Thursday Theology: Homily at the 2026 Crossings Conference.

Co-missioners,  

Here is another artifact from last January’s Crossings Conference, the manuscript of a sermon preached at our gathering by Pastor Jack Busche.

Mindful of the conference’s theme of wrestling with the relationship between the Gospel and “Christian behavior,” Jack warns us to not “become numb to this great gift” of the Gospel, nor take its implications lightly, seeing as God did not consider it “too light a thing” to pour salvation out generously even to us sinners. He puts his finger on a real pitfall of our wonderful Lutheran tradition, one that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among others, warned about: That because God’s grace is free, we think of it as cheap. Rather than the life-injecting and utterly elating news of our redemption, we take God’s love for granted and shrug our shoulders, only to remain stuck in our malaise. This, I think, is every bit as much a problem for us as the opposite tendency of works-righteousness. As Dr. Luther liked to point out, we human beings are like drunken peasants, getting on the horse on one side, only to fall off the other. 

I found Jack’s sermon challenging and needed. I hope you will find the manuscript likewise.  

Peace & joy, 
Co-editor Robin Lütjohann 
for the Crossings Community 

Homily at the 2026 Crossings Conference 

by the Rev. Jack Busche 

Text: Isaiah 49:1-7 

1 Listen to me, O coastlands;
         pay attention, you peoples from far away! 
The Lord called me before I was born; 
        while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. 
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword; 
        in the shadow of his hand he hid me; 
he made me a polished arrow; 
       in his quiver he hid me away. 
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, 
      Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” 
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain; 
      I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; 
yet surely my cause is with the Lord 
     and my reward with my God.” 

5 And now the Lord says, 
      who formed me in the womb to be his servant, 
to bring Jacob back to him, 
      and that Israel might be gathered to him, 
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord, 
      and my God has become my strength— 
6 he says, 
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant 
        to raise up the tribes of Jacob 
and to restore the survivors of Israel; 
       I will give you as a light to the nations, 
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” 

7 Thus says the Lord, 
       the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, 
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, 
      the slave of rulers, 
“Kings shall see and stand up; 
      princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, 
because of the Lord, who is faithful, 
      the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” 

Grace and peace to you, from God, Creator of the coastlands and the nations, the Holy Spirit who calls us to attention, and Christ our Lord, the one sent to redeem Israel and bring light to all the peoples of the earth.  

Raphael (1483–1520) – The Prophet Isaiah
From Wikimedia Commons

Like many pastors, I am in the habit of saying “yes” to everything – it feels like we should be “yes” people, right? We want to serve people, to be helpful, to feel useful – well really, we want to be liked, most of all. And so we say yes to everything, whether it is directly in our purview or not – we’ll speak at that Memorial Day event, we’ll volunteer for the school committee, and of course I’ll officiate your wedding on a golf course 50 miles away. I don’t have anything else to do on a Saturday! Eager to please, despite the pleas of our families and partners, we say, “yes, of course – no, it’s no problem at all!”  

“No problem at all” – it’s a phrase I use too frequently I think, not because work and volunteering are such a burden, but because in saying so I am devaluing my contribution, my time, and myself. Also inherent in the phrase is the assumption that if there were a problem, if it cost me anything in time or effort, I wouldn’t do it. If we lived that way, then we are really in the wrong line of work. As pastors, at least all the pastors whom I aspire to be like, we are happy to pay the cost, in our time, our personal funds, even our public standings, if we think it will serve God or our neighbor. Convicted by a gospel that teaches us to take up our cross and follow Christ, we pursue the costly grace which Bonhoeffer spoke of, a grace which is freely, but not cheaply, given.  

But then again, no we don’t. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran (and we never tire of reminding ourselves of that), but far more often as Lutherans we have been either quietist or pietist. We either accept the grace of God happily, thank you very much, without assuming the transaction need go anywhere else, or we take seriously Christ’s calls to action (of which there were many), but only as somber calls to duty, rather than the radical freewheeling call to love. I understand this week’s topic concerns behavior, that is, “how trusting Christ gives a distinct shape to the behavior of baptized people.” Perhaps only at a Lutheran-oriented conference would that have to be established as a premise! Intended or not, our tradition’s finest point of distinction, the great correction of the Reformation, has very often been interpreted into our daily living in the most corroded form, that having been saved, our eternal life secure, our daily life need not be bothered too much with those difficult things of which Jesus spoke.  

In our focal text this evening, Isaiah 49, in verse 6, the LORD says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” This is the voice of the Father, speaking about the Suffering Servant prefigured in Isaiah, revealed to us as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. This is the gospel news, the declaration that for the Father, it was “too light a thing” to only redeem Israel and all his children, but that all people, of every origin, should see the light and receive salvation. Hear, and believe – see, and be saved.  

If we hear this wrongly, for God, this is all “too light a thing,” a passing fancy, something to be done over a long spring weekend. More rightly, for God it is “too light a thing” to only have concern for those who have already heard the promise, who are already ‘in the tribe.’ We risk the good news of Jesus becoming “too light a thing” when we preach only of salvation accomplished in the past and resurrection to come in the future, and miss the living in between! We make the gospel a proposition, faith a light thing we need only agree with – we make following Jesus not only “too light a thing,” but practically nothing, an aesthetic, put on and taken off as easily as a cross necklace. Unfamiliar with a faith that has anything to say to our lives, we dwell unhappily in our worst impulses, and blindly conform to the world, having been given only the shallowest of good news. We have a cardboard cutout Jesus who asks for nothing, because he has given us barely anything at all.  

Graffiti with the words “And love your neighbor as yourself” on a wall in Jerusalem.
From Wikimedia Commons

But he is not a cardboard cutout. He was not a metaphor, or a Jungian archetype, or a nice idea – he was flesh and blood, a human being who felt hunger and sadness and pain. For him, the salvation of Israel was “too light a thing,” only because his love was too great a thing to be limited to his own people. Our salvation, purchased at so high a cost, was not given lightly, but it was given freely. When we become numb to this great gift, when we trust only a salvation to come and miss our redemption happening right now, there he is again – “Ecce homo!” Behold the man, the suffering man, the “one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers.” (v. 5) He is the one whose mouth, “like a sharp sword,” (v. 2) convicts us of our sins, and like a “polished arrow” pierces our hearts with the righteous pain of empathy for our suffering neighbor. Jesus, who died a real and brutal death, will not let us breeze past that death lightly – from his cross, he sees us, all of us, in our passivity, our self-centeredness, our sinboundedness – and he calls us to die with him.  

From winter, comes the spring – from the despised One, comes redemption – from the grave, life, and life abundant. Jesus, who really died, and was really raised, intends for us to follow him now in real ways, really. A flesh and blood Jesus who was raised to flesh and blood, now invites us into a flesh and blood faith, a faith that feeds our neighbors, that cares for the poor and oppressed, and faith that believes that loving your enemies now is not a loss, but a gain. A faith of flesh and blood does not treat our neighbors as “too light a thing,” and does not separate spiritual redemption from physical service – if we are to be resurrected in both body and Spirit, if God has such a care for us in our entirety, how can we draw distinctions where God does not? You have been saved for all time by our Redeemer, and in time to come you will see his kingdom come, when “every king and nation shall prostrate themselves,” when force and terror and greed shall be brought low by the Holy One of gentleness and mercy and generosity. Bathed in the light of salvation, expectant for the kingdom to come, in the meantime we live, a real faith, with real consequences, in service of our very real Savior. Amen.