“Grafted In (Back In)” Sunday Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / August 16th 2026 Season of Pentecost / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Romans 11

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday August 16th 2026: Season of Pentecost / Romans 11:1-2a, 13-15, 28-32 “Grafted In (Back In)”

I ask, then, has God rejected His people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. … Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?

… As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends do you have elm trees? Are you familiar with them? We have a couple of them and they are very messy. I say they are very messy because there are always twigs and branches breaking off of them. And these dead dry branches need to be mown or raked up and put in the compost. These branches don’t just decide to break off the tree, they tend to come off the tree in the wind. When the wind is hard set against the tree that’s when branches and twigs break off and come tumbling down to the ground. When the wind is particularly treacherous and set against them with tremendous force even living branches can be broken off. Now on the one hand if I was a botanist or if I had a particularly green thumb, I might be able to graft that living branch—broken off in the particularly treacherous wind—back into the elm tree. However, on the other hand, grafting in the dead branches and twigs is not something even a botanist can do. Even if I had two green thumbs and two green toes, I wouldn’t be able to do that. That would require a miracle. Now if I was the Lord and giver of Life; if I was the Maker of heaven and Earth; if I was The Way, The Truth, and The Life well then, I would certainly be able to take those dead twigs and branches and graft them back in, because I could take what is dead and make them alive again. Such is the nature of God’s almighty power. But then again, dear ones, I’m not talking about twigs and branches, am I? Those twigs and branches are people.

Just as the wind was set against the disciples on the Sea of Galilee in last weeks Gospel so to, we likewise see, how the winds of the World both natural and supernatural are set against the Tree of Faith. Many things break branches off of The Cultivated Olive Tree of the Church. I’d mentioned this illustration of the Church, The Cultivated Olive Tree, two weeks ago. I’d explained that Saint Paul uses this picture in his letter to the Christians of Rome when talking about the history of the faith and the realities of the moment they were living in. This analogy is from chapter eleven of Romans and our Epistle Reading today is from that same chapter however our appointed Epistle reading sort of reads around this illustration of The Tree used to explain our place in Christ, so today we will again unpack that Scriptural illustration as we dig into what Saint Paul has to share with us in this section of Romans.  

The context of this part of Saint Paul’s letter is the way in which the Jewish community reacted to Jesus’ teachings, His life, death, and the news of His Resurrection and Ascension, new of Jesus being the long-promised Messiah, the Saviour, who was and is God made manifest in taking on our flesh and blood, the flesh and bone of mankind. So, as a Jewish person did you embrace this heritage come to fruition and carry on in your faith or did you reject all of this and side with the Pharisees and Sadducees who were doubling down on their rejection of Jesus as the Christ. This was the question swirling around at that time. In those first years following the events of that first Holy Week and the proceeding Pentecost where 3,000 were baptised along with all the other things that had transpired as the Gospel went out into the nations was a real “paint or get off the ladder” sort of time for the Jewish people. Would they be counted as Christian or wouldn’t they. Would they cling to the gift of faith in Jesus or would they have it all slip through their fingers. And what would that mean regarding God’s relationship to them. And so, Saint Paul begins this chapter of Romans chapter eleven saying, “I ask, then, has God rejected His people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew.” Paul is saying Father, Son and Holy Spirit didn’t reject him, God found a way for Paul to remain in the true faith, and if God had done this for Paul, who’d formerly become an enemy of Christ and His followers surely God would have a heart for the rest of Saint Paul’s brother and sisters among the Jewish people. The question that brought Saint Paul spiritual anguish was ‘would those people be shown to have a heart for the Lord?’       

In that sermon a couple of weeks ago I’d mentioned Issac’s sons Jacob and Esau from the book of Genesis and the birthright and promise of the messiah. In this part of his letter Paul doesn’t bring them up again but rather moves to a later time in salvation history when the established kingdom of Israel was sadly likewise divided in their beliefs and practices and the prophet Elijah was earnestly working to call the people of the promise back to faithfulness and away from false worship and a broken relationship with the LORD. So, in the spot where our Epistle reading skips forward Saint Paul continues with this example of a time when God preserved a Remnant in the Northern Kingdome of Israel:

“Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have demolished Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for Myself [says the Lord] seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise, grace would no longer be grace.”[1]

And so, we are back to that question of the day. Are you in or are you out? Paint or get off the ladder. ‘Is my branch on or off the tree? Where am I, what does all this mean? How can I understand it all? Do I work to be on the ladder or is it by grace? Do I work to be a branch on the Tree of the Church or not? Paul says it’s the unmerited gift of grace.’

I can sit all afternoon in my back yard and watch the grass and the dry and broken dead twigs and branches and the yard will not cut itself and the twigs and branches will do nothing to graft themselves back into the tree. The lawn will continue to grow and grow and the twigs and branches will simply lay there unmoving unless grace intervenes.

Thinking of Saint Paul and his fellow Christians confronted by Christ Jesus, does what was going on in that day have any barring on what is going on in our day? Do we have Christians who have been provided the promises of God who can be counted as such based on their family heritage and may have even been baptised personal, brought into the faith by grace, but now live lives unsure of what it all means and what they believe or don’t believe about Jesus. Lives where these thoughts are far from their daily concerns? Saint Paul continues his thought asking:  

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.”[2]

These are sort of alarming words? Less alarming if they are only about Jewish people back then or now, maybe less alarming if it’s about some outsider group today, but certainly alarming if they can be applied to fellow Christians today, if they can be applied to the ones we hold dear to our hearts among our friends and family. And so when applied to our present time chapter eleven of Paul’s letter to the Romans starts to ask ‘What is God’s relationship to the Christian who is far off from the promises of God, from the Sacraments, from God’s Word and prayer … and what about the modern Jewish person who at present retains a special place in God the Father’s heart but refuses to have their hope and trust and faith in His only Begotten Son Jesus the Christ? What then?’ 

The twigs and branches broken from the tree are dead because they are no longer connected to the living root of the tree and so if the person is not rooted in the forgiveness of Christ Jesus, rooted in the Sacraments, rooted in God’s Word, rooted in Jesus Himself, if they are rather rooted in the sins of Pride, and Hypocrisy, if their hearts despise the preacher God has given them and the sermons prepared for them, if they are rooted in a disregard and disrespect for those placed in authority over them, if their heart is rooted in Anger or Lust or Greed, if their tongue would rather cut like a knife than build up like a trowel the reputation of their neighbour, if they are busy Coveting what isn’t there’s while failing to recognize with thanksgiving the wonderful things that do belong to them through the love of God, then such a person is certainly in danger of being broken off of The Tree of the Church, broken off of the Tree of Faith, because they have the wrong kind of root. A root that is dead in sin, not a root that is alive in Christ. And so, this warning is as much for us today among Christians as it was for the ones who originally heard these words. A pressing question begins to emerge ‘why is this the way it is?’ The answer is hard and Saint Paul continues giving answer to this concern:   

Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you.[3]

This is a sober word of warning to those who are newly grafted in whether that is an individual or a congregation or a church body. Saint Paul in Galatians encourages us to “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”[4] And in the book of Hebrews we hear this admonishment, “obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”[5] We are called to watch over ourselves, but the Lord also gives us ones tasked to watch over us, and ultimately He watches over us all as King Solomon reminds us in his book of proverbs “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.”[6] And for the LORD’s very own we trust Solomon’s father King David’s Words in Psalm 23 when David comforts us with the words “The Lord is my Shepherd,”[7] He’s the one who “restores my soul,”[8] who “follow[s] me all the days of my life,”[9] Dear ones remember out of the flock of the 100 The Good Shepherd does go after His one lost sheep,[10] but likewise remember that sheep somehow became lost, whether that was by being ‘blown away by the winds of the World’ like a twig or branch blown off an Elm Tree or by being kidnapped or enticed away, by wilful stubbornness and sin, one way or another people can become lost, broken off in need of rescue. But woe to them that become broken off and lost of their own accord, and so Saint Paul says:

Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in His kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.[11]

And so dear ones we arrive at a mystery. Now this mystery that we are about to consider for some may bring unease because they desire to pry into it and know every detail, yet for others it can bring peace and comfort. Saint Paul continues with these words:

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,

         “The Deliverer will come from Zion,

                 He will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;

         “and this will be My covenant with them

                 when I take away their sins.”[12]

The Lord is always at work in the life of His bride the Church, the pruning hook is always in His hand, the shovel is always at the ready to provide fertilizer on her roots.[13] Jesus is always about the work of forgiving and unlike you He can take dead wood and make it live, He can bring back the twigs and branches blown off by the cares and riches or the world, the concerns and troubles set against them. The Cultivated Olive Tree of the Church, the Cultivated Olive Tree of Israel which is one and the same is His Tree and He loves every twig and every branch. He shed His blood for each and every one of them, but His love spills the banks of His love for this tree and He is busy grafting in branches and twigs from all sorts of wild trees; and so we don’t forget His love for the Tree itself, the one He has cultivated and established. Here, Saint Paul digs into the mystery of this love as we return to the last bit that we did hear from our Epistle Reading today where Paul reminds us:

As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake [these are them who refuse to believe in Christ even thought He is their messiah as much as He is yours]. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Saint Paul says, “For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience [in that by their absence they made an opening for you], so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all.[14]

I leave you with the Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel. Without digging deeply into it and reading it only on the surface what Jesus says to her might sound harsh, but in truth Jesus is being very gentle with this woman and she as a Canaanite was from a branch long broken off from the Cultivated Olive Tree of the Church. In His interaction Jesus shows just how far He will go to graft in wild shoots and twigs and branches. Will He then not care for those closest to you who likewise are broken off from what was theirs? In the end she is not turned away, and Jesus says to her “O woman, great is your faithfulness,”[15]  two weeks ago I encouraged you not to give up sharing the Good News of Jesus with everyone, including the Jewish folks—for who Jesus first came as Saviour—and today I say do not give up on the ones closest to you, those dear twigs and branches, your wild little olive shoots that you love so dearly, continue in prayer for them, be not discouraged but be encouraging, speak to them God’s Word, share with them what the Lord has done for you and hold fast to your own faith and the practice of it, that all these things by the grace of God might draw them back in, grafted once again into the Tree of Faith by the hand of the Lord. We all have but one life to live, and yet, remember nothing is over until it is over, for:

         “The LORD is gracious and merciful,

                 slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

         The LORD is good to all,

                 and His mercy is over all that He has made.”[16] Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Romans 11:2b-6
[2] Romans 11:7-10
[3] Romans 11:19-21
[4] Galatians 6:1b
[5] Hebrews 13:17a
[6] Proverbs 15:3
[7] Psalm 23:1
[8] Psalm 23:3
[9] Psalm 23:6b
[10] Luke 15:1-7
[11] Romans 11:22-24
[12] Romans 11:25-27
[13] Luke 13:6-9
[14] Romans 11:28-32
[15] Matthew 15:21-28
[16] Psalm 145:8–9

Photo Credit: Main Photo and photo of Elm Tree from Regina and Olive Tree from the Mount of Olives all taken by Pr. Ted Giese.