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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.
Some of you have heard me talk about my answering telephones in the newsrooms where I worked, defending the forecasts of the station’s weather-people and meteorologists, sometimes as a last resort rhetorically asking the angry viewers on the other end of the line, “You do realize that they are just guessing, right?” Clouds on the horizon and blowing winds make possible even our at once saying that a shower is coming or that there will be scorching heat—and lately we have had plenty of scorching heat! Yet, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said already then that many do not “read the weather signals of God’s approaching storm” (Roehrs-Fransmann, 71), and, by Jesus’s possible train of thought, He may be suggesting that the failure of especially the younger generation to “read the weather signals” contributes to division not only among people in general but also even among our immediate families. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “Families and the Times”.
Sadly there are a number of things that can divide our immediate families. Children may move cities, states, or even countries away, sometimes for good reasons, such as a better job, and sometimes for bad reasons, such as in order to get away from positive parental influence. The politics that divide our population at large can also divide families, and so last month at the wedding we attended I had to tread lightly as I gently teased one of my cousins who is profiting more from the current economic conditions. But in today’s Gospel Reading the five who are divided three against two and two against three—the father and son, the mother and daughter, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law—they are all divided over Jesus—no doubt, over Who He is, what He does, and how He does it. Our experience with the Church’s general decline from one generation to the next may give us an idea, but the Divinely‑inspired evangelist St. Luke admittedly does not record Jesus’s saying whether the three or the two or the older generation or the younger generation (or some combination of the two) are the believers, for Jesus’s main point is the division.
Although Jesus speaks differently in other contexts, in this case Jesus says that He came to cast fire on to the earth. He asks His disciples whether they think that He had come to give peace on earth, and, since apparently they did think so—as we often think so, too—Jesus says “by no means”, “not at all”. In contrast to the popular reception of the false prophets whom the Lord criticized through Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 23:16-29), at times faithful preachers of God’s law and Gospel are falsely accused of disturbing the peace, and people may wish that the law and Gospel had never been preached and such public peace had never been disturbed (confer Luther, AE 26:452). But, the problem is not in the faithful preaching of God’s law and Gospel but in what others and we ourselves might think about that faithful preaching! We can interpret the appearance of the earth and sky to tell what kind of weather we are getting, Jesus says, but we do not know how to interpret the present time.
Since the time that Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel Reading, He has, as it were, kindled the fire upon the earth, He has accomplished (or “finished”) the baptism with which He had to be baptized, and the division over Him has resulted. The signs are all there for us to interpret: now is the time for us, enabled by God, to repent—to repent of our wrong thinking about Jesus, to repent of our failure rightly to interpret the present time, and to repent of our sinful nature and of all our actual sin. For, when we so repent, then God forgives our sin—all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
I was unexpectedly blessed this past Monday morning to read through and discuss the original Greek version of today’s Gospel Reading with the Rev. Will Wilson of First Presbyterian Church here in Kilgore. In the course of that discussion, as I recall, he asked me where there was any Gospel in that Reading, and, at that time, I said that was a good question! Yet, surely our Lord Jesus’s saying that He had a baptism to be baptized with, referring to the severe affliction of His suffering and death in our place on the cross, surely that is Gospel! Jesus says that He was already experiencing great distress until that baptism was accomplished, but the baptism that is His death on the cross especially is what makes peace between (or “reconciles”) us sinners and God. Because of Jesus’s death on the cross for us, a multitude of the heavenly host could praise God at Jesus’s birth, saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased” (Luke 2:14 ESV). God “is pleased” with us who are incorporated into His Son—His Son Who lived the perfect life that we otherwise fail to live and Who died for our failure to live it. When we turn from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then we are no longer alienated from God on account of our sin, but we are forgiven and restored to fellowship, a right relationship, with Him.
That forgiveness is given and that fellowship is effected and expressed through God’s Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments, His Word as He commands attached to visible means that give the forgiveness of sins. That Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading and elsewhere describes His suffering and death for us in sacramental terms—He has a baptism to undergo; He has a cup which He needs to drink—should not surprise us (confer Matthew 20:22-23 and Mark 10:38-39), for Jesus’s suffering and death and the Sacraments are closely connected (confer Scaer, CLD VIII, 124; XI:40 n.27, 44). As we are united with Him by water in Holy Baptism, as we are forgiven with the touch of those He calls and ordains in individual Absolution, and as we receive bread and wine that are His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar, we, as we prayed in the Collect, “receive with thanksgiving the fruits of His redeeming work and daily follow in His way”.
Early this past Wednesday morning, I was blessed to give that food for the way to our former member David Smith, less than 48 hours before the Lord summoned David’s soul to our eternal home. David certainly knew, like so many other families, what it was like to have a family divided over the Christian faith along the generational line. No doubt he both wrestled with that division and lived in God’s forgiveness of sins where he failed in that and every other regard. In keeping with his Confirmation verse (Revelation 2:10), David was faithful unto death and was given the crown of life. We endeavor to do the same! We faithfully witness to our straying family members and pray for them, and we receive God’s forgiveness where we fail in that and every other regard. By faith, David and we—like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and others we heard about in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 11:17-12:3)—by faith we all lay aside sin that clings so closely and run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The forgiveness we receive from Him by faith can heal divisions in our family, but, even when divisions over the faith remain, we are comforted that we have still closer ties of kinship with our brothers and sisters in Christ’s blood.
This morning we have considered today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Families and the Times”. Not due to any meteorological training but by God’s grace, we have realized that we may not always both think correctly about Jesus and interpret the present time as we should, but, as we turn from our sin and trust God to forgive us, God does forgive us, by grace through faith in His Son Jesus Christ. That faith and forgiveness may divide people in general and even our families in particular, but God does not leave us to ourselves but instead places us in His family of the Church. Together in the Church we sing, as we did in the antiphon of today’s Psalm (Psalm 119:81-88; antiphon: v.81), our souls long for God’s salvation, our hope is in His word.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +