Isaiah 12:1-6 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

The Fifth Sunday of Easter | 28 April 24 | A Sermon on Isaiah 12:1-6 | Samuel D. Zumwalt |

You will say in that day:

“I will give thanks to you, O LORD,

for though you were angry with me,

your anger turned away,

that you might comfort me.

2 “Behold, God is my salvation;

I will trust, and will not be afraid;

for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song,

and he has become my salvation.”

3 With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

4 And you will say in that day:

“Give thanks to the LORD,

call upon his name,

make known his deeds among the peoples,

proclaim that his name is exalted.

5 “Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously;

let this be made known in all the earth.

6 Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,

for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

HOLY KEYS: SHOUT AND SING FOR JOY!

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

You Are Here…Rejoice?

Forty-two years ago, I served with four others an advanced clinical chaplain residency at a major trauma center, Parkland Memorial Hospital, in Dallas TX. Every terrible news story ended up at the Parkland Emergency Room made world famous at President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Our Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, Bob Davis, taught us how to be present to provide care in the midst of unimaginable, unfathomable tragedies that ripped apart for many the façade of security that our death-denying, narcissistic American culture had offered them. I think of that grandfather who kept repeating, “This doesn’t happen in our family.” But it did!

On-duty for weekend evenings and nights when the volume of terrible events swelled, we chaplains went repeatedly between the surgical or medical trauma teams and the families. In almost rabbinic manner, we would in essence say, “Your loved one is here, but we hope he or she will recover.” Yet, sometimes, our role was to prepare families for imminent bad news, often delivered by the most socially-awkward, first-year resident physician: “We did all we could. Sorry.”

I was simultaneously working part-time as a pastoral assistant in a suburban parish. In the days before Christmas, the congregation was preparing for a joyful celebration. At Parkland, we were firsthand observers as lives were being shattered daily and nightly. I remember having to postpone Christmas shopping, because the “you are here” of Parkland didn’t fit that cheery scene. Perhaps you will remember that first Christmas or Easter after your world suddenly fell apart.

Ahaz became king of the southern kingdom of Judah in 735 BC at age 20 and ruled twenty years until his death. To make the connection with last weekend’s reading from Ezekiel 34, Ahaz was a bad shepherd. He did not fear, love, and trust God above all else. With the coalition of the northern kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Syria threatening Jerusalem and his people, Ahaz would not heed the wise counsel of the prophet Isaiah: “Yes, you are here, Ahaz, but God will deliver you. Shout and sing for joy! Do you not remember how Moses sang a victory song when Pharaoh’s army was drowned in the Red Sea? He sang, ‘The LORD is my strength and song!’”

As with cultural Christians today, Ahaz knew the major stories of God’s mighty acts, but the stories had no real impact on his daily life. When push came to shove, Ahaz turned to Assyria for deliverance and worshiped Assyria’s gods. He watched Assyria utterly destroy the northern kingdom. He did not heed God’s promises, and Ahaz is forever remembered as a bad shepherd even unworthy to be buried with the descendants of King David. So, what will be said about you when you are gone? Will you be remembered as a joyful person of hope or one who did not trust God?

Christ Is Here…Rejoice!

In another congregation, our part-time conductor of a forty-five-member wind ensemble and his wife called me early one morning. Their oldest adult son had been stricken in the night with bacterial meningitis. By midday, he was dead. The father planned his son’s funeral and chose as the sermon hymn, “My Life Flows On in Endless Song” (With One Voice#781). We hurled its refrain into that dark, incomprehensible moment: “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging. Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

Christ Jesus was there in their midst through His Word of Promise. But He was most intimately there in the Holy Eucharist. As they received His crucified and resurrected Body and Blood, the Lord Jesus entered into the son’s terribly fragile wife and his deeply grieving parents to be with them as the Lord of Life. Those who have practiced the faith through all the seasons of life are no less heartbroken than those without faith. Those who have prayed, worshiped, studied, served, befriended, and given are no less subject to the brutal assaults of sin, death, and the devil. But having developed a kind of spiritual muscle memory through the keeping of their baptismal covenants, they can shout and sing for joy in worse, in poorer, in sickness, and indeed when all hell is breaking loose around them. They can see the marks of the nails in His hands and feet, in His spear-torn side. Jesus is here in their midst. For Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Each Sunday is a little Easter. But in these seven Sundays of Easter, we rejoice that by the death on the cross of God’s Incarnate Son Jesus Christ we who are baptized into His saving death and glorious resurrection have His promise that His victory is ours. Because He lives, we shall live. The strife is over. The battle is won. It is finished! Death has no more dominion over us! On the other side of our Baptism, we sing His victory song just as Moses sang on the sea’s other shore.

At whatever hour worship may be scheduled, once worship begins we are in God’s time, united with the whole Church across space and time. The Christian faith cannot be practiced alone apart from the Body of Christ. We are “ekklesia,” called out of our homes to be with our Lord Jesus. From the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, we learn that the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ called many sinners to repentance. Then, Baptism created Christ’s Church (2:38). Then, they continued in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers (2:42). Christ is here by His Word of Promise: Here in His Word and most intimately in His Supper. Because the Lord is risen indeed, we rejoice that we have salvation in Him alone.

All Will Be Well…Rejoice!

Each Sunday Eucharist begins with the confession of sins. When we practice the faith and daily read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest God’s Word, we come to the services of God’s house knowing that we have not loved God with our whole heart and have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. I think often of the confession of sins I knew by heart from the age of seven years old: “O Almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray Thee of Thy boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being” (The Lutheran Hymnal, 16).

The joy of Easter is inextricably tied to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, who took His Father’s anger upon Himself and became the blood sacrifice for all my sins and yours. In short, my repentance is my response to what He has already done for me, for us, and for our salvation. Marked with His cross, I am His and no longer my own. Sealed with the Holy Spirit, I am being changed day by day through God’s Word and Sacraments. When we receive Jesus in Host and Cup, it is not a metaphor, not a symbol, and not a brief encounter. He takes my sins and yours to His cross. He gives us Himself and thereby gives us the eternal life and love of the Triune God.

This world is passing away. Each painful death reminds us. Each new wrinkle, new ache, and new limitation reminds us. Each terrible disappointment in others and in ourselves reminds us. Here we have no continuing city. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are most to be pitied. The wise one built his house upon the Rock. Do not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Abide in me, and I in you… apart from me you can do nothing

Today, we shout and sing for joy, because all will be well. Our Lord Jesus promises: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Yes, we shout and sing for joy. Oh yes, the people of God rejoice in the very face of every manifestation and intimation of sin, death, and the devil. Why? For Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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szumwalt@bellsouth.net

St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church

Wilmington, North Carolina USA