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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.
As perhaps outside of your homes here in East Texas, outside of my parents’ home in Arkansas there are a number of bird feeders. For two of those feeders, last month I purchased at the farmers’ co-op fifty pounds of sunflower seeds, and, as I did so, I mentioned to the merchant that while the Bible says that God feeds the birds, the Bible does not say how God feeds them. (I am not sure the merchant appreciated my comment.) Already in the Old Testament, the Bible says both that young ravens cry to God for help (Job 38:41) and that He gives them their food (Psalm 147:9). Regardless of how God feeds the birds, that He feeds them is part of our Lord Jesus’s basis in today’s Gospel Reading for encouraging us not to be anxious about or seek what we are to eat. Rather, our Lord Jesus calls us to seek the Father’s Kingdom, for, Jesus says, the Father’s good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Our Father’s Good Pleasure”.
Today’s Gospel Reading picks up right where last week’s Gospel Reading left off (Luke 12:13-21). You may remember that last week we heard a man from the crowd of thousands essentially tell Jesus to arbitrate a family inheritance matter, and we heard Jesus respond, in part, by warning everyone against covetousness and by telling a parable of a rich fool, who stored up treasure for himself but was condemned for not being rich towards God. Continuing on that topic, today we heard Jesus for that reason encourage His disciples, including us, not to be anxious, and then Jesus gives a number of additional reasons why we should not be anxious.
Jesus says both that life is more than food and that the body is more than clothing. Jesus tells us to see with our eyes that God feeds the birds and clothes the lilies and then to reason with our minds that, since we are more valuable than even many birds and lilies (see Luke 12:6-7), then all the more will God feed and clothe us. Besides, Jesus says, our being anxious does not add a single hour to our lives (in fact, others might say that our being anxious even subtracts time from our lives). Of course, a certain amount of anxiousness and even stress can be good for us: for example, a certain amount of anxiousness and stress can prompt us to have jobs and savings accounts, through which God can provide for us, just as we, in turn, might feed the birds. But, we are not to be too anxious and stressed, thinking that by our work or savings we feed and clothe ourselves. Rather than seeking such things as what we are to eat or drink, we are to seek the Father’s Kingdom, for, Jesus says, the Father’s good pleasure is to give us that Kingdom.
Do we make the Father’s Kingdom our priority? Do we think that by our work or savings we feed and clothe ourselves? How well do you and I do with having just the right amount of anxiousness? In these and countless other ways, we sin, and, on account of our sin, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we deserve death now and torment for eternity. Not only are we, by our worry, incapable of adding one hour to our lives, but, by nature, we are also incapable of doing anything about our sin, we by nature even are incapable of believing in Jesus Christ or coming to Him. Like the grass that is in the field today and in the fire tomorrow, if left to our own devices, we might be relaxing, eating, drinking, and being merry one moment and, the next moment, be suffering in hell for eternity. We rightly would have to be afraid of God, Who can kill our bodies and cast us into hell (Luke 12:4‑5), if God Himself, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, did not tell us not to be afraid because, as we heard today, our Father’s good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom. When we confess both our sin and our faith in Jesus, then Jesus confesses us before the angels in Heaven (Luke 12:8-9). When we repent and believe, then God forgives all our sin, for the sake of Jesus Christ. In short, He gives us the Kingdom!
Echoing words spoken through Isaiah (41:14), Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, calls those who so repent and believe His “little flock” and tells us not to be afraid, for the Father’s good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom, to redeem us (see also Daniel 7:18, 27). Independent of any human influence, from eternity the Father chose so to save us (Ephesians 1:5-9). The Father loved the world by giving His Son, Jesus Christ. For forty days in the wilderness, Jesus lacked food for us (Luke 4:2). On the cross, Jesus thirsted for us (John 19:28), and there also Jesus was stripped naked for us, as He suffered the pains of hell (Luke 23:34; John 19:23-24; confer Hamp, CPR 26:3, 44). The Father could have righteously condemned us to hell, but instead He freely gives us the righteousness that Christ won for us on the cross, and so He freely gives us heaven itself. Out of His good pleasure, the Father reveals Christ to us (Luke 10:21) and enables us both to repent of our sin and to believe in Jesus. For Jesus’s sake, our Father’s good pleasure gives us the Kingdom; our seeking it on our own does not give it to us (Hamp, CPR 26:3, 43). But, after the Holy Spirit has brought us to repentance and faith, then we are not afraid and seek the Kingdom, as those we heard of in the Old Testament and Epistle Readings (Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1‑16; confer Greeven, TDNT 2:895) sought a homeland, a better, heavenly country, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from God (Revelation 21:10). So, we do seek the Kingdom, both as we believe, our even‑little faith being counted to us as righteousness, and as we let God and His way “hold sway in our lives” (TLSB, ad loc Lk 12:31, 1741). We seek the Kingdom by continuously seeking the forgiveness of sins that God gives to us through His Means of Grace.
Our Father’s good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom through His Means of Grace. Through Holy Baptism, we are made the Father’s believing children and are clothed in the garments of Christ’s righteousness (Galatians 3:27). Through individual Holy Absolution, the Father’s called ministers exercise His authority to cast not into hell but into heaven (Luke 12:5). And, through the Sacrament of the Altar we with bread eat Christ’s Body and with wine drink Christ’s Blood (Luke 22:19-20), satisfying our hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:16). In all these ways, the Good Shepherd through His under‑shepherds (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2) cares for His little flock, the true Church, which may appear small in any given place and time because the Church’s glory here and now is hidden under the cross.
The head of a seemingly‑larger church, Pope Francis, recently said that the Gospel is unfinished and that we all are called to write in it our deeds of mercy. I suppose in the sense that Pope Francis meant it, he is correct. For, in today’s Gospel Reading, our Lord Himself calls His little flock both to sell at least some of their possessions and to give to the needy (more than feeding the birds!). We primarily seek the Kingdom, and, as we are able, we also work as we are expected and encouraged to do, but we are not anxious about what we will eat or wear, for we know that our Father’s good pleasure is not only to give us the Kingdom but also to give us all the other things we need to support this body and life (Small Catechism II:2), even in an abundance enough to help others. Instead of being anxious about necessities, we give them away (Hamp, CPR 26:3, 43)! Such deeds of mercy do not get us into heaven, as the Pope may think, for only God’s grace for Christ’s sake gets us into heaven, and if getting into heaven depended on our deeds of mercy no doubt we would anxiously wonder if we had ever done enough. But, such deeds of mercy are at least thought to accumulate rewards for us in heaven, rewards different from the food a thief might steal and from the clothes a moth might destroy.
“Our Father’s Good Pleasure” is to give us the Kingdom. In the Lord’s Prayer we pray our Father both that His Kingdom might come among us and that we might realize that He gives us our daily bread and so receive it with thanksgiving. To the extent that we have sinful doubts about those things, in the Lord’s Prayer we also pray Him to forgive us our trespasses! With repentance and faith, we live every day in His forgiveness, also forgiving those who trespass against us. We who struggle with our faith can say to God, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) and “Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5). And, as today’s Psalm reminded us (Psalm 33:12-22), amid various false hopes for salvation from such things as famine and death, we faithfully “wait” for the Lord, our help and shield. Our hearts are glad in Him because we trust His holy Name. As we did in the Psalm, we pray to Him now, “Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in You.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +