Sermon: Pentecost 15 (Trinity Lutheran Church) – 2024

1 September 2024

Text: Mark 7:14-23 (Deut 4:1-2; 6-9; Eph 6:10-20)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Dear friends, we are a nation at war.  And what is our nation?  God says that if we hear the Word of God and keep it, with “wisdom and understanding,” we will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”  For “what great nation is there that has a god so near it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call on Him?”  Part of our problem, dear friends is that we don’t know what nation God is speaking of.  When we hear the word, “our great nation,” we usually think of America: our flag, our history, our ancestors.  It’s good to be patriotic and love our country, but America is not our nation, dear brothers and sisters.  It is not our identity.  Our identity is to be baptized into Christ.  Our nation has a King, not a president.  Our nation is Israel, and not what the world thinks Israel is: a modern country halfway around the world.  We, the one holy Christian and apostolic church; we, the baptized; we the confessors of the Most Holy Trinity and our Lord Jesus Christ are the nation.

And we also forget, dear friends, that we are a nation at war. 

We forget because of God’s mercy.  We go about our lives without seeing the warfare all around us.  We think we’re at peace, when there is no peace.  For Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 

St. Paul reminds us that we are a nation at war in the famous passage of Ephesians that we heard yet again: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  St. Paul urges us Christians to “take up the whole armor of God.”  It is spiritual armor for a spiritual war.

How often we forget what our nation is, and what war is.  We get lulled into making peace with the fallen world, and we forget that we are but strangers here.  We think this temporary country is “one nation indivisible,” as though all countries don’t eventually fade or fall away like the Roman Empire.  Rome fell.  The rulers that replaced Rome fell.  The kings who ruled the ruins of the empire fell.  All countries fall.  But the nation, the people of God, the church, has the promise that not even the gates of hell will conquer it.  Our nation the church is truly “one nation indivisible,” for it is one, holy, Christian, and apostolic – and it is grounded in the Word of God that endures forever. 

We are the baptized, and we can never be unbaptized.  We are the redeemed of the Lord, and our demonic enemies can never overcome that reality.  But there is a danger, dear friends.  The danger is that we forget that we are at war, making peace with the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh.  And there is a danger that we forget that we are a nation: a holy nation and a royal priesthood, instead just seeing our temporary country as our national identity.

When the flag replaces the cross, when the Pledge of Allegiance replaces the Creed, when the military replaces the church militant, we need to repent.  And I say this, dear friends, as a military chaplain and seventh generation American.  We need to remind ourselves of what it means to be a nation at war. 

Our Lord’s hearers thought of their nationality in terms of their ancestry.  To them, being an Israelite was being descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And they thought their war was against the Romans and the Samaritans and the other people who were not descended from Jacob.  They thought that what made them the people of God was external religious observance, obeying the ceremonial law.  They too did not realize they were at war.  They too had made peace with the enemy: sin, Satan, and death.  They went through the motions.  They lived a fake life of obedience based on obeying rules and regulations that – apart from faith – were meaningless.  They took more pride in not being a filthy Samaritan or Gentile or Roman rather than seeing their identity as recipients of God’s grace.  They saw their country as their nation, and they were filled with pride.  And then along comes Jesus to turn over their tables, to call them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites, eating with Gentiles and Samaritans and sinners, even praising the faith of a Roman soldier as being greater than anything that He saw among the people who boasted in their being Israelites.

Jesus reminds us that externally following rules is not what it means to be part of the nation.  We need to be reminded of this today.  We need to be reminded that we are a nation at war, that our nationality is rooted in our baptism, and we are not friends with this world.  We hold to the Holy Scriptures, and we hold ourselves to the standard that God has set for us.  It’s not about external compliance, but internal righteousness, and we only have that in Christ, by His cross.  We have that righteousness by grace, through faith, and it comes to us in Word and Sacrament.  We are at war with the forces of darkness, and our weapons are spiritual, dear friends. 

In times of war, we cannot be complacent.  But too often, we are.  Too often we let down our guard and take off our armor.  Paul tells us to put on the “belt of truth.”  For there is objective truth, dear brothers and sisters.  There is not your truth and my truth.  And if there is truth, there is also falsehood.  We stand for that which is true, and the truth is found in God’s Word, and not in human wisdom or our feelings.  The truth can be hard to abide.  The truth may turn us away even from our own families, our neighbors, and from others in our country.  The early Christians were forced to choose between honoring the emperor and honoring Jesus.  We stand with our countryman Polycarp, the 86-year old bishop who was burned at the stake for refusing to worship Caesar.  St. Polycarp understood what it meant to be a nation at war.  He said simply, “I am a Christian.”  He was joyfully defiant as he served His King.

St. Paul tells us to put on the “breastplate of righteousness.”  We protect our heart by protecting that which is righteous – not our own, but the gift of God given to us in Holy Baptism, won for us by Jesus, by His blood shed at the cross.  We rejoice in righteousness, and we do not join with the world in mocking it. 

Our shoes are “the readiness given by the gospel of peace.”  We are at war with the world, but we are at peace with God.  The first word from the mouth of Jesus when He appeared to the disciples after His resurrection was “Peace.”  He gives us not the phony peace of this world, but the true peace of reconciliation with the Father.  And this Good News of peace with God is like shoes for our feet allowing us to walk out into the world – even a world that hates us – and bring this Good News to people who need to hear it. 

St. Paul urges us to take up the “shield of faith” which protects us against the devil’s flaming arrows.  For we are a nation at war, dear friends.  We cannot see the enemy drawing back the bow and aiming at us.  That’s why the shield has to be in place at all times.  It is faith: confidence in your Lord to protect you. 

Paul implores us to put on our helmet, to protect our minds with salvation itself.  For without our being saved by grace, our heads are exposed to the enemy’s thoughts and ideas that expose us to a mortal wound. 

Paul offers us one offensive weapon, dear friends: a sword: the sword of the Spirit, “which is the Word of God.”  Take up the Word, dear friends, and go on the offense.  For we are a nation at war. 

Because we are a nation at war, we pray “at all times in the Spirit.”  And we “keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.”  We are a nation at war, and St. Paul is an “ambassador.”  Our pastors speak on behalf of the King.  And this holy place is an embassy, dear friends.  This sanctuary is dominated by an altar and a font and a pulpit, for it  is an embassy of heaven.  In this place, we don’t have a president, but rather we have a King.  In this nation, we don’t stand for an anthem, but we stand for the Gospel.

Let us fight, dear friends.  Let us serve our nation and King, for it is one nation, indivisible, holy, Christian, and apostolic.  And by grace, the kingdom ours remaineth.   Amen.

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