​Rev. Shemwell
Matthew 17:1-9
1/21/24

Homily for the Feast of the Transfiguration

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “When
Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand
as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face
shone because he had been talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw
Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near
him.”
Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when our
forefather in the faith Moses returned from the summit of Sinai with the two stone
tablets of the divine law inscribed by the very finger of God, the Decalogue, also
called the Ten Commandments, in his human hands, Aaron and all the people of Israel
were afraid of him. Now it was not the law written in stone that terrified them—not
yet, anyhow—but it was rather the sheer majesty of the glory of God temporarily
reflected off of Moses’ own face. He had spoken with God in His very presence, you
see, and the power of God’s glory lingered on Moses’ skin for a little while afterwards
– and it shocked and unsettled the people. As we know from the Old Testament, when
a man witnesses the unveiled glory of God, the result is usually death. It is too
overwhelming for a mere mortal to observe and yet still survive. Even the residual
glory reflected from Moses’ own skin, that had seeped into his pores for period of
time, was too overpowering for the ancient Israelites – even in reflected form, God’s
glory was much too much for them to bear.

2
And so we are told, Moses placed a veil over his face when he came back down from
the mountain, for the safety of the people of Israel, for their sake, so that they could
bear the law and also God’s glory in a suitable dose, so to speak. All that to say, from
Mount Sinai, Moses brought down the law to the earth. But on his face lingered the
radiance of the glory of that pure, incarnate Gospel Who was to come many centuries
later.
And this fitting human fear of divine glory is spoken of in our gospel lesson
from St. Matthew as well, isn’t it? At the summit of the mount where our Lord Jesus
Christ was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, when His glory shone forth and
that voice from heaven spoke with a glorious booming, we are told that the disciples
threw themselves on the ground and hid their faces, out of fear of the glory itself. In
that moment, and for just a moment, those disciples witnessed what Moses had long
ago seen. They witnessed through the slits of their hands, those trembling hands
covering their frightful faces, they witnessed the Second Person of the Trinity in His
profuse exuberance and His intense and irrepressible resplendence. They beheld
Christ’s awesome divinity momentarily unveiled – and it utterly overwhelmed them.
Though they had already been with Christ for quite some time at that point.
They had even hiked up the mountain with Him, with this man, in the blistering
middle-eastern sun, with the man Jesus, Whom they knew very well. They were not
then afraid though, for Christ’s divinity at that point was still veiled by His humanity
before they reached the mountain’s crest.

3
However, when that same God-made-man, Christ Jesus in the flesh, Who had trekked
up the mountainside with them in the heat of the day, when that same God incarnate
was at the peak unveiled, when He was transfigured before them and His true divinity
shone forth unrestrained by His humanity, it struck terror in the hearts of the disciples.
And that was because of their grave sin, because of their fallenness. This was
the same God, by the way, the pre-incarnate Christ, Who once strolled with Adam in
the cool of the day. Man could once bear to witness God’s glory. In the garden, man
viewed God in all His wonder, without a seeming care in the world. But in sin, in
man’s fallen state, so tainted as he is in his exile from Eden, Christ’s unveiled glory
and bare divinity, it was too sublime – sublime to the point of striking dread in the
souls of men. And so those disciples at the Mount of Transfiguration threw
themselves down to the ground and hid their shamed faces, knowing that the
proximity, the very closeness of such divine glory with their own immense human sin,
with the depth of iniquity in their own hearts, could prove fateful.
And as St. Matthew writes: “Christ’s face shone like the sun, and His clothes
became as white as the light.” The One Who in the beginning said “Let there be light”
showed forth His luminous light to Peter, to James, and to John that day. The Son of
God shone as glaring as the sun in the skies to those select men. They were given the
gift of a glimpse of Triune splendor. They were allowed to experience the
Transfiguration of Christ the Lord, of the Second Person of the Trinity, with their own
senses, their eyes and ears. And this, friends, was the culmination of our Lord’s
Epiphany – it was the high point, the peak of His epiphany before men.

4
Christ was revealed to the venerable old Simeon in the Temple, remember? Just a few
weeks ago. He was then revealed to the worshipping magi. He was likewise revealed
at His baptism by John in the River Jordan. And then, in this majestic moment we
hear about in our lesson this morning, He was revealed in the fullness of His glory.
Those three disciples laid eyes on God made man with His divinity unveiled and His
grandeur wholly exhibited from on high.
And again, what did the disciples do? They threw themselves to the ground in
response. They hid their poor faces. That’s all they could think to do. Adam once had
the privilege of comfortably witnessing God’s glory in the garden. However, with the
weight of sin, God’s glory had become too burdensome for any fallen man to bear.
Therefore, the disciples hid their faces. They prostrated themselves all the way to the
ground, in the dust, in humility, and for their own spiritual and physical welfare.
And so you, too, should throw yourselves down before your God, dear faithful,
for you also have sinned. You have sinned in thought, word, and deed. You are a
sinner by nature. Don’t kid yourself. You have fallen short of the glory of God – and
your own sin cannot withstand divine glory. You have cheated your neighbor out of
good will, you have stolen time and attention from your loved ones, you have looked
lustfully upon a sister or a brother in the Lord, you have thought little of the Word of
God on occasion, you have missed church and have taken God’s power and glory and
goodness for granted – and you know it. You have failed to fear, love, and trust in
God above all things. That is a fact. And with this sin in your hearts and heavy on
your shoulders, your only secure, sensible posture is one of full prostration before the
Almighty and Merciful God, our Father in heaven.

5
You should throw yourself before His grace, before the glory of God, before His Son
and His eternally consequential and beneficial atoning sacrifice. That is what a
repentant Christian does. That is what repentance looks like – prostration and fear.
And so you already have. This morning. You’ve done just that. You have
confessed your sin here together. The law long ago brought down from Sinai has
terrified you, it has crushed you under its weight, it has left you dead in your
trespasses before its dread. And recognizing your helplessness with respect to it, you
have entered through those church doors, you have boldly confessed your sin together
as a congregation and have sought the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness. And insofar as
you truly are repentant, God grants His forgiveness to you freely.
That day centuries ago on the mountain when the disciples threw themselves to
the ground, Jesus, the One unveiled, then instructed them in His soft but stern voice:
“Arise, friends, and have no fear.” These were His consoling words to those petrified
men. The disciples then stood up and saw Jesus standing all alone, like He had once
been. Christ, their sole salvation, was all that remained at those heights. And then they
all descended the mountain together, just as they had shortly ago ascended it. These
men survived the ordeal; they endured an encounter with the tremendous radiance of
God’s glory, as few men up to that point had. And they lived to tell the tale, but only
after Jesus’ resurrection, only after the Son of Man was raised from the dead on the
third day, per His own command. These eyewitnesses to God revealed in the totality
of His glory recorded their experience for our spiritual benefit.

6
And so it is inscribed by the very finger of God in the inspired Holy Word to this day
– in the immovable, unalterable, permanent and inflexible solid stone of the infallible
and inerrant Holy Bible – and thanks be to God for it.
Jesus told His disciples not to speak about His profound glory until after His
death and resurrection had passed. And as they descended the mountain together that
day, our Lord’s still-brilliant face was turned right there – toward Jerusalem – toward
the place of His passion, toward His own unjust-but-necessary death. As He headed
down the mountainside with His disciples, His tragic fate at Golgotha awaited Him, it
hung over His every waking moment. The radiance of His glory on the mountaintop,
when eternity broke through into time, where heaven intersected with earth, that same
bright radiance later had to be briefly eclipsed by three hours of the purest darkness in
the valley on a cruciform instrument of torture and execution.
What came down from Mount Sinai millennia ago, the law on two stone
tablets, this law still accuses you, dear faithful. To this day, it reveals to you your sin
and your deserved death, your transgression and the wrath it incurs, by pointing you to
the death of God on a cross, and by directing your face to look upon your pride and
lust and greed and envy that nailed Him there. This law puts you to death,
figuratively, and in time, literally.

7
However, what came down from the mountainside that day with Peter, James, and
John, Christ Jesus in the flesh, He is the Gospel incarnate, the good news in body and
blood, Who descended the mountain and willingly mounted the cross in the valley for
your sake, for your forgiveness, for your unearned absolution, to withstand the hellish
burden of your failure before God’s good and perfect law, to transfigure your eternal
fate, out of an immeasurable love for you and all for whom He suffered. In Moses’
hands, death came down the mountain with the law and its terror. But in Christ’s body
though, life came down the mountain with the Gospel – which after those three hours
of pitch black poured forth from His pierced side as the elements of like, as water and
blood, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, flowing forth sacramentally down the
mountainside like a waterfall to this very hour into the font and the chalice here at
Bethlehem.
At the mountain’s summit, the disciples were afraid and hid their faces. But
after the resurrection in the valley, they had no reason to fear any longer. Redemption
was won. Victory was had. They were even allowed to feel that victory in the holes in
their Lord’s own hands and side. And so, knowing His victory to be true and sure,
they told the whole world the good news of triumph in Christ’s death and resurrection,
the saving Gospel of the empty tomb. They preached this Gospel of glory hidden in
the horrible shape of a cross, even risking their own lives to do so, with most being
martyred for it. And taking their cue, we, too, should continue to tell the world this
story, no matter the consequences to us, nor to our reputations.

8
Proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth, friends – or if nothing else, tell at
least one person every day of your life. What could it hurt? Tell others about their
need for repentance, about their need for redemption, about the Redeemer’s raised
body and the promise of life without end in His name alone. And encourage others to
come here, to have the opportunity to witness His glory face to face, to be drenched in
His baptism, to taste for themselves of His own true body and blood in this holy meal.
In the light of Christ, there is no more room for the darkness of fear and dread. When
a person is repentant at heart and feels sorrow for their sin in the depth of their soul,
he or she can then stand erect before God, staring Him face to face, and can bear to
witness His glory under the salutary veil of Word and Sacrament.
The law from Sinai accuses us, but the blood of Christ vindicates us. All praise
be to God for it. This is the Gospel. For you. For others. For all. The law kills us, but
we faithful never remain dead, since all death for the believer is only temporary. The
law puts us to death in our sin, but Christ has already paid the price for our failings
and raises us again, time after time, week after week, sin after sin. And in that grace
won there at Golgotha on a cross so long ago, and by the grace poured out for us in
Word and Sacrament here and now and perpetually, we are strengthened, indeed
quickened and enlivening, so that we may glance upon the glory of God in this
beautiful place.
And the grace we witness here transforms us, brothers and sisters. Make no
mistake: every week you are being transformed, you are made different, you are being
sanctified. If you don’t feel it, just trust me – I can see it; I know it to be true.

9
For as St. Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthian church, all us believers,
“with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being
transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” We, too, are being
transfigured, made like our Lord over time. In Christ, the glory of God no longer
threatens us – it no longer terrifies us. Because our sin has been washed away. So long
as we remain repentant, so long as we abide in forgiveness, here in this church, here in
the Word, here in the Sacraments – so long as we dwell firmly in Christ Jesus our
Lord, we, too, can stand erect before God’s throne and behold His majesty, now
through a glass darkly yet one of these days altogether clearly. Covered in the blood
of the Lamb, we live now and forevermore, becoming more and more like that
precious Lamb as the end draws near.
And in this holy life we live, in our lives as Christians in the world,
transformed and transfigured from one glory to another, God’s own glory reflects
from our faces, too, not unlike our forefather Moses in those few moments following
his descent from God’s presence at Sinai. And to be sure, dear flock, the radiance of
this reflected divine glory we receive here Sunday after Sunday may sometimes strike
some fear in the hearts of the unbelievers whom we encounter throughout the week
out there in the world. They may not comprehend the light, as St. John once put it –
and that might well confuse and scare them. They may feel triggered, threatened,
unsettled by the Word of God itself – by God’s law and its accusation. That is no
surprise. The Word and the world are so often at odds.

10
But we pray always that that fear strongly felt might eventually beget repentance for
them, too, so that all who hear the Gospel and read it on our faithful faces, and witness
it in our many Christian deeds, might be saved.
You are forgiven, dearly beloved. You are healed. So as our Lord once said:
Rise, and have no fear. Ascend these steps, this mountain here. Prostrate yourself and
kneel before your God at the summit of this rail. And receive His glory onto your
skin, upon your lips, into your very soul. And let that glory which becomes a part of
you here in this place, which seeps into the countless pores of your everyday life, let
that glory reflect far beyond these walls for the days to come. Just know that I
encourage this with all my breath, as your shepherd. May it be so this day and
tomorrow and especially the day after. In the most holy name of our transfigured
Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

​Rev. Shemwell
John 2:1-11
1/14/24

Homily for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear
brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, so last week I told you all
about my love for the feast day of Epiphany and this entire season of the church year.
And one of the things I really love so much about this season is this morning’s
reading: John chapter 2 on the miracle at Cana – one of my favorite passages in the
entire Bible. Now as I shared with you last Sunday, Epiphany is all about the
manifestation of God’s salvation in Christ for the Gentile world in particular. And
today we get a reading from John’s gospel, which, much like Luke’s gospel, was
written very much with the Gentile reader in mind. And this reading from John 2 is
perfect proof that not only did the Messiah come to rescue both Jew and Gentile, but
that He furthermore came to fulfill the hopes and expectations of both Jews and
Gentiles. I think in our lives as Christians we have probably heard many sermons on
how our Lord came as the clear fulfillment of the biblical prophesies and as the
promised Messiah for God’s chosen Israel. I sure hope we have. And so today, amid
this season of Epiphany, I want to focus instead on how Christ moreover came in
fulfilment of Gentile hopes and expectations. We don’t talk as much about this in our
church, but it is an incredibly important topic, if you ask me. And today’s lesson has
everything to do with it.

2
Now I am sure we have all come across plenty of different interpretations of the
narrative of the miracle at Cana. We know the story, right? The wedding feast is going
on for days on end. But the partiers eventually run out of wine. So Mother Mary asks
her Son Jesus to help and He agrees. He then turns some large stone water jugs into
approximately one thousand bottles of an otherworldly wine, which the master of
ceremonies then tastes and greatly delights in. And thus, the party goes on and the
proverbial buzz continues. And in John’s Gospel, this is presented as our Lord’s very
first miracle. And it is indeed miraculous. Anybody would probably think so. No
matter your ethnic or religious background, turning that many gallons of water into
premium wine is a wondrous feat. We aren’t just talking about Yellow Tail here – this
was the primo-good stuff. Any Jew would surely have been impressed. But here’s the
thing: any Gentile would have been equally impressed and intrigued as well,
especially a Gentile coming from the dominant Greco-Roman culture of the day – a
Gentile kind of like the ones John probably had in mind when he wrote his gospel.
But what do I mean? Well, have any of you ever heard of the Greek god
Dionysus? He was one of the chief gods in the ancient Greek mythological pantheon
of deities, the son of Zeus. And Dionysus, as the story goes, was a bit of a wild card
and a wild god. He was considered the god of wine, of merrymaking, the patron of
partying, in short, the deity of debauchery. When Dionysus came, he always brought
with him much wine. And so, Dionysian festivals in antiquity involved a great deal of
drunkenness and libertine revelry. And perhaps understandably from the standpoint of
sinful human nature, Dionysus was a favored god among the Greeks. People liked
Dionysus back then. He was popular.

3
He could be rough around the edges, kind of unpredictable and at times terrifying, but
also, people liked to have fun and party in their cultural immaturity, so they had a
fondness for this crazy god Dionysus. He was a good-time god, you could say.
And even though we look back on the cult of Dionysus and regard its excesses
as shameful and altogether sinful, and rightly so, his cult did still nevertheless
represent a kernel of a rather powerful religious truth. And that is this: mankind longs
and is eager not just for salvation and life in the hereafter, but for an abundance of life
in the here and now. Mankind is anxious for a god who shares his grace lavishly and
presently. And on top of that, the Dionysian religion pointed to a similar significant
truth: that salvation is not solely reserved for the life to come, but it is meant to spill
over liberally onto current life as well, into creation here and now.
Unfortunately, as St. Paul tells us in the very first chapter of his letter to the
Romans, the pagan Gentile world, by rejecting the true God from ages ago, they were
in turn and over time handed over to their own lusts, to their depraved mind and
uncleanness and their sinful desires. And as Paul informs us, that pagan world then
began to worship the creature rather than the Creator. They made idols out of created
things instead of worshipping the hidden God of creation, the Creator Himself. That
was their sad fate. And so unsurprisingly, the cult of Dionysus, like all pagan cults
throughout history, was excessive and debauched, overindulgent and depraved.

4
Yet Paul also tells us in Acts chapter 14 that God did not leave the peoples of
the world without a witness. None of them. They were all left a witness of some sort.
And despite the clear bastardization and excesses of the Dionysian cult, some slight
religious truth about the hidden God nonetheless peered through all the ugly mess and
idol worship. Enough truth about the coming universal salvation was still discernible
in the Greco-Roman myths to keep a hope alive and a longing aflame in the Gentile
heart – a hope and longing for a real savior, for a true myth, for something so much
better than what they had shamefully settled for, for the living, breathing God of all
creation. Yes, these pagan myths were lies, they were re-formed by Satan. However,
by the grace of God, enough truth from the beginning, from before the flood, from
before the fall even, remained and slipped through these mythological fictions to keep
the Gentile world eager for real redemption. Even in their pagan lies lay some small
truth.
And John’s gospel is proof that Christ did come as the fulfillment of both
Jewish and Gentile hope, Israelite and pagan longing. Today we see it in the miracle
at Cana. St. John was well aware of the Greco-Roman myths when he wrote his
gospel. He was a learned man living in a Hellenized world. And all this knowledge
looms in the background of his gospel, if only one takes the time to recognize it. He
knew how a Greek audience would have responded to this first miracle at Cana. In the
narrative, Jesus Christ is portrayed as the true wine-bringer, the one who provides for
life in overabundance.

5
And in John chapter 15, Jesus explicitly refers to Himself as the “true vine.” He
comes not only to bring life, but indeed an excess of life. He takes water, the source of
life itself, a basic fundamental necessity for survival, and He turns it into something
lavish and opulent, something exorbitant and extra. He takes a need and uses it to
satisfy a human want. His grace flows over from ordinary sustenance into sheer
satisfaction, not altogether unlike the fictional god Dionysus supposedly did. But the
great apparent difference is, this Christ, this God actually lives. Jesus was a real being,
God-made-man, He is a real flesh and blood and bone person. In the words of C.S.
Lewis, Jesus Christ is the true myth. He further fulfilled the longings perpetuated
through the mythologies of old, from across cultures, but He did so in human and
historical form. Greeks would have heard this miraculous narrative of Cana and would
have recognized in it the answer to their own prayers as well. They would have seen
in this story the consummation of their own deepest spiritual yearning. And so some
did. We know that for a fact, because John more or less tells us so.
Further on in John chapter 12 we are informed that sometime later there were a
handful of Greeks who had come to Jerusalem to observe the Jewish Passover.
Remember this story? Well as a reminder, the text reads – John 12: “And so the
Greeks then came to Philip, and they asked him, saying, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
So Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus. But Jesus
answered them, saying, ‘The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.’” Here ends the gospel narrative.

6
So in this passage, Andrew and Philip come to Jesus to tell Him about some
Greek visitors outside the temple walls who have heard about Jesus’ miracles and
long to meet with Him. And in response to this curious news, instead of actually
meeting with those Greeks, Jesus gives His disciples a short message to relay to them
on His behalf. And that message is this: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground
and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” Now that might
seem like a strange and mysterious and awfully brusque reply to offer some unknown
people eagerly desiring to meet with you. It is a kind of an unusual, enigmatic
message. It meaning isn’t intuitive or overly evident. But that’s nevertheless what our
Lord said to them, through His messengers. And you know, it only seems peculiar to
us now because we are not first century Greeks – we are not the original audience for
this message. But no, to their Greek ears, this saying would have actually made
perfect sense – it would have been the ideal answer to hear, in fact, the best possible
news to receive.
John shows us that Gentiles not only sought out Jesus after presumably hearing
about the miracle at Cana, for instance, but that they even received confirmation for
what they had sought. But now what do I mean? Well, Dionysus was not the only
deity in the Greek pantheon. Another chief deity was Persephone, a goddess of
agriculture and the daughter of Zeus and his occasional consort, Demeter, who was
herself the primary goddess of the harvest season. And Persephone was the goddess of
grain – that was her symbol.

7
So in the ancient myths, the god Hades, king of the underworld, he at some point
abducts Persephone and forces her to be his wife and, as the myth goes, he even
seduces her into eating the seeds of a fateful pomegranate fruit, a most consequential
decision on her part (it is almost as if this myth is a broken, warped genetic memory
from the garden).
Well because of her eating of this forbidden seed, so to speak, it’s then decided
between her father, Zeus, the main god, and her new involuntary husband, Hades, that
Persephone would be forced to spend part of the year in the company of her seducer
and spouse in the underworld. However, during the rest of the year, Persephone would
be allowed to return home to her mother above ground, again to Demeter, the goddess
of the harvest. Now that part of the year when she was permitted to come home was
understood to be springtime – when Demeter, her mother, as the principal harvest
deity, was happy and whole and bursting forth with joy at her daughter’s return – and
abundant with fruit and vegetation of the earth. Yet during that time of year when her
daughter was down below with Hades, Demeter would not let the earth flourish at all,
but instead she would mourn greatly for her daughter, with the earth laying fallow as a
result. That time of year was clearly winter, right? And so, for the Greeks who
worshipped these goddesses, Persephone’s return aboveground and springtime was
understood as a sort of divine homecoming and even a resurrection of sorts of the
earth itself – a return to life and abundancy and fruition.

8
And since the festival these Greeks in John 12 were attending was the Jewish
Passover, a festival which always occurs in the springtime—just like Easter for
us—they would have been particularly sensitive at that time to any implied mention of
their own springtime religious traditions.
And according to John 12, Jesus responds to these Greek visitors by alluding to
His own coming death and resurrection—the grain of wheat that falls to the ground
and dies—and He does so in this language that would obviously remind them of their
own myths. But why would He do that? Well, if you ask me, it is because Christ came
as the fulfillment of both Jewish and Gentile longing. He came to fulfill the hopes of
both God’s chosen Israel and the entire fallen world. Perhaps in the ancient
Persephone cult, some grain of truth remained from the early days after fall after all.
God would have to descend into hell, into the underworld below, in order to bring
forth resurrection and fruition of life above. This truth about divine sacrifice and a
hellish descent below became confused in the pagan world, it was made ugly over the
millennia, to be sure. But in John 12, Jesus nonetheless uses this precise imagery in
order to point these Greeks to His own fate and sacrifice and its gracious benefits for
them as well. What Jesus was saying to those Greeks through Andrew and Philip in
John 12 was not snappy or dismissive in the least. Rather He was saying: “Yes, I have
come for you, too. What you have heard of at Cana is true. I am also the fulfillment of
your hopes for springtime, of your dreams for salvation and resurrection. I am the true
myth. Forsake your false idols and devilish deities now and believe instead in Me, the
one Who comes to replace and abolish them all.”

9
So what is my point with all this? Well, I personally believe in John’s gospel
we see that Christ our Lord came as the supersession of pagan mythology. Which is to
say, He came to replace the false gods of a confused world, indeed to overthrow and
override them, to definitively supplant those eternally useless fictions. For He is the
true wine-bringer, He is the true sacrifice to the underworld Who brings forth
resurrection. The Greeks were worshipping mere idols, they were worshipping
creation rather than their Creator, as Paul says. Without the Word of God, without His
revelation to guide them, the Gentile world had become lost in its own distortions of
religious truth. But a witness remained regardless. And Jesus came for the lost sheep
as well, did He not? He came as the fulfillment of their expectations, too. He came as
their personal Savior. He came as their true myth, as the one, true God. His miracle at
Cana was specifically for the Gentile audience. That’s my reading, anyhow. His
words in John 12 to the Greeks were for the entire Gentile world. God became man
for all men and women. And in the resurrected Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek
anymore. All are equally saved in Him. All are united in Him. There is no more room
for identity politics.
But what does all this mean for us today? Well, for starters, whenever you read
Scripture as a so-called Gentile, don’t ever feel like a spectator. Ethnicity does not
matter anymore. Not one bit. These scriptures are ours and they are meant for us.
These true stories are our stories, they belong to us no matter our backgrounds. That’s
what Epiphany is all about! Jesus is the Savior of all peoples. There is no more Jew or
Gentile in the eyes of God. The church is God’s chosen Israel from here on out. God
condescended to be born of the Jewish virgin to redeem us all equally.

10
But also, I think emphasizing Christ’s fulfillment of Gentile longing in
particular demonstrates for us a truth we sometimes may lose sight of. And that is this:
Christ is our eternal salvation, without question. However, that salvation we have in
Christ, thanks be to God, it often pours over from eternity right onto the present
moment as well. The kingdom of glory overflows and runs over into the kingdom of
grace. Our redemption is not reserved for the life to come alone – way far in the
future. Instead, it is also playing out here and now. God provides not solely for our
basic eternal needs. But He moreover provides for our current overabundance. And
He does so here in creation. Creation is not hopelessly evil. Rather, in light of the
Incarnation of our Lord, in light of His epiphany, in light of His life, death, and
resurrection, creation has become a vehicle for our salvation. Christ and the Holy
Spirit save us in space and time through physical things, through the tangible means
of grace. And they even do so through both water, the very basis of life, and wine, a
symbol of the pure excess of life. A cup of life that runneth over!
The pagan Gentile longing of antiquity was characterized by the emphasis it
placed on the present life, on an affirmation of this world, on an appreciation this
creation right here. Regrettably, that emphasis and appreciation eventually became
gross idolatrous worship, as Paul tells us. It became corrupted. But there was still
some truth in that stress laid. There is a balance to be struck here. This world is
passing away, yes. And yet, God saves us in it, and through it, and provides lavishly
for us within it.

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No we should not cling to this life. Jesus goes on to say in John 12: “Whoever loves
his life will lose it, but whoever does not cling to his life will keep it for eternal life.”
We are not to place our hopes in this life alone. Our truest hope lies in the next.
At the same time, however, neither are we to detest and despise or bemoan this
life. We are not supposed to reject this creation and deprive ourselves of God’s good
gifts for us within it. This world and the next one need not be entirely opposed in the
life of the Christian. And yet, sometimes, some man-made teaching in the church sure
starts to sound an awful lot like hatred of this life. But how do any who teach that way
handle John 2? How do they read the miracle at Cana? God turns water, a necessity
for life, into an intoxicant, an inebriant, a means for a surplus of life and cheer. God
wants us to enjoy this creation, He wants us to delight in this life He has given us. We
are to appreciate the gifts of the earth, the springtime, the fruits of this life, the
figurative fruit of the vine. And yes, we are to have fun even, according to God’s
Word and will. Gentiles were arguably, on occasion at least, better at appreciating that
fact, for better or worse. And so, I sincerely pray that some small Gentile wisdom
might continue to carry over to the present day in the new Israel, the holy Christian
church.
Brothers and sisters, Epiphany is all about the Lord’s salvation for all people,
for Jew and Gentile. He is revealed to all of us, and saves us each by grace through
faith. And this Second Sunday of Epiphany, we are provided the miracle at Cana,
where God liberally pours the red wine of His love and grace upon us undeserving
sinners.

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Christ is the fulfillment of our eternal hopes and the fulfillment of our immediate
earthly desires, too. He feeds us even in this life, He gives us drink even in this
creation, even this side of heaven. Our souls are saved for eternity by water and the
Word, by the basis of life, H 2 0, and God’s inspired Word spoken over it in Holy
Baptism. That secures us for the life to come.
And yet also, even in this life, right here, right now, God strengthens that
saving faith and our mortal bodies through an overabundance of life. He strengthens
our faith through the fruit of the vine. We do not need wine, but He gives it to us
anyways, and implores us to take and drink, as we are able. He is the true wine-
bringer. And this day, He abides in this wine which He has brought, His blood once
shed is sacramentally united to the fruit of the vine at this altar. And He comes for
you, for both Gentile and Jew. For whoever longs for Him. He comes for all Who
believe in His name. He comes to forgive and rescue you, to lift you up, to give you
mirth and merriment and to fulfill your deepest longings for meaning and purpose and
life now and without end. Having been buried in the earth below and having sprung
forth again Himself like bounteous grain, He brings you His resurrection and an
eternal spring through the tiny grainy host at this rail. So come and taste and see, dear
flock. Come this day and taste for yourself of the true myth, of the fulfillment of all
genuine human hope, come taste God-made-man in this soon-ready meal. In the most
holy name of our one, true God – in Jesus’ name. Amen.

​Rev. Shemwell
Matthew 2:1-12
1/7/24

Homily for Epiphany

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear
brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I love this feast day. I love
Epiphany. Now to be sure, I’ve got a lot of favorites when it comes to feast days. I’m a
liturgical guy, if you haven’t already noticed. So to be honest with you, I am a sucker
for the entire church calendar. But this one day certainly tops the list. And I suppose the
less-liturgically-minded out there might find that kind of unusual. Why not Christmas,
you know? Or why doesn’t Easter top the list, the more well-known of feast days? Or
even Pentecost or Reformation Sunday? To quote our President: “C’mon, man!” Aren’t
those days just as good? And I mean, obviously I love all those feasts too – and I would
probably be lying if I said I loved Epiphany more than Easter or Christmas. But I do
really cherish this feast. And moreover, I feel like it’s the most underrated of holy days.
It just doesn’t get enough appreciation. But maybe you’re wondering why though?
Why Epiphany? What’s your obsession with it, pastor? And what’s your great defense
of this supposedly underappreciated church festival?
Well, dear faithful, I think I love Epiphany so much, and think it as so
undervalued, for two primary reasons. The first of which is actually simple enough: if
you didn’t already know this, Epiphany has another popular name: it has traditionally
been called the Gentile Christmas. And that’s because Epiphany is all about the
manifestation of God in man to the Gentile world in particular. It’s about the revelation
of the good news of salvation for all mankind to all mankind. Which is to say, it’s about
God’s revealing Himself to the Gentiles as well.

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And you know, I’m about as Gentile as it gets. My blood is half Anglo-Saxon, a
little bit of Dutch, and the rest is mostly Mestizo-Mayan-Iberian-Conquistador. I’m
exceptionally Gentile, you might say. And so, this feast day above all others is for
people just like me! And looking around here, you can all probably relate, as most of
us—and most Lutherans for that matter—are of Gentile stock, usually of European
ancestry, historically of German or Scandinavian extraction – although of late and
globally, more of African descent. And thus, if it weren’t for the good news of
Epiphany, we might all still be hopelessly lost heathens and pagans like most of our
forefathers. But thanks be to God, Christ also came for us! He came for both Jew and
Gentile. And I feel like Epiphany doesn’t get enough credit among us for being the
primary joyous liturgical celebration of the all-encompassing—even Gentile-
encompassing—nature of our salvation. But it really should. So that’s reason number
one.
The second reason though, it is a little more complicated. But in short, it’s that
Epiphany, when you really get to the heart of the matter, it is all about humility. And by
that, I mean, it’s all about the humility of faith. And that is a topic very near and dear to
my own heart, and my own theological interests and concentrations. It is personal for
me. This is a subject I care an awful lot about – the humility of faith.
You know, we live in a world that prides itself on allegiance to science, to the
experts, to the intellectual authorities, to Enlightenment ideals and the supposed “surety
of human reason.” And yet, this same world fails to realize how all that stuff, every last
thing taken for granted as true and certain in this earthly life, is all based on faith. At
the end of the day, everything is faith. All knowledge is a matter of faith. It really is.
And all reason is grounded in a very primitive faith.

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Whatever you believe about the world around you, it is all ultimately taken on faith. It’s
a leap of faith. If nothing else, it is dependent on the faith that you place in your own
five senses, in your mind, in your sanity. To even believe that the sun will rise again
tomorrow, that’s a matter of faith. Maybe faith with apparently good reason behind it –
but still faith nonetheless – faith that your senses and your reason and memory are
reliable, trustworthy. Everything is faith. And yes, even all science. It boils down to a
hypothesis and a theory – that is to say, to faith – to belief.
But so often in our society we completely fail to recognize that unpopular
reality. And so, we instead tend to pit reason and faith against one another, as if reason
has some sort of power or authority apart from belief – apart from being the handmaid
to faith, which is what it used to be in former times. We have forgotten just how
corrupted our reason has become – how reason, too, once fell into sin with Adam and
remains impure and depraved this side of heaven. That being the case, what the world
definitely needs now is a little bit of humility. That is true across the board, but I think
it is foremost true when it comes to the prideful fixation we have with our own human
reason. We treat it like an idol. We absolutely, positively treat our so-called
autonomous, independent human reason like a gross idol.
But as St. Paul assures us in his first letter to the Corinthian church, idols do not
actually exist. They are figments. However, the devil sure does exist, and untruth very
much exists. Remember, the serpent provided Eve with seemingly sound reasons in the
garden, now didn’t he? His words sounded sensible enough to the human ear. And yet,
idols don’t have any real existence of their own. Reason has no existence apart from
serving God or serving Satan. Reason does not exist on its own, apart from aiding
either faith or untruth and lies.

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So what we desperately need as a society is the humility to acknowledge the crucial
place of simple faith in every single aspect of life, even when it comes to our
rationality. And most importantly, we need the wisdom of faith. But what exactly does
that mean? What is the “wisdom of faith” and what use does our overly reasonable,
scientific—increasingly secular—society have for it? Well, that’s exactly what I’d like
to touch on in our sermon this morning. And toward that end, let’s take another brief
look at our reading, so that we might get a better idea of what this feast of Epiphany is
all about and how it ties into everything I’ve just said.
So, in our lesson, we hear that sometime after Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, a
handful of “magi” come from the east to Jerusalem in search of the newborn King of
the Jews. However, the always-malevolent King Herod, of course, he catches word of
this entourage of curious “magi” and, being deeply concerned about the matter, he calls
together a summit of his very best men in order to interpret the many biblical
prophesies and to determine the correct location of the new King’s birth. When the
scribes inform him that the location is indeed Bethlehem, just as Micah had prophesied
long ago, he then schedules a meeting with these curious magi, and playing
nice—which should have been suspicious enough for a crooked figure like Herod—he
inquires about the star that they magi had seen which initially piqued their curiosity in
this new King’s nativity.
He then sends the magi off to Bethlehem with the command that they are to
return to him afterwards with the Child’s exact location so that he, too, might have the
opportunity to visit the newborn ruler and pay Him due homage. That’s what he tells
them, anyhow. So, the magi head off, following the star, and eventually make it to
where Christ and the Holy Family are dwelling.

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And upon reaching the home, St. Matthew tells us that the magi are overjoyed at seeing
the regal Child. The text says that they bow down and worship Jesus and offer Him
their three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And finally, having been warned in a
dream not to return to the deceptive King Herod, as he’s really just intent upon killing
Jesus, the true King of the Jews, the magi return to their own land by an altogether
different route, thereby disobeying Herod’s command. So that’s our story in a nutshell.
Now the first thing to address here, friends, is the identity of these “magi.” The
word “magi,” or the singular “magus” from the ancient Greek, it basically means
magician. And you can clearly see the etymological connection between those words,
right? Yet many translations render this word as “wise men,” I think with the
understanding that at that time in history, magicians, or those well-versed in things like
astrology, and dream interpretation, and even ceremonial magic, men trained in these
kinds of skills were very much considered wise men in antiquity—that was more or
less the science back then—and so these wise magicians were those upon whom the
masses depended for their own understanding of the world around them. Put simply,
magicians were the experts in a much earlier age. For instance, think of the use of
Daniel’s skill at interpreting dreams for the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the
Old Testament—and there are plenty of other similar examples in Scripture as well.
Not that Daniel was a magician – but certainly he was a dream interpretor!
So, suffice to say, these guys were trusted wise magicians. But they were
furthermore, and most importantly for us today, they were Gentile magicians. They did
not hail from the land of the Israelites but from the east. Now we don’t know exactly
where in the east they came from, but we do know they would have been Gentile, likely
pagans from somewhere near modern-day Iran perhaps.

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To recap, then, these three wise men—well, here’s the thing: we assume there were
three of them because of the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, right? But
really though, the text doesn’t outright say how many there were, it’s just traditionally,
we’ve assumed there were three—so these three wise men, they were foreign pagan
magicians.
And think about that for just a second, beloved. We also hear that Herod’s
brightest most learned religious scholars, those faithful Hebrew scribes who knew the
Torah so well, we are told that they comprehended the scriptural prophesies and that
they likewise fully realized that the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem. They
knew it perfectly well. Yet we don’t hear anything about them attempting to make a
pilgrimage to see the Child. And Herod, for that matter, the accepted, earthly king of
the Jews, not only did he not really intend on paying homage to Jesus, he in fact just
wanted Him dead, as he saw Him as a threat to his worldly power. That’s why he
sought the location of Jesus’ birth. In other words, the main representatives of the
Jewish people in the area, the temporal ruler and the scholars, they didn’t seem to have
much love for the newborn King of the Jews. Our text even suggests that all of
Jerusalem was “troubled” at the prospect, presumably at the idea of the new King’s
arrival. Instead, it was a handful of Gentile pagan magicians from the east who were
eager to worship the neonatal Jewish Messiah. And how all this so obviously
foreshadowed our Lord’s eventual rejection by His own people.
But brothers and sisters, here’s the question worth answering at this point: what
precisely made these pagans wise? I mean, to be fair, they were deemed
knowledgeable, reliable in their age on account of their astrological proficiency and
their mastery of magic. However, why do we still consider them wise today?

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What is the wisdom these pagan magicians still represent for the church in the twenty-
first century? What do these ancient Gentiles have to teach us modern Gentiles? What
is the point of their purported wisdom? Well, as I see it, their true wisdom lies plainly
in their faith – in their willingness to humble their own human reason and trust in faith
alone.
But what do I mean? Well think about this: as first century astrologers, the magi
had every reason to trust in the stars above. That was kind of their whole thing, their
business. Astrologers believe in the lights of heaven and take their cues from
astronomical occurrences up there. So all that makes sense – it fits their M.O., so to
speak. But why would these pagan magicians and astrologers, why would they be
putting their faith in Jewish prophesies as well? They were led not by the star alone but
also by Jewish prophesy. Yet they themselves were not Jewish. And still they knew the
prophesies though, they knew the scriptures, however foreign they were. And not only
did they know the prophesies, but they also believed them, for whatever untold reason.
And it seems they had more faith in them than the Jewish hierarchy at the time, maybe
even more than the whole of Jerusalem.
But common sense tells us that all their pagan reasoning should have led them to
disregard this seemingly insignificant prophesy about a newborn Jewish king,
especially since, at that time, the Jewish kingdom was not that big of a deal on the
world stage, from the global perspective. And the Jewish people did not dominate the
culture of the empire either, the Romans did. Therefore, pagans were still in power, not
the other way around. So the magi had no clear logical reason to care about these
obscure prophesies concerning a Jewish king. But… these wise men, they did not listen
to their reason, to their own pagan science, now did they?

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They ignored all sound reason and all the valid arguments to care less about a faraway
infant Israelite monarch. They did not heed their worldly reason but instead they
blindly followed some exotic prophesy and, of course, that unusual star in the sky.
They followed the star to a little home where they found a peasant Jewish
family, a virgin, her husband, and a newborn, Who was understood by them to be God
in the flesh. We know this for sure because they bowed down and worshiped Him. And
they even offered Him gold, a gift for a king, frankincense—incense—a present for a
priest, and myrrh, an offering for a condemned man or terminal case, that is to say, for
a sacrifice. And it’s this final gift of myrrh, this perfumed oil that was used
ceremonially to anoint dead or dying bodies, it is this gift in particular which suggests
that the magi somehow knew that not only was this Child going to be the King of the
Jews, but that He was moreover going to die a sacrificial death for them.
So again, to recap once more, these pagan magicians from the east followed a
strange star to reach and worship the Jewish baby of an ordinary undistinguished
family, understanding Him to be God made flesh and the King of the Jews, and they
brought Him a present that prefigured and predicted His sacrificial death. Were these
wise men so wise and so prescient that they further foresaw that Christ would later die
on a cross at Calvary? And if so, then how much more remarkable was their faith and
their readiness to humble their reason. These Gentile men accepted not only that God
had become a man, but that He would go on to die for mankind. But why on earth
would a god do that?
Especially for learned magi coming from a pagan world, in their thinking: what
sort of divine being does that? What kind of god takes on human form all in order to
die a gruesome death in a shameful way?

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In their heathen society, such a thing was entirely absurd – it was the epitome of
foolishness! That’s not what Mithra, Zeus, Jupiter, or whomever else would do. Not at
all! And certainly, all this contradiction and paradox, unexplainable mystery and
apparent impossibility must have crossed the minds of the wise men at some point
along the way – they were wise, after all. Not terribly unlike the supposed wise men of
our day. And yet, they followed that star anyways, they bowed down and worshipped
anyways, and nevertheless they offered their gifts to that foreign sacrifice of a King.
And then, they listened to the wisdom of a dream, of all things, and ignored Herod’s
explicit command. They refused to let any harm come to the Child. And that is faith,
friends. That’s what faith looks like. Faith clings to a heavenly promise against all
worldly reason, against all odds, against all earthly authority even.
And that’s why those ancient pagan magicians were so wise. It was not so much
a result of their worldly knowledge, but it was because of their faith. They were wise
not on account of their minds, but their hearts. You know, St. Paul tells us in his epistle
to the Hebrews that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
not yet seen.” These Gentile men, they wanted a real savior, a redeemer, someone to
come and rescue them from sin, death, and meaninglessness. They hoped for salvation,
even among the offspring of a poor family belonging to a people not their own in a
faraway distant land, only identified for them by an evidently random star in the sky.

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They hoped for it, and that hope formed their faith. They followed that random
star out of a conviction of something not yet seen but hoped for – hoped for in earnest,
hoped for by eager men, by men who, like all men, suffered under the weight of sin and
the threat of death – men who shared a longing, shared among the chosen Israelites as
well as every pagan society throughout world history, a longing for a true flesh and
blood savior. And because of that hope, because of their faith, we now celebrate
Epiphany, the Gentile Christmas, that feast day when we appreciate with exceedingly
great joy the manifestation of God through the virgin womb not just to the Jew, but to
the Gentile too, for all mankind. And yes, that is true wisdom. The wisdom of faith.
And that, friends, is why I cannot help but love this holy day of Epiphany.
And you know what else, the word epiphany, it just means “manifestation” or
“theophany.” It’s when God reveals Himself to man in some way, shape, or form; for
us Gentiles, in the very flesh of a man named Jesus of Nazareth. And the thing is, this
feast of Epiphany is not solely a celebration during which we look way back in time to
when God once revealed Himself to mankind in Christ Jesus in the first century. It is
also a day when we concentrate on the epiphany still presently before us, right here. For
Christ, He is still being manifested, revealed among us Gentiles today, all these
centuries later. He is still coming to us, disclosed in the Word of God, and enfleshed,
incarnated in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
This morning is the first day of the Epiphany season, but really every Sunday
and every celebration of the Divine Service is an epiphany of sorts, a Little Epiphany,
much like this particular feast day is the Gentile Christmas, or the so-called “Little
Christmas.” Every celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a Little Epiphany for us as
individuals.

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And so, dear flock, in this meal God is still being revealed to you, manifested before
your eyes, epiphanized just for you, each and every time you eat and drink of His true
Body and Blood. You Germans, Swedes, Finns, Danes, Dutch, Scots, French,
Cubans—or Anglo-Saxon/Mestizo-Mayans like myself—of whatever stock you may
be, the King of the Jews, the King of All, of every ethnicity on earth, is manifested
before you in Word and Sacrament, revealed here and now.
And so, in closing and taking our cue from those wise men of old, those foreign
pagan middle-eastern magicians who led the way by following a star and heeding the
wisdom of a dream, of all things; taking our cue from them, let us, too, bow down and
worship our Lord. Let us worship our King… the King of the Jews and the King of the
Gentiles… the King of all creation. Let us bow down and worship, receiving His grace.
And let us prostrate ourselves and offer to Him our gifts and presents of prayer, praise,
and thanksgiving. Let us bow down and worship before this weekly epiphany of our
very own Messiah. And yes, let us be as wise as those men of the past, rather than the
presumed wise men of the present; let us be as wise as those faithful magicians from
the east, those Gentiles of yesteryear. And may we be as wise as all who have preceded
us in the faith, all the saints and martyrs of every generation who once hoped in Christ,
despite and yet in boastful glorification and pride in the sheer shame and foolishness of
His cross – all who’ve paid homage to the true King, born in a manger, enthroned on
the cross at Calvary, and now seated triumphantly at the right hand of the Father in
heaven. In short, let us be wise in our Christian faith.
All that to say, I really do love Epiphany. I love this feast day and this season,
the entire short season of Epiphanytide, and not just because it’s a nice liturgical excuse
to keep my Christmas decorations up for another month until the feast of Candlemas.

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No, I love Epiphany for these more profound reasons. And I hope and pray that you do
too. And so, dear friends, my fellow redeemed sinners, of either Jew or Gentile stock,
of any race, whatever you may be, from wherever you may come, with these words,
words of joyful recognition, given this day from the holy evangelist, St. Matthew,
through the inspired Word of God, to us, the church, the Body of Christ, with these
words, shared this cheerful Epiphany, between but a lowly saved sinner and other saved
sinners, toward greater appreciation for the all-encompassing nature of our salvation
and toward a humble and more grateful heart for the Epiphany of our God in man as a
newborn King and the manifestation of His redemption through the cross upon which
that King suffered and died out of immeasurable love for His creation, with these
words, may you now, by the grace of God our Father, by the presence of our Savior and
King in both Word and Sacrament, and by the power of His Holy Spirit, may you be
forever kept in the eternal security of our Lord’s heavenly bosom. In the most holy
name of Jesus. Amen.

​Rev. Shemwell
Luke 2:21–40
12/31/23

Homily for First Sunday after Christmas

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear
brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, you know, I read an article
some three or so years ago, because the headline was just far-too attention-grabbing
not to read it, as they tend to be these days in our culture of clickbait. In any case, this
article has really stuck with me ever since. I don’t read too many articles, or pay much
attention to any modern media whatsoever, or, to be honest, to the news at all, for that
matter—and my life is immeasurably the better for it—but anyways, this one article, I
did take the time to read it and really remember it. So there was at that time a hot new
statistic out that suggested that Americans were the least happy they had been in over
fifty years. American happiness levels—whatever that means—had hit a record low.
The statisticians had proved it, right? And obviously, that caught my attention. I don’t
so much recall the headline verbatim, but it was something pithy along the lines of:
Americans now least happy and contented in over half a century. Something like that.
Now that article was published, I believe, back in early 2020. And I’m sure
y’all remember what else happened as 2020 went on – who could forget? – and what
else has happened from that point to the present as well. Suffice to say, I can’t
imagine we have yet rebounded from that supposed record low nearly four years ago.
I haven’t seen any newer statistics—I haven’t really looked either—but my guess is
we have continued to plummet when it comes to general nation-wide contentedness.
And I suspect that that nosedive into cheerlessness as a country has been a decades-
long affair; the research seems to suggest as much.

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For example, according to another statistic I saw recently, the happiest year in
American history was actually 1957. Again, I have no clue how they gauge these
things, but evidently the beginning of Eisenhower’s second term, for whatever reason,
was a year for the history books. Maybe some of you were lucky enough to have been
around back then and can recall the good old days. Personally though, I have always
thought that the nostalgia for the 1950s was precisely that: overblown, exaggerated,
rose-colored nostalgia, a pining for a time that never truly existed, a longing for what
shows like Happy Days and Leave it to Beaver and movies like Grease represented
but might not have accurately portrayed in full. But clearly, there was something to
the 1950s, particularly 1957 apparently. And whatever that something was, it made
Americans happier and more fulfilled at that time; and regrettably, according to the
experts, whatever it was, we have clearly since lost it.
Of course, there is plenty of speculation about why Americans used to be
happier than they currently are. And those speculations are spread all across the
spectrum. Whatever your preconceived notions are, you can sure find a statistic to
back them up, that’s always an option. However, one speculation I ran across struck
me as especially believable. And that is this: some say that Americans were happier in
the 1950s because they more or less had a better handle on their expectations for life,
and most importantly, they were just better at prioritizing the things that really do
matter in life. In other words, Americans in the 50s were more content because they
realized that the happy life is usually a simple one, centered around family and friends
and one’s community, and yes, the church as well. To be fair, they could afford such a
simple life back when single-income families were a possibility. But I digress.

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At any rate, I can believe that speculation. That specific theory strikes me as
reasonable enough. Because if there is one thing that is true about Americans today, it
is that there is no longer any limit to our unreasonable expectations for life and neither
is there a limit to our insatiable desire for distraction, for the very things that get in the
way of the simple life – of a life grounded in family, friends, faith and fellowship. We
have all the creature comforts in the world at our disposal. We are supposedly more
connected by technology than ever before, and even more than we ever could have
imagined in the science fiction of the 1950s. And yet, we are nevertheless seemingly
miserable. We are overindulged to the point of depression. In the sixty-six years that
have passed since 1957 our contentment levels have declined consistently, and as of
late, precipitously, even despite the undeniable fact that advancements in science and
technology and medicine and scholarship have been exponential. It is almost as if the
more we have, the more we have access to, the more we think we know, and the more
we have to look forward to—such as the new smart phone, the next season of our
favorite show, or whatever else—it is almost as if the more we have of all this, the
less happy we actually are. And frankly, dear faithful, that all sounds about right to
me.
But what’s your point, pastor? What are you getting at with all this gloomy and
upsetting news about the unfortunate state of the union and the collective crash of our
dopamine and serotonin levels as a country? Well, friends, I mention all this today for
two reasons.

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Firstly, because it is New Year’s Eve, that time of year where we are all looking
forward to a better tomorrow and are optimistically anticipating a brighter future; the
annual occasion for resolutions, renewal, and recommitments, and yes, for re-
prioritizations. So it seems like a good time to mention how much we’ve failed in that
department over the last half-century, according to those in the know, anyhow. But
also, I bring this up because of our Gospel reading this morning.
In the lesson read, we heard the story of our Lord’s circumcision on the eighth
day and then His presentation in the Temple in Jerusalem some weeks later in
fulfillment of the public rite of consecration to God and redemption of the first-born
son, a common thing for a Jewish family to do back in the first century. And in this
lesson, we hear some very familiar verses, the so-called Song of Simeon, or the Nunc
Dimittis, as it is entitled from the Latin in our liturgy, which we sing each Sunday
after our celebration of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. And what a song of pure
contentment. What an ideal song to hear today of all days, on New Year’s Eve, on the
cusp of tomorrow and the future, and in light of all the heavy news I just laid on you.
Because Simeon, he understood contentment. And Simeon, he was a man who had all
his priorities and expectations in proper order.
Admittedly though, as we are told in our reading, Simeon did have a little bit of
help in the whole sorting out of priority and expectation thing. St. Luke informs us
that Simeon, a righteous and devout man in his own right, did have the Holy Spirit
upon him – and that the Spirit had even revealed to Simeon at some point that he
would not taste death before witnessing salvation with his own two eyes.

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Not surprisingly, such a holy message stirred Simeon’s heart and so he then went on
to the Temple to follow up on the Spirit’s promise, where thankfully and somewhat
serendipitously he one day found Mary, Joseph, and the child Jesus. And there in the
Temple that day, Simeon, this elderly man, after so many years still eager for the
consolation of Israel, as St. Luke writes, Simeon took up salvation in his own arms;
when the child was presented in the Temple by His parents, the holy infant was rested
against the bosom of this presumable stranger, a kindly old righteous man named
Simeon.
Now St. Luke doesn’t mention this next part, but I cannot help but think that
Simeon’s eyes that day were filled with tears of sheer joy. I picture this grandfatherly
man embracing the little child, tears running down his life-worn and fully-bearded
face. And this inspirited man, according to Luke’s account, then gloriously sang with
the little God in his arms: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast
prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of
thy people Israel.” As Simeon knew and acknowledged in song, the child he held in
his aged arms was not merely the consolation of the chosen Israel, but He was
moreover the redeemer of all mankind. The world’s deliverance, creation’s fortunate
fate, he held tight to his own chest. Simeon realized exactly Whom he was laying his
tired eyes upon. This child was God. And Simeon delighted in that magnificent
realization. The Holy Spirit’s promise for him was wholly fulfilled.

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Of course, we Lutherans sing this song so often that perhaps we forget its
original context and its truest meaning. When we chant the Nunc Dimittis together at
the close of our service, those beginning words about “departing in peace,” we
probably take them to be a reference to how we Christians are now getting ready at
the end of our worship to leave this church and are going out into the world for the
coming week. We are departing here in peace, with Christ in our bodies and souls,
taking Him out yonder to be a light unto the world through our holy lives. “Let us now
depart from this church building in peace.” That’s the thought, I assume. That’s the
image in mind when most sing this hymn. And that is in part correct.
However, that is not exactly what Simeon meant by his original words. On the
contrary, Simeon very much meant that he was then, having beheld and even held the
Lord in his own arms, that he was then literally ready to die. He was saying that he
was ready to depart from this earthly life. The Holy Spirit had told him, this venerable
old man, that he would behold salvation before his death. Simeon clung to that
promise and hung around the Temple and indeed eventually beheld that very
salvation, and cherished Him in his arms. That’s all Simeon needed. That’s all he
expected, anticipated, or wanted. He was contented. And so, he was ready to leave
this world behind. He had seen what he was promised to see, what needed to see – he
witnessed what he had so hoped for: the consolation of God’s people in the form of
that small child. So Simeon was saying: “I’m ready to go now, God. Let Your servant
depart in peace – not only from this temple but from this earth, from this vale of tears.

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I have seen Your salvation, so if You are ready to take me home, then I am ready to
be there.” And that, friends, is legitimate contentment. That is what it sounds like.
That is genuine happiness.
We have all likely had those moments in our lives, those tremendous moments
when we felt so happy, so contented, so perfect and at peace, that if life were to have
ended right then and there, it would have been okay. Those moments where
everything is altogether fine, even the reality of the end. And if you ask me, that is
true happiness: when you can let go of all the things you so desperately cling to –
when for a moment, you can place every last thing in God’s hands where it belongs,
because you are utterly satisfied in spirit, to the point of even accepting your own
inevitable death. A moment of peace that transcends the fear of death itself, that
drowns it out – that’s authentic peace. And that’s the kind of peaceful moment
Simeon experienced long ago. And the song he then sang remains a lesson for us now:
it a lesson about from whence true happiness and contentment come. And that is from
God. These come from God. Happiness, satisfaction, peace, contentment, fulfilment.
The things of the world will never ever bring us these. Science, technology, modern
medicine – these may extend our lives, they may make our lives easier and more
comfortable—and thanks be to God for it—but they don’t make our lives any better
on the deepest level. They can’t. Only God fills that hole in the depth of our soul.
Jesus Christ alone brings that kind of lasting fulfilment and imperishable joy.
So why are Americans less happy today? Well, because they have forgotten the
priorities they once had. We work far too much, we are on our phones way too much,
we are distracted too easily and entirely too much.

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We ignore our families, we have become disconnected from our friends, we are
isolated and we so often don’t even have the guts to admit it to ourselves. But more
than anything else, in the past half-century or so, we as Americans have abandoned
God and His holy church. People were happier in 1957 because they went to church
week after week. That is the plain and simple and unavoidable truth. All the
psychotropic drugs and designer clothes and TikTok reels and sexualized media and
sums of money in the world will never get us any closer to contentment as a nation
than we once were when we put the church first and foremost in our lives. Period.
To be sure though, most of the supposed experts when it comes to these
statistics would never entertain that controversial reality – they would never consider
it as a possibility. It isn’t politically expedient to do so anymore. It isn’t fashionable in
our secularized society. However, we all know it’s true. This country has forsaken the
wisdom of St. Simeon. Which is why we are no longer content. And which is why we
have become a people so paralyzingly afraid of the topic of death, for instance. We
are thanatophobic, to use the technical term: we have a phobia of death, of even
speaking about it. We don’t want to die. We are so quick to avoid the issue even, it
unsettles us on such a primitive level. And that is because we are so painfully
unfulfilled and lacking in peace. We have lost all hope, because we have lost all touch
with the source of our consolation – we as Americans have removed Christ the Lord,
our peace incarnate, from our world of priorities. We’ve relegated Him in our culture
to an optional and extracurricular status.

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And yeah, I get it: without Christ, death is terrifying. Without Him, the end is
petrifying. And so long as death terrifies and petrifies, a person will never be truly
content or happy for very long. It’s simply not possible.
But for all of us here, still in the church, for us Americans still trying our best
to prioritize our Lord, we don’t share that same fear. Or at least, we shouldn’t. St. Paul
says: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then we are of all men the most
pitiable.” And yet that is not our sole hope, he declares, because Christ has indeed
risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
The last enemy to be defeated is death, and our Lord overcame that adversary on the
cross centuries ago. Death has no more sting, the grave, no victory. So we Christians
are allowed to be content. We’re privileged and permitted to be free of the fear of
death and meaninglessness. Take us now, Lord, or let us live for a little while longer.
Either way, we are pleased and fulfilled in You alone. Heavenly Father, you can let us
now depart in peace, or you can enable us serve You in this world for a bit more.
Either way, we live or we die in peace. Because we have Christ.
We have the consolation of His salvation. We have nothing to worry about.
Death has been put to death – it has been swallowed up in victory, as the Scripture
says. Whether here on earth or there in heaven, we are already made whole, we are
already made happy. We have Christ’s church. We have the priority of His Word and
His means of grace. We have everything we need to lead a happy and peaceful life
here in time or there in eternity. If only we cling to these things above all else.

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If only we remember what the Nunc Dimittis, what Simeon’s Song really means. If
only we trust Simeon’s wisdom when it comes to priority. If only we let go of all the
petty and useless distractions and diversions, deflections and digressions of this sad,
sad culture of ours. If only…
It is New Year’s Eve, brothers and sisters. So make your resolutions. Look
forward to a better year. Entertain decently high expectations for your life – be an
optimist, by all means. We can at least hope, all of us, that inflation lessens in the
coming year, right? There is nothing wrong with looking forward to a better, easier
life down the pike. But just know that little material things won’t really make you
happy. Having an easier life, having more money, being in better shape, resting more,
lowering your cholesterol, quitting smoking, taking time to travel, reading the
classics, all those usual cliche resolutions: they are great and may well extend your
life and are no doubt healthy things to desire. Having said that though, none of those
achievements will make you truly happy in the end.
But concentrating on your family will. Focusing on your family will bring you
more fulfillment. The folks in 1957 understood that. Therefore, get off your phone and
try spending more time with the people you love, you know, those people who, after
all, make life worth living in the first place. But even above all that, the only thing that
will bring you permanent meaning and persistent contentment and happiness in life,
and in death, is your Lord, Jesus Christ.

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And graciously, for your sake, He comes to you even this morning, this last day of
2023, to forgive you once more and refresh you for the next year of your earthly life,
and to fulfill you, to make you contented, to satisfy and gratify, nourish and
strengthen you for the new year – for whatever comes next – for whatever the tide
should bring.
So receive your God in body and blood this morning with a right and worthy
heart. Prioritize this Sacrament, and this congregation here, and make a resolution
tonight to be here more frequently, to help out more regularly, to give more
generously and open-handedly in the next year. But most consequentially of all, when
you sing the Nunc Dimittis here shortly after the Eucharist, for the final time in 2023
– when you sing it, sing it like you mean it. Sing it like Simeon once sang it. Having
received your God as an infant child this Christmas season and soon having been
filled and satiated with the flesh of that same God, Christ incarnate, in the Holy
Supper, as you depart this place, sing to your God with thanksgiving and total trust –
singing like this: “If it should be your will, dear Lord, let Your servant now depart in
Your peace. For I have beheld Your salvation. I have held my own redemption in my
hands, He rested on my tongue and now rests in my body, in my heart and soul unto
life everlasting. And I am content. And I am happy. So all praise be to Your name
forever and ever.” Sing your thanksgiving and your song of trust like you mean it –
like Simeon once meant it. Be ready to depart in peace, dear flock. If, for now, only
just from this calendar year, be good and ready to depart it in the peace of Christ. In
the most holy name of our consolation, our precious salvation Himself, in the name of
Jesus. Amen.

​Rev. Shemwell
John 1:1-18
12/25/23

Homily for Christmas Day

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him
nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. The
Word was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not
know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as
received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who
believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we
beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and
truth. And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was
given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen
God at any time. The only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has
declared Him.”
Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our salvation
begins right here, this very morning, with the Word made flesh. Salvation was won a
cross, true enough. But it was begun in a lowly manger. The power of the saving cross
depends entirely on the Incarnation of our God on this day; and so this morning we
celebrate just that, the Nativity of the Creator Himself: the fact that the Almighty has
taken on the flesh to save us from sin, death, and the devil.

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This day is our greatest joy and hope, it is a remembrance of that occasion long ago at
Bethlehem when eternity itself pierced through time, when heaven broke through to
earth, when a wee Child was born of a woman, but a Child through Whom that very
woman herself was once made. The God through Whom all things were created,
including Mother Mary herself, a God of infinite and immeasurable power and might,
made his home in the womb of that teenaged girl. It is a profound mystery, friends,
which transcends space and time and logic. An apparent impossibility even. That goes
without saying. But this feast of Christ’s exceptionally mysterious Nativity is
simultaneously the commemoration of our fortunate redemption, the redemption of
our bodies from the curse of sin and our souls from the curse of the law. The labor
pains of the mother of God were a signal, you see, a signpost pointing far forward to
that future day when all pain will be undone forever, when sin and its consequence
will be eternally nullified.
The infant Who filled little Mary’s womb that night, the Holy Child born of
Bethlehem Ephrathah, Who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger,
this child was the Incarnate Word, that Word Who was once with God in the
beginning, and indeed Who was God and is God. The divine Son Who has no
beginning nor end was passed through the birth canal of a young Jewish woman,
through the body of one of His own creations. And in that newborn Child once dwelt
all the fullness of God – and so it pleased Him to dwell, as St. Paul tells us. Our Lord,
the true God, He did not come in tremendous glory. He did not descend to earth in
splendor, in pomp and circumstance, with many trumpets, a marvelous ensemble of
brass, and the whole host of angels at His side.

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Instead, He came to us, He took up our humble flesh, by way of a peasant virgin’s
womb. He came down from heaven, from a place likewise without beginning or end, a
place of all beauty and peace and rest, and He voluntary entered into space and time,
with all its trouble and heartache, and rested in the belly of an unknown maiden. He
came in complete and utter lowliness, in near nothingness, for our undeserved sake.
The God Who rules the entire universe, Who reigns over both heaven and
earth, found Himself vulnerable for a time, willingly exposed in His mother’s arms.
The God Who sustains all things, Who cares for all things, for a while depended on
His cherished momma for the basic need of food, for sustenance, for the invitation of
a warm comforting breast and the sweetness of milk. The God of all things left His
mother’s nipples cracked and bleeding, His tummy desperate for earthly nourishment.
The God Who defeated the enemies of His people and safeguarded His chosen for
thousands of years needed an earthly father to watch over Him for a number of years,
to defend and guide Him, to show Him how to be a man. The Lord of all things above
and below was made lower than the angels for a little while. And yet, through this
lowering, through this humbling and humiliation and stooping down on His most
merciful and clement part, the Lord of Hosts has saved the flesh from itself, indeed He
has even esteemed, elevated, and exalted it, made it worthy of being sanctified and
one day eternalized.
As Jesus once promised, the heavens above and earth below will someday pass
away. However, He will never pass away, the Word made flesh will never pass away;
what was wrought by His incarnation, His birth, His life, His ministry, His passion,
death, and resurrection, these things will never pass away.

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All Who believe in Him shall not perish but will inherit eternal life. That is the
unbreakable promise. Christ, the Son of God, the Incarnate Lord, He came to His own
people, yet they did not receive Him. The Light shone in the darkness, but the
foolishness of darkness did not comprehend it. The God of all grace and perfection
was rejected and repudiated by this fallen and sinful world. And frankly, all this was
foreshadowed that night long, long ago when there was no room for mother and child,
for the Light Himself, in that country inn. There was no room for God in the rural inn,
and to this day, in the hearts of many wayward men and women, there is still
regrettably so little room.
Nevertheless, for the chosen, for those given the free gift of grace and faith, for
the baptized, the Light is now partly visible. The Holy Spirit has given us, the
spiritually blind, eyes to see, we are given to behold the truth of the life-giving Light.
God became flesh, He was betrayed, imprisoned, assaulted and scourged, His flesh
was flagellated, ravaged and ripped from His sinless and devastated body, His passion
was so incredibly acute, He was ridiculed and stripped naked and nailed to a tree of
torment. He was left to die. His flesh was left to waste away. He bled out for us, so
that by His blood we might be saved. And His sacrifice, His cross, that holy cross, the
crucifixion and burial, all this was necessary, the Lamb of God was to be slain from
the foundation of the world, as St. John writes in his Revelation. All this was
guaranteed from Eden, from Genesis 3:15 on, that the seed of woman would someday
crush the head of the serpent. And so He did, for us, He defeated sin and the devil, He
bound Satan and emasculated his minions and conquered death itself. Death has no
more sting; the grave has been robbed of its victory.

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And all this was done, promised and delivered, forever fulfilled, so that we poor
sinners might be given the right to become children of God. But it all began way
before that in a manger, with a baby boy. The cross was always that child’s fate, His
divine destiny. Its gruesome shadow always hung over His short life. And thanks be to
God, that God became a boy and then a man and then an atoning sacrifice hanging
helpless under heaven for our eternal benefit.
The child born of Mary was miraculously conceived, as we know and confess,
by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born of a virgin uterus. The God through
Whom all things in the beginning were made was Himself made man, was given
human form and definition. And through His life, death, and resurrection, and by the
power of His Spirit, that same Spirit Who once hovered with Him over the face of the
deep at the dawn of creation and time, through that same Spirit, God now works for
you a miraculous birth, a rebirth through water and the Word. In your Holy Baptism,
you have already arisen to new life, beloved. God condescended to be born below all
so that through Him you might be exalted and born again from above. That is your
baptism, your miraculous birth, the forgiveness to which you return again and again
through the Holy Absolution spoken week by week in this consecrated place. You
weren’t once baptized, dear faithful, but rather you remain baptized, you are
baptized—present tense!—and forever will be, thanks to that blessed boy of
Bethlehem and His shameful cross three decades on.

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All this is a mystery, of course, dear faithful. How could God be man? How
could the God of all vigor and authority be a tiny creature wrapped in swaddling
clothes, the first century equivalent of a diaper? How could the invisible God be seen
and felt in pale skin? Well, it is simply a mystery. That’s all there is to it. But it is a
mystery we cling to eagerly, a foundational mystery of the faith. Salvation was won
on a cross, but it was begun in a manger. And that is the glorious mystery we observe
this morning. Today we cheerfully celebrate Christmas, but we furthermore celebrate
Christ’s Mass, which is what the word Christmas means, by the way. God once came
to us in body and blood at Bethlehem as a boy. But He comes to us again, even here
and now, from this altar, as a man. The God of the Universe condescends to the
current manger of this here sacred altar, into the unadorned form of bread and wine, a
tiny grainy host and a sip of the fruit of the vine. But such is our God: mysterious,
profound, and a God Who is pleased to be glorified in the seemingly contemptible, in
littleness and meekness. Through this heavenly meal, this Christ’s Mass here, we are
fed for life everlasting. The Light continues to shine through this bountiful Supper, to
bear us up for the coming church year, through all the darkness of this present life, to
forgive us our sins and to solidify us in the one true faith until we die or until our Lord
incarnate returns again.

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So rejoice, brothers and sisters. Your God is here. Receive Him, this day, as a
baby boy laid in a manger, as the Incarnate Son crucified for your sins, as the
resurrected and ascended One, and as the One Who comes to you perpetually to
bolster your faith in Holy Communion until the end of time. And someday soon, He
will be back, in the flesh once more, to take you to where He now is, to take you home
to His Father’s house in paradise. What good news this is to hear on a cold Monday in
December. Unto us a Child is born this day, a Son is given. And through Him we are
granted eternal salvation and all peace and joy here on earth. Merry Christmas, dear
flock. In the most holy name of our blessed Savior and King. Amen.

​Rev. Shemwell
Various readings
12/24/23

Homily for Christmas Vigil (Lessons and Carols)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear
brothers and sisters in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, this year at Bethlehem we
are celebrating on this Eve of the Nativity of our Lord, perhaps for the first time in our
history as a church, a service of Nine Lessons and Carols. Now this traditional
Christmas Eve service, conveniently called Lessons and Carols, originally comes from
the Anglican tradition and dates back at least to the nineteenth century. It was initially
popularized though during the First World War through the annual service held at
King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England, which to this day is broadcast
globally.
About four years ago, I was blessed to be studying abroad at the University of
Cambridge for my second year of seminary. Every day I had the privilege of walking
right past that prominent chapel at King’s College, built over five-hundred-and-
seventy years ago, where the angelic voices of their boys’ choir perform the carols for
this famous service year after year. It was a remarkable site to stroll past on a frequent
basis. You know, England, like many European countries, is utterly replete with all
these gorgeous, absolutely breathtaking old churches; but unfortunately though, like
elsewhere abroad, they are nearly always empty, with well-afforded choirs singing to
the very few. The traditional Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast yearly from
King’s College gets many online views and radio listens, I am sure. It is a beautiful
service – I highly recommend it to y’all. But how few actually attend Christian
services there at the chapel regularly.

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And the situation is no better in those historically Lutheran countries in Western
Europe, Scandinavia, and the Baltics. The state churches are embarrassingly vacant
for most of the year.
Of course, that sad reality is only symptomatic of a much greater, much broader
problem, one that reaches even to our own shores. People cling fiercely to the
trappings of the Christian faith, to Christmas and the cozy feelings of nostalgia, to the
caroling and good cheer, to Father Christmas himself, but what a scarce number in
this country actually concern themselves with the true meaning of Christmas – or how
few even seem to care about the ancient Christian basis for this now-thoroughly-
secularized-and-commercialized holiday. I mean, if you don’t believe me, there is
proof enough in the fact that so many take the time to come to church on Christmas
and at Easter, yet evidently only then. Rarely on a random Sunday of the church year.
Seldom on the many green Sundays after Pentecost do we see them. The old C&E
Christians, as clergymen often refer to them in private. The Christmas and Easter
faithful. Now I hope no one takes offense at that. It isn’t meant to offend, but if
anything, to exhort. So should it ever apply to you or yours at any time, just recognize
that that’s God’s law knocking hard at the door of your needful heart.
But anyhow, what we learn this night from our nine lessons and hymns, it is not
only a matter for a happy midwinter yuletide celebration. Instead, it matters every
Sunday, and every single day, and every moment of every single day. After all, what
exactly is the story we hear tonight? It is not merely the story of our Savior’s birth, but
it is moreover the story of all human history, from its fall from grace unto the birth of
its redemption. It is the story of sin and its ultimate defeat.

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It is the principal story of good versus evil. It is our story; it is the story of the
salvation of each and every one of us gathered here tonight. This isn’t only a story
from thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away. It is rather an ongoing
story that is very much alive today in 2023 in the hearts of Christians across the
nations, and in the lives of all sinner-saints. The Gospel doesn’t just matter on
Christmas and at Easter, it matters every day in between. Because every day we sin
and every day we need a Savior, we require a Redeemer. We need His cross, His
redemption, His cleansing blood. But in order to have that cross, as I’ve said before,
in order to have that fortunate salvation through the death of the Son of God, we must
first have His Incarnation, God’s blessed Nativity. In order for God to die, He first had
to be born. Easter needs Good Friday and Good Friday needs Christmas. All these
holy events and feasts hang upon one another. They depend on each other. Salvation
comes alone through the seed of the woman, remember? His birth is the beginning of
our deliverance. So the Christmas story has everything to do with every passing day
of our sinful lives. It does not only matter tonight, but each and every morning and
night of our God-given existences.
Regrettably, America is probably right behind most of Europe. I hate to say it,
but it is likely true. And most of you already realize that. Our churches are aging,
many are closing, and pastors are few. The pews are emptying all around, in every
denomination. To be sure, people still love the Christmas season, of course, its songs
and colors and tastes. They love the superficial aspects of it anyhow. However, maybe
that’s all they really love at the end of the day. That seems to be the woeful
implication.

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But you know what, dear friends, while we here remain ever faithful, and thanks be to
God for that fact, make no mistake though: we, too, may play some small part in the
problem. The church is declining because people have forgotten what the Good News
is really all about. They think that the church is just a nice place to go every once in a
while, where you dress up and treat it like a social club of sorts. It is a place of
familial obligation once every winter and spring. In other words, it is more routine and
rhythm than real religion. And know this, dear flock: that depressing impression did
not arise in a vacuum. No, the church, over time, fostered it, whether deliberately or
inadvertently. The church let herself become but a comfortable place without much
depth or substance or relevance. And for many people, that just isn’t enough to keep
them interested. And understandably so. People don’t need another social club, there’s
plenty of other places to go.
How so many in our country have completely forgotten what the Incarnation
really entails, or what the cross even means, for that matter. Countless people don’t
even know what the clerical I wear every day means – when I go to the grocery store
sometimes, dressed in black, people think I work there. The symbols of our faith that
were once so unmistakable have lost all meaning in our culture. People don’t know
about God’s law; they don’t acknowledge the extent of their sin. And if I’m being
honest, that is partly because the church has stopped speaking in an authoritative way
beyond the border of her walls. The church has kept the message to herself, for fear of
being rejected, for fear of being labeled foolish, for fear of political correctness, for
fear of running off wealthy parishioners, or just from outright laziness and apathy.

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And worst of all, the church in many places has really begun to look exactly like the
secular world around her. The world and the church have become all but
indistinguishable. Which is to say, the church is taking on the profane form of but
another hollow institution of this fallen world.
But we can’t let that happen. It is our responsibility, our duty to share the
message of the Almighty God born of a woman, the good tidings of the incarnate God
dead on a cross for the transgressions of the whole world, the gospel of the one true
God resurrected and ascended, now reigning from on high. And yes, we need to
remind the world that God will return in judgment, too. That’s the hard part, sure
enough, for the world loves its sins. But again, the thing is, that return in judgment is
actually very good news, because God reckons all believers righteous for the sake of
His Son’s atoning sacrifice. God’s grace remains free. It demands nothing of us but
faith. And that is the best news in the world. So it is imperative that we share it. Not
just during the Christmas season either. Not solely during Eastertide. But every day of
our brief lives. We owe it to the world to be set apart from it – and to share the Gospel
with it from the standpoint of sanctification.
Tomorrow, unto us a Child will be born. We confess that salvation comes
through the womb of the blessed virgin. The promise given at the exile from paradise
was fulfilled in the little town of Bethlehem, six miles out from Jerusalem. And so,
knowing that, we are obliged to our neighbors, to the entire world, to proudly share
this most joyous news with them. If we desire warm pews, it is on us to spread the
word to the lost. It is on us to broadcast the genuine truth about Christmas.

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Salvation is here. Born of Mary, crucified outside the walls of the holy city, buried in
a borrowed tomb, raised on the third day, all so that we, too, might be raised on the
Last Day. Therefore, take this news beyond these church walls, dear flock. And never
stop speaking it. Until our Lord comes again. There is certainly time to watch to lay
back and relax and watch A Christmas Story or It’s a Wonderful Life. There is time for
family and friends, for eggnog and carols and all the things we so love about this
Christmas season. But there is furthermore a time to tell others about its real meaning.
And that time is now… and tomorrow… and the day after that – yes, even the day
after Christmas. In the most precious name of our Lord, Whose birth we cherish this
holy night. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

​Rev. Shemwell
Luke 1:39-56
12/24/23

Homily for Rorate Caeli (Fourth Sunday in Advent)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “Shower,
O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness.” So said the God of
all creation through the lips of His prophet Isaiah. Dear brothers and sisters in our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ, this Fourth Sunday of Advent in the historic church year is
called Rorate Caeli Sunday, meaning “Rain Down, O Heavens Sunday,” again from the
opening of the day’s introit. As you know, this Sunday is also the closing of Advent;
the fourth candle is lit, signifying the end of our liturgical wait for the birth of our
precious infant King. Tomorrow we will celebrate His blessed Nativity. But today, this
morning, we are still being instructed through Holy Scripture on how to prepare
ourselves beforehand. Remember, Advent is all about preparation, about making us
ready, both for our Lord’s birth at Christmas, His first advent, but most importantly, for
His final return, His eternal advent.
And this day, this Rorate Caeli Sunday, we are instructed by way of an example.
We are given the example of the holiest woman to ever live, the Blessed Virgin Mary,
whom Martin Luther once called our noblest gem after Christ Himself. Borrowing
Isaiah’s words, we poor sinners beg God above for His righteousness all the time, that
He might shower it upon us daily. That is our perpetual prayer. But when it does come,
when God’s righteousness comes, how are we to receive it exactly? Which is to say,
when God comes in Christ, how are we to receive Him? That’s the question worth
considering this morning, as we arrive at Advent’s conclusion.
Throughout the Gospels we encounter countless instances of how our Lord,
righteousness incarnate, in the flesh. was rejected by His own people. The Light once
shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it, as St. John says.

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The people of Israel implored their God for salvation again and again, they beseeched
God for His righteousness, and yet when He finally sent His only-begotten Son to
them, they tore Him to pieces. They did not know Him, they did not take the time to get
to know Him, but instead yelled out, “Crucify Him,” and let the Pontius Pilate nail Him
to a cross.
But really, that was all fortunate enough, a felix culpa or happy fault in the Latin,
as St. Augustine once put it. You see, through their rejection of the Son of God, their
very own Messiah, through the Judeo-Roman slaying of the holy Lamb, the totality of
human sin was mercifully covered. Thanks be to God. And yet, even after that
sacrificial Lamb miraculously rose again on the third day, proving His identity, many
persisted in rejecting Him. For several thousand years now, how so many have turned
their backs on their redemption, and still do so. And even us miserable sinners, we have
abandoned our Lord at times as well. We are hardly guiltless in this. We have deserted
Him in favor of our own pet sins and the delights of our flesh, at least on occasion. We
have sought the pleasure of pride and lust and greed instead of the comfort of His
gospel and the perfection of His presence. We have begged the Lord for power and
prestige rather than His holy righteousness. Indeed, every sin we’ve ever sinned, every
sin we will someday sin, each one put our Lord on that despicable cross. Each one was
God’s personal human hurt. These iniquities of ours left Christ forsaken outside the
walls of the holy city, hanging on a cursed tree.
Man is fickle and faltering. That is fact. He wants to be saved but only on his
own terms. He wants righteousness to rain down from the heavens, but only on his
timing and to the benefit of his own ego. Such is the nature of the sinner, after all. Such
is our nature, dear faithful.

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The old Adam within us each, the lingering sinner we daily wage war against this side
of heaven, wants to reject our God’s salvation and righteousness. He needs to reject it.
The old Adam is self-destructive, you see, and eternally so. But by God’s grace and
mercy, through our Holy Baptism, born in us each new day is a New Man, the Christ
Himself. Jesus now lives within us, in our beating hearts, through grace and faith, and
His Holy Spirit sanctifies us day by day, sometimes even against our fallen will. We
will admittedly continue to sin, but along the way, we will be sanctified, too. We are
presently being sanctified, whether we see it or not. It is a lifelong struggle, but the arc
bends toward our eventual holiness; what seems circular and Sisyphean at times is
regardless spiraling heavenward. And one of the ways the Spirit makes us holy is by
giving us biblical examples by which to learn. Today, the Holy Spirit shows us through
the inspired Word the example of the young Mary, a teenaged girl given the heavy task
of bearing the world’s salvation within her womb. When the archangel Gabriel came to
Nazareth to announce the Savior’s conception to Mary, she did not doubt him, she did
not complain or moan, she did not fret or flee under the weight of the charge. Instead,
she simply said in reply: “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me
according to your word.”
After conceiving the Child King by the power of the Holy Spirit, young Mary
visited her relative, Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zachariah, and mother of John the
Baptist, a visitation about which we read in our gospel today. And upon her greeting
Elizabeth, little John heard the voice of Mary, God’s mother, and leapt in his own
mother’s womb. And Elizabeth, feeling that immense joy within her, herself exclaimed
many commendations upon the mother of her Lord, shouting “Blessed are you among
women!” among other things.

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Elizabeth knew well the holy child in little Mary’s stomach. But most notably, to all
this honor and glory, to all this privilege and distinction and blessing offered her by her
relative, the virgin Mary replied humbly with beautiful verse, with what is called her
Magnificat or magnification: “My soul magnifies the Lord,” she chanted, “and my
spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His
maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He Who
is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. And His mercy is on
those who fear Him, from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His
arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the
mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, in
remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed
forever.” This was Mary’s passionate song of praise. Put otherwise, Mary sang out loud
for joy about God raining down His righteousness upon His chosen people through her
own flesh. And she delighted in her role in God’s divine economy.
This is how the Blessed Virgin Mary received her Lord, this is how she
responded in song to God raining down His righteousness upon her and upon the land.
This is how Mary understood her place in God’s plan. She was a modest maidservant, a
passive recipient of God’s good grace. When Elizabeth hailed her and sought to glorify
and praise her, Mary insisted that the Lord alone be glorified and praised. When any
ever attempted to magnify Mary, her heart magnified the Lord in response. What a
shame it is that her identity has been so twisted, turned, and distorted into near idolatry
by some in the holy Christian church. Mary did not want any honor or undue
veneration for herself.

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She was indeed blessed, and has been recognized as such by every generation, for she
physically bore the Lord Himself and breastfed her very own Redeemer. But she
moreover recognized her own littleness, her lowest estate, her spiritual need as one
equally born of the wretched sinful flesh.
When Gabriel came to her, she was probably not looking forward to becoming a
teen mom, as it were. It wasn’t a part of the plan she had for her life. But again, she did
not bicker, but rejoiced in God’s righteousness, however much it differed from her own
human will. She let it happen on His terms, on His timing, and did not insist on the
needs of her own imperfect heart. Mary simply stepped back and let the Lord do His
work through her. She received Him as her Savior, as One to Whom she owed her
everything. She feared, loved, and trusted her God above all things, so much so that she
let Him rest for nine long months inside her. And for that reason, the Holy Spirit lifts
her up for us this Fourth Sunday of Advent as our chief example – as the model for
how we, too, are supposed to receive our Lord; how we are expected to prepare
ourselves for Him and for His advent.
God will be born of the virgin Mary tomorrow. As we relive the life of Christ
throughout the church year, that history becomes a reality again through our Christian
liturgy. So the question is: are you yet prepared? Is your heart right this season? Is your
mind in a reverent place? What is Christmas really about for you? And even more
urgently than that, where are your heart and mind this morning. Have you been made
ready to receive your God? Are you put together in body and soul? Because He comes
here soon, from this sacred altar.

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When you ascend these steps to receive Christ in His body and blood, you must do so
as one repentant and ready, lest you commune unworthily and to your great detriment.
You must receive Him as a lowly sinner who recognizes his or her desperate need for
His forgiveness.
To help you out, brothers and sisters, I strongly recommend to you this little
prayer to pray every time you come to the altar. It is called the Prayer of the Unworthy
or the Domine, non sum dignus, and it follows the words of the centurion’s prayer in
Matthew chapter eight. As you kneel here, speak this little prayer to yourself: “Lord, I
am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my roof, but only say the word and my
soul shall be healed.” Pray these words, for they will prepare you. I know from
experience. The church’s traditional prayers are born out of her wisdom. God prepares
your heart by first preparing your body, your mind, your lips. So pray this prayer and
never forget: what you receive here is not mere bread and wine distributed Sunday after
Sunday. Rather it is the same body and blood that once hung at Golgotha for your sins.
It is the same life-giving flesh of the God of all creation administered to you, His
beloved creation, as much-needed medicine. And today, that body and blood returns to
you, to heal you, to strengthen your faith, to make you ready. So receive your Lord
rightly. Be like Mary, be like the centurion, come ready, cognizant of your
unworthiness, and wholly prepared to be a passive recipient of God’s abundant grace.
Open your heart and magnify your Lord, so that He might nourish you in all your
needs.
And then, after you’ve been fed this morning, once you leave this building and
depart from this place, spend the next day really preparing yourself for your Lord’s
birth by meditating on your deep need for it. Treat this season properly.

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Don’t be anxious about gifts and food and travel or whatever else. That is all secondary
and eternally inconsequential. Christ comes first, always. Tomorrow, we observe and
celebrate His Incarnation, when the God of all creation rained down His righteousness
upon the unworthy earth through the womb of the blessed virgin. Our salvation begins
at Bethlehem. So in this next twenty-four hours, be sure to receive that news of God’s
birth, of His advent, with humility and joy. Really contemplate it. Receive it like young
Mary once did.
Our God comes in littleness, in swaddling clothes. But in His birth was profound
righteousness, a righteousness later poured out in crimson on the cross, and a
righteousness now poured into you through that same Holy Spirit Who once
empowered the Almighty’s own conception. Take heart this season, be joyful, rejoice,
and again, with Paul, I say, rejoice. But above all, be meek, be humble, be modest,
recognize your unworthiness, acknowledge your need, and confess your passivity in all
things holy. And receive your God as the weak creature and poor sinner you really are.
Repent and receive the righteousness won for you by your Lord’s birth, by His life, His
ministry, His passion, death, and resurrection. God showers His righteousness from the
heavens this very day. So may the earth of your heart receive the rains fully. In the
most holy name of our righteous Lord and King, in the name of Jesus. Amen.