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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.
Even secular holidays often bring families and friends together. That togetherness can be fun, especially on the Fourth of July, with good food and fireworks—fun, provided the fireworks are on the ground or up in the air, and not in people’s interactions with one another. Some families and friends may avoid conversations about politics and even religion in order to try to keep the peace between people in their own home. Truly, some people reject the Gospel, and other people receive the Gospel. On this Fourth of July that the Church observes as the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the appointed Gospel Reading includes the accounts both of Jesus’s being rejected in His hometown of Nazareth and of His sending out the twelve apostles, who presumably were received in at least some of the households that they entered. Considering the Gospel Reading, this morning we realize that, “Rejected or received, the Gospel is preached”.
All three of the appointed Readings in some sense have to do with matters of preachers’ dealing with rejection: the Old Testament Reading about God’s calling Ezekiel and sending him to the rebellious house of Israel (Ezekiel 2:1-5), the Epistle Reading about Paul’s being content with such things as insults and persecutions (2 Corinthians 12:1-10), and the Gospel Reading about both Jesus’s being rejected—in His hometown, among His relatives, and even in His own household—and His preparing His apostles to deal with those who do not receive and listen to them. And, in each case, that the Gospel would certainly be rejected by some did not prevent the Gospel from being preached at all.
Whatever we might think of Ezekiel’s, Paul’s, or the other apostles’ styles of preaching, maybe even to some extent wrongly blaming them for the rejection of the Gospel from their lips, we can hardly blame Jesus for the rejection of the people in His hometown, among His relatives, and even in His own household. Many in the synagogue were astonished, asking where He got the things that He taught, what the wisdom was that He had been given, and how mighty works were done by His hands—that all could be taken positively. Yet, they thought that He was just a carpenter, the son of Mary, and related in some way to other men and women there whom they knew. So, they took offense at Him. Despite Jesus’s words and actions, they were trapped, caught, and spiritually dead in their unbelief that left Him marveling.
To be sure, we do not have exactly the same issues of familiarity with Jesus that the people of Nazareth, Jesus’s relatives, and His own household had with Him. But, our life-long familiarity with the Gospel and our assessment of its simplicity may lead us to reject it (Kretzmann, ad loc Mark 6:1-4, p.193). The water, touch, and bread and wine of the Sacraments may be too ordinary for us. Or, we might wrongly take offense at something else—God’s law’s condemning a sin that we want to be okay, pastors’ styles of preaching or teaching, or something else that they said or did. Or, maybe we wrongly take offense at something else that some other well‑meaning person said or did. By nature we all are trapped, caught, and spiritually dead in our unbelief, and we are too quick to stay or return there, as we sin by wrongly taking offense and in other ways. Because of our sinful nature and actual sin, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity.
Yet, “Rejected or received, the Gospel is preached”. And, as the apostles then went out and preached that people should repent, so pastors today preach that we should repent. Through this preaching, God Himself grants us the fullness of His grace that we are called and enabled to repent, and so, as the Collect of the Day put it, we are made partakers of His heavenly treasures.
“Rejected or received, the Gospel is preached”, and thank God that the Gospel is so preached, regardless of whether it is rejected or received! For, if Jesus had let the rejection at Nazareth been the end of Gospel’s preaching, then we would never have heard the Gospel, and we would be eternally lost as we deserve to be. But, despite the persistent rejection of some, Jesus Himself continued to preach, and He sent His apostles to do the same. They preached that despite all of our sin, God loved us by sending His only Divine Son into human flesh to die on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we deserve. In some sense Jesus’s rejection by the Jewish leaders and Romans of His day was foreshadowed by His rejection at Nazareth and was necessary in order for Him to die on the cross for the sins of the whole world. When we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to apply the benefit of Jesus’s death to us, and want to do better than to keep sinning, then God forgives us. God forgives our previous rejection, our wrongly taking offense, and whatever else our sin might be. God graciously forgives our sinful nature and all of our sin, as we receive His forgiveness through His Means of Grace.
Whether by Jesus’s hands, by the hands of His twelve apostles, or by the hands of their successors, pastors today, God does mighty works for us. We may not have demons cast out and be physically healed, as did those whom Jesus and His apostles spoke to and anointed, but, just as miraculously, we receive greater spiritual healing. With the water and the Word of Holy Baptism, we are brought into the household of faith. With the touch and Word of individual Holy Absolution, the sins that we know and feel in our hearts are forgiven. And, with the bread and wine and the Word of the Sacrament of the Altar, we are fed the family meal of the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us, which strengthen and nourish us in body and soul to life everlasting. We may not shake off the dust on our feet as a testimony against those who reject and do not receive the Gospel, but we do warn both the impenitent by excommunication and the unbelieving by closed communion, both with the goal that people should repent, and rejoicing when and if they do repent.
Notably, Jesus’s charge to the apostles whom He sent—His charge not to take any bread, a bag for other food, or money in their belts—seems to have been in order to keep them dependent on God to provide for them through the households that received them as prophets and so protected and provided for them. After all, the laborer deserves his food and wages (Matthew 10:10; Luke 10:7)! And, the New Testament tells of households that did receive those whom God had sent, such as the household both of Lydia and of Jason (Acts 16:15; 17:5-7). But, in most places today, the system of congregational offerings and paychecks provide the pastors’ daily bread. And still, while the pastor serves the congregation by preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments, that does not mean that the rest of the people of the congregation do not still have responsibility in their various callings of life to confess their faith and otherwise give answer for the hope that they have in Christ. Yet, we are not to blame when people reject, and we cannot use that lack of blame as an excuse to give offense. In the end, of course, none of us fulfills our various callings perfectly, but, as with St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading, God’s grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in our weakness.
“Rejected or received, the Gospel is preached”: according to our various callings, even at gatherings of family and friends such as on the Fourth of July. To be sure, Jesus knows and feels first-hand the pain that we know and feel having people in our own households who may reject the Gospel right now. Yet, precisely for their sake, He would have us not avoid conversations about religion but keep preaching and confessing, so that one day, instead of rejecting, they might receive the Gospel and the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation that it brings for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +