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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.)
I am not a knitter, but my sister is a knitter, and so, as a child taking long trips together on our family’s summer vacations, I got dragged into knitting and yarn shops all across America, and I was used for tracking stitches and rows and for detangling skeins and winding balls of yarn. Of course, over the years I have also received from my sister some nice hand‑knit articles, such as a dressy scarf of grey and black yarn that matches my dressy grey long overcoat, though since I have lived in Texas the last now 25 years, I seldom wear either that scarf or that overcoat. One can knit from a single yarn, and one can knit from more than one yarn—all part of the process of inter‑looping the yarn with needles, in order to knit a fabric of sorts. In the rationale of the Collect of the Day for All Saints’ Day that we observe today, we confess that God knits together His faithful people of all times and places into one holy communion, the mystical body of His Son, Jesus Christ. Obviously God does not “inter‑loop” His faithful people with needles, but, using a more general sense of the word “knit”, we confess in the Collect that God joins us closely together in the mystical body of His Son. The Collect was written for the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of 15‑49, then revised 113 years later, and finally came into Lutheran use another nearly 300 years after that. No single Bible passage is behind the Collect, but a number of passages could be listed, such as 1 Corinthians 12:27, where the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul writes, you-all “are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (ESV; confer and compare Romans 12:5). With that verse as the free-text for this sermon, let us direct our thoughts to the theme, “God knits us together into the mystical body of His Son”.
What we observe today as All Saints’ Day began many centuries ago as a day to honor all martyrs, and only some centuries later was the day broadened out to include all of the faithful departed, such as former long‑time Pilgrim member Jeanette Paetznick, whom we will commemorate today. Of course, the faithful who have departed this life are not the only “holy ones”, which is what the word “saint” really means, but we who believe and are still in this life are also “holy ones”, and we in what is sometimes called the Kingdom of Grace are closely connected to those who are in what is sometimes called the Kingdom of Glory. Liturgiologist Luther Reed remarked how the Collect of the Day “in superlatively beautiful language unites”—we might say “expresses God’s union of”—“the faithful of both worlds in the communion of saints, the church of Christ” (Reed, 571).
Of course, on our own, we are like separate strands of unformed yarn, likely to tangle and knot! By nature, we offer the individual members of our bodies to sin as instruments for unrighteousness (Romans 6:12). The individual parts of our bodies are slaves to impurity and to lawlessness that leads to more lawlessness (Romans 6:19). The individual members of our bodies are full of sin, and so our individual bodies are bodies of death (Romans 7:23-24). We are opposed to God, and so, not surprisingly, we are opposed to other people. Apart from the Church there is no truly God‑pleasing good works, whether on our own or in some form of union with others. We deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless, enabled by the Holy Spirit, we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake. Part of the honor that we give to the faithful departed is thanking God for the faithful departed as examples of His mercy, for His revealing His will to save people, and for His giving teachers and other gifts to His Church, and another part of the honor that we give the faithful departed is using the examples of God’s forgiving them in order to strengthen our faith that He also will and does forgive us, that His grace abounds more than our sin (Apology to the Augsburg Confession XXI:4-5).
God the Father’s grace abounds to us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, by the power of their Holy Spirit. Out of the Triune God’s great love for even the fallen world (Romans 5:8), the Son of God took on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and grew to be the man Jesus. The Son of God in that same human body lived the perfect life that we fail to live and then died for our failure to live that perfect life. The Son of God in that same human body died on the cross as our substitute, in our place, the death that we otherwise deserve, and then the Son of God in that same human body rose from the dead. When we repent, then God forgives us, for the sake of the Son of God in that same human body. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. And, one of the ways that God forgives us is by our faithfully eating the Body and drinking the Blood of that same Son of God.
A few verses before today’s sermon text, St. Paul wrote that “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit”, adding that “the body does not consist of one member but of many” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14 ESV). Earlier in the letter (1 Corinthians 10:16-17), St. Paul had said essentially both that the bread of the Holy Supper is a participation—a communion, a partaking—in the Body of Christ and that the wine of the Holy Supper is a participation—a communion, a partaking—in the Blood of Christ (confer 1 Corinthians 11:27-30), and so because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Others point to the many grains’ going into the one bread and the many grapes’ going into the one wine as analogies of our unity in the body of Christ that is the Church, what the Collect of the Day called the mystical body of His Son. The sacramental body of Christ constitutes that ecclesial body of Christ, the Church. Although they are supernatural realities hidden from our eyes and so not seen by us, both the bread in the Holy Supper and the Holy Church are the Body of Christ in their own ways (for example, Sasse, This Is My Body, 389‑398); we hardly can think of Christ’s being anywhere without the same human body (Stephenson, CLD XII:255 n.36, with reference to Luther, AE 37:89 [see also 37:95]).
Writing to the Ephesians, St. Paul tells us that there is one baptism and one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one Father, Who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6). That One Triune God gives the Office of the Holy Ministry in part for building up the body of Christ that is the Church (Ephesians 4:11-12). As I wrote in my column for yesterday’s newspaper, in the Apostoles’ Creed we confess our belief in “the communion of saints”, which in the Latin of the creed could be either that shared holy people or shared holy things, such as Christ’s Body and Blood. The question arguably is not “either—or” but “both—and”! To be sure, as ancient liturgies have expressed, the holy things of Christ’s Body and Blood are given to the holy ones. Truly the author of Hebrews says that, by a single offering, Christ perfected for all time those who are being sanctified, that is, being made holy (Hebrews 10:14). Now, united with Him and with one another, we offer the individual members of our bodies to God as instruments for righteousness (Romans 6:13). The individual parts of our bodies are now slaves to righteousness that leads to sanctification (Romans 6:19). Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who has delivered us from our bodies of death (Romans 7:24-25)!
As we prayed in the rationale of the Collect of the Day, “God knits us together into the mystical body of His Son”. In this lifetime there will be on our part what might be considered the equivalent of inconsistent or dropped or added stitches, but, with daily sorrow and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins. The sacramental and mystical bodies’ connecting us with our loved ones who have gone before us in the faith comforts us now, until we experience the joy of the blessed reunion in heaven. Ultimately, God will grant us, as we prayed in the petition and benefit of the Collect of the Day, to follow His blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living that, together with them, we may come to the unspeakable joys He has prepared.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +