Peace Lutheran Church
2025 Sermons
Posts Tagged "Death"
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
August 03, 2025
Text: Colossians 3:1-11
Outline
1. We see dead people walking
a. Dead in our sins and trespasses
2. Dead can be made alive
a. Not because we find some kind of medicine, but because we are given the best medicine, JC
3. Alive people do not return back to death
.
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is Saint Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, chapter three verses one through eleven.
Intro: Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you ever seen a poster like this? It is a poster that police used to use many years ago. They would put out this posters and say, “We want this person, dead or alive.” It did not matter if the person was dead or if they were still breathing. The police wanted to protect people from what this evil man was going to do. What would you think if your picture was here? It might be a little bit scary. You might be afraid.
But in Jesus, your picture is here. He wants you, He created, redeemed, and makes you holy. He takes you who were dead and makes you alive. Jesus says, Wanted, Alive! How does being made alive in Christ Jesus show itself in your life? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. We see dead people walking
When you look around at other people, what do you see? You might notice the color of their skin. The nice and neat or disheveled appearance of their clothing. If you have eyesight like Sherlock Holmes, you might notice minute details they have a button undone in their shirt, the small tattoos that point to a life of travel and adventure. If you are looking at them as Christ sees them, to quote the movie, The Sixth Sense, you can say “I see dead people.”
As we look at the people in the world around us, and even here at church, we rightly see dead people walking. That is because of our sinful nature. Because of the Fall, Adam and Eve brought upon all of humanity the curse of sin. Our default setting, as Saint Paul says, was one of a corpse. Dead in sins and trespasses. Saint Paul says that this was our former condition before our Baptisms and the creation of faith by the Holy Spirit. We were enslaved to Satan, our sinful nature, and eventually Death itself leading to eternal death.
We were hostile to God and to what He says in His holy Word. Death showed itself in our lives as we follow the ways of our own flesh, gratifying our own desires. We get angry at our neighbor. We look upon others not with love but in wrath and malice, desiring for ourselves the things that they have. We use our words not to build one another up, but to slander others. We gossip and lie about others. We do not use our words to praise God. Rather, obscene talk comes from your mouth. Many times, we still do this today because we have our sinful flesh still clinging to us. Yet, for many in the world today, it is not their former condition, it’s their current condition!
The worst part, what can a dead person do? Nothing! People dead in their sinful nature are trapped. They cannot save themselves. They cannot free themselves and make themselves alive. They are trapped, slaves of Satan and Death until they suffer eternal death forever in the fires of hell.
2. Dead can be made alive
What then can the dead do? They need to be made alive again, no longer dead. Just think of any zombie movie that you have ever seen, the scientists are always looking for a cure, looking for a way to remove the curse of the undead and make people alive again. We have something better than a scientist’s cure, we have the cure from God Himself for our dead, sin-filled condition.
Indeed those dead in their sins are made alive again in, though, and, because of Jesus Christ. Jesus took upon Himself their death. He was crucified, died, and was buried, so that the dead would not die eternally but have the forgiveness of their sins, the salvation of their souls, and, life everlasting with Him forever. All this He gives graciously in the waters of Holy Baptism. There, the dead come shambling from the grave of death. Their sins are crucified with Christ Jesus, buried in the tomb with Him, and they rise to newness of life forever. The dead are alive! They are freed from Sin, from the Devil, from Death itself by Jesus Christ. He died and rose so that you can live. He says, “Wanted: not dead, but alive forever. I paid your price with My own death and resurrection.”
3. Alive people do not return back to death.
Because we are alive in Christ, we do not go back to the deadness of our sins. We do not return to the deadness of sinful ways or gratify their desires. Rather, we live as His alive people in the midst of people dead in their sins. We die to our sinful natures and rise to new life in Christ. We put on Christ, the same way we change clothes daily. That when people look at our thoughts, words, or deeds, they do not see us, rather they see Jesus in us. We set our minds not on what we desire. Rather, we look heavenward. We look to Jesus and set our minds on things above, on doing the good works that He has given us to do as we serve our neighbors in love. We put Christ and His righteousness on ourselves, being renewed in Him, being strengthening by His word and Sacraments in our faith, as we daily grow in His grace, mercy, and love.
As we live out our lives as people made alive in and through Jesus Christ, let us always show grace and mercy to those still dead around us, as we point them to Jesus that they too may live with us in His kingdom forever.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
February 22, 2025
Sermon Outline
Do Not Fear Living and Even Dying for Christ, Because While in Adam All Die, in Christ All Will Be Made Alive.
I. We all die like Adam because we all sin like Adam.
II. But Christ died our death for us, so in Christ all will be made alive.
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the first letter of Saint Paul sent to the church in Corinth, the fifteenth chapter verses twenty-one through twenty-six and thirty through forty-two.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. How are you doing today? Are you happy to be alive? I pray that you are. There are many reasons that we can have joy over being alive. There is also a lot that we could be afraid of that might take our lives. Sickness, diseases, wild animals. There are many things that could kill us.
Paul tells the Corinthians he fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, presumably because he would not compromise his Christianity. Authorities threatened Paul repeatedly during his ministry. But Paul kept preaching Jesus, even when, eventually, he was killed for doing so.
Why do we die? To answer that question, 1 Corinthians 15 will help. Even if—or actually because—Paul is blunt. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (v 22). There are only two possibilities. Are you dying with Adam or living with Christ? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
I.
In Adam, all die. All. No exceptions. You have Adam as an ancestor. So the next time you’re at a funeral, take a good long look at the body in the casket. Unless Jesus returns quickly, the day is coming when that will be you.
You can put me in a solid gold casket, and I’ll be just as dead as if you bury me in a cardboard box. I can cover your grave with a blanket of beautiful bouquets. The flowers will hide the dirt. But they will not change the fact that you’ll still be a lifeless corpse six feet under the soil. Because you are connected to Adam. Like I am. In Adam, all die.
How does the triage nurse in the emergency room determine if the unresponsive body that just arrived is dead or alive? Feel for a pulse, right? And check for breath. If possible, maybe find out if there are brain waves. If you have a pulse and breath and brain waves, you have life, right?
No. You have death waiting to happen. You started dying the moment you were conceived. So did I.
But not Adam. Adam started with life that did not have to end in death. Adam enjoyed a carefree existence. And he could eat from apple trees, peach trees, mango trees, and especially from the life tree.
God wanted Adam to continue living. So God told Adam not to eat from one tree. From the only tree with deadly fruit. God was protecting Adam. God warned that eating that fruit would kill Adam. Maybe Adam did not believe the consequences could be that dire. God says ignoring his Commandments will kill us. But we’re tempted to believe the consequences could not be that dire. So we sin. And we die.
You can try to blame Adam. After all, you inherited sin from him. But Adam isn’t the one listening to the devil when you break one of the Commandments. You are. Adam isn’t the one who’s harboring anger in his heart toward the person who makes you mad. Adam doesn’t force you to curse. Or lie. Or covet. Adam is not the one afraid to live for Jesus. You are.
You and I are in Adam. And in Adam all die. There is nothing you can do to stop that reality or reverse that reality. We may as well eat, drink, and indulge all our sinful natures’ desires, because tomorrow we die.
II.
Unless we have another Adam. Unless there is a human like Adam but unlike us, an Adam who starts life without any of our sinful inclinations. But this Second Adam needs to do what the first Adam failed to do. Heed God’s warnings. And resist every enticement of the devil. And then this Second Adam would have to do something even more unlikely. He’d have to be willing to die for people who ignore his warnings.
Jesus is the Second Adam who volunteers to pay your debt in full. He willingly and joyfully obeys the will of the Father, even when you owe death. He takes the blame for the sin that kills you. Your sin kills him instead of you. In that great exchange, Jesus gives you, His perfection. That leaves you sinless.
That is why we clothe the newly baptized in white. It’s also why we cover the bodies at each Christian funeral with a pall. The pall is white, to tell you the body beneath it belongs to a purified, baptized child of God. Ours has a red cross covered over with gold in the center to say the body beneath it was washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb, the Second Adam. The cross shows you where that blood was shed. Someday that pall may cover your dead body.
Maybe the pall should also include an altar, where your Lord puts into your mouth his body that rose from the dead and his blood that pays the debt it would have taken an eternity for you to pay in hell.
In Adam, all die. But you have already died. With Christ. In Baptism. Now in Christ will all be made alive.
That’s why when Paul speaks of Christians who have died, he sometime calls them asleep. Oh, make no mistake; the bodies of Christians die. The wages of sin is death. We will collect our paycheck. But when you are in Christ, that death is not permanent. It is temporary. Like sleep.
One Greek word for resurrection means “to be awakened.” If you die before our Lord’s final advent, before the day Jesus returns, picture him reaching down into your grave, tapping you on the shoulder, and saying, “It’s time to wake up.” Then you will wake up from death just like you wake up each morning. You will get up out of your grave like you get up out of your bed. Because whether you’ve been dead only a few minutes or for a few centuries at his return, you still will be baptismally linked to the risen Christ. And in Christ, all will be made alive.
You no longer have death waiting to happen. You have life waiting to be lived, now in this old creation and fully in the new creation.
Death hurts. Death separates you from the people you love. Death is a blot on God’s good creation. So despise death. But do not fear death. Death has been conquered. Death will be undone. In Christ will all be made alive.
That is why Paul did not have to fear death when he faced the wild beasts. That is why you could say at your confirmation, “I am ready to suffer anything, even death, rather than compromise this confession of faith.” That’s why you can love your enemies instead of hating your enemies. Like Joseph did in our Old Testament lesson. His brothers sold him into slavery. But Joseph did not hold it against them. He believed in the God who uses evil to accomplish good, who uses the evil of death as the gate to life with him. You are in Christ. Even if they kill you for being a Christian, you won’t stay dead. Not permanently.
Maybe that’s why in, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul does not say the bodies of believers are buried. He says they’re planted, “sown” (v 42). Maybe we’ve been using the wrong word. We talk about burying Christian bodies. Maybe we should join Paul in saying we plant them. Because when you bury something, you put it in the ground and expect it to stay there. When you plant something, you put it in the ground and expect it to come out again. We plant the bodies of baptized believers in Christ. That’s why we do not need to fear living for Christ or dying for Christ.
It’s true that in Adam all die, but in Christ shall all be made alive.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.