Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Alleluia, indeed! In today’s Gospel Reading, our Lord Jesus Christ says “Because I live, you also will live.” If Jesus’s resurrection benefitted only Him, we would hardly have reason to say “Alleluia”, to praise God for that resurrection. We live in a fallen world of death. We see death in the destruction that violent weather reaps (severe thunderstorms are predicted across Texas today and tomorrow, likely bringing needed rain but also maybe threatening flash flooding). We see death in the crimes people commit against one another (just Friday night a 22-year-old man on a rampage through a California college town killed six other people before killing himself). And, we see death in the declining health of those we love and of ourselves. We desperately need our Triune God and His assuring us that “Because Jesus lives, we also will live”.
Jesus first spoke the words of today’s Gospel Reading on the night when He was betrayed. As we hear them on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, just four days before the feast of His Ascension and two weeks before Pentecost, we might tend to focus more on His words about His departure and on His comforting His disciples concerned about that departure by telling them about the giving of the Holy Spirit. Yet, we are still in the Easter season, and this day and always we do well to reflect on and remember Jesus’s ultimate comfort, that “Because Jesus lives, we also will live”.
Now, to be sure, in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments.” Bible translators and commentators differ as to how to interpret the Greek words used in that statement—for example, whether the “keeping” has more the sense of “obeying” or “treasuring”, and whether the “commandments” are more like “the Ten Commandments” or the whole of Jesus’s Word, law and Gospel, Word and Sacraments. But regardless, Jesus expects that, if we love Him, we will keep His commandments, obeying His law and treasuring His Gospel. So, we, who claim to love Him, then ask ourselves whether, in fact, we do obey His law and treasure His Gospel. Do we have them as our inner possession? Does that inner possession show outwardly in the way we live our lives? Or, because we do not keep His commandments, do we, in fact, on account of our sins, deserve the death we see around us? In the Gospel Reading, Jesus says the world cannot receive the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, because it does not see Him or know Him, and, apart from that Holy Spirit, the same is true of us. By nature we are unable to obey God’s law and treasure His Gospel. What we think of as our “choice” or “free will” plays no role in our salvation. We experience our inability as The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther experienced his, which experience of his was is described at length in today’s Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 556), what one author calls “unquestionably … the greatest confessional hymn of the Lutheran Church” (Fred Precht, LW:HC, #353, p.371).
Especially here in East Texas, we might characterize people the way St. Paul in today’s First Reading characterized the people of Athens: “in every way … very religious” (Acts 17:16-31). Yet, Paul’s characterization is hardly a compliment! For, St. Paul was “provoked within him as he saw that [Athens] was full of idols”. He rebuked the city’s people for their wrong ideas about God; he spoke to them about God’s judgment, and so he called them to repent. Similarly God calls us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep sinning.
On the cross Jesus died for our sin: for your sin and for my sin. After the little while of Jesus’s betrayal, suffering, and death, the unbelieving world did not see Him any more, but the disciples did. After three days—during which Jesus victoriously descended to hell, as mentioned in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Peter 3:13-22)—Jesus rose from the dead, and “Because Jesus lives, we also will live”. Like the disciples, we know the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, for He dwells with us and in us. For that Holy Spirit, Jesus, according to His human nature, asked the Father, and the Father gave to us. Thanks to that Holy Spirit, we know that Jesus is in His Father, that we are in Jesus, and that He is in us. We have His commandments as our inner possession, and we show that inner possession in our outward lives. We are those who sacrificially love Jesus, and we are sacrificially loved by His Father and by Jesus Himself. We do not forfeit that love, but we repent of our sins, believe God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, and receive God’s forgiveness through His Word and Sacraments.
Through His Word and Sacraments, the Holy Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies [makes holy] the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian Church, He daily and richly forgives … the sins of all believers.” We are no more “orphans” than the disciples were. At the Baptismal Font we are adopted as God’s children through the water and Word of Holy Baptism, which, as St. Peter says clearly in the Epistle Reading, saves us. As we consider our place in life according to the Ten Commandments and so know our sins and feel them in our hearts, we confess them privately to our pastor, and in individual Holy Absolution he forgives them with Christ’s authority. And, Christ Himself abides (or dwells) in us and we in Him, as we feed on His body and drink His blood in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion (John 6:56). In His Word and Sacraments, we have the forgiveness of sins, and, by our receiving them, we in truth worship the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 4:23-24; 14:6; 15:26; 16:23).
With what Jesus says in the Gospel Reading about those who have and keep His commandments being the ones who love Him, people understandably try to reason backwards, from what we say and do, to whether or not we love Jesus, and so even to whether or not we have faith. After witnessing something perhaps decidedly un-Christian, no doubt you have heard (if not said) something such as, “And they call themselves Christians!” Yes, there are hypocrites who do not really believe, and there are others who believe falsely, but even true believers who genuinely love Jesus do not perfectly keep His commandments. We should, but we do not. So, every day, with repentance and faith, we live in the forgiveness of sins, both from God for ourselves and with one another. As St. Peter describes in the Epistle Reading, we are always prepared to make a defense (give an answer) to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us, and we do so with gentleness and respect. We pray that the world, which by its nature does not see God active in His Word and Sacraments, through our words and deeds, might be drawn by God to know Him.
Some 483 years ago this week, Martin Luther’s mother Margaret was seriously ill, and he wrote her a letter of spiritual counsel. In the letter, Martin comforted Margaret with Jesus’s victory given to her, as to us, through His Word and Sacraments. Martin specifically pointed to the words of today’s Gospel Reading where Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live” (AE 50:21). As with Martin and Margaret, we live in a fallen world of death. Yet, “Because Jesus lives, we also will live”. His resurrection is the basis for the new life that we have already now. In His Word and Sacraments, Jesus manifests Himself to us now, and, on the Last Day, He will manifest Himself to us in all His glory and take us to be with Himself forever.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +