Mount Calvary Lutheran Church In Lititz PA
Jesus prepares His disciples for His departure by using the phrase, “a little while.” Rather than using a specific unit of time, the phrase encourages the disciples to realize that the wait, though seemingly long, will be over shortly. Our Lord does not tell us the seasons and times of His return. The three sad days where He remained dead, remind us that though we suffer, grieve, and mourn in this life, our weeping will turn to great rejoicing. By His death and resurrection we share in His victory. Our hopes will soon be realized, and when they are, no one will be able to take our joy away from us.
The service bulletin can be found here.
The sermon text is available here and can be read below:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Shout for joy to God, all the earth. Alleluia. Sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise! Alleluia. Psalm 66:1
Easter is known for its Alleluias. If Lent is a time that we bury them, Easter is a time that we resurrect them. If Lent is a time where we say none of them, in Easter we make up for all the times we missed. It is easily forgotten why we say the word and what it means. Did you know that Alleluia, and Hallelujah come from the same word? Long ago when we were taking the Hebrew word and spelling it out in English there were two different ways that we did it. Imagine for a moment that we had our resident French speaker tell our Sunday School class a French word and ask them all to spell it. I imagine we would get several variations! So in the church even as we say our Alleluias, we also sing our Hallelujahs. The word comes from two words in Hebrew. The one, Hallel means to praise. And Jah, a shortened version of Yahweh, is God’s name. So in so many words we are saying, “Praise Yah!” “Praise our God.”
You might wonder, or at least it would be interesting to think about, who it is you are saying it to. You probably thought you were saying it to God, that you are here to praise God, but actually and surprisingly it’s not to God that you speak it! Surprisingly you are actually talking to your neighbor next to you. You look over your shoulder and literally tell the people around you. “May I tell you about My God. He is pretty great.”
And just as praise in the world, people would think you left them hanging if you stopped with saying, “I loved my meal at Ciro’s,” so praise leaves people hungering for more. Tell me why? What dish did you have! Wow, I’d like to eat it too, you are making me hungry!
So our praise of God is an invitation to our neighbor. Praise is naturally evangelistic. The next time you drive by the restaurant you aren’t surprised to see your neighbor there too. And if your neighbor gets the gist, He will start praising too. Praise is contagious.
So today we literally started our service with the psalm from which this day takes its name, Jubilate, so we said, “Shout for joy to God, all the earth, Hallel Jah.” Or literally, “You, all of you around here, praise God too!”
But just as your neighbor wouldn’t be content with you praising something without wanting to know more, so the bible in the Psalms, the Psalms which are the Book of Praises, never leave us with Praising alone. You will always read on and hear the reason why.
It is sometimes said that modern Praise & Worship Choruses are strong on praise, and weak on content. Judge for yourself. If all we have in the church is a bunch of Alleluias, if all Easter is, is us going around and shouting Praise the Lord, than maybe we have missed the boat. We want to talk to each other, and we want to have our pastor give us the content and reason why, what our God has done, we want to be lead into praise, not just to say praise, but mean it, not just to sing praise from our lips but sing from the best instrument of our heart, why it is that all the earth should get on board with shouts of joy to God, giving to Him glorious praise.
Today I want to give you four reasons why we should praise God. One from each of our readings today.
First, we start with the Introit. Now I will admit I am not a big fan of the word. In fact, the word cringe makes me cringe. Yet the essence of the Introit, one of the reasons giving to praise God, is that God’s enemies come cringing to Him. When we think of a docile dog who cowers in fear before its master and doesn’t actually go after the rabbit it wants to chase, so we see in Easter that the enemies that war against you and me, sin, death, and Satan cower before God. The grave gives up its dead, our sins lose their eternal power, and hell and Satan have to admit defeat. Jesus mighty resurrection means that the strong enemies of sin, death, and the devil are now three whimpering dogs that are at the feet of the Master. The greatest enemies we face have been reduced to cowering wimps. Praise the Lord.
In the Old Testament lesson we heard one of the most beloved and well known promises from Isaiah.
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
This part of Isaiah is, as they say in Australia, a big brag about God. All it does is says, “Hey, let me boast a little bit about my God, He is pretty great, let me tell you about Him.” Not only is our God not weak and never tires, He has the amazing ability to imparts that quality to us who are old, weary, don’t have any gas left in our tank. And while youths that I saw this week in our local track qualifier at Hempfield, some of the best races and runners I have ever seen, fall over at the end of their race, in Church old people get out their walkers and canes and never tire out. For lifted by the Gospel and what God has done for them, they have that renewing power which will carry them through death to the resurrection where all canes will be gone forever. They will even mount up like eagles, being brought to the heavenlies, soar on the breezes to God Himself. God imparts strength to the weary. Praise the Lord!
While you may wonder what the pastor will make of the Epistle, because speeches about the government and bad employers don’t seem like much of a praiseworthy topic. Yet, if we see it, even through leaders who don’t seem to know what all the repercussions of their actions are, and even through nasty bosses God rules the world. The government, the church and the home are God’s creations of praise. And He makes the world run, not when institutions are perfect, government is great, stocks soar, or bosses understand, but when people live by faith in God despite what they experience from the higher ups. God calls us not to go outside of our callings, but gives us ways to live and serve the imperfect and believe that even in them He is going to do His work. And even in the simple means by which you live in faith and serve your neighbor, you are God’s feet and hands, no matter how lowly the task, how thankless the job. God sees and is well pleased. This is the work He gives you to do. God works through means, and you are the means by which the Gentiles, who speak of you as evildoers, will praise God’s name on the day of visitation, because of your good works.
Fourthly we get to our Gospel lesson. Jesus was giving His disciples a quick run down on the night of His betrayal saying in effect. Hey buds, I am checking out here shortly. “Checking out here shortly, what’s going on?” And why this is a reason to praise God and give our Jubilates when such a sad message is heard, a little while and I will not be with you, is because we know what Jesus accomplished in this little while. In these three days He died for all our sins, and accomplished our redemption, and while it was tough for them to go through (and even more tough for Him to go through) that separation did amazing things. It may be a muted Praise the Lord, but when we look up at that cross, we see what God did for you and for me. Even though they wept their eyeballs out, cried like babies, were tortured by the world that made fun of them, in three days their eyes were dried and their muffled cries changed to shouts of amazing joy that no one could ever take away.
Jesus deals with a principle about life. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.
I am not sure if there could be a more fitting image on Mother’s Day. If our mothers knew anything it was the pain of childbirth. Getting us out wasn’t an easy task. And the pain did not stop there. It was the pain of sleepless nights, the pain of sicknesses where our mothers didn’t always know what to do or how to make us feel better, the pain of holding a household together with love when they didn’t have any love to give, the pain of watching us in those awkward teenage years, the pain of worry when we drove off on our first car ride by ourselves. It is pain, all pain, and some joy, but pain that has given you the joy of life.
God uses the pain of mothers to show that pain is productive. And what of Jesus pain, and then what of yours. Even this pain that you now face, as the disciples did, is producing and preparing, and is the very proving grounds of a joy and a new life that you are giving birth to.
We think God works only in joy or that suffering is only moments that have to be endured or suffered through, but even in the heartache, weeping, tears, sadness, we can have the wonderful realization that even at this moment, God is doing amazing things, and even this moment is sanctified and good. As we look at the picture on the cover of the bulletin it makes us sad. But praise can be sung also with tears.
Today is a feast of praise. Our God is a great God. He is unlike all others and all pretenders. He shows mercy and compassion on the distressed. He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve. As high is the heavens so great is His love to those who fear Him. He sent His Son to be with us for a little while. And now for a little while we wait until He returns. Though we have sorrow, we rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and are filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of your souls.
We were made for praise. All creation praises God. The stalks of ripened grain bent and waved in the breeze this week. The drops of rain played their percussive patterns as they dripped off the gutter and against the window this week fulfilling their work. The last bird called out its nighttime thanks before the evening was over and the sun was put to bed giving one last song to God. All creation praises God but one creature God is still working at. That is you. But praise is contagious. We shout to our neighbor. We tell them why. We learn to dance to God’s steps, and be what we were made to be. We were creatures made for praise. For eternity we will do it. And we start now. Here this Easter season. In pain, in work, in old age, in suffering and sorrow there is reasons for praising God. We need to get on board. But sometimes we need help. We need the help of our brothers and sisters. We come here to have them remind us.
Will you join in in the song of all creation? The feast of victory for our God.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Jesus Christ.
~ Pastor Seifferlein
