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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The celebration of Pilgrim’s sixtieth anniversary as a congregation is nearly upon us! The anniversary itself was September 17th, but our special Vespers service with the rededication of our newly‑remodeled sanctuary is this afternoon. Yet, some trappings of the anniversary are present this morning—the special flowers on the altar and on the new flower shelves and on the window sills, the special banner hanging on the wall, and the color-coordinated and themed decorations present in the Parish Hall. Of course, many of you have been involved in anniversary preparations for weeks if not for months. This afternoon the fifth vice-president of the Synod has the honor and privilege of preaching on the occasion of the anniversary, but this morning, even without the trappings of the anniversary, I could hardly ignore how this morning’s Gospel Reading relates to the occasion. This morning’s Gospel Reading’s seemingly‑disparate sayings give us the theme “For us”.
Last week’s Gospel Reading included Jesus’s teaching His disciples about His death and resurrection, their arguing about who was the greatest, and Jesus’s sitting down to tell them to be last of all and servant of all, driving that point home with a child in their midst, saying that receiving the child in His Name is to receive not only Him but the One Who sent Him. This week’s Gospel Reading picks up right from there, with John’s reporting to Jesus that they tried to stop someone casting out demons in Jesus’s Name because the person was not following them. But, Jesus said not to stop such a person, saying, “The one who is not against us is for us.”
You and I might sympathize with John’s desire to stop someone casting out demons in Jesus’s Name because the person was not following them. The divinely‑inspired St. Mark does not tell us exactly what motivated John, but the people who put together our series of appointed readings certainly seem to be suggesting there is some similarity between John in the Gospel Reading and Joshua in the Old Testament Reading. In the Old Testament Reading, Joshua jealously wanted Moses to stop two of the seventy elders from doing briefly what was usually Moses’s work, even though they were only doing it because God gave them the Spirit to do so, and that after Moses had complained about his inability to care for all the people. Some pastors and people today can wrongly think that pastors must do things that lay people can do.
If John’s motive was not jealousy, perhaps his being so close to Jesus gave him a wrongful sense of pride. You and I can sometimes have a wrongful sense of pride in our close connection to Jesus, His Church, and the truth with which He has blessed us. That wrongful sense of pride can even get in the way of our telling others about Jesus, His Church, and the truth with which He has blessed us. For example, we might treat too lightly or otherwise ridicule what others believe so that we offend them, instead of speaking the truth to them in love so that the Spirit can more‑easily convert them.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus likens the seemingly‑greater miracle of the person casting out demons in His Name and the seemingly‑lesser act of mercy of giving someone who belongs to Christ a cup of water to drink. Then, Jesus warns of the consequences of causing even a little child who believes in Him to sin, and Jesus warns of the consequences of our not denying ourselves but instead letting ourselves sin in such ways that we end up spending eternity in hell—hell, where the inside of the body is tormented by undying worms, and the outside of the body is tormented by unquenchable fire.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus mentions such torments of undying worms and unquenchable fire, both to the disciples and to us, in order to rouse our consciences to fear the judgment we all by nature deserve on account of our sin. In other words, Jesus mentions such torments in order to lead us to repent—in order for us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. As others in history have done, we could quite literally cut off our hands and feet and cast out our eyes, but our real problem is not that those members sin, but our real problem is the sinful heart and mind that control those members. And, of course, we can hardly cut out our sinful hearts and minds and remain alive. The change of heart and mind we need only comes from God and only when we turn from our sin, trust Him to forgive our sin, and want to do better. Then, God forgives our sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, Who died on the cross and rose from the grave for us.
Far more important than whether or not any other individual is “for us” is whether God is “for us”, and, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God is “for us” in the way that matters most. In Jesus Christ, God is not “for us” the way you and I might be “for” a football team. In Jesus Christ, God is not “for us” as a passive partner activated by us to accomplish our purposes. Rather, in the divine and human person of Jesus Christ, in His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave, God is “for us” in the way that saves us from our sins. Jesus sacrifices Himself to pay for our sins, and He lives the perfect life we fail to live. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ God forgives our sin—our sin of jealousy over ministry; our sin of wrongful pride in being close to Jesus, His Church, or the truth with which He has blessed us; or whatever our sin might be—by grace through faith in Jesus Christ God forgives all our sin. He enables us to follow Him by changing our hearts and minds and so how we use our members by giving us the Spirit to do so, through His means of grace: His preached Word and His Word in its sacramental forms, namely, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion.
We think first—and perhaps especially—of Holy Baptism. There, at the Baptismal Font, God makes us His children by water and the Word. He puts His name upon us and so brings us under the operation of His Holy Spirit. By means of Holy Baptism even little ones only eight days old believe in Him, as Jesus in the Gospel Reading clearly says is possible. Their child-like trust is the model even for us adults seemingly capable of much more “discursive thought, intelligent knowledge, and introspective consciousness.” Next we think of Holy Absolution. After you or I privately confess to a pastor the sins that we know and feel in our heart, the pastor absolves or forgives us as an individual, casting out our sins, as it were, in the same Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Finally we think of Holy Communion. Jesus Christ is present on this altar in bread that is His body and in wine that is His blood. He is distributed by me and received at this rail by you who believe, for the forgiveness of sins, for life, and for salvation. Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion—all means of God giving us what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross for us.
Two particular things related to this morning’s Gospel Reading came across my desk and to my attention this past week. First, there was a mailer from the Faith and Freedom Coalition, calling on us as Christians to be “salt” in society by registering to vote, being informed on the issues, and voting accordingly—good things, to be sure, but not exactly what Jesus means when He speaks of our having salt in ourselves or of our being the salt of the earth. The second thing was a news report about Roman Catholic bishops ramping up their fight against gay marriage, with at least one archbishop saying Roman Catholics who support gay marriage should not take communion. That archbishop said that either people are with them on the important things or they are not. Indeed, Jesus not only said, as He does in the Gospel Reading, that “The one who is not against us is for us”, but elsewhere Jesus also said, “Whoever is not with Me is against Me; whoever does not gather with Me scatters.”
As Jesus seems to describe it in the Gospel Reading, we gain our flavor as salt by the fires of persecution in this life, so that we do not end up suffering eternally in unquenchable fire. We may have a hard time imagining the salt we use in our life losing its flavor, but, if it is combined with other substances, it can lose its character as salt, as those to whom Jesus originally spoke knew happened on the shores of the Dead Sea with salt and gypsum. We do need to be conscious of those who use Jesus’s Name but do not follow Jesus with us. We should not necessarily stop them, but we should attempt to bring them into fellowship with Him. If they refuse to be part of His fellowship, then they show themselves to be not with Him and so against Him, and we avoid them. If such a wanderer eventually comes into the fellowship, as the Epistle Reading says, his or her soul is saved from death.
Where possible, we live at peace with one another, that is, with all those who are not against and so for us and Jesus Christ. We are not jealous for ministry, and we have appropriate pride that we are close to Jesus, His Church, and the truth with which He has blessed people of this congregation in Kilgore for sixty years. We live every day in the forgiveness of sins He won for us on the cross, and so we are comforted and do not despair. No one who matters can be against us, because, in the person of Jesus Christ, God is for us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +