Our Savior Lutheran Church Burlington

Our Savior Lutheran Church Burlington Our Savior Lutheran Church is a member of the LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) Please join us for worship, Sunday School, and adult Bible class.

Saturday evenings 5:30 - 6:30
Sunday mornings 8:00 - 9:15 and 10:45 - 12:00
Sunday School 9:20 - 10:30 (temp. virtual)
Adult Bible class 9:30 - 10:30 visit www.oursaviorburlington.com for details

08/31/2026

August 30 Lord and Christ
Final sermon in a series, “Word and Deed”
Matthew 16:21-28 // Romans 12:9-21 // Jeremiah 15:15-21

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text for today is from Matthew 16, “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Jesus is both Lord and Christ. That’s our sermon theme for today. Jesus is both Lord and Christ.

Here we are at the last sermon of the series, as we see Jesus revealing himself to be the Lord of all things. Last week, we saw Peter call Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

“From that time, Jesus began to show to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, to suffer many things, to be killed and on the third day to rise.”

Simon Peter called Jesus the Christ. That was last week for us. That was just minutes before this, for the disciples. Now, in this passage, Jesus is telling the disciples what it means to be the Christ.

To be the Christ means to suffer, to die, and to be raised on the third day.

Now, that’s not a surprise to you because you are a Christian. It’s not a surprise that Jesus died for your sins on Good Friday and rose on Easter morn.

But for a first century Jew, looking for the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, the Christ he was looking for was a conqueror, a liberator of his people. He’s looking for the Son of David “whose government would be upon his shoulders.” Isaiah 9! “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.” He’s looking for a leader for a people that will draw all peoples to himself.

And Jesus tells Peter that the Christ does not come to lead an ever-victorious army into an undefeated season. He’s not leading the 1972 Dolphins.

No, the path of the Christ doesn’t avoid death; it goes through it.

Jesus didn’t come to make it through impossible odds. He didn’t come to throw the Hail Mary and bring victory at the very last second. He didn’t come to fake his own death, collect the insurance money, and fool the masses.

He came to take our (this is Jeremiah language) He came to take our incurable wound. He came to suffer many things, and do so on our behalf. He came to die. To die the death of a sinner. Not to escape but to win our salvation through his death. Through death and then to life.

That is what it means to be the Christ.

Last week, I told you that I wasn’t going to get to the last verse of our reading, not until this week. That was Verse 20, “Then he commanded his disciples to tell to no one that he indeed is the Christ.”

Why? Why did he do that? Well, he did that because of what we read today. Peter had just said, “You are the Christ!” But today we see that he didn’t know what it meant to say that Jesus is the Christ. He knew the words, but he didn’t know what they meant.

When Jesus begins to unpack what it means to be the Christ, Peter begins to take him aside and rebuke him.

“Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are being a stumbling block, a hindrance, to me.’” You know the right words but you do not yet know what they mean. “You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

It seems like it’s far too easy to get distracted from what matters most in our faith and to spend too much time on what matters less.

Looking to Jesus for everything he doesn’t promise and then treating as worthless what he calls precious.

We can spend our time majoring in minors in our faith and neglect what is central.

What do I mean by that? I mean that this Christianity that you practice, the thing to remember day in and day out is that we are training you to die. To pick up your cross and follow the Christ, who suffered many things, who was given into the hands of scribes and Sadducees and Pharisees, who died and was raised.

We can forget that this whole endeavor is to shape you around a Gospel that tells you, “You will die. You will die, but take heart because “He is the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through him.” And “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Your baptism plunges you into the death of Christ to be taken up out of the water in the resurrection.
This Word that I preach, the Word that you read, it kills, and it makes alive.
The Supper that you eat and drink proclaims our Lord’s death until he comes.

And if we have already faced, in Christ, our sin and death, then, well, all the other crosses of life, well, that puts it in perspective, doesn’t it?

Those who follow Christ are following the way of the cross. Thinking the things of God. Following Christ to the places he goes. Losing your life within the One Body of Christ.

“For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

On the third day he rose. On the fortieth day, he ascended into heaven. Even now he is sitting at the right hand of the Father, until the day when he judges the living and the dead. And he judges them, he judges us, by our deeds.

But the good news, of course, is that when he looks at you, he sees the robe of his own righteousness draped over your shoulders. He sees your baptismal coat of many colors, marking you as a son and daughter of the most high God. He sees how “God has worked good in all things for those who are called according to his purposes.”

And he finishes this teaching by bringing it back to the events of the cross. “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” They will see this, the suffering, the death, the resurrection of Jesus, the lynchpin on which the door of salvation swings. The keystone that holds the whole scriptures in place.

They will see and in his death and resurrection, the Christ will “open up the Scriptures to them.” He will “make their hearts burn within them.” He will, as he still does today, show them how he came “not to abolish the law and the prophets” and the promises of the anointed one, “but to fulfill them.”

“He showed them that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Jesus is both Lord and Christ.

Amen and amen.

Here’s a quilt that Our Savior quilters made and are sending to Quinn Adamek, young man and former IHA student. He was i...
08/24/2026

Here’s a quilt that Our Savior quilters made and are sending to Quinn Adamek, young man and former IHA student. He was in a motorcycle accident and is now going through painful recovery and rehabilitation.

When our quilters heard that, they thought, “Everybody sleeps better with their own quilt and to get better you have to get good sleep.”

Please know that we still care for these little inches that we have been privileged to serve, even when they aren’t little anymore.

Our prayers are with Quinn and his family.

08/24/2026

August 23 Lord and God
Fourth in a series, “Word and Deed”
Matthew 16:13-20 // Romans 11:33-12:8 // Isaiah 51:1-6

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text is from Matthew in the 16th chapter, “Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Our text thus far.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Who do you say that I am?

In this second half of summer, we’ve been considering what Jesus says about himself. What he shows about himself in word and deed, who he reveals himself to be.

He is Lord of Bread and Fish, who has compassion on the crowds in both body and soul and gives them something to eat. He is the Lord of Earth and Sea. He is who he is, no matter what we see. He is the Lord of all the nations, who gathers all peoples to himself. And today, he is both Lord and God.

Who do you say that I am? But before he asks that, Jesus asks, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

What do others say? What have you heard? And they reply, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

That is to say, a good man, a great man, a once-in-a-generation kind of a person who spoke truth like Jeremiah spoke truth. They wondered if he would be like the prophets were.

What do others say? Every religion in the world has an opinion about Jesus, about who Jesus is, and many of them are favorable. They are complimentary. The Baha’I faith calls Jesus a manifestation of God, which progresses religion through the ages.

Your Hindu neighbor believes that Jesus is one god in the pantheon of gods.
Your Buddhist neighbor believes that Jesus is a Buddha, an enlightened one.
Your Muslim friend believes that Jesus is a prophet, a great one, one of the great four, second only to Muhammed. In fact, according to Wikipedia, “The Quran mentions Jesus by name 25 times, more often than Muhammad.”

And, of course, most atheists and skeptics would still say that, whatever the church may be, Jesus, he had some good stuff there.

And there are really three categories. First, the people that would see Jesus as a pretty good guy, with good stuff, a good moral teacher among other moral teachers. Good, but not our main guy. Second, there are those who would call Jesus another version of what they already have. A sage, or a Buddha, or another incarnation, it just around and around and he’s one of what they’ve already seen. Third, there are those who look at Jesus as unique, but as doing, not as his teachings say but instead what their religion says. Like the Gnostic religions that Paul talks about in Colossians, or the Manicheans of St. Augustine, where Jesus is the Messiah, but the point of the Messiah, for them, is to escape, to escape this world, to flee the physical, to go somewhere else and be something else besides human.

But who do you say that I am?

Now, this question, I’ll tell you, the you that Jesus uses here, it’s a plural, and that means, in the next sentence, it is Peter speaking for the group, as he often does. Speaking for the group, but speaking his own answer.

“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” he says. Now, there are three things that Peter says here that we have to see. First, You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. More on what that means next week, on this misunderstanding of it and especially on the curious last verse today, when we tackle the second half of this story, next week.

You are the Christ, is first. Second, you are the son, third, of the Living God. Second, he is the Son. Son of Man and Son of God. He is begotten of the Father from all eternity. The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father, and yet we do not have three gods but One God.

Third, the son of the living God. What does he mean by that? Well, it means what Jesus says in Matthew 22, that our God is not the god of dead but of the living, because all live to him, and by his power we have hope for resurrection.

Now, the disciples have already confessed him to be the Son of God. That happened after the wind and the waves and the boat and the walking on water. The Son of God. But what Peter says here is that Jesus, the Son of God, is the Christ. The Christ, the Messiah, is the Son of God. Where heaven meets earth. Where God walks among us. Where salvation takes the form of a man, the Christ is the Son of the Living God, and he is Jesus.

Here's how our collect of the day prayed it. It did a good job. “Almighty God, whom to know is everlasting life, grant us to know Your Son, Jesus.” Do you hear the wordplay there? Knowing God is everlasting life, so let us know your son.

Let us know him “to be the way, the truth, and the life.” That’s the way that John 14 says it. And then we get to the “So That,” the ask, the petition of the prayer. “So that we may boldly confess Him to be the Christ and steadfastly walk in the way that leads to life eternal.”

What you say, what you do, how you walk confesses something about what you believe.

So, I’ll ask you, if someone looked at how you spent your hours, would they see Jesus?

If someone looked at how you spend your money, would they see the Christ?

If someone looked at how you treated your loved ones, would they see the Son of the Living God?

Let those be challenging questions for you. Do you know what it means for Jesus to be Lord of your money, Lord of your actions, Lord of your sexuality, Lord of your thoughts, words, and deeds?

Because, of course, your faith is (to use Isaiah 51 language) hewn from the same rock as Peter’s faith. It is the same Jesus who is still the Son of the Living God. His is the exclusive claim on your heart and your life, and it is by his death and resurrection that you live.

By the mercies of Almighty God, you are given a new birth of water and the word, to wash you clean in word and deed. By the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God, though the heavens and the earth may pass away, his salvation will be forever, a Word that lasts beyond death, a key that has loosed you here on earth so that you are loosed in heaven.

And by grace you are being transformed by the renewal of your mind, in the body and blood of Jesus, given in the bread and the wine, so that all your sins are forgiven and that we, though many, are one body in Christ, individually members one of another. And those gifts we have, they are made to serve.

Who do you say that I am? You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and your people show that in word and in deed.

Amen and amen.

08/17/2026

August 16 Lord of the Nations
Matthew 15:21-28 // Romans 11:1-2a, 13-15, 28-32 // Isaiah 56:1, 6-8

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text for today is from Matthew chapter 15, Jesus answers a Canaanite woman, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you are desiring.” Our text thus far.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Jesus is the Lord of all nations. He alone is God, and there are no gods like our God.

There’s this one-liner that atheists like to drop. Christians are basically atheists, they say. Basically atheists, because you don’t believe in 2,999 gods. We don’t believe in just one more.

Interesting claim. Now, it’s just a one-liner, which means that it’s not supposed to really have much of an argument to it, it’s just supposed to punch a little. But still, interesting claim.

You see, it gets this right: we believe, teach and confess that our God is like no other. That all other gods, or heavenly bodies, or powers of this world are not who our God is.

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, not only is he the God of the Middle Eastern, Hebrew people, we believe, teach, and confess that he is in fact the Lord of all nations, the God of all the universe.

Isaiah says, “I will bring these foreigners to my holy mountain… My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples… The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.”

But notice the tense of those verbs. Future. Isaiah talking in the future. Shall be called. Will gather. Will bring.

We go to our Gospel reading. This is an interesting and provoking story about Jesus here. He pushes this Canaanite woman. Spars with her. Challenges her.

Or, to take metaphorically what was literal last week, with the boat and the walking on the water, here Jesus is the wind and the waves that are against her. And again, from last week, do you remember why?

The devil tempts, and he tempts in order to see you fail. Your God tests, in order to prove your faith genuine.

Jesus comes to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Those cities are 60 or so miles north and east of Galilee (as opposed to Jerusalem which was 60 or so miles south of Galilee). Jesus is withdrawing after provoking the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

He here is supplicated by a Canaanite woman. Now there’s a long and complicated history with the Canaanites and the Hebrews with the land, and that goes on to this very day. But what it means here is that she is not a Jew.

And yet she calls Jesus Son of David.

She is not a Jew, and yet she calls Jesus Lord and asks him to have mercy on her.

She is not a Jew, and yet she will kneel before him. The word here, proskuneo, it’s the same one used last chapter when the disciples kneel and worship Jesus as the Son of God in the boat.

The disciples say, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” They mean, “Do what she wants so that that she won’t bother us anymore.”

But Jesus, he tests her. He challenges her. Like the wind and the waves, he’s against her, to prove that her faith isn’t in the Canaanite gods, but in the One True God, the Lord, the Son of David.

“I was sent to the lost sheep of the sons of Israel.” That’s true. It won’t be until the end of the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus commissions his disciples to go therefore to all nations. Now, his ministry is to a particular chosen people at a particular place and time.

“It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Challenging, again. The Hebrews were God’s people. Jesus’s mission was to them. What did Paul say in Romans 9 a few weeks ago? “They are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.” Today in Romans 11, Paul says, “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”

And here is the extraordinary, the great, faith of the Canaanite woman on display. She doesn’t say, “Yeah but.” She doesn’t say “Nuh-uh.” She doesn’t go “That’s ridiculous.”

She replies, “Yes.” Yes, your chosen people are your chosen people, and you gave them gifts and put them in their place because that’s what you did, and there’s nothing that I could say or do that would change what you’ve already done. Yes.

Yes, they are the children of Israel, and the One True God’s generosity is twelve baskets full (if you remember the loaves and the fish. Yes, she agrees with the one that she has called “Lord” and “Son of David,” and salvation that comes to Israel, well, “The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others to him.”

Now, take a moment and consider how amazing that kind of a faith is. Take a moment and consider why this is a refreshing and faithful response.

It is because it says, “Lord, I’m not asking you for what you gave to that person over there. What I’m asking is that you would be here too.”

And it is that kind of a faith, the faith given as a gift to this woman, it is that kind of faith that Jesus commends. One that looks to the One True God for what the Lord of All Nations alone can give. One that knows, there’s no other place in heaven or on earth that compares with where our God promises to be.

In the washing of water and the Word, our God promises to be near. In the preaching and teaching of his word, our God promises to be near. In these New Testament days, he promises to be near. “In many and various ways God spoke to our fathers of old, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his son.”

Ricky Gervais, famous atheist, would say Christians are basically atheists, he’d say. Basically atheists because you don’t believe in 2,999 gods. We don’t believe in just one more. Well, that’s like saying, A married person is basically a single person. Only, the single person is “not married” to just one more. But when that One more is the One, then it makes all the difference.

Our God is the only true God, not because he is ours, but because we are his. And that makes all the difference.

Amen and amen.

08/10/2026

August 9 Lord of Earth and Sea
Second in a series, “Word and Deed”
Matthew 14:22-33 // Romans 10:5-17 // Job 38:4-18

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text is from Matthew 14, “Immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’” Our text thus far.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Jesus is the Lord of Earth and Sea. About 10 years ago, I remember getting a call to a house. You see, Gene, he called because Ginger, his wife of many many years, she woke up that day and didn’t remember him. He showed her pictures, she denied it. He showed her their wedding certificate, she refused it. She would say, “You look like my husband, but you aren’t him. You look like my husband, but he left years ago.”

What would you say to a person like that? What would you say when logic doesn’t work? Can you convince them that you are who you’ve always been, even when they don’t believe it?

That’s the question that we bring to our text today, as we remember that Jesus is the Lord of Earth and Sea.

Jesus has been searching for retreat and solitude for a while now. Ever since word of John the Baptist’s death he’s been looking for it, and now as he disperses the crowd that he gave the Loaves and the Fish to, he sends the disciples away too, and “he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”

In the events of that day, he revealed himself to be the Lord of Loaves and Fish. And in the events of that night, he reveals himself to be Lord of Earth and Sea.

Alright, so we started our readings with one from Job, and there’s a thread that runs through it that I want to identify.

But, to say it first, the story of Job is an interesting one. It’s like the old rhyme, how much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Only, how much suffering can Job suffer? What’s the limit? And then, what’s the point?

Well, we get God’s response in starting in Job chapter 38. Bursting forth in the whirlwind, God answers Job, not with “Why” but with “Who.” God is who he is, and he commands even the wind and the waves and they obey him, the Lord of Earth and Sea, and that’s who he has been since before time began. From the beginning, that’s who he is. There’s the thread of the OT reading.

Then we get to our Gospel reading. As Jesus walks on the water, in the dead of night, even when they don’t know who he is, still he is the Lord of Earth and Sea. Even as the wind and the waves are against them, a long way from the land, still he is the Lord of the Earth and the Sea. As the disciples think he’s a ghost, even when they think he is an enemy or a vision, or an apparition, or as they think he is anything besides Lord of Earth and Sea, still he is who he is.

Now, a little aside: Job 38 and the disciples of Matthew 14, they know this truth that you know too, that it is the will of God that tests you. It is the will of God that sets the wind and the waves against you at times, to prove that your faith is genuine. It’s what you pray in the Lord’s prayer: lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Send us through and be with us in every trial of life.

Back to the Gospel story. When they cry out, Jesus reveals himself. So far, he doesn’t calm the wind and the waves, but he does reveal himself. Right? Here’s the “Who” again. Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid, not because adversity is gone, but do not be afraid because I am near.

So next, are you surprised by Peter’s boldness? I’ve heard sermons praising what he does, as he steps out of the boat. I’ve heard sermons question what he does, as if he needed further proof.

I’m not going to do either today. Instead, I’d liken Peter’s boldness to—and stay with me here—to the boldness that a little grandson has to be all up in your business, whenever you sit down. To assume that all your things are his things too. To claim you as his own as soon as he gets in the door.

To be frank enough to ask for something honestly, that’s what Peter does, knowing that Jesus would give him a straight answer.

When Peter is sure in his steps on the water AND ALSO when he is sinking fast, still his Savior is the same Savior, the Lord of Earth and Sea, the God of his salvation. Still his Lord is the Same Lord, the one who descended from heaven to dwell among us, the one who was raised from the dead for us.

When Peter was one of great faith and here, when Jesus calls him O you of little faith, still his faith is in the same Lord.

And that’s true for you, too.

In his promise of Holy Baptism, you were given the Holy Spirit and called on the name of the Lord, and so you were saved. In the promise of his word, you were given a word of faith to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart and you were saved. In the promise of the sacrament, you eat and drink the promise of forgiveness, life, and salvation and so you are saved.

And when you are buffeted by the storms of life, cry out to the God who promises he hears. When you are sinking into the chaos of the sea, cry out to the God who reaches out his hand to take hold of you.

This, I believe, is worth repeating every single day of your life. Whatever may be, Jesus is still Lord. One commentator notes how the word for doubt here is not the word for unbelief, like the father who says in Mark 9 “Lord I believe; help my unbelief.” Or when Jesus says to Thomas in John 20, “Do not disbelieve but believe.”

This word means to waver. To see that what’s in front of you doesn’t match what you think. To hesitate, when things do not match what you thought. To waver between the two. And for you, there will be days, even the valley of the shadow of death, when you may waver. When your eyes cannot show you what the Scriptures teach.

When (and this is Psalm 46, which I pray often with people), when even the mountains of your life are thrown into the heart of the sea and everything that that you thought you knew has now gone topsy-turvy, still, the God of Jacob is your fortress. Your very present help in every day of trouble. Still within the refuge of his strength, you will not be shaken.

Let me go back to my opening story. They invited me over and we talked for a long time. Logic didn’t get us anywhere. Evidence wasn’t helping. But in the end, I asked her, “But does he make you feel safe?” She said, “Of course he does.” “Why?” “Because he’s my husband.”

You see, in the end, what mattered more for her is that he was who he had always been, on the days when she could see it, and especially on the days when she could not.

Jesus is the Lord of Earth and Sea.

Amen and amen.

08/03/2026

Word and Deed
August 2 Lord of Bread and Fish
Matthew 14:13-21 // Romans 9:1-5 (6-13) // Isaiah 55:1-5

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our sermon text is Matthew 14, the feeding of the five thousand with the loaves and the fish, which begins like this. “Now, when Jesus heard this, he withdrew in a boat… When he went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them.”

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Jesus is Lord of Loaves and Fish. But, what does that mean?

I heard a tale once about a magic lamp with limitless power to give you whatever you desired, but there was a catch. It could only give you what you desired in the way that you could comprehend. For instance, if you wished for the end of world hunger, you’d have to imagine how it would happen, what quantities of crops you needed, how the farmers get paid, what kind of a fleet you need, refrigeration, distribution….

Or if you wished for world peace, you’d have to have an idea of what the treaties would look like, of how the peoples of the world would be treated, of what judgments and compromises and punishments and rewards you would have to resolve. And the curse of that lamp was that it could only grant your wish in a way you could comprehend.

So, what does that mean?

Well, the point of the little parable was that we wish for things we don’t understand. We can see the endpoint, the big thought, the way-out-there resolution, but it’s much harder to see how to get there, what the steps are, the moves in-between.

Jesus is the Lord of Loaves and Fish. Two events happen before our text today, two events that are important to understand. First, at the end of chapter 13, Matthew records how Jesus finishes his parables and then is rejected in Nazareth, in his hometown. In his own synagogue, they would not believe he was the Christ. Second, he learns that John the Baptist had been imprisoned and executed. His cousin and his Elijah, executed at the hands of Herod.

And Jesus withdraws. Jesus, who is both God and man, withdraws, to be by himself. But the crowds follow him, and he, seeing the crowds, five thousand men besides women and children, he has compassion on them.

And here’s where we get back to my opening illustration again. When Jesus “has compassion,” he’s not having compassion on the far-off idea of their humanity. He’s not just having compassion on the thought that humanity suffers…

If you’ve ever had compassion on someone, you’ll know that there is a limit to how much compassion you can have…. At some point, you find yourself, as well-meaning and generous as you are, you’ll find yourself at a limit, where you can do no more. That limit is called compassion fatigue… There is a limit to how much compassion to how many people you can have, because compassion is taxing. It takes something from you to give.

But Jesus, though exhausted in his body, he has a divine capacity for compassion. And the first and most wonderful miracle of this text is that in the midst of a crowd of thousands, Jesus and his compassion is for each and every one of them.

Let’s take a step back and just apply that, briefly, to you. The Gospel is this, that Jesus and his sacrifice wasn’t just for the idea that you might be a sinful person, but he suffered for each of your sins. He knows you, down to your core. He has forgiven more than you will understand. And every time you come to confess your sins, he is there to say, now you know a little more about how deep my forgiveness goes.

He has compassion on them, a divine, a limitless capacity for compassion on them.

And then, that compassion, focused on the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation that was his mission for them, on their behalf he runs this race, as that is on the horizon, and is the goal of his life, that compassion also turns into… what does our text say?

He had compassion on them and healed their sick. He had compassion on them and gave them something to each. He had compassion on them, and they ate and were satisfied. He had compassion on them, and twelve baskets were left over.

He takes care of the body; he takes care of the soul.
He is the God of the horizon; he is the God of the next step.
He is God in the big picture; he is the God who resides in the details.

Which of these, do you think, is it more challenging for you to understand? Or, which of these makes more of a difference to you today?

Here’s how the Collect says it. “Heavenly Father, though we do not deserve Your goodness.” Now, I’ve been a Lutheran my whole life, and I’m used to starting every sentence with “we do not deserve this grace,” but here’s what I want to point out to you. The word goodness here, it’s one that we can pull from our Old Testament lesson. Isaiah 55. “Eat what is GOOD, delight in rich food.” It’s contrasting GOOD with the verse before. Eat what is good rather than chasing what does not satisfy. Good things satisfy.

Though we do not deserve how you satisfy, “still you provide for all our needs of body and soul.” The word goodness, it’s contrasted with that which does not satisfy. It’s also the same word, TOV, that we in the creation account of Genesis. God made all things TOV, good. They fit together, just as they should.

God’s goodness is just as it should be. God’s goodness is a goodness that satisfies, “All our needs of” both “body and soul.” And then we pray that we would respond rightly to that.

Not like the Israelites in the desert. Do you remember those stories? Manna and quail and water from the rock, and a hundred other miracles that happened so often that they started to seem commonplace? Still they would say, “but what about the cucumbers and the watermelons of Egypt?”

Instead, we pray, “Grant us Your Holy Spirit that we may acknowledge Your gifts, give thanks for all Your benefits, and serve You in willing obedience;”

That we would acknowledge his gifts and give thanks for his benefits. That we would respond to his providence, whenever and wherever he would give it.

This, I think is a very interesting point. That in whatever manner he gives it (be it miraculous or mundane), we would acknowledge that God is the giver. That in whatever circumstances we are in, we would give thanks for his benefits.

In every circumstance, to thank God for every good thing that he gives in body and soul. In every desolate place, thank God whether he gives bread miraculously or not.

The tendency we have is to let the bad things of life, the circumstances of difficulty, overshadow the gifts that God gives. As if, because things get so bad that not even the good is good anymore. That is a tremendously tempting thing.

But the good news is yours today tomorrow and forever, that the Lord of Loaves and Fish has given much more than that to fill you, to satisfy you, with his own body and his own blood, to fill you up with the forgiveness of sins, a promise that even the riches of the whole world couldn’t buy. He satisfies the needs of your soul, in a way that is unfathomable and (to quote the post-sermon blessing) beyond our understanding.

And equipped, armed with these promises, he has given us the certainty, the fortitude, the ability to join him in serving others, so that the loaves and the fish that they receive from us, they’ll know that they come from the Lord.

The service others receive from us, they’ll know it as a gift from the hand of the Lord.

The care they receive from us, they’ll know it as just a small picture of the One (capital O) who has had compassion on you.

Amen and amen.

Address

417 S Kane Street
Burlington, WI
53105

Opening Hours

Monday 1pm - 5pm
Tuesday 1pm - 5pm
Wednesday 1pm - 5pm
Thursday 1pm - 5pm
Friday 1pm - 5pm
Saturday 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Sunday 8am - 9am
10:45am - 12pm

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