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.
As some of you may recall, nearly four years ago now, a regular visitor to Pilgrim’s Adult Bible Classes and Divine Services stopped coming after we rightly baptized a newborn baby. We did as we in today’s Gospel Reading heard our Lord Jesus say to do: we received one such child in His Name, and thereby we also received not so much Jesus as the One Who sent Him. The one-time regular visitor heard but did not correctly understand such passages of Holy Scripture, and the questions he asked and the resulting discussion we had with him left him convinced that his mis-understanding was correct, in light of today’s Gospel Reading, we might say that the one-time regular visitor thought his “understanding” was greater than ours.
In today’s Gospel Reading, after Jesus for the second time taught His disciples—that He was being delivered into the hands of men, that they would kill Him, and that, when He was killed, after three days, He would rise—Jesus’s disciples did not understand what Jesus said and were afraid to ask Him. The first time Jesus had so taught His disciples, Peter had objected and was rebuked (Mark 8:31-33). Maybe the disciples’ recalling that rebuke made them afraid to ask Jesus about what they did not understand, and maybe their recalling that rebuke even led at least a couple of them to argue about who was the greatest among them. That argument certainly led Jesus to teach all twelve of them that those who want to be first must be last of all and servant of all, serving all not precisely as Jesus did, but by receiving one such child in Jesus’s Name, and thereby also receiving Jesus and the Father Who sent Jesus. “Jesus serves all,” and we are to “receive Him by receiving others”.
We certainly can fault the disciples for their failure to understand what Jesus said, for their being afraid to ask Him, for their arguing about who was the greatest, and for their silence when questioned about it. They were acting like children in the worst possible ways! And, even after Jesus’s teaching, they still did not get it: for, one chapter later, Jesus’s third Passion prediction is followed by the sons of Zebedee’s striving for positions of honor and authority over their fellow disciples, leading Jesus basically to repeat the same lesson about one who wants to be first’s being slave of all (Mark 10:32-45). In today’s Epistle Reading (James 3:13-4:10), the Divinely‑inspired St. James rightly says how bitter jealousy and selfish ambition lead to disorder and every vile practice, such as boasting and being false to the truth.
We certainly can fault the disciples, but we often fault them too easily, and sometimes we fault them and fail to fault ourselves at all. For, at times we also fail to understand what Jesus (or our pastor!) said and are afraid to ask. At times we also argue about who is the greatest and are silent when confronted with our sin. Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition also lead us to disorder and every vile practice, such as boasting and being false to the truth. We sin in these and in countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. For our sinful nature and actual sin, we deserve death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, if we do not turn away from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake.
While being reluctant to ask questions can be a sign of im-penitence (Mark 6:52; 8:17; confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 9:30-32, p.670), Jesus nevertheless called the Twelve so to turn away from their sin and to trust Him to forgive their sin. Despite their continued sin, Jesus remained committed to them, and so He forgave them (Marcus, ad loc Mark 9:33-37, p.677). So also we, empowered by God, in the words of the Epistle Reading, draw near to Him and He draws near to us. We humble ourselves before the Lord, confessing both our sin and our faith in Him, and He exalts us with His grace and forgiveness. For, “Jesus serves all”.
Jesus’s service to all was in part prophetically foretold by what we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading happened to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 11:18-20). People close to Jeremiah were devising schemes against him, to kill Jeremiah and destroy his legacy. Jeremiah was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter, and he committed his cause to the Lord of hosts, Who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind, to take vengeance upon his opponents. As Jesus repeatedly told His disciples, He, the Lamb of God (Isaiah 53:4-7; John 1:29, 36), certainly knew what was happening to Him. The Father was delivering Him into the hands of men, who would kill Him on the cross, for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and mine. What wondrous love! How strong to save! (Lutheran Service Book 438:3.) Jesus was given into death for us, so that we do not have to die eternally. And, Jesus did not stay dead but rose and so showed Himself victorious over sin, death, and the power of the devil, also for us! Now, we receive the benefits of that victory, in the ways both that we ourselves are welcomed by our Lord and that we receive others.
Like that newborn baby nearly four years ago, most of us are first welcomed by our Lord at the Baptismal Font. In the Gospel Reading the Lord took a child in His arms and essentially adopted it as His own, as He adopts us by water and the Word in Holy Baptism. Thereby, the Lord welcomes and the Church receives children of all ages in Jesus’s Name—in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—and so the Church receives Jesus Himself and the Father Who sent Jesus. In that same Triune Name used in Holy Absolution, pastors, acting in the stead and by the command of Jesus, individually forgive those who privately confess the sins that they know and feel in their hearts. And, the Lord Himself welcomes and the Church receives those so baptized and absolved in the Holy Communion of Christ’s Body and Blood, in, with, and under bread and wine, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Jesus’s followers’ greatness lies in such, from the world’s point of view, “un-spectacular ministry” (Franzmann, Word of the Lord Grows, 189). “Jesus serves all, and we receive Him by receiving others”.
Now, to be sure, the greatest service we can do for anyone—man, woman, or child—is being God’s instruments for receiving them into His Church. But, in the Gospel Reading, Jesus also seems to be speaking of receiving—that is showing hospitality to, supporting and even, as necessary, adopting—children: maybe those children orphaned or abandoned by their parents, or those children at the time deprived of their parents by persecution or by their parents’ itinerant mission work. Such serving others is the God-pleasing opposite of the self-serving concern of Jesus’s disciples. (Marcus, ad loc Mark 9:336-37, pp.681-682.) However, we do not have to be adoptive or other kinds of parents to have vocations that serve children and others who cannot care for themselves by receiving them, both spiritually and materially. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles all help care for children, and grown‑up children become caregivers for their parents and sometimes even their own spouses. As we sang in the Hymn of the Day (LSB 851:3), our Lord gives a wondrous honor to our humblest charity by saying that all that we do to and for others we are doing to and for Him.
“Jesus serves all, and we receive Him by receiving others”. A non-denominational friend of mine last Sunday finally let his older children be baptized but not his younger. Not only my non‑denominational friend, or our one-time regular visitor, but also many of your relatives and friends, especially in our East Texas context, reject Holy Baptism as the Lord’s welcoming and the Church’s receiving children of all ages, thereby raising questions about whether or not they truly believe in Jesus as the Bible reveals Him at all. Of course, none of us perfectly receives Jesus and the Father by receiving others, but, as we turn away from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, God forgives us His children, so that we have life with Him now and for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +