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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's the Sunday Drive to Church podcast for the last Sunday of the church here, November 23rd, year of our Lord 2025.
[00:00:10] The theme is Christ the King. This is an interesting little history. Christ the King Sunday was. It's probably one of the newest liturgical innovations that came from Roman Catholicism before Vatican ii. I just looked into it just very briefly, and the Catholic Church used to celebrate Christ the King Sunday on the last of October, which conveniently was Reformation Day 1925. It was moved to the last Sunday of the church year. So that's why the theme of the texts today are not so much the Lord's coming glory. We got to hear that last week from Pastor Smith's first pastor sermon. Wow.
[00:00:55] But this week is about Jesus enthroned. And in fact, the gospel lesson takes us to the crucifixion, Luke 23:3, where Jesus is crucified and the thieves are on either side. In fact, it's the way to the cross and well, we'll get there in due time.
[00:01:13] But let's pray the collect and then talk a little bit about these scripture lessons.
[00:01:19] By the way, we're going to switch now this year from the three year lectionary, which we've done for a while. I'm not sure how long the three year lectionary has been in place. We're going to switch this next church year to the one year lectionary. So I'll be talking about that that a little bit in Bible class and with the email that announced this. Well, I'll send out an email to everybody with an article about the different lectionaries and what's going on.
[00:01:46] So that change is happening as well this week as we switch from one church here to the other. So that'll be really interesting. More about that in just a minute. But let's pray.
[00:01:57] Lord Jesus Christ, you reign among us by the preaching of your cross.
[00:02:02] Forgive your people their offenses, that we being governed by your bountiful goodness, may enter at last into your eternal paradise. For you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:02:17] Amen.
[00:02:18] Let's run through quickly the text that we have for today. The opening our psalm entrance psalm is Psalm 46, the great reformation Psalm. We remember we talked about this quite a bit already this year. But remember Psalm 46 has these two great stanzas with the refrain that is between them. I always forget where the numbers divide up. So I got to open it up here. It's one to six is the first stanza.
[00:02:48] God is our refuge and strength. The very present help and trouble. We won't fear even though the earth gives way. Mountains are moved into the heart of the sea. There's all this chaos. This is Second Coming stuff. The nations rage, the kingdom totters, he utters his voice, the earth melts. And then verse seven is the refrain, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
[00:03:09] Then the second stanza is verses 8 to 10. This is where it really hones in on the idea that we're living in this castle city that belongs to the Lord and we're safe because the Lord is with us. But then someone runs up to the wall and says, come look at this and. And the Lord is out there in the battlefield destroying all of our enemies. And while he's doing it, he turns back to look at us. In verse 10, be still, know that I am God. It's almost like you have to imagine that you're on the wall of a medieval castle and you know that you're safe. Even though the castle is surrounded by enemies, you know you're safe because the Lord is with you. But now the Lord has gone out to fight all of these enemies single handedly and you're watching this happening. He's breaking the spears, breaking the shields, burning the chariots, and you think to yourself, should I go help? And he says, no. He looks back at you as he's fighting and says, be still and know that I am God.
[00:04:07] I will be exalted among the nations. I'll be exalted in the earth. It's a beautiful picture. That verse is normally, you know, be still and know that I am God. And it's normally like on a poster that you see and there's like mountains with a lake and a trout with a butterfly resting on its nose and everything's all peaceful and quiet. But that's not the psalm at all. I mean, Jesus is single handedly overthrowing armies and armies of enemies. And while he's doing that, he's telling us, you just take it easy, just watch this.
[00:04:42] And then verse 11, the refrain comes in a second time. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.
[00:04:50] Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. What a psalm.
[00:04:55] The Old Testament lesson is Malachi 3, starting with verse 13.
[00:05:01] So last week we had Malachi 4, the very last part of the Old Testament, the very last words of the prophets.
[00:05:09] We go back and have now the penultimate words of the prophet.
[00:05:13] You know, Malachi in Hebrew, I think in Hebrew, Malachi only has three chapters.
[00:05:19] In fact, I'm very sure of that because there was one day when I spent 45 minutes looking for Malachi chapter four in the Hebrew. I realized that there's four chapters in the English, but only three in the Hebrew. That was a painful lesson to learn. I had to count the verses. And I realized what was going on. Anyhow. Anyhow, we don't need to rehash all that. But we're here in Malachi chapter three, as the prophetic voices is winding down. But listen to what the Lord says.
[00:05:49] Remember, Malachi, it has this rhetorical advice where the Lord says, hey, you said this. And then the people say, when did we say that? And then the Lord said, this is when you said it.
[00:06:03] So that's going to happen here in verse 13. Also, your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, how have we spoken against you?
[00:06:13] And then the Lord answers, you have said it's vain to serve God. What's the profit of keeping his charge? Or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?
[00:06:22] Now we call the arrogant. Blessed evildoers not only prosper, but they put God to the test, and they escape.
[00:06:28] Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another, but the Lord paid attention and heard them. A book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.
[00:06:37] They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts. In the day when I make up my treasured possession, I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.
[00:06:45] Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve him.
[00:06:53] There's always this cry of injustice that goes up through the Old Testament, in the Psalms and everywhere, because the Lord says, hey, keep my commandments. And then there's those who don't keep the commandments. And it seems like things go better for them.
[00:07:07] It seems like the wicked have a better life than the godly. And so the godly are complaining, Lord, what's going on?
[00:07:14] Until we consider the end. And this is what this passage is about. There's going to be a day when that distinction becomes apparent again.
[00:07:23] And on that day, you want to be on the side of those who trust the Lord and call upon his name.
[00:07:30] Don't be mistaken.
[00:07:33] It's great.
[00:07:34] The Epistle lesson is from Colossians, chapter one, verses 13 to 20.
[00:07:42] And this is, you know, Ephesians and Colossians are almost like twin Books, but like, not fraternal twins. What's the twins called when you're not fraternal? When you. When you, like, you can have a boy and a girl and they're twins.
[00:07:59] I forget what that means. That's how Ephesians and Colossians are.
[00:08:03] So they're not identical twins.
[00:08:07] That's the word I'm looking for. They're not identical twins, but they are definitely related. They're born at the same time. They have a lot of the same themes. And I heard someone say that Ephesians and Colossians talk about how Christ is the head and the church is the body.
[00:08:26] And Ephesians emphasizes the body, but Colossians emphasizes the head.
[00:08:31] So there's a lot of high, beautiful Christology in Colossians. Christology means the study of Christ or the doctrine of Christ.
[00:08:41] So Colossians has this beautiful Christology.
[00:08:45] And this text that we're going to hear in a few minutes read in church is some of that high Christology of Colossians, starting in verse 13. I'm just going to read the whole section. It's really great.
[00:09:01] He, that's Jesus has delivered us. Sorry, excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. He is God the Father.
[00:09:08] He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
[00:09:19] He, and now this is the Son, our Lord Jesus. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
[00:09:29] For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
[00:09:41] Those are all technical terms for the ranks of angels and demons.
[00:09:45] All things were created through him and for Him.
[00:09:49] And he, your Lord Jesus.
[00:09:53] He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[00:10:01] And he is the head of the body, the church.
[00:10:04] He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. That in everything he might be preeminent.
[00:10:11] For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
[00:10:29] Oh, boy. Now, I think I've told you before that St. Paul is cheesecake. I mean, it is dense, dense, dense. But this is especially dense. This section here is the stuff that you write books and volumes of books about because it's just such a piling up of all of these assertions about who Jesus is and what he's accomplished.
[00:10:52] He created all things. He holds all things together. He is the source and the Purpose of all of the universe. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. That's the mystery of the Incarnation. He's the image of the invisible God. That's also the mystery of the Incarnation. There's so much here, it's incredible. And he, the Son of God, who has taken into himself our humanity, has done all of these things so that he can die to make peace.
[00:11:26] He reconciles all things to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.
[00:11:35] So here is the spilt blood of God, which affects the redemption of all of the world. This is just incredible. And this at least tells us, you know what I want to make it. I mean, the content of this is so phenomenal that we could talk about it for hours. But the fact that St. Paul writes this in chapter one of his letter to the Colossians means that the Holy Spirit intends every single Christian to be a theologian.
[00:12:09] I mean, you can't just.
[00:12:11] This is not just eating popcorn, watching football or figure skating or whatever.
[00:12:18] I want to pick two sports to make sure I throw everybody under the bus with this. I mean, you can't.
[00:12:25] Look, this text forces us Christians who want to read the Bible to say, all right, I got to hold on. I got to turn off. I got to turn off the music. I got to hone in on this stuff to pay attention, because God wants me to think deeply about these things.
[00:12:42] I mean, he's before all things. In him, all things hold together. He's the head of the body, of the church. He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything, he might be preeminent.
[00:12:53] It's incredible.
[00:12:55] So may God grant us his Holy Spirit that we can begin to chew on these words and meditate on these words until.
[00:13:02] Well, I mean, one day we'll see Jesus and all of these things will be obvious. But I think here's a conviction of mine that we'll still be learning our doctrine and theology even in the Resurrection. I mean, there's so much to learn. How can you ever exhaust the depths of these things?
[00:13:18] You can't. It's great.
[00:13:21] Okay, the gospel lesson is Luke 23.
[00:13:25] I'm just on a tirade that every Christian is a theologian.
[00:13:31] Okay, you guys know this. I've told you this plenty of times. But I'm just. I'm frustrated at the idea that there are expert theologians out there. Like, the pastor is the one that does theology.
[00:13:44] No, I mean, well, okay, yeah, the pastor should do theology, but he's not the only one that's every single Christian is a theologian. Every Christian.
[00:13:53] You're listening to the Sunday drive to church, and that means. And you're baptized. You are a theologian, you say. But Pastor, I'm only three years old. No matter.
[00:14:02] You're a theologian.
[00:14:05] Luke 23.
[00:14:07] It's dangerous to think that there's an expert class of theology, you know.
[00:14:13] Anyway. All right. Luke 23, the gospel lesson. This takes us to the Passion of our Lord Jesus. This is Good Friday.
[00:14:24] It's going to start after Pilate has scourged Jesus and he's sending him to the cross, and he's carrying the cross.
[00:14:32] And then.
[00:14:34] Then they're going to grab Simeon and he's going to carry the cross behind Jesus.
[00:14:39] There followed Jesus a great multitude of the people, women who were mourning and lamenting for him.
[00:14:45] But turning to them, Jesus said, daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children.
[00:14:52] For behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.
[00:14:58] And they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills cover us.
[00:15:02] For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it's dry?
[00:15:07] Jesus says, in other words, don't cry for me. It's just going to get worse.
[00:15:13] Two others who are criminals were led to be put to death with him.
[00:15:16] When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him. And the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And we're going to get the first and the third words of Jesus on the cross in this text. Here comes the first.
[00:15:33] Jesus said, father, forgive them. They know not what they do.
[00:15:38] It's incredible.
[00:15:39] And that's why Jesus is dying. For the forgiveness of sins, they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by watching. The ruler scoffed, saying, he saved others. Let him save himself, if he's Christ of God, his chosen one.
[00:15:53] The soldiers mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine. If you're the King of the Jews, save yourself. There's the king part. And this is the kind of king that Jesus is, the one who's exalted in his cross.
[00:16:09] There's an inscription over him. This is the King of the Jews.
[00:16:15] One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.
[00:16:21] The other rebuked him, saying, do you not fear God since you're under the same sentence and condemnation? We indeed, justly we're receiving the due reward for our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
[00:16:36] And he said to him, truly, I say to you, today, today you will be with me in paradise.
[00:16:44] This is, this is the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to Adam and Eve in paradise. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. And he brings us back to that place of rest and enjoyment and peace by the forgiveness of all of our sins.
[00:17:11] Just beautiful. Now it's almost stunning. I'm glad we're doing the Sunday drive to church. I'm glad you're listening because, you know, Lent is a really helpful practice because it gets us ready to hear the crucifixion of our Lord. I don't know if this is your experience, but for me, whenever I'm reading through my devotional reading or reading through the treasury of Daily prayer and we get to the Passion Week into the crucifixion of Jesus, it's almost shocking. It's like I needed seven weeks to get ready for it.
[00:17:45] I needed Lent to prepare me for the depth of the, of the thing that's happening. And so it's. It's going to hit us pretty hard tomorrow when all of a sudden we're whoosh, brought by, by the readings to the crucifixion of Jesus.
[00:18:01] But in some ways we, you know, it's good because we always are living there. It's. It's in the death of Jesus that we have our life. It's in the suffering of Jesus that we have our joy.
[00:18:11] So we're ready for that. It's really great.
[00:18:13] The, the hymns really capture this kind of kingship theme.
[00:18:19] All hail the power of Jesus. Name as our opening hymn, Lord enthroned in heavenly splendor is the hymn of the day. Let all mortal flesh keep silent. The tree of life crown him with 20 crowns. The head was crowned with thorns. Those are the distribution hymns. And then we praise you and acknowledge you as our closing hymn. It's beautiful, really beautiful. Okay, now a few words about the lectionary.
[00:18:46] Again, I'll send out an email to all the congregation.
[00:18:50] Hopefully you will have it in your inbox on Sunday, Monday, maybe Saturday night, but probably not till next week. But a little discussion about the lectionaries. If you open your hymnal, though, when you get it to the very first pages, it's on page.
[00:19:13] Sorry, it's on preface page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, that you see the different lectionaries the first six pages are the three year lectionary. And that custom comes out of the liturgical reforms made by. In Vatican II. So 1960s and 70s, there was a lot of pressure.
[00:19:40] Well, there was already a lot of pressure all the way through the 18th century to.
[00:19:51] Expand the lectionary to.
[00:19:55] No, sorry, it's the 20th century. The 20th century, not the 18th. The 20th century, 1960s, 19 or 1930s to expand the one year reading. You can even see it in the TLH in that hymnal. That there was the One Year Lectionary, which was inherited from, I don't know, ancient days. I mean, it goes back to like Gregory I or something in the year 600. This article has all that history.
[00:20:20] There was a sense that we should get more Scripture in there.
[00:20:26] And so even the TLH had a two year lectionary. I don't think anybody ever followed it, but an idea to get that everyone was kind of itching for more readings. So in the 60s, all of these liturgical reforms in Vatican II, amongst those were included this expansion to the three year lectionary. And it did some pretty cool things.
[00:20:50] It kind of emphasized each of the Gospel lessons. So year A had a lot of Matthew. Year B had a lot of Mark, supplemented by. By John.
[00:21:00] Year C had a lot of Luke. And that's why we hear from Luke today. And we've had a lot of Luke this year because we've been in year C.
[00:21:07] It also had a kind of continual reading of the epistles.
[00:21:12] So you'll notice that like a lot of the times we had epistle lessons, we'd have like five weeks in a row reading from First Corinthians or three weeks in a row reading from Philippians. So they kind of, they put those in order. That was kind of cool.
[00:21:25] It's interesting that originally they picked a lot of narrative from the Old Testament and it went back and forth. They dropped a lot of the promises, like a lot of the Messianic promises that the One Year had for the various different series of readings. There was no real historic one year Old Testament lesson, but the Lutherans had picked a lot of those Old Testament lessons that had direct Messianic prophecies and those are sort of dropped for narrative and then that's gone back and forth, back and forth. Well, that three year lectionary was revised and again and again. And I think we have in our hymnal a pretty nice unique three year lectionary that was put together just for our hymnal. It was a revision of the Revised Common Lectionary.
[00:22:14] They noticed a lot of things that like Vatican II and the other churches, passages that they left out and said, no, we should throw those in there. So they included passages that were left out.
[00:22:25] And that's great. And I think the three year lectionary really serves us well.
[00:22:29] The one year lectionary, though has this advantage of it's been around forever and ever. I mean, basically since 600, the epistle and the Gospel lesson appointed for the Sunday readings have been around. And it was there in the time of Luther and Walther and all the way, well, until the 1960s.
[00:22:50] And so we were talking with. Jonathan and I were talking, oh, a year ago and we started talking with the elders about it. Hey, could we, could we use the one year for a few years?
[00:23:01] And the elder said, yeah, let's go ahead. That sounds good. So we're going to make the switch this Advent to the one year. So that means if you're looking at the lessons to be read, you got to Skip from page 19 in the front of your hymnal to page 20 in the front of your hymnal and you'll notice the lessons there. There'll be a few things that will be very interesting. I mean a lot of people, it'd be hard to notice, I think if we didn't say anything about it, it would be.
[00:23:28] It would be hard to notice that you did it unless you were paying pretty careful attention. I know a lot of you were paying very close attention.
[00:23:36] But here's where you will notice a few things. One is that there's a whole other season in the one year lectionary that's not in the three year, the season of pre Lent. So that's the Septuagasima, Sexagesima, Quin Quagasima, the three Sundays before Lent, which is. They're amazing little mini season. Also Lent itself also has some different contours in it. So you have the seven weeks of Lent, but then you have the last two weeks of Lent, that's Passiontide and then Holy Week. So there's more layers that are added to Lent via the one year.
[00:24:15] Otherwise I don't know if there will be a lot of the church year. Seasons will probably be very, very close. But the nice thing is that you'll notice that we'll do for three years we'll have the same Gospel lessons, same epistle lessons, same Old Testament lessons on the various different Sundays. And the idea is that these lessons will really be drilled down so that we'll be able to, well, hopefully memorize them, know where they come up in the church year. And the nice thing I think about the one year is that it connects the Gospel lesson to the church year. In other words, it seems to me like the one year the seasons grew out of the readings.
[00:25:07] This is the reading, this is the year. This is the day that we had the reading of the five wise and five foolish virgins. And so this becomes really the. The Sunday of the end times.
[00:25:18] Or this is the Sunday when we hear about the paralyzed man being healed. Or this is the Sunday when we hear about the triumphal entry or whatever. And so the readings were first and then that gave birth to the church year in the three year lectionary. It feels to me like the church year. The seasons were first and then the readings were chosen to fit the season.
[00:25:42] So we're at the end of the church here. So we have second coming readings. We're in Advent, so we have John the Baptist readings and so forth and so on. So it just seems like there's a different flow. But both are good and both are a blessing. But we're going to make the change this next coming week, so you'll be ready for that as well. So if you have questions about it, bring those questions to Bible class and we will see you soon. That's Sunday. Drive to church. God's peace be with you.