dad is just too 
tired or preoccupied or selfish to pay attention to what his poor child is 
trying to say.

When we fathers fail as fathers, we misrepresent God the heavenly Father to our 
children. When we fail, we make it hard for our children to see why they might 
want a heavenly Father. The image of the Father becomes obscured and 
hidden—sometimes His image turns unrecognizable—when we fathers refuse or fall 
short of the office and responsibility we have been given. 

This guilt does not belong to fathers alone. Husbands (Ephesians 5:25), mothers 
(Isaiah 49:15), older brothers (Romans 8:29), and even little children (Luke 
2:51): God gives to each person an office and a place. When you refuse the 
office you have been given—when you fail in the office you have been given—you 
cloud and obscure the image of God that He portrays to your family and to the 
world by means of your office.

Jonah has been there and Jonah has done that. What really is the difference 
between a prophet who fails to be prophetic and a father who fails to be 
fatherly, a mother who fails to be motherly, or a brother who fails to be 
brotherly? What guilt has Jonah incurred that you and I have not? 

That is what makes the book of Jonah a good read for the season of Lent. 

·   First, Jonah might make it easier to see why each of us would dare to 
fail and why we would tolerate failing so miserably in the offices we have been 
given. Jonah fails in his office for the same reason you and I fail in our 
offices. Jonah boils down to lack of love, to self-centeredness, to wanting 
only the best while others get the worst. For example, Jonah gets totally 
ticked off when he loses the shade and comfort he received from a silly little 
plant, yet he seems entirely unmoved at the thought of an entire city being 
destroyed. By comparison, if I had a green plant for every time I got too 
irritated when one of my sons inconvenienced me, we would be living in a 
jungle. Why does Jonah exist, except for Nineveh? For that matter, why do I 
exist, except for my neighbor—most especially my sons and my wife and my 
congregation? Jonah’s anger over a wilted plant is as much about my sin as it 
is about Jonah’s sin. Perhaps you will see your sin
 rooted there, too.

·   The real joy and benefit of Jonah, however, is not what Jonah shows me 
about me. The real benefit is how this fighting, kicking, runaway prophet 
declares the work of my Lord Jesus Christ for your and for me. Jesus points us 
to “the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Then Jesus goes on to explain, “Just as 
Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will 
the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” But 
this is only the first and best point of comparison between Jesus and Jonah. As 
we proceed our way through Lent, reading the book of Jonah, you will see many 
ways in which God presses Jonah into the image of His Son. You will hear again 
and again how the image and light of Christ shines through Jonah, even while 
Jonah protests and flees the task and responsibility he has been given. 

·   This is good news for you. “Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according 
to the Word of the LORD… and the people of Nineveh believed God.” Jonah will 
prove to be a great blessing for fathers who never fail to fail. Nineveh is 
saved by means of Jonah’s prophecy. Nineveh is saved, despite the fact that 
Jonah is not a very good prophet. If God can make such a beautiful silk purse 
from a sow’s ear like Jonah, who knows what miracles He has done and will 
continue to do through us? Jonah allows us to believe that our children have a 
chance of remaining Christian and might continue to love their heavenly Father, 
even when we earthly fathers cast such a poor image of Him. Jonah allows us to 
believe that husbands and mothers and brothers and even small children still 
somehow convey the image of Christ and His salvation, despite their 
unwillingness and in the face of their sin. Jonah displays the Christ who 
forgives you all your sins and all your
 failures and who shall not fail you even when all others do. Your Christ shall 

SERM: Matthew 6:24-34, Epiphany 8, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday After the Epiphany

A Sermon on Preparing to Live


Theme: Are you no longer afraid to die? Great! How do you feel about living?

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Today’s Gospel is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says to 
you, “Do not be anxious about your life.” With these Words, Jesus acts like a 
lifeguard who performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. With these Words, Jesus 
breathes and exhales life itself into your heart and mind. “Do not be anxious 
about your life.” With these Words, Jesus chases anxiety away from you; He 
banishes fear and forbids all fear; He miraculously fills you with courage and 
willingness to live.

Dear Christian friends,

Over the years, I have heard many Christians say—and it seems that quite a few 
of you have said it to me very recently—“I am not afraid to die.”

Congratulations!

Many things can bring a Christian to that point in life at which he or she can 
flatly and unblinkingly say, “I am not afraid to die. I am in fact ready to 
die.”

·   Certainly the good news about Jesus’ forgiveness of all your sins will 
rob you of your fear of death. Over time, as the good news of forgiveness roots 
and grows more deeply within you, it will choke away your fear of death. The 
Book of Hebrews states this very thing when it speaks about Jesus: 

“Since the children have flesh and blood, He [Jesus] too shared in their 
humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of 
death—that is the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery 
by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15). 

Stated another way, because Jesus defeated death and the devil for you, you no 
longer need to feel afraid of dying. What is death when you have been 
guaranteed to life and health and peace forever?

·   What about God’s miraculous love for neighbor, which He has created 
within you by the power of His Word? Certainly God’s miracle of love for 
neighbor will also evoke a sense of readiness or willingness to die. Jesus 
says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for 
his friends” (John 15:13). In the same way that Jesus loved you unto death, 
“even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8), you probably can think of someone 
whom you love so dearly that you would gladly lay down your life for that 
person. (My first memory and realization of this sort of love came in 1980, 
when I looked into the cradle of my newborn baby brother.) So sincere love for 
neighbor will motivate many Christians to say, “I am not afraid to die. I am 
ready to die.”

·   In addition to faith in Jesus and love for neighbor, there is a third 
very good reason why a Christian might feel ready to die. Call it 
world-weariness. Call it disgust with the cesspool of daily struggle. Call it 
feeling as though there is nothing left for which to live. Christians who have 
suffered great losses in life begin to feel this way. Christians who outlive 
too many of their friends and relatives begin to feel this way. Christians who 
suffer debilitating illnesses or terminal diseases begin to feel this way. 
Christians who feel lonely or forgotten or overlooked or neglected begin to 
feel this way. Christians who feel the weight of their age begin to feel this 
way. “I am not afraid to die,” they say. “I am in fact ready to die,” they say, 
“because life has nothing less for me.”

Allow me to say again, congratulations! If you now feel unafraid and ready to 
die, good for you! By the miraculous power of God’s living Word, you possess 
exactly one half of the cookie. You are halfway free. 

Today’s Gospel gives you the other half of the cookie, so to speak. Today’s 
Gospel exhales and breathes into you the other fifty percent of the freedom 
that is now yours in Christ. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to YOU, “Do not be 
anxious about your life.” These Words intend to do more than merely take away 
your fear of dying. With these Words, Jesus means to take away your fear of 
living.

What is that? You say that you do not feel afraid of living? I am not so sure 
that any of us have truly lost our fear of living:

·   Some Christians take it really hard when they lose their property, such 
as through a job loss or a house fire or a natural disaster. (By the way, St. 
Paul raises a very good point in today’s Epistles when he asks, “What do you 
have that you did not receive?” [1 Corinthians 4:7]). Think about what you have 
accumulated. Do any of us really think we could shrug our shoulders and walk 
away without a tear, should it all gets swept away? (When I think about all the 
hours I have spent building my house, it becomes very difficult to remember 
that the entire building is nothing less than a gift dropped out of heaven from 
God.) What is this, other than a deep fear of living? 

To such fear, Jesus speaks consolation and peace in today’s Gospel: “Do not be 
anxious about y

SERM: Matt. 5:38-48, Epiphany 7, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany

Context is Everything


Theme: You will probably love the Sermon on the Mount more if you always keep 
in mind Who preaches it to you.


Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Today’s Gospel is from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today Jesus the 
Perfect Son of God says to you, “You… must be perfect, as your heavenly Father 
is perfect.” The New International Version in this case is simpler and I like 
it better: “Be perfect… as you heavenly Father is perfect.”

Dear Christian friends,

Context is everything. You can change the meaning your words simply by changing 
the context in which those words are used. Here is a little exercise for you 
that will illustrate what I mean: 

·   Choose someone in your life that you care about very deeply. Make it 
someone close, someone to whom you are intensely devoted, someone for whom you 
have deep and abiding feelings. Picture yourself saying three words to that 
person: “I love you.” In this context of speaking to someone for whom you have 
deep feelings, the words “I love you” have a certain meaning for you and for 
that person.

·   Now change the context for those three little words. Now picture 
yourself saying, “I love you,” to a plate of fried chicken. Because the context 
has changed, the meaning of the words “I love you” has likewise changed. The 
phrase “I love you” does not mean the same thing when spoken to fried chicken 
as it does when spoken to a close relative or a friend.

Sometimes, the context will completely change the impact a word or a phrase has 
on you. You can make that same word or phrase have directly the opposite impact 
of what it first had, simply by changing the context. Let’s try another 
exercise. We won’t use the three words “I love you” this time. This time we 
will use three stronger words, “go to hell.”

·   What sort of meaning or sentiment would I convey if I were flatly to 
say to someone, “Go to hell”? Obviously, the meaning of that phrase is very, 
very negative. The person who hears me speak such words might not respond 
terribly well. In this context, the words “go to hell” would help me to create 
anger or insult or injury or pain.

·   Place these same words into the right context, and they will not 
inflict any pain at all. Create the right context for the words “go to hell” 
and suddenly these words can help convey promise and consolation and peace. For 
example, I might say, “Your God has acted for you so that you will not go to 
hell. Jesus’ blood and righteousness, given and shed for you, assure you that 
you will never go to hell.” 

·   My three little words did not change. The context radically altered the 
impact and message I delivered with my three little words.

Always keep context in mind when you hear or read the Sermon on the Mount. 
Today’s Gospel comes from the Sermon on the Mount and this Gospel says to you 
in no uncertain terms, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

·   “Be perfect.” By themselves and taken out of their context, you have no 
defense against these Words. These Words make an impossible demand upon you—a 
demand that you know you have no chance of fulfilling. 

·   “Be perfect.” Outside of their context, these Words leave you with no 
hope. You might be able to fool yourself into thinking that you can make 
self-improvements toward perfection, but you would only be fooling yourself. 
Nobody who knows you is fooled in the least. We all know you well enough to 
know that you are not perfect and you won’t be anytime soon. You know the same 
about us. 

·   “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” By themselves and 
apart from their context these Words essentially say to you, “Go to hell.” If 
that is not painful, I do not know what is.

Place these words back into the right context, and they will not inflict any 
pain at all. Keep these Words in their correct and original context, and 
suddenly convey to you promise and consolation and peace. 

What is the context for “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”? These 
Words are spoken to you by:

·   Jesus, the Perfect Son of God, the One in whom there is no darkness (1 
John 1:5), no sin (Hebrews 4:15), and no deceit (Isaiah 53:9).

·   Jesus, the One who came to you, not demanding you to produce 
perfection, but giving His perfection to you (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

·   Jesus, the One who draws imperfect people to Himself while those who 
are confident in their own righteousness (Luke 18:9) get turned away.

·   Jesus, the One who came, not to give you a new law, but to accomplish 
and fulfill for you every dot and every iota of the Law by His perfect life and 
sin-atoning death.

·   Jesus, the One who does miraculous things simply by speaking His Words. 

o   And they brought to [Jesus] a man who was deaf and had a speech 
impediment… And looking up to heaven, [Jes

SERM: Introit Psalm 98:7-9 Epiphany 6 A, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany

Burn, Baby, Burn

Theme: Global warming gives you a great opportunity to confess the Christian 
faith
 that Jesus “shall come to judge the living and the dead.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Today’s Introit from Psalm 98 uses human terms to speak about the way the 
entire creation right now rejoices in its Creator: “Let the sea roar, and all 
that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their 
hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the LORD.” Why should the 
creation rejoice so resoundingly? The psalmist explains: “Let the rivers clap 
their hands; let the hills sing for joy before the LORD, for [because] HE COMES 
TO JUDGE THE EARTH.”

Dear Christian friends,

“I am praying for global warming.” This sentence was written across the top of 
a letter that arrived in my mailbox at Christmastime. It was a form letter 
written by a fellow pastor. The letter had been sent to hundreds, if not 
thousands, of people. The opening sentence caught me completely off guard.

“I am praying for global warming.” It is not that I disagree with the idea. In 
fact, I am now totally on board with the thought of praying for global warming. 
I was caught off guard—and immediately a little jealous—that this pastor had 
stated the Christian faith so simply, so jarringly, and so beautifully.

·   You can hear all kinds of messages in the media, shrieking that global 
warming is a terrible trend and we must act immediately to save the planet, 
especially if we want to live here for millions of years. (Do we?)

·   You can also hear plenty of other people snort and say that the whole 
idea of global warming is hogwash; that global warming is merely a leftwing 
conspiracy to establish communism by means of environmental terror.

·   You do not hear many people saying, “Global warming? Grovy! ‘Your 
redemption is drawing near’” (Luke 21:28).

“I am praying for global warming.” The pastor who wrote these words was only 
echoing those many passages in God’s Scriptures that say essentially the same 
thing. 

·   In today’s Introit from Psalm 98, why does the sea roar? Why do the 
rivers clap their hands and the hills sing for joy? The entire creation 
expresses such rejoicing “before the LORD, BECAUSE He comes to judge the 
earth.” It is almost as if this Third Rock from the Sun were waiting with bated 
breath for Jesus and His glorious return, even now clapping and whistling and 
hooting like a concert crowd before the band takes the stage. 

·   God’s apostle Paul said a similar thing in Romans, although he used 
Words that sound opposite to the Words used here in Psalm 98. Where Psalm 98 
speaks about the earth’s longing for Jesus in terms of exuberant rejoicing, 
Romans chapter 8 speaks in terms of travail and suffering and the pain of 
childbirth.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 
… the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay … the whole 
creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now 
(Romans 8:19-22). 

·   This yearning for the completion of childbirth echoes back into 
Isaiah’s prophecy. God promises you in Isaiah that even the rocks and the dust 
beneath your feet will benefit from the glorious return of Creation’s Christ. 
When Jesus comes again, “the earth will give birth to her dead” (Isaiah 26:19b, 
NIV).

In the resurrection of all flesh on the last day, “You who dwell in the dust 
[will] awake and sing for joy!” (Isaiah 26:19) The song you will one day sing 
is the song that the creation now sings in yearning and anticipation and hope. 
“Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before 
the LORD.” Psalm 98 allows us to believe that the creation sings and 
rejoices—even in the midst of possible global warming and its threatened 
chaos—the creation sings and rejoices “BECAUSE He [the LORD] comes to judge the 
earth.” 

“I am praying for global warming.” Consider the possibility that the planet 
does not want you to save the planet. Someone much greater and more able than 
you has, by means of His crucifixion and death and resurrection, already saved 
the planet. And Jesus is coming again to judge. The sea roars and the rivers 
clap their hands with joyful anticipation. 

There are all kinds of technologies being developed right now—technologies that 
stand to make this earth a cleaner and somewhat safer place to live. It is 
entirely possible that alternative energy sources and “greener” living will 
eventually drive down the costs of heating and cooling, reduce waste and 
pollution, improve medical technologies, and relieve the poverty and the 
suffering of countless people. (Then again, things might not change all that 
much on this earth—after all, nothing can reform human nature.)

Let’s develop all of these technologies and

SERM: Introit--Psalm 119:9-16, Epiphany 5, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany

A Word-Plated Heart

Theme: Rather than inflating yourself or debasing yourself based on what you 
see inside your heart, focus instead on the Word of God covers your heart like 
gold plating or wall-to-wall carpet.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Introit from Psalm 119, King David prays, “I have stored up 
Your Word in my heart, [O LORD,] that I might not sin against You.” When he 
says, “I have stored up Your Word,” King David is not talking about stacking up 
God’s Word in his heart like cookies in a cookie jar or hay bales in a barn. 
David is not comparing his heart to a warehouse in which he has stored and kept 
God’s Word for future use. 

David is speaking about wall-to-wall carpeting. David is speaking about the 
gold overlay that covered the ancient temple and its furnishings. You could 
translate these Words from David as, “I have wall-to-wall carpeted my heart 
with your Word,” O Lord. “I have gold-plated my heart with Your Word so that I 
might not sin against You.”

Dear Christian friends,

What do you do in order to cover over or disguise those flaws you see in 
yourself, but would rather not have other people notice?

·   Do you wear your hair a certain way so that people will not see your 
bald spot or your cowlick or your scar?

·   Do you use makeup to hide a pimple or to divert attention away from 
your crow’s feet?

·   Have you avoided contacts because your glasses hide the dark circles 
under your eyes?

·   Do you want to wear a certain style of clothing because it helps you 
create a certain image for yourself, or because it minimizes those features you 
do not especially like about yourself?

·   Would you rather not go out the door until you have had a chance to get 
everything stapled and strapped securely into place? 

No matter what surface feature you might want to hide—whether pimples or pudge 
or a pasty complexion—no matter what surface feature you might want to hide, 
the stuff on the inside must be hidden most of all. Everyone has stuff they 
want to keep hidden. One difference between old Christians and young Christians 
is that old Christians have accumulated more stuff that we feel the need to 
hide:

·   Young or old, God forbid that we ever learn how to read one another's 
thoughts! War would immediately break out; families would shatter more quickly 
than they now do; society would crumble around us and anarchy would destroy us 
all. Just because something passes through your mind, that does not mean it 
needs to come out of your mouth. God has done exceedingly well by NOT giving us 
the ability to read one another’s minds. I want NO ONE—not my wife or my sons 
or my closest friend—I want NO ONE to know every detail of what I am thinking. 
Take a tour through my heart and mind and you would see unbecoming things about 
me and unflattering opinions about other people—maybe even you. (If you feel 
angry or offended to know that I have such opinions, you only prove my point 
about the need to hide certain things!) Jesus was speaking about you and Jesus 
was speaking about me when He said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, 
murder, adultery, sexual
 immortality, theft, false witness, [and] slander” (Matthew 15:19).

·   Young or old, what things have you done that you need to keep hidden 
like a pimple under makeup? Young or old, what things have happened to you that 
make you feel the need to hide self-consciously, carefully minimizing those 
things that you do not want others to notice about you?

F (Editorial Comment: When I point out to you the way this or that Bible verse 
has been translated, I do NOT point these things out to you in order to 
criticize the hard work that others have done. Sometimes I do not even want to 
talk about the way certain Words have been translated from the Bible because I 
never want you to doubt or to lose confidence in reading the Bible on you own. 
I point out translations of different Words for you because I want to teach 
you; I want to open up to you the rich flavors of God's Word that sometimes you 
might not immediately taste when you read His Word.)

In today’s Introit from Psalm 119, King David prays, “I have stored up Your 
Word in my heart, [O LORD,] that I might not sin against You.” The problem with 
this translation is that it almost makes your heart and my heart seem like a 
better place than they actually are. This translation of today's Introit makes 
it sound as thought our hearts could be compared to a warehouse in which we 
store up God's Word for future use, or a cookie jar into which God's Word can 
be stacked. 

When he says, “I have stored up Your Word,” King David is not talking about 
cookie jars or warehouses. David knows all about that hostile environment we 
call the human heart. When David talks about his heart and our hearts, he is 
talking about a landfill. He i

SERM: Psalm 1:1-5 (Introit), Epiphany 4, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany

TORAH

Do you—or does anyone you know—wish that everyday life could seem to be happier 
than it now is right now? God wants your perspective to change. God promises 
you in today’s Introit Psalm that His LAW makes you happy, or to use another 
word, God’s LAW makes you “blessed” (Psalm 1:1).

Do you feel as though your life could stand to be a bit more prosperous than it 
is at the moment? God wants you to look differently at your life. God assures 
you that His LAW brings prosperity to you, so that you right now and always 
shall be “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3).

Happiness and prosperity: according to today’s Introit psalm, these are the 
gifts that God your heavenly Father both promises and delivers to you and to 
all who “delight…in the LAW of the LORD” (Psalm 1:2).

Dear Christian friends,

Take a walk through a creek or a moving stream on a hot summer day. If you try 
to look down through the rippling waters, everything below the surface will 
seem blurry and out of focus. You will see much more clearly if you look into 
the water through a drinking glass, a Mason jar, or something similar. By using 
the glass jar as a lens, everything in the water will come into clear focus and 
beautiful detail. With the glass jar guiding your eyesight, you will see many 
things in the streambed that otherwise would remain blurry and hidden beneath 
the surface of the water.

Think of God’s Holy Scriptures as being like that creek or stream. God has 
written countless blessings and benefits for you into the pages of His Bible. 
Like a stream of moving water, not all of these blessings and benefits are 
immediately easy to see and understand. You need a lens—a Mason jar (so to 
speak)—that will help you bring God’s blessings and benefits into clear focus 
and beautiful detail for you.

If God’s Scriptures can be compared to a creek or stream, then you could think 
of your Mason jar or drinking glass as being the simple definition of one of 
the Words you see written in the page. Stated another way, unless you 
understand what a particular Word means in God’s Bible, you will never get a 
clear picture of the blessing and benefit God has for you beneath the surface 
of that Word, so to speak. If we do not know the meanings of individual Words 
in God’s Bible, we will not benefit from reading the book!

God promises happiness and prosperity to all who “delight…in the LAW of the 
LORD” (Psalm 1:2). In order for you to realize and benefit from this happiness 
and prosperity that God gives to you through “the LAW of the LORD,” it is 
absolutely essential for you to understand what the Word LAW means in this 
important verse! A right definition of the Word LAW will be the Mason jar that 
allows you look below the rippling surface of this Word, so to speak, so that 
you may see the beautiful gifts that God is right now delivering to you through 
this Word.

When God speaks about delight “in the LAW of the LORD,” He is not speaking 
about the Ten Commandments alone. Yes, the Ten Commandments are included in 
God’s delightful LAW, but by themselves the Ten Commandments are totally unable 
to give you the happiness and prosperity God promises you. Independently and by 
themselves, God’s Ten Commandments 

·   give you sorrow, not happiness. The Ten Commandments expose your sin 
and your shame and the guilt you share with all people everywhere. Who could 
possibly want to feel happy about that? 

·   impoverish you by laying out for you in graphic clarity everything that 
you are not and everything that you are unable to do. The Ten Commandments 
strip you of what little you might think you have. The Ten Commandments expose 
everything that you hate about yourself and about your neighbor, and these 
commandments display for you every reason you have to fear and loathe your God. 

No, there is much more to this Word LAW here in Psalm 1 than the Ten 
Commandments alone. When God speaks about His delightful Law in this Psalm, He 
uses the Hebrew word 

TORAH,

which so much more than “commandment” or “demand.” Although most Bibles usually 
translate the Word as “LAW,” the Hebrew word 

TORAH

means infinitely more than merely LAW. Torah means something more along the 
lines of “LAW and GOSPEL.” Torah might be better translated as “God’s threats 
and promises taken together” or “the full counsel of God into a book and 
declared to you.” 

“Blessed is the man… [whose] delight is in the LAW of the LORD.” That is to 
say, Blessed—happy—is the man whose delight is in the TORAH of the LORD, the 
Law and Gospel of the Lord, the full counsel of the LORD’s Words. God wants you 
to know that when you have the TORAH of the LORD—the counsel of God—at work in 
your heart and in your mind, you are like a tree planted by streams of water. 
God wants you to know that when you have the TORAH of the LORD, you are HAPPY 
and you are PROSPEROUS right here and right now 

SERM: Matthew 4:12-25, Epiphany 3, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Third Sunday After the Epiphany

REPENT

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Gospel, as soon as John got thrown into prison, Jesus 
immediately set to work. Jesus continues what John and the other Old Testament 
prophets did before Him. Jesus preaches to you and to all people everywhere, 
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Dear Christian friends,

When lightening ignites a forest fire in a California mountain range, or when a 
hurricane begins to gather its fury off the coast of Texas, you will inevitably 
find people living in the path of death and destruction who do not want to 
listen. Government officials appear on the front porch, warning these people in 
the strongest terms: “The hurricane or the forest fire is coming. You are not 
going to stop it. Act NOW.” 

The people will not listen. “I can take care of myself. I will tough it out. I 
do not need your help.”

Everything may seem fine while the danger is still distant, but then the forest 
fire begins to melt the siding on the house, or the hurricane picks up your 
boat and throws it through the living room window. NOW you want to escape, but 
you cannot. You do not have the power, you do not have the escape route, and 
you do not have the time. Fire and storm are right there.

What happens? The very same government officials who earlier warned you that 
this was going to happen now come in and save the day along with your backside. 
First they gave you the command, and then they did for you what you would not 
and now could not do. Without them you would be destroyed; with them you escape 
death and you get the gift of life.

God Sent His Son Jesus to Save You from Disaster!

Somewhat like a government official who is warning us of impending disaster, 
Jesus says to you and to me in today’s Gospel, “Repent, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand”—right here at your door and my window. Now ask yourself 
honestly: How is it even possible for you to repent? What exactly does 
repentance look like and what does it mean and how can any of us be certain 
that we have done repentance well enough to gain entry into the kingdom of 
heaven? You do not have any more willpower for repentance than I. Even if you 
did have the desire to repent, what precisely are you going to do? What steps 
do you plan to take? How do you intend to do it?

“The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Fire and storm are right here; Jesus is 
right here and Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead. “Repent, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Like a homeowner who stays too long while the 
disaster looms overhead, it does not matter how much you might want to escape 
the fate of those who refuse to repent. Neither you nor I have the power to 
repent, we no escape route to follow for repentance, and I am not getting any 
younger so maybe we do not have the time. 

So, what happens? The very same Jesus who calls for your repentance now comes 
in and saves you. Jesus is like the government official who warns you to escape 
the storm and the fire, but then He comes and gives you the very escape that 
you now realize you need. First the official gives you the command, and 
then—even while the forest fire is consuming your garage—the official does for 
you what you would not and now could not do. In the same way, Jesus likewise 
says to you, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But then, even 
while the kingdom of heaven is drawing near to you, Jesus does all of your 
repentance for you. Jesus does all your repentance for you from beginning to 
end, without any help or contribution from you at all. Just as the government 
official saves you from the deadly jaws of the looming storm, so likewise does 
Jesus give you your repentance, that is, your deliverance and escape from 
death, and Jesus gives you your
 certainty of forgiveness and life.

Jesus’ Built His Sermon Upon the Sermons of the Old Testament Prophets Who Came 
Before Him, Preparing His Way

When Jesus preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” He is not 
merely echoing the preaching of John the Baptist before Him (Matthew 1-2). 
Rather, Jesus’ sermon about repentance in today’s Gospel taps deeply into God’s 
Old Testament, where God spells out for you precisely how it is that He works 
His miracle of your repentance for you. Essentially, Jesus is applying 
personally to you what God had earlier said through His prophets: 

·   Hosea 6:1–“Come, let us return to the LORD; for He has torn us, that He 
may heal us; He has struck us down, and He will bind us up.”

With these Words, God wants you to know that repentance is something HE begins 
in you through the wrath and condemnation of His Law. Through the Ten 
Commandments, God tears at you, so to speak. God’s Law performs its work on you 
when it crushes you and breaks your bones, as it were—so that God Himself may 
heal you and bind you up with the promises

SERM: 2 Kings 11:1-16, The Feast of the Epiphany

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany

LONG LIVE THE KING! 
(2 KINGS 11:12)

You can have a little fun with the way you write a letter to a friend or 
relative. In addition to writing in pen, which is immediately visible to the 
eye, also write a few lines using lemon juice. The ink-written message in the 
letter can stand on its own, but when the letter is held over a warm light 
bulb, the lemon-juice message will become clear.

Think of God’s Old Testament as being like that letter you might write to your 
friend or relative. The historical lines on the pages of the Old Testament can 
stand on their own. The Old Testament is the book of God’s salvation history 
prior to Christ. Now think of your Lord Jesus—whom the Scriptures call “the 
light of the world” (John 8:12)—think of Jesus as being like a warm light bulb. 
When you hold the Old Testament near to Christ, wonderful messages emerge that 
might not have been visible at first.

The history recorded in 2 Kings chapter 11 is history in its own right. Written 
in clear ink, this chapter of history can be read profitably without thought 
toward the larger themes of God’s salvation for all people in Christ Jesus. 
Simply stated, 2 Kings chapter 11 is a great example of how God faithfully kept 
His promise that David’s royal line will not be extinguished and that David’s 
throne will endure (2 Samuel 7:16, 1 Kings 8:24). Wicked queen Athaliah 
attempted to take the throne for herself, and for a time, she appeared to have 
succeeded. Wanting to eliminate the competition, Athaliah “arose and destroyed 
all the royal family” (2 Kings 11:1). Only one infant child, Joash the son of 
Aha-ziah, survived the massacre. This child was hidden and nursed in secret (2 
Kings 11:2), not unlike Moses before him (Exodus 2:1-2). This child grew up in 
the precincts of the house of the Lord (2 Kings 1:3), similar to the prophet 
Samuel’s childhood (1
 Samuel 1:21-2:11). When King Joash finally made his public debut, the people 
shouted, “Long live the king!” (2 Kings 11:12) in the same way that their 
forefathers had shouted for King Saul generations earlier (1 Samuel 10:24).

This history of Joash’s ascent to the throne can be profitably read without any 
thought of Jesus. However, when you read this history from the viewpoint of the 
New Testament, knowing full the history of salvation, the history of Joash 
begins to sound a lot like the history of Jesus. Stated another way, if you 
hold this chapter of the Old Testament near the light bulb (so to speak) that 
is Christ, a new message emerges. In the light and heat of Him who is our 
Light, 2 Kings chapter 11 begins to look like a Christmas pageant that took 
place more than eight centuries before the first Christmas. Consider the 
similarities:

·   Queen Athaliah had no Davidic claim to the throne and she knew it. 
Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1) felt similarly insecure. Herod was not even a 
Jew, much less from the house and line of David. Where Athaliah took the throne 
when the opportunity presented itself, Herod gained his throne with help from 
Rome.

·   Just as Queen Athaliah drew blood to preserve her place (1 Kings 11:1), 
Herod likewise stooped to killing even little children—“all the male children 
in Bethlehem and that region who were two years old or under” (Matthew 2:16).

·   In each case of regal rage, only one child survives. Joash was hidden 
in the house of the Lord (2 Kings 11:3) and Jesus was whisked away to Egypt 
until Herod’s death (Matthew 2:14).

·   The similarity between Joash and Jesus might begin to break down when 
you think of the heavily armed guard that accompanied the king (2 Kings 
11:7-11). But Jesus didn’t want the same protection. “Do you think that I 
cannot appeal to My Father,” asked Jesus, “and He will at once send me more 
than twelve legions of angels? (Matthew 26:53).

·   Queen Athaliah cried “Treason!” against Joash, but to no avail (2 Kings 
11:14). Jesus’ accusers succeeded in filing the same charge against Jesus 
(Matthew 27:11-14, John 19:15), but that was part of the divine plan.

As you can see from the example of 2 Kings 11, it is possible to read the 
history of the Old Testament on its own terms, without any thought of the 
larger themes of God’s work in Christ Jesus. Without the Incarnation of our 
Lord, no one would ever be able to see that the story of Joash and Athaliah is 
somewhat like a Christmas pageant that took place eight hundred years before 
the first Christmas. With the Incarnation of our Lord, God has opened the doors 
to understanding the Old Testament in a profoundly different way, as much more 
than the history of God’s people who awaited Messiah. 

The Old Testament history could be compared an ink-and-pen letter that includes 
some writing in lemon juice. The message has always been there, but the message 
did not always become visible until held near the warmth and light of Christ, 
“the true Light” (John 1:9)

I know that t

SERM: Luke 2:40-52, Christmas 2, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Second Sunday After Christmas

A SERMON [NOT ONLY] FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. At the beginning of today’s Gospel, St. Luke states that Jesus was 
continually growing, increasing in both wisdom and in strength. At the end of 
today’s Gospel, Luke repeats himself. Luke repeats Himself so that you will 
notice and be nourished this Word from God: “Jesus [continually] increased in 
wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”

Dear teenagers, preteens, and younger children of the Church,

CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT YOUR LIFE, RIGHT HERE AND NOW!

Many people think of Christmas as being about “the little Lord Jesus, asleep in 
the hay” (LSB #364.1). Christmas is about much more than the baby Jesus. 
Christmas is also about the childhood that Jesus experienced. 

·   When Luke states that Jesus increased in wisdom, that means Jesus 
started His earthly life without much wisdom. Stated another way, Jesus had to 
learn His Sunday School lessons, just like you have to learn yours. Jesus also 
heard different messages in His life—not all of them helpful or beneficial—just 
as you also hear many different messages in your life. Jesus had to sort 
through and come to understand who He was, just as you must sort through who 
you are.

·   When Luke states that Jesus was continually growing in strength and 
stature, that means Jesus had to go through the same process you now also are 
going through. His body, like yours, had to transform from the body of a child 
to the body of an adult. His mind and His thinking, like yours, also had to 
mature in the same way that yours must mature. This is good news for you, 
because there were many things in Jesus’ life that He did not always understand 
simply because He did not yet have the equipment to understand. For example, 
Jesus seems very surprised in today’s Gospel that Mary and Joseph did not 
immediately come look for Him in the temple. “Why were you looking for me?” He 
asked. “Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?” (Jesus, in His 
very young way of thinking, does not yet seem to realize the terror that 
parents feel when they look around and see their son or daughter is missing. 
You children probably do not
 understand that feeling, either, but you will.)

Christmas Season is not merely about the Baby Jesus. Christmas Season is about 
you Lord Jesus must pass through every single stage of life that you also must 
pass through. Jesus grew through the stages of His life without sin and no one 
else has ever done that—neither you nor your parents before you. Just because 
Jesus grew up perfectly, do not assume that growing up was easy for Him. Jesus 
struggled in every way that you struggle. Jesus was tempted in every way that 
you are tempted. Jesus experienced every feeling and emotion that you 
experience. Jesus had to discover who He was, independent of His father and His 
mother, in the very same way that you also must discover who you are. 

LEARN YOUR INDEPENDENCE FROM JESUS

Today’s Gospel is very important for you because it tells you about one of the 
steps along the way of Jesus’ eventual independence from His parents—steps that 
you each are right now in the process of taking. “When the [Passover] feast was 
ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.” A 
little separation from mom and dad for a little while must have been sort of 
nice. As the children of my generation were singing with Cheap Trick thirty 
years ago, “Mommy’s all right, daddy’s all right, they just seem a little 
weird” (Cheap Trick, “Surrender”).

I know that most of you can chuckle and say that I am an old man. (If you 
don’t, my sons will do it for you.) Please believe me when I say that I 
understand very well you growing desire for independence. You and Jesus are not 
the only two people who ever felt such needs. Your desires for independence are 
most certainly made worse by some of the music that you are pumping into your 
ears. You probably are not singing much Cheap Trick these days. Shinedown is 
likely more your speed:

Tell my mother, tell my father, I’ve done the best I can
To make them realize this is my life
I hope they understand (Shinedown, “Second Chance”)

Yes, dear Christian: This IS your life. Make sure that you do not allow the 
devil, the world, and your own sinfulness to fool you. Do not get fooled into 
thinking that that you can do whatever you want with your life, just because it 
is yours. “You are not your own,” says Paul, “you were bought with a price” (1 
Corinthians 6:19-20).

Learn your independence from Jesus, my young saints! Jesus did not grow into 
His independence by running away from the way He was raised or by throwing out 
the things He was taught to hold dear. Your Lord Jesus grew into His 
independence voluntarily embracing those who once held Him in their arms.

·   Jesus grew into His ind

SERM: 1 Kings 2:1-4, Circuit Winkel for December

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

1 Kings 2:1-4 
When David's time to die drew near, he commanded Solomon his son, saying, 
[2] "I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a 
man, [3] and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and 
keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it 
is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and 
wherever you turn, [4] that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke 
concerning me, saying, 'If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk 
before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you 
shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.' 



Sermon for the Circuit Pastors’ Conference

BE STRONG AND SHOW YOURSELF A MAN

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s reading from 1 Kings chapter 2, a falling king speaks to a 
rising king, “Be strong and show yourself a man.”

Dear brothers,

One of the strengths of the hymnal Lutheran Service Book (LSB) is that it 
reverses many decisions made by its predecessor, Lutheran Worship (LW). For 
example, LW eliminated that verse from “God of the Prophets, Bless the 
Prophets’ Sons” (LW 258) which describes pastors as kings over their 
congregations. In the spirit of its grandfather, The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), 
LSB puts the verse back into its rightful place:

Anoint them kings, yes, kingly kings, O Lord.
Anoint them with the Spirit of Your Son (LSB 682).

If you hesitate to think of your pastoral office in regal terms, you are not 
alone (Lutheran Book of Worship [LBW], the ELCA progenitor for Lutheran 
Worship, eliminated the hymn entirely, presumably on account of the hymn’s 
description of the Pastoral Office in male terms. The absence of this hymn in 
LBW suggests that it might have been influences within the Missouri Synod that 
led to the exclusion of verse 4 in LW.). Your hesitation, however, will 
probably be for the wrong reasons and it will do your office no good. Just as 
surely as you are the prophet for your congregation, speaking forth the Word of 
God with authority that surpasses that of the rabbis (Matthew 7:28); just as 
surely as you are the priest for your congregation, interceding for God’s 
people, leading them in the “sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15), and perhaps 
even making certain sacrifices of your own on their behalf (2 Timothy 4:6, 
Romans 12:1); so surely are you also the
 king for your congregation. 

·   Obviously you are not to be king as the gentiles are king, lording your 
office over your congregation (Matthew 20:25). God has given you the office of 
shepherd-king, guarding and protecting the flock of God committed to your care 
(1 Peter 5:1-2). 

·   Self-evidently, you are not the King of Kings (1 Timothy 6:15). Another 
King, one greater than you, already occupies that higher office. You are 
under-shepherd and under-king, if you will, serving in the stead and by the 
command of the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4) and King eternal (1 Timothy 1:17).

You are king nevertheless. Your congregation is the kingdom on behalf of which 
you have been given responsibility to face the lion, the bear, and if need be, 
the Philistine giant (1 Samuel 17:34-36).

One of the benefits you receive when you acquiesce to the title “king” is that 
you ears become more acutely attuned to the Words God speaks, not only to His 
prophets and His priests, but also to His kings. While on his deathbed, David 
does not speak to Solomon merely as a father speaks to his son. King David 
speaks from the God-given authority of his office to one who is about to take 
the God-given office: “Be strong and show yourself a man.” Solomon most 
certainly does not stand alone by his father's bedside. “Whatever was written 
in former days was written for our instruction” (Romans 15:4), brother, and you 
in your God-given office stand beside Solomon as he hears the kingly charge 
spoken also to you: “Be strong and show yourself a man.” 

David immediately tells Solomon and all his kingly sons what it means to be 
strong and show yourself a man. Manliness—for that matter, kingliness—does not 
have much to do with displays of strength or gruffness or even a deep voice. 
Manliness and kingliness have to do with keeping the faith: “Keep the charge of 
the LORD your God,” David says, “walking in His ways and keeping His statutes, 
His commandments, His rules and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of 
Moses” (1 Kings 2:3). That is what it means to be a man. That is what it means 
to be king.

Some people might protest my line of thinking. They might say that King David's 
Words should be applied to all men, and not merely to pastors. To be sure, 
fathers are the best fathers and husbands are the best husbands and brothers 
are the best brothers when they show themselves to be men, that is, when they 
devote their lives, both outwardly and inwardly, to the Word of 

SERM: Romans 13:11-14, Advent 1, LSB A

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent

THE JESUS SUIT

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Amen. In the Epistle of the Day from Romans 13, God’s apostle Paul uses 
clothing imagery to speak about your preparation for the Last Day, when Christ 
shall return. “The night is far gone; the day is at hand,” Paul says. “Let us 
cast off—that is, let is disrobe ourselves or undress ourselves from—the works 
of darkness and put on—clothe ourselves and dress ourselves in—the armor of 
light… Put on—clothe yourself and robe yourself in—the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Dear Christian friends,

Perhaps you get the chance, every once in a while, to visit with fellow 
Lutherans who are members of sister congregations somewhere in our Missouri 
Synod. Lutherans will inevitably tell you about their pastor and sometimes they 
complain.

·   Some complaints are humorous and picayune and actually say more about 
the people who are complaining: Pastor Parrothead wears sandals too often; 
Pastor Longwind chooses hymns with too many verses.

·   Other complaints are more serious: Pastor Busyboy does not seem to have 
time to visit the sick or the homebound in his flock; Pastor Wandereye seems to 
be visiting the organist or the church secretary too often.

·   I have even heard some Christians complain about problems that I 
believe are very good problems to have. For example, one of my fellow pastors a 
considerable distance east of here is apparently guilty of preaching too 
frequently about the benefits of confession and absolution. Imagine that! Some 
Christians find it abrasive to hear repeatedly that God’s forgiveness in Christ 
is for you personally and individually; that forgiveness is so powerful, so 
life-encompassing that you do not need any longer to limp along under your load 
of guilt or fear or damnable self-righteousness. If you ever have a pastor who 
seems to speak too frequently about confession and forgiveness, fall upon your 
knees and you thank your God for the sweet and undeserved gift He has given to 
you.

Some of you probably do not need any help deciding how you could complain about 
your pastor, but one or two of you might still be open to suggestions. I would 
love to be accused of preaching too much about Baptism. I would love for God’s 
Christians to have Baptism come to mind when they think about the one thing 
they hear most from this pulpit.

·   No, Baptism is not in every single sermon, but that is really my fault 
and I must try to improve on that. The absence of Baptism in any given sermon 
is really more about my sin and blindness than anything else.

·   Yes, some people would say that Jesus should come to mind when you 
think about things you hear most from this pulpit, but Baptism is really just 
Jesus in liquid form. 

·   No, the word “baptism” does not occur in every single Bible passage 
that you hear or read, but the lack of the letters B-A-P-T-I-S-M does not mean 
that the gift and miracle of Baptism is not present there in the passage. 
(Think about it: just because you might not mention the word “milk” at the 
breakfast table, that does not mean the milk is not right there in front of you 
next to the box of Cheerios. In the same way, you should consider it entirely 
possible that any given Bible verse will teach you about the benefits of your 
Baptism, even if you cannot see the word “baptism” expressly spelled out.)

·   Yes, I know that such things as faith, confession and absolution, Holy 
Communion, preaching, and the work of the Holy Spirit are also important to 
hear from the pulpit, but when you hear about such things, you are really just 
hearing about the on-going miracle and benefit of the Baptism your God has 
given to you.

Baptism is really the only thing that God’s apostle Paul wanted to talk about, 
especially in his letter to the Romans. Many people know and have even 
memorized those well-known and essential Words of Romans chapter 6:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were 
baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into 
death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of 
the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-4). 

·   Romans begins with a discussion of Baptism, specifically your need and 
my need and the entire world’s need for this miracle and gift, “for you have no 
excuse, O man… [for] you condemn yourself” (Romans 2:1).

·   Romans crescendos with death-and-resurrection description of your 
Baptism, by which you were “baptized into [Christ’s] death” in order that you 
might be given a full and good place in His resurrection.

·   Even here in today’s Epistle, at the tail end of the letter to the 
Romans, many chapters and verses after the word “baptism” was last used, Paul 
is still pre

SERM: Psalm 121 (Introit), Pentecost 25, LSB C

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost,

THE LORD WILL KEEP YOU FROM ALL EVIL

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Amen. In the Introit of the Day from Psalm 121, which we prayed at the 
first part of the liturgy, King David makes a promise to you that you might not 
want to believe is true, in light of your experiences. The promise David speaks 
in this psalm, spoken to you by the authority of God Himself, might even cause 
you to feel a sense of revulsion or a sense of indignation or a sense of 
injustice when you think about some of the things that have happened in your 
life. Viewed from the trenches of daily living in this sinful world, David’s 
divine promise might even tempt you to think that either David was wrong or 
that God is a liar. King David’s promise from God must be believed, even when 
this promise cannot be seen or felt in your life: “The Lord will keep you from 
all evil,” David promises. “The Lord will preserve your life.”

Dear Christian friends,

When Jesus gave you the Lord’ Prayer, which is the perfect prayer to 
pray in every situation, He made it to the last and final petition for you to 
pray, “Deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). Why do you suppose Jesus would 
make deliverance from evil the last thing for which you pray, unless He wanted 
it to be the last thing for which you pray? Stated another way, Jesus wants 
deliverance from evil to be your lowest priority and the least of your concerns 
when you pray to your Father in heaven.

I know that it sounds strange to you that Jesus would regard 
deliverance from evil to be your lowest priority in life, but that is mostly 
because you and I continually want to make deliverance from evil our highest 
priority in life. There is nothing any of us naturally wants more than to feel 
comfortable. When it comes to daily life, we could easily define evil as 
anything that disturbs our comfort. Taught by our experiences, evil includes 
everything that we do not want to see or feel and everything we would rather 
not experience: fear and uncertainty are evil; pain is evil; poverty, illness, 
and death are evil; family struggles are evil; embarrassment and shame are 
evil; boredom is evil, and so are loneliness and monotony. According to our 
very human and very natural way of thinking, evil has to do with our senses and 
with our thinking and with our experiences. 

Given the opportunity, who wouldn’t want to correct Jesus and reverse 
the order of the Lord’s Prayer so that deliverance from evil becomes the first 
thing and the main thing for which we pray? Given the evil circumstances in 
which many of God’s people must live—given the evil experiences most of God’s 
people pass through at some time or other—who wouldn’t want to make deliverance 
from evil a top priority? Who wouldn’t sometimes feel tempted to trade away 
even the holiness of God’s name and the coming of His kingdom and the 
accomplishment of His will in order to obtain a life that is free from the 
evils we all dread? 

Jesus lovingly and deliberately makes deliverance from evil the lowest 
priority and the last thing for which we pray. Jesus does this for us, not only 
by making deliverance from evil the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer, but 
also by admonishing us elsewhere, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).

Jesus makes deliverance from evil the last and final petition of His 
Lord’s Prayer because He wants you to know and to believe there are things in 
life that are much more important for you than avoiding evil, that is, avoiding 
the things that make you feel discomforted and afraid. Jesus knows very well 
that some of you have seen and experienced some evil things—even some terribly 
evil things—but Jesus also wants you to know that these evils you have 
experienced are really very small compared to the greater evils that exist 
beyond your experiences, beyond your perceptions, beyond your feelings and your 
thoughts. By putting deliverance from evil last in His Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is 
showing you those things that are first and most important for you, even more 
than deliverance from the evils you perceive:

·   “Hallowed be Thy Name.” It is foremost and essential that God’s name be 
kept holy among you, that is, that the Word of God be taught faithfully in your 
midst and that this Word of God have its way with you and with the manner in 
which you live your life. Without God’s pure Word in your midst—that is, 
without the holiness of God’s name among you—there is no salvation, no hope and 
no future for you. What benefit is deliverance from evil—that is, from the pain 
and discomforts you wish to avoid—when your eternal life is in jeopardy?

·   “Thy kingdom come.” It is also of utmost importance to you that God’s 
kingdom come to you, especially since neither yo

SERM: 2 Thess 2:1-8, 13-17; Pent 24; LSB C

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of My Installation as Your Pastor

WHY WE SPEAK THE CREEDS IN WORSHIP

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Amen. The Christians of the ancient city had been thrown into a bit of 
a tizzy. Some false teachers had been stirring up the Thessalonian Christians, 
shaking their minds and alarming them by telling them that Christ had already 
returned and that these Thessalonians had missed Him. In response to this 
terrible disturbance among them, Paul wrote today’s Epistle to the 
Thessalonians and commanded them in the most earnest terms, “Let no one deceive 
you in any way.”

What shall we say we are celebrating today? The quick answer is that we 
are celebrating my tenth anniversary as your pastor. But maybe that answer is 
too narrow. Maybe we should say that we are celebrating the tenth anniversary 
of your tolerance; the tenth anniversary of your gracious examination and 
acceptance of my preaching and teaching; or the tenth anniversary of “the unity 
of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) that God has mercifully 
preserved between you and me. Whatever we call this 
day-that-celebrates-a-decade, Paul’s message in today’s Epistle is as earnest 
and as important for you as it was for his Thessalonians of old. Dear 
Christians of Grace Lutheran Church, “Let no one deceive you in any way.”

I. OUR APOSTLES’ CREED COULD HAVE HELPED THE THESSALONIANS

One of the earliest creeds in the ancient church was the simple 
expression, “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:11). It took some time for 
this one-sentence creed, “Jesus is Christ Lord,” to develop into the fuller 
form that we have now have in the Apostles’ Creed, but just imagine how much 
difficulty could have been avoided if these early Thessalonian Christians were 
already confessing the full form of Apostles’ Creed in their worship every 
Sunday. False teachings about Christ’s return had been shaking these Christians 
around, tossing them back and forth like a ship on a stormy sea. (If you have 
ever felt a panic attack or a case of extreme nervousness about your situation, 
you probably can relate to what these poor folks were experiencing.) 
 
·   The Apostles’ Creed could have provided anchor and ballast to the 
wave-tossed Thessalonians, especially with its confident expression concerning 
the future, “I believe… Jesus Christ… will come to judge both the living and 
the dead.”

·   The Apostles’ Creed could have served as a tape measure or a plumb 
line, by which these Thessalonians could have evaluated the preaching that they 
had heard. Where these damnable false teachers were saying, “Christ has already 
returned and you were left behind,” the Thessalonians could have pointed to the 
Creed and said, “What you are telling us does not measure up and align with the 
Christian faith! We believe that Christ will come to judge both the living and 
the dead. Since we are here among the living, we further believe that we 
ourselves gathered in to be part of the judgment. Gee, we certainly do not 
remember anything like that happening recently.” 

·   Anchored and ballasted by the Apostles’ Creed, having used this same 
creed as their tape measure or plumb line, these Thessalonians could have then 
turned the Creed into the whip or the club they used to drive those 
faith-destroying false teachers out of their midst—just as Christ our Lord 
drove the moneychangers from the temple (John 2:12).

II. THE APOSTLES’ CREED IS VITALLY IMPORTANT FOR YOUR 
EVERYDAY LIFE!

Anchor and ballast; tape measure and plumb line; if it comes to it, 
whip and club: we Christians must use the Apostles’ Creed today in all the same 
ways. We speak the creeds to one another every Sunday—either the Apostles’ 
Creed or the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed—because these creeds are 
essential for your survival and my survival in this life. To use the words of 
today’s Epistle, these creeds will help you “let no one deceive you in any way.”

1.  The Creed is anchor and ballast for your life. 

An anchor helps a boat hold its position, especially as the wind and 
current beat against the boat. Ballast is the weight you place in the bottom of 
a canoe—ballast is also the bilge water you pump into the lower hold of a large 
ship—to keep the craft from flipping over. 

The Apostles’ Creed (with its sister creeds) is your anchor and ballast 
for your everyday life. Just think of some of the things you have 
experienced—or perhaps are right now experiencing. 

·   Last Monday was All Saints’ Day. All Saints’ Day is a day of rejoicing 
because Christians who mourn the death of their fellow Christians need not sink 
into despair. We have the anchor and ballast of the Apostles’ Creed, which 
holds us afloat with its divine promise, “I believe… in the resurrection of the 
body and the

SERM: Luke 19:1-10, Pent 23, LSB C

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost,
Celebrating the Feast of the Reformation

TODAY

Theme: What you believe is more important than how you behave.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. St. Luke has two very important details for you in today’s Gospel about 
Zacchaeus and Jesus. The first detail is unfortunately hidden and will need 
explanation, but the second detail is as plain as day:

1.  The first, hidden detail has to do with Zacchaeus climbing up into the 
tree. The “wee little man” did not climb the sycamore tree to see who Jesus 
WAS, as you heard it mistranslated in the Gospel reading. Zacchaeus climbed to 
see who Jesus IS. Luke very carefully spells out for you the word “IS,” but the 
translators of our English Bible missed it. Luke does not concern himself with 
who Jesus was—as if our Lord were dead and gone. Luke tells you about who Jesus 
IS—“yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:3)—not once living, but 
here-and-NOW living among you in the power of His resurrection.

2.  The second detail—the plain-as-day detail—has to do with the way Jesus 
speaks to Zacchaeus. Twice Jesus says and twice Jesus emphasizes the word TODAY 
for Zacchaeus and for you: “Zacchaeus… I must stay at your house TODAY,” and 
again, “TODAY salvation has come to this house.”

(1) Who Jesus IS (2) TODAY: these are the two important details Luke has for 
you in today’s Gospel. Stick those two details into your pocket and hang onto 
them for a while.

Dear Christian friends,

Which is more important for your everyday life: What you believe or how you 
act? Today is Reformation Day and this question that I have posed to you sits 
at the very heart of the Lutheran Reformation. Which is more important for your 
everyday life: What you believe or how you act? Is it the teaching that you 
hear or is it the life you lead that will bring you into heaven with Jesus for 
an eternity of peace and joy?

Some of you—perhaps most of you—can already give the right answer to the 
question. Of course it is more important to believe rightly than it is to act 
rightly! You are Lutheran and the hallmark of the Lutheran confession of faith 
is Romans 3:28 (the usual Epistle for Reformation Day): “We hold that one is 
justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” Stated another way, it is 
much more important for you to believe than it is for you to behave. 
Doctrine—that is, the teaching of God’s Bible—doctrine and daily living must be 
kept separate and distinguished one from the other. What you believe and what 
you teach is far more important than how you act. 

Think of your behavior as being like the skin of an apple. Think of what you 
believe as being like the meat and core of the apple. If the apple’s skin has a 
blemish, the apple can still be enjoyed. If the apple’s meat and core are 
rotten, who wants it? In the same way, just as a blemish can be cut away from 
the skin of an apple, your sinful behavior has likewise been forgiven and cut 
away from you by the death and resurrection of your Lord Jesus Christ. But if 
you do not believe rightly—that is, if you do not hold the Christian 
faith—there is no hope for you, in the same way that a rotten apple is good for 
nothing but compost. Far better that you believe than behave.

There is a serious problem with this idea that it is more important to believe 
than to behave. YOU are the problem; I am the problem. When a sin-diseased, 
death-ridden, rotten-to-the-core bag of worms like me hears that it is more 
important to believe than to behave, I immediately want to turn this good news 
to my own selfish advantage: “Believing is everything,” says me. “Behaving is 
nothing so therefore I won’t. I can say or do what I want it won’t matter 
because I believe all the right things.” (I am not making this up. After ten 
years together, some of you have gotten to know me pretty well—and some of you 
have seen and heard things from me that sometimes you wish you hadn’t.)

“We hold,” Paul says, “that one is justified by faith apart from the works of 
the law.” Believing is everything and behaving is nothing. But then sinners 
like you and me turn this blessed news into an opportunity to sin. Because it 
is the Creed and not the Commandments that spell our eternal life, our sinful 
flesh would have us think that the Commandments might as well be thrown away. 
Our Lutheran forefathers called this Antinomianism (FC, SD V.15)—which is a 
fancy word for lawlessness—and they warned us against it (e.g., AE 3, 239). Do 
not misunderstand: Believing is everything and behaving is nothing, but that 
does not mean sinful behavior and an evil life can be ignored.

Call me crazy, but I think Luke wrote the story of Zacchaeus partly on account 
of this idea that believing is everything and behaving is nothing. Luke wrote 
this story to warn us that we not focus so greatly on believing that we forget 
about behaving. In this s

SERM: Luke 18:9-17, Pentecost 22, LSB C

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

EVEN INFANTS
Theme: The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is designed to make 
you an infant.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell about people bringing children to Jesus 
so that He could touch them. The Greek word that Matthew and Mark both use for 
“children” can mean “toddler” or “young child” (Matthew 19:13, Mark 10:13) and 
it can refer to someone who might even be five or six years old. 

Luke uses a different word in today’s Gospel, and he sounds a little surprised 
by what he says. Luke does not use the Greek word for “toddler,” but he uses 
the word for “infant” – a word that can be used of children either newly born 
or in the womb yet to be born. Luke wants to impress upon you how young and 
small these children are, and as I said, Luke sounds surprised by his own 
report: “Now they were bringing even infants to [Jesus] to have Him touch 
them.” Even infants! Infants have no list of accomplishments, such as the 
Pharisee in the parable had; infants have no seared conscience on account of 
the sins they have committed, as this tax collector seems to have had; infants 
do not even have a supposed “age of accountability” as dreamed by those who 
deny Baptism; “they were bringing even infants to [Jesus]” and the only thing 
an infant has is a poopy diaper. 

The whole point of today’s Gospel is to turn you into an infant.
The point is NOT that you would make yourself into an infant.
The point is that Jesus MAKES you an infant, reducing you to infancy.

Dear Christian friends,

Today’s Gospel will show you that no one can ever become a master of 
God’s Scriptures. Today’s Gospel is a great example of how Jesus uses His 
Words, not to make children into scholars, but to make scholars into infants 
and children. Jesus wants you to be rock-solid certain about your salvation and 
eternal life, and in order to give you that certainty, He uses today’s Gospel 
to create a sense of uncertainty inside of you. I know that sounds strange, so 
I will say it again in a different way: In order for you to be certain about 
your salvation, Jesus in today’s Gospel makes you feel uncertain about 
yourself, about who you are, and about what you are able to do or not to do.

Jesus creates this feeling of uncertainty about yourself by telling you 
about two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector. 

·   From the way Jesus tells the story, the Pharisee is clearly the bad 
guy. But isn’t this the guy we are raising our children to be? The Pharisee has 
the Ten Commandments in mind and he treats his neighbor decently according to 
the commandments. He doesn’t take things that do not belong to him, and that is 
good. He doesn’t cheat on the wife, and that is even better. This Pharisess 
doesn’t ignore the worship life of the Church and he is by no means stingy. In 
fact, he gives more generously to the offering plate than most Christians are 
willing to give. A year or so ago, someone on the Versailles Ministerial 
Alliance came up with the boneheaded idea of offering a scholarship to the 
graduating senior who showed the best Christian example in life. If this 
Pharisee were in the graduating class of 2011, he would win the award!

·   You already know, simply from hearing the parable, that Jesus wants you 
to be like the other guy—the miserable guy who looks bad and sounds worse: 

The tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, 
but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, 
this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. 

Here is how Jesus uses today’s Gospel to create this sense confusion 
and uncertainty about yourself that I mentioned earlier:

·   Clearly Jesus wants you to be like the tax collector, but as soon as 
you say, “I will be like that tax collector,” you end up being like the 
Pharisee. Did you catch that? As soon as you say, “I will be like that tax 
collector,” you end up being the Pharisee.

·   Alternatively, as soon as you say to yourself, “I am just like that 
Pharisee,” you become the tax collector who “went down to his house justified.”

That is why I told you earlier that Jesus uses His Words, not to make children 
into scholars, but to make scholars into infants and children. That is also why 
Luke so carefully reports to you, “Now they were bringing even infants to 
[Jesus].”

I am NOT trying to be clever with you. I am trying to help you map out 
and understand what happens inside your brain (if you are listening) when Jesus 
speaks the parable in today’s Gospel:

1.  Obviously, you wish to be justified, that is, declared righteous by 
God. (Who wouldn’t want that?) When you hear Jesus say to you that the tax 
collector is the one who “went down to his house justified,” your brain 
naturally responds, “I need to be

SERM: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, Pentecost 21, LSB C

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

GODSBREATH

Theme: The Bible is not “God was breathing” but “God IS breathing.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. In today’s Epistle, St. Paul tells you about this Bible that you read and 
hear proclaimed in your midst: “All Scripture is breathed out by God,” he says.

Dear Christian friends,

“What is this Holy Bible that I see in your church and in your home? 
How would you describe this book to me?” If asked such questions, many of our 
fellow Christians in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod would happily answer, 
“The Bible is the inspired, authoritative Word of God.” Perhaps if you yourself 
were asked to describe what God’s Bible is, you also would use those same 
words: inspired and authoritative. 

You would not be wrong, of course. We dearly believe—we have built our 
congregations and our families and our own lives upon the belief—that God’s 
Bible is truly God’s; that the writers of our Old and New Testaments wrote by 
divine inspiration “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 
1:21); that the Bible is the sole authority by which we preach and teach as we 
do; that “all Scripture is,” as you heard Paul say in today’s Epistle, 
“breathed out by God.”

You are not wrong to say and believe that the Holy Bible is God’s 
inspired and authoritative Word. You DO open yourself up to terrible temptation 
and serious danger if inspiration and authority are the ONLY things you believe 
concerning God’s Bible. Many of your fellow Christians in the Lutheran 
Church-Missouri Synod have already fallen into that temptation and into that 
danger, and today they live spiritually impoverished lives because of it! Who 
knows? Perhaps my sons and your daughters being lured into the same direction. 
Give them something more than the inspiration and the authority of God’s Holy 
Bible!

Left by themselves, inspiration and authority might give you the 
mistaken impression that God’s Bible is primarily a source of information for 
you—authoritative information, to be sure; divinely inspired information, 
absolutely—but information nonetheless. Think of the pitfalls and disasters 
that await you when you think of God’s Bible primarily as your source of 
information:

·   You will conclude, as many of your fellow Christians have already 
concluded, that you only need the information. Once you have learned your 
information in Confirmation, there is no longer any need for worship or Bible 
Study. You have the information that Jesus loves you and forgives you, so why 
bother with anything else? This is why you can find many people all around you 
who tell you they are Christian and say that they have Jesus in their heart, 
but whose lives give no impression at all that they are part of “the holy 
Christian church, the communion of saints.” Many people in hell have a thorough 
grasp of the information in God’s Bible. Some of those people might even have 
been on the membership roles of a Missouri Synod congregation when they died.

·   If you think of God’s Bible as primarily information, you will begin to 
think of worship as primarily an information seminar. But if God’s Bible is 
primarily information, and if you hear basically the same information each week 
as you pray the liturgy, worship will become drudgery to you. Worship will 
visiting an Alzheimer’s patient with whom you repeatedly have the same 
conversation. You will begin to think, “We all know we need to be here in order 
to get our information from God, but can’t we get it in a less repetitive way? 
Can’t we make worship more interesting?” 

·   If you think of God’s Bible as primarily information, you will very 
likely underestimate the seriousness of your sin and of the death that is 
lurking inside of you. What would you think of the doctor who tells you that 
you will be cured of your headaches if you read about migraine medication? A 
migraine cannot be cured with information. You need a pill, a drug, a medicine 
to cure your migraine for you. In the same way, the disease of your sin will 
not be treated and cured by the mere information—the authority and the 
inspiration—of God’s Word. If the disease of your sin is to be treated and 
overcome, God’s Word (the Bible) must be a medication, a power, a force, a 
miracle that acts upon you. Stated another way, if your sin is to be rightly 
treated you must take the pill, and not read just information about the pill.

To what can we compare the inspiration and authority of God’s Bible? 
The inspiration and authority of God’s Bible are like two people sitting 
together in the back of a taxi. They may be reputable, handsome and 
hardworking. No matter how good those two people are as they sit together in 
the back of the taxi, they will go nowhere unless the cabbie gets in and drives 
his taxicab. 

In the same way, the inspir

SERM: Luke 17:11-19, Pentecost 20, LSB C

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

GIVE HIM THANKS

Theme: Our Christ is generous even when we are thankless, because He is.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! 
Amen. Only one person out of ten, seeing that he was healed, “turned back 
praising God with a loud voice.”

Dear Christian friends,

This is what Jesus says to you in His Sermon on the Mount: “Judge not, that you 
not be judged. … Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do 
not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1, 3)

·   These Words from Jesus stress for you the importance of not holding 
your neighbor’s sins against him or her. It would be impossible for you not to 
notice your neighbor’s sins. Only make certain that you do not use your 
neighbor’s sins in the wrong way: Do not judge your neighbor on account of his 
or her sins, “for in the same way you judge others,” says Jesus, “you will be 
judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2, 
NIV).

·   We must not take note of our neighbor’s sin as a way of judging and 
condemning our neighbor, to be sure. But maybe we can take note of our 
neighbor’s sin as a way of examining and judging ourselves. “Why do you see the 
speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your 
own eye?” Perhaps it would be a good thing for us each to use the specks in our 
brother’s eye as a way of alerting ourselves to the log that is in our own eye. 
In light of these thankless lepers in Gospel, bear this in mind: those things 
that you might not so much appreciate about your neighbor might be the very 
same sorts of things that your God might not appreciate so much about you.

I know this sounds a little strange, but I sincerely hope that most of you have 
had the opportunity, at least once in your life, to feel unappreciated or 
unthanked by someone you love. For example,

·   At one time, thank-you notes were a common courtesy that you showed to 
someone who gave you a gift. Thank-you notes are fairly rare these days, but if 
you are a bit older, or if you have given an extraordinarily large gift to 
someone, you probably felt insulted and hurt about the thank you note that 
still has not arrived in the mail.

·   Or think about the unnoticed, thankless service you give to this 
congregation. Yes, you have been elected to the task—but a little appreciation 
goes a long way, doesn’t it? When you do not feel as though your labors are 
appreciated, how enthusiastic does that make you feel about the next time you 
are needed?

·   Or again, think about the experiences many parents have with their 
children. Clearly your children do not see how much you sacrifice for them on a 
daily basis. If they did, would it seem as though they could treat you a little 
nicer than they do?

Such experiences as these will go a long way to helping you understand and 
appreciate today’s Gospel. You should think of the thanklessness others have 
shown to you as the speck in their eye. You could use that speck of your 
neighbor’s thanklessness, not as a way of examining your neighbor and judging 
him, but as a way of examining and judging yourself—especially in light of 
today’s Gospel. Ten of your neighbors make an appearance in today’s Gospel, 
each crying out to Jesus, “Have mercy upon us!” Of the ten,

·   Which of these neighbors do you not appreciate so much? 

·   Stated another way, which of these neighbors has a speck in the eye 
that points to the log in yours?

·   Jesus asks, “Were not ten healed? Where are the [other] nine?” I am 
ashamed to say that I am one of the missing nine. Each of the specks in the 
eyes of these nine cleansed lepers is like a compass needle that points 
accusingly northward to my log in my eye concerning my cold and thankless 
attitude toward the gifts God has given.

Perhaps you have had the opportunity, at least once in your life, to feel 
unappreciated or unthanked by someone you love. Learn the lesson from such 
experiences. Allow those experiences to warn you about the hazard and danger of 
feeling thankless or unappreciative toward your God—

·   the God who loves you and who gave Himself up for you (Ephesians 5:2, 
25);

·the God who forgives your sins and cleanses you from all 
unrighteousness (1 John 1:9); 

·   the God who heals all your diseases and redeems your life from the pit 
(Psalm 103:3);

·   the God who secures you in every storm and tempest (Jonah 2:5-6).  

And what a wonderful picture of our wonderful God St. Luke has painted for us 
in today’s Gospel! Here Jesus our God quickly acts with kindness, with 
compassion, and with open-handed generosity: 

As He entered a village, [Jesus] was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 
and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When He 
saw them he said to them,  “Go and show yourselves to the

SERM: Luke 17:11-19, P 20, LSB C (Occasional Sermon)

[ERIK ROTTMANN]

Affirmation of Holy Matrimony for 
Mark and Shannon Ramey

In Praise of a Miracle

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus 
Christ! Last Sunday’s Gospel about ten lepers might not seem to lend itself 
well to a sermon on marriage. But what really happens here, when these ten cry 
out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”? In this Gospel, Jesus gives a great and 
miraculous gift to a relatively large group of people. This was a gift these 
people could get from nowhere other than Jesus, but only a small part of that 
group returns to Him with thanks for His generosity and grace.

Dear Christian friends,

Marriage is a great miracle that God performs for you. Marriage doesn’t 
always look like a miracle, to be sure. Marriage sometimes looks more like two 
aging people with puffy eyes and messy hair consoling themselves with coffee at 
the breakfast table. Marriage doesn’t feel like a miracle. Marriage sometimes 
—or maybe most of the time—feel like hard work and repetitious labor and 
unnoticed self-sacrifice. No, marriage doesn’t always sound like a miracle, 
either. Sometimes marriage sounds like war; sometimes it sounds like silence.

Marriage is not a sacrament like Baptism and Holy Communion are 
sacraments, but marriage is a miracle very much like Baptism and Holy Communion 
nonetheless:

Baptism looks like water that we pour onto someone—but that water of Baptism is 
God’s miracle and God’s doing, whereby He adopts you to be His child forever.

Holy Communion looks like bread that we eat and wine that we drink—but the 
bread and wine of Holy Communion are God’s miracle and God’s act, in which 
Christ Himself feeds you His Body and serves you His blood for your forgiveness 
and life.

Holy marriage looks like a man and a woman vowing their wedded love and 
faithfulness till death do they part—but marriage is really God’s miracle and 
God’s deed, God’s joining together (Matthew 19:6) whereby a man becomes one 
flesh (Genesis 2:24) with his one wife (1 Timothy 3:2). No matter whether it is 
a civil ceremony or a churchly rite; whether it is a union of unbelievers or a 
union of Christians: marriage is God’s miracle and God’s gift, given to all 
people for our universal blessing and benefit just as surely as the sun shines 
and the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:45).

Marriage is a miracle, just as Baptism and Holy Communion are miracles, but 
marriage is NOT a sacrament like Baptism and Holy Communion are sacraments. 
Baptism and Holy Communion deliver God’s grace and forgiveness to you. Marriage 
might be one of God’s best ways of showing you how much you need grace and 
forgiveness, not only from God but also from this treasure and gift—this 
husband or wife—whom He has given to you. To forgive and to be forgiven: that 
is a miracle, that necessity, that gift must remain enthroned at the very core 
of every marriage.

Marriage is a great miracle and gift from God and it is an equally great 
miracle and gift from God that marriage survives and endures among us:

Homosexual unions gain greater standing in our midst every day, yet such unions 
are nothing more and nothing less than a rejection and a mockery of the Father, 
Son and Holy Spirit, of Whom it is written, “In the image of God He created 
him, male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Many men and women—including many Christians—are now living together without 
being married, delaying marriage or refusing marriage, and thus proclaiming 
publicly by their very lives that they do not want God or His Word or His 
miracle of marriage to lay claim upon them.

You probably have already heard the statistics that report how more than half 
of all marriages—including Christian marriages—now end in divorce. Many people 
will say that their divorce was inevitable and unpreventable and even necessary 
and in some cases they are probably right. Divorce is a miserable fact of life 
for sin-filled people like you and me who live in a sin-filled world, and I am 
not sure I can name a single Christian who has not in some way suffered from 
the sin of divorce. 

Even among those many Christians who somehow manage to remain married for fifty 
or sixty years or more, is it not by the grace and mercy of God that they have 
done so? My fellow pastors jokingly tell me that I have a wife that I do not 
deserve, and they could not be more right. Mark Ramey right here also has a 
wife he certainly did not earn, and Shannon a husband graciously given to her 
by the mercy of God. Such gifts must not be taken for granted! None of us who 
are married truly deserves the good and faithful spouse we have been given, 
just as none of us deserves the forgiveness God gives to you in Jesus or the 
protection of the holy angels or the unshakable hope and promise of your bodily 
resurrection on the Last Day. God gives “them all to us by grace” (Small 
Catechism, Fifth Petition).

This is