Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Listen, my friends! God is indeed calling, offering forgiveness, comfort and joy! I pray today that our ears will be open to God’s call and that our hearts, motivated by God’s Holy Spirit, will again respond to God’s call. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Through all these past 17 years now, I think I have you all well trained to answer my frequent question as to what is my most favorite thing I get to do as a pastor. If you’ve listened at all during these past 17 years you will be ready to answer that my most favorite activity as a pastor is to baptize. Let me tell you that there is nothing better than being the agent and instrument of God Himself in bringing a person – no matter what their age – from darkness into light, from the kingdom of Satan into the Kingdom of God, from estrangement from God into being a beloved child of God. It brings a smile to my face and tears to my eyes every single time!

The second favorite thing I get to do as a pastor is to visit our older church members, many of whom frequently can no longer make it to church themselves. You see when I show up at their door, I am not just a friend. I am not just a pastor. I am not there just for a social call. When I show up at their door, I am the Church. And we “do church” – we start with the confession of sins, we hear a Scripture reading, we hear a short devotion, we pray The Lord’s Prayer, then we receive The Lord’s Supper and, finally, hear the Benediction, assuring us of God’s continued presence and blessing. It is not unusual, after I speak the final “Amen,” that the person I am visiting looks at me and says “Thank You.” That may seem like a strange thing to say but it’s what makes visiting our older members the second favorite thing I get to do as a pastor.

The other reason I so enjoy visiting our older members in their homes – or wherever they happen to be living – is because of something I get to witness and that is, without exception, no matter how alert or unresponsive the person might be, when I get to two parts of “doing church” with the person, suddenly they are right there with me. They may not have heard the invocation. They may not have heard the Scripture passage. They may not have understood one word of the devotion I shared, but when we get to The Lord’s Prayer, I hear their voice join with mine. But even before The Lord’s Prayer, I get to hear their voice when I say, “Let us confess our sins to God, our Father” and then start with those words, “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.” If they don’t quite get all the words, they get most of them and I stand in awe of that!

You know, today most people don’t take sin seriously. We seem to have lost the “I” in sin. Sin if often what someone else does.

But when you stop to think about it, that’s really not something that has just happened recently. That’s what sets the scene for our Gospel today [Matthew 21:23-27]. The chief priests and the elders thought Jesus was doing something wrong and they were going to take Him to task for it, but Jesus ended up turning it right back upon them, requiring them to analyze their actions and their motives and determine who it was they were trying to please in life. In their eyes, sin was what Jesus was doing but Jesus opened their eyes to show them that they were the sinful ones. They were the ones in need of repentance. They were the ones in need of forgiveness.

The same thing can be found in our First Reading today [Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32]. When their eyes saw and their minds began to understand the deplorable conditions in which they lived, the Children of Israel made the mistake many people make. They blamed God. They lost the “I” in sin. God was to blame. God was at fault. You see, if they were at fault, they’d have to face God. They’d have to somehow make it up to God. But if they put God at fault, they could go about their merry way and call themselves “victims of circumstances.”

Does that sound familiar? It probably should because there are many people today who do the same thing. It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s much easier to blame someone or something else than it is to come to terms with ourselves, to admit that often the pain and problems we face in life are our own doing. That’s tough to do. That’s unpleasant to do. It’s something that just doesn’t come naturally to us, but when we finally get to that point, when we finally experience that powerlessness, that hopelessness, that despair of hitting bottom, we are then ready to hear God calling. And what is God saying? He’s saying the same thing He said to the Children of Israel more than 2,500 years ago: “Repent! Turn away from your offenses, then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die? I take no pleasure in the death of anyone. Repent and live!”

And that’s again why I love visiting our older members in their homes, people like Lucile and Rudy and Clara and Estelle, because when I show up at their doors, I am there as the Church. I am there as Jesus Christ Himself and when their voices join with mine in saying “O Almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities,” they then stop and they listen and they hear God calling to them, reminding them of Jesus Christ, reminding them of Jesus’ innocent suffering and death on Calvary’s Cross for them, reminding them of the forgiveness of sins that is theirs, reminding them of His Body and Blood given and shed for them, cleansing them from every sin, giving them a new heart and a new spirit over and over again, which is why they say “Thank You.” They’re not really saying it to me. They’re saying it to their Lord and Savior, Jesus, Who has reminded them again that He takes no pleasure in the death of anyone but has done everything to give life and health and strength.

But, my friends, listen! For God is not just calling for our older members who need the pastor to visit them in their homes on a monthly basis. No, God is calling for you and for me, reminding us to keep the “I” in sin, reminding us to honestly confess our sins to Him, reminding us that when we keep the “I” in sin, when we confess our sins to Him, He is always faithful and just and will always forgive us our sins, reminding us that for each of us, He is a God Who takes no delight in death, but delights in offering forgiveness, comfort and joy.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena