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THE SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST July 7, 2024 Pastor Tom Steers Christ the Saviour Lutheran Church, Toronto Divine Service Setting III (Pages 184 – 202) Lutheran Service Book OPENING HYMN: 904 “Blessed Jesus, at Your Word” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bikJOMZPk Confession and Absolution Page 184-185 Introit Psalm 132:13-16; antiphon Ps. 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provisions; I will satisfy her poor with bread. Her priests I will clothe with salvation, and her saints will shout for joy. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! The Kyrie (Lord Have Mercy) Congregation: Lord have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us. Lord have mercy upon us. The Salutation: Pastor: The Lord be with you. Congregation: And with thy spirit. Our Collect Prayer: (Please stand) O God, Your almighty power is made known chiefly in showing mercy, grant us the fullness of your grace that we may be called to repentance and made partakers of Your heavenly treasures; through Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Our Bible Texts – Frist Reading: Ezekiel 2:1-5 Psalm 123 (antiphon v.1) Epistle Reading – 2nd Corinthians 12:1-10 Gospel Reading (please stand) – Mark 6:1-13 THE NICENE CREED Page 191 HYMN OF THE DAY: 839 ”O Christ, Our True and Only Light” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITcK0kBrrHg THE SERMON – God’s power is made known in Creation. His holiness is seen in His Law. But His mercy is revealed through the crucified and risen only Son, sent to us out of love. His mission has built the Church – currently over two and a half billion Christians. Much of the world’s eight billion people are non-believers, especially in secular places such as Toronto. Yet God warned in the Bible that this would be so. Christ said, “The gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” So, God sent believers to show the way, to spread the Gospel. The prophet Ezekiel was of the priestly class in Jerusalem. He was in the first wave of exiles that Nebuchadnezzar took out of that city in 597 B.C. The Babylonian king left most of the people in this first stage, but took the leaders. He was hoping to lop the head off any future rebellion. The exiled people would serve as hostages to discourage those remaining from rebelling again. It didn’t work. Within a decade Nebuchadnezzar’s armies were encircling Jerusalem again. This second invasion resulted in an exile far more brutal and thorough than the first. God first calls Ezekiel in that decade when Jerusalem still stood. Yet the apostasy, the rebellion against God in the land didn’t relent. So, neither did the Babylonians. The key here is that God was punishing His people through the pagans. There was hope Nebuchadnezzar would let the first exile wave of exiles return. Much of Ezekiel’s initial ministry is charged with squashing that hope, a tough mission assignment. Before God’s restoration will come judgment, and punishment. Repentance will come before absolution. The Lord sends Ezekiel to a stubborn people with a history of rejecting God’s message, pleas, and prophets. God doesn’t send out this prophet with a promise of success. But He sends him. The Lord will spare nothing. He will put Ezekiel through humiliation and suffering to get this message across to the people. To convince them of their need to return to God. The Lord comes to a rebellious people today, a people who have repeatedly betrayed and turned away from Him. His messengers should not think the mission will be easy, nor that it comes with a guarantee of success. But He sends us anyway. God will sort things out in the end. We are called first, and foremost, to be faithful. The Lord has created us with feet to go, ears to hear, mouths to speak, hearts to believe. His Word and Sacraments create our faith. The message and the mission are His. In our Epistle reading, the Apostle Paul speaks of his own call. It was a literary convention in the ancient world that one did not make much use of the first person, especially the first-person singular – the “I” or “me” pronouns. So, when Paul speaks of a “certain man” who was taken up to the third heaven, he’s talking about himself, and specifically the encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road. Paul recounts that he was brought to this heaven, to the presence of God. He says he will not boast about it; instead, he draws attention to a thorn in his flesh, a limitation. He’s asked the Lord to take that thorn away, but God says His strength is made perfect in the weakness of His servants. God’s answer is important here. It speaks to the doctrine Lutherans call the Theology of the Cross. It is clinging to the cross of Christ, to His suffering, death, and resurrection, as the sole basis and means for our justification and salvation. A humble carpenter carrying His cross up a hill appears as a failure to many human eyes. But it is God’s mechanism and plan of salvation. God’s strength, shown in mercy, is made more evident, more perfect, in our weakness, not our human strength. In this passage, Paul turned his history of persecuting the Church into the very occasion of grace in his preaching of Christ. In our Gospel text the disciples are sent out two by two. They’re authorized, and put into a situation, in which they must trust. They go. The Word is spread, demons are cast out, the sick healed. Yet, it didn’t always work. Sometimes they were rejected, as Jesus was at times. Even in His hometown, where the locals tried to kill Him. Christ gives the disciples authority over demons and diseases, but not over whether people accept the message. In fact, if they’re rejected, the most they can do is shake the dust off their sandals and move on. Were they afraid, as we sometimes are, when God tells us to spread His Word? Did they fear, at times, that they weren’t up to the task? God stresses here that they went out. We can feel our thorns in the flesh, and yet be reminded by God that it is His power and message that are at play, not our own. And certainly not our ego, or score keeping. Our Churches have too often overlooked Christ’s Great Commission to go and make disciples. As have individual Christians. Jesus knows our problems, and our neighbors’ issues as well. That was the whole point of the Incarnation and the cross. Christ embraced this world, and our humanity. He gave His life for every problem, ours and our neighbors’. The community, that was shattered in Eden’s fall, has been restored in Jesus. In the righteous reign of Christ, we experience a true fellowship, as sins are forgiven, and love is reborn. This radically alters our relationships with others. God cares for the world, and that is exactly why He sent us to tell this Good News and not an angel. God works through, and despite, our weaknesses and limitations. Because in our weakness, God’s strength is revealed. God’s upside-down world of winning through losing, and dying to live, reflects the divine genius and compassion. The broken of the world are the perfect vessels to spread Christ’s Gospel of salvation. God uses us to change hearts and minds, because He has already started to work within us, and continues to do so, through His Word and Sacraments. This good work, of God, in us, will continue, until He brings it to completion on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. PRAYERS OF THE CHURCH SERVICE OF THE SACRAMENT Page 194 THE LORD’S PRAYER Page 196 THE WORDS OF OUR LORD Page 197 Pax Domini Pastor: The peace of the Lord be with you always. Congregation: Amen. THE DISTRIBUTION Post Communion Collect (Left-hand column) Page 201 Salutation and Benedicamus Page 201-202 Benediction Page 202 CLOSING HYMN 924 “Lord, Dismiss Us with Your Blessing” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ3dQqi0xOI