+ + + 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.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
Praising God and being joyful is difficult when expectations seem to be dashed. In today’s Gospel Reading, Cléopas—who may be Joseph’s brother and so Jesus’s uncle—and his unnamed traveling-companion—maybe his wife, or his son, or the evangelist St. Luke—are perhaps disputing with each other, taking opposite sides, while talking with each other about at least the events of Easter Morning, if not also the events of Good Friday, but regardless they look and apparently are sad because they had hoped that Jesus was the One to redeem Israel, hoped at least before their chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death and crucified Him. Praising God and being joyful is difficult when expectations seem to be dashed. If you were a part of Pilgrim’s Special Voters’ Meeting last Sunday, you may or may not have come away from it with your expectations seemingly dashed. I think I can say fairly that Pilgrim’s Board of Elders and I did not expect the result of the final vote, nor did we expect the congregational divide that the final vote indicates, much less did we expect the statements that some Voters made during the Meeting, statements indicating that they recognized the serious problems with The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod but nevertheless that, contrary to the congregation’s Constitution, they did not want to do anything about our fellowship with the Synod’s errors, wrongly thinking that clarifying our confession was first and foremost in order to try to change the Synod and not for others in the congregation’s or even their own benefit, namely, for eternal salvation.
“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe” the Lord Jesus said to Cléopas and his unnamed traveling-companion in today’s Gospel Reading. I hate to think of Jesus’s calling anyone names, but His words certainly describe the two disciples. Even though their eyes somehow were being kept from recognizing Jesus on the road, Jesus seems to think that they still should have understood from Moses and the Prophets—essentially what we consider the Old Testament—that the Christ’s suffering was Divinely necessary before His entering into His glory and so they should have believed in Him. “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe” I must say to at least some of you based on today’s Gospel Reading. For more than three years we at Pilgrim have been hearing God’s Word and considering the Lutheran Confessions relative to the false practices of the Synod, and yet some of you refuse to understand and act accordingly. God through Isaiah says, “Depart, depart from there” (Isaiah 52:11). Essentially quoting Himself, God through St. Paul says, “Go out from their midst and be separate from them” (2 Corinthians 6:17). And, likewise, God revealed to St. John a voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). We can no more blame the process for giving us what ended up being a bad choice than the Israelites could have blamed Moses or Joshua when they set before them the sanctified choice of life or death (Deuteronomy 30:11-20), of serving the Lord or serving false gods (Joshua 24:14-28).
Of course, regardless of how any of us voted, or if you did not or even could not vote, we all are equally sinful by nature, and, if we did not sin in that particular way of failing to clarify the congregation’s confession, we sin in countless other ways. So we all deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. On our own we do not recognize Jesus or understand or believe the Scripture. Even when the Holy Spirit actively is leading us to be sorry for our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning, nevertheless we can keep ourselves from recognizing Jesus, from understanding and believing the Scripture, and from acting accordingly. But, when we truly repent, then God indeed forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, our unclear confessions, or whatever our sin might be. God forgives us, for Jesus’s sake.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Cléopas and his unnamed traveling-companion describe Jesus as “a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people”, which description is true as far as it went, but Jesus is much more: Jesus is God Himself in human flesh. Jesus’s being delivered up to be condemned to death and crucified may have dashed Cléopas and his unnamed traveling‑companion’s hopes that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel, but Jesus’s being condemned and crucified, in fact, redeemed the people of Israel and the people of all other nations, including you and me. Jesus died on the cross in our place, the death that we deserved. As the Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews says, once for all Jesus, by means of His own blood, secured an eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). Then, the women did not find His body because, as the angels said, He was alive—He had risen as He said that He would rise (Luke 24:6-7). Out of God the Father’s great love, and of His own free will, Jesus, the Son of God, was led by the Holy Spirit to suffer and enter into His glory. He did what all the Scriptures said was Divinely necessary for us and for our salvation, and now He gives us that salvation as we who truly repent receive it through His Word and Sacraments.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Cléopas and his unnamed traveling-companion returned to Jerusalem and told the Eleven and those who were with them how Jesus both interpreted to them all the Scriptures on the way and was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Truly God works faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel (Augsburg Confession V:2)! In today’s First Reading (Acts 2:14a, 36-41), St. Peter told those who were cut to the heart to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, for the promise was for them and their children. That day the Lord added to the Church about three‑thousand souls, and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, that is, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42; confer vv.46-47)—the one part of the Sacrament—the bread that is the Body of Christ given for you—signifying also the other part of the Sacrament—the wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for you (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXII:7). Similarly, in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Peter 1:17-25), St. Peter, who on Easter Day appears to have received private Holy Absolution from Jesus (confer 1 Corinthians 15:5), wrote of believers’ being born again, as in Holy Baptism, and redeemed by the blood of Christ, as in the Holy Supper. So redeemed, we are transformed and live more as Christ would have us live.
In our Sunday Adult Bible Class last year, we spent fifteen Sundays studying Romans chapter 14 (Romans 14:1-23), in which chapter the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul exhorts the members of the Roman congregations with stronger faith to welcome—presumably to bear with and to bring along—the members of the Roman congregations with weaker faith, seemingly in regards to their keeping or not keeping Old Testament dietary restrictions. However, making a clear confession of faith is not such a matter of indifference (for example, Romans 10:9-10). As we studied earlier this year, just before the end of Romans and at the point at which the Sacrament of the Altar would be celebrated in the service where the Epistle was being read, St. Paul commands the Roman believers not to have fellowship with those who depart from the doctrine they have been taught. For a time, God patiently waits for people to repent, but His patience comes to an end, ultimately with judgment (for example, 2 Peter 3:9-10). Our day of grace certainly will end when the Lord returns or with our deaths, whichever comes first, but our day of grace also can end before then, and we can be hardened in our impenitence and sin. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
Although in various ways we all by nature are “Foolish ones, slow of heart to believe”, and we all sin in various ways, God the Father by the power of His Holy Spirit leads us to repent truly and forgives us by grace for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ. He stays with us and forgives us who truly repent and gives us already now, what we prayed for in the Collect of the Day, perpetual gladness and eternal joys.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
