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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. (Amen.)
Clear in the whole of today’s Gospel Reading is, to borrow the phrasing of today’s Collect, that “The Lord sends His messengers to preserve you in true peace”. Picking up where last week’s Gospel Reading left off (Luke 9:51-62), in today’s Gospel Reading, with some details unique to St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired account, we heard how the Lord appointed seventy‑two others and sent them on ahead of Him, two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to go. In essence, the seventy-two were to greet the people of a house with peace, and, if there were people of peace there, then that peace would rest upon them, and the seventy-two should remain there, and, if there were not people of peace there, then that peace would return to the seventy-two, and they were to move on. Whether the seventy-two were received or not, they were to preach, as John the Baptizer and Jesus Himself previously had preached, that the Kingdom of God had come near to the people (for example, Matthew 3:2; 4:17). Where the seventy-two were received, they would share table fellowship as the Lord had shared—and the hospitality of those who received the seventy-two would provide them wages, as it were—and, where the seventy‑two were rejected, they would enact God’s judgment. Those who heard the seventy-two heard Jesus, and those who rejected the seventy-two rejected Jesus and also the Father Who sent Jesus. In short, the Lord sent His messengers to preserve the people of those towns in true peace, and likewise “The Lord sends His messengers to preserve you in true peace”.
Increasingly, it seems, the people of the world outside of the Church, including our 246‑year-old country, are not interested in the peace in which the Lord’s messengers are sent to preserve them. And, if not rejection of, then at least indifference to the Lord’s peace can be true of the people seemingly inside of the Church. You may not study or even hear the Word of God as you should. You may not appreciate that God Himself is speaking through the faithful preaching of a sinful man. You may not rightly regard your Baptism; you may not ever seek individual Absolution; or you may not regularly receive the Sacrament of the Altar. You may not, with your sacrificial first-fruit offerings, help provide wages for the Lord’s messenger sent to preserve you in true peace. You may not consider how you could serve either this congregation as a volunteer or the Church at large as a full-time church-worker, or you may not otherwise try to share the Lord’s peace when the Holy Spirit provides you opportunities in the various vocations that you have, even if you want Pilgrim to grow, maybe even if you care about people’s lost souls.
On account of those sins, all of our other sins, and our sinful natures, we deserve nothing but both death here and now and eternal torment in hell, unless we repent. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus referred to the Lord’s earthly destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19:24), remembered for its people’s wickedness, and Jesus anticipated the lesser torment that the people of Sodom might experience after the Day of Judgment, relative to the greater torment of the people who would reject the call to repentance that comes with the preaching of the Kingdom of God. Likewise, Jesus suggested that the more‑Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon previously would have repented in sackcloth and ashes, if He had done there the unmistakable mighty works that He had done in the more-Jewish cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida, which apparently nevertheless still did not repent. (Pieper, II:547.) And Jesus said that even His adopted home-town of Capernaum would not be exalted to heaven but would be brought down to Hades, that is, hell. Heaven and hell with their opposite natures do exist, and when, enabled by God, we repent of our sinful nature and all of our sin, then we will not be brought down to hell, as we deserve on account of our sins, but we will be exalted to heaven, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
We can be exalted to heaven because Jesus, God in human flesh, is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7). As the angels sang, His birth means there is peace on earth among the people of God’s favor, or grace (Luke 2:14). Because of Jesus, the Lord, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 66:10-14), extends peace like a river, in an over-flowing and never‑ending supply. The Lord may send His messengers as lambs in the midst of wolves, but Jesus is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36; confer Exodus 12:3). We are redeemed with the precious blood of Chirst, like that of a lamb without blemish (1 Peter 1:18-19). He is the Lamb standing again now even though He had been slain (for example, Revelation 5:6; confer Isaiah 53:7). Jesus is the Good Shepherd, Who guards the sheep from the wolves, and Who lays down His life for the sheep—messengers and all—and then takes His life back up again (John 10:11-13, 15, 17-18). Far greater than any of God’s other blessings on us in this country, in His great love, mercy, and grace, God sent His Son to die on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. When we repent, then we are justified, or made righteous, by faith and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1).
“The Lord sends His messengers to preserve you in true peace”. He sends His messengers with His authority to retain and forgive sins in word and deed. People who do not hear and receive Him but reject His call to repent are cut off from the communion of the Church. Those who do hear and receive Him in repentance rejoice that in Holy Baptism His Name is put upon them and their names are written in heaven; they go in peace from individual Absolution, and they partake of the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us, by which we receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In part on the basis of a portion of today’s Gospel Reading, our Lutheran Confessions understand that the office of the pastor is both to exclude from the Christian community the ungodly whose wicked conduct is manifest and to forgive sins by preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments (Augsburg Confession XXVIII:20-22).
I admit that at times my preaching about a pastor’s authority and his deserving his wages is a bit awkward for me. You should know that I am not complaining, but I am faithfully preaching the text—or, in this case, the texts (plural)—before me, such as today’s Gospel Reading and today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 6:1-10, 14-18), which includes the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul’s reminding those who are taught the Word to share all good things with the one who teaches. We do pray earnestly that the Lord of the Harvest would raise up, train, and send out more laborers into His Harvest, for laborers are still needed to teach the Word, as those who support those laborers in their work are still needed. We want the Church to grow because people’s eternal salvation is at stake, and we do what we can, although such growth does not ultimately depend on us but on God. In some ways the nature of the work of the seventy-two is different from the nature of the work of pastors and other church-workers today, but in other ways the nature of their work is the same. At a minimum, now as then, “The Lord sends His messengers to preserve you in true peace”.
With that true peace comes true joy, joy both now and at the Last Day, with believers’ relative degrees of glory (Pieper II:552-553). True joy does not depend on what we think is the success or failure of God’s message; true joy does not depend on us but on God. In today’s Old Testament Reading, we heard the Lord call those mourning the condition of Jerusalem to rejoice with her in joy because of what the Lord would do for her, such as His extending peace like a river. Likewise today’s Psalm (Psalm 66:1-7; antiphon: vv.8-9) calls us to shout for joy to God, even in a time of hardship. So, we truly bless our God and let the sound of His praise be heard!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +