+ + + 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!)
There are a lot of things that might trouble our hearts. Globally there are the wars in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine—we hear so much about Iran that we may have sort of forgotten about Russia, which just yesterday attempted to invade another Ukrainian city. Nationally there is increasing polarization between the political parties and division over the economy. At Pilgrim there are leadership positions to fill and congregational disunity to address. And, in our homes, there may be financial shortfalls and health crises. There are a lot of things that might trouble our hearts and make them afraid (confer John 14:27).
In today’s Gospel Reading, on the same night when He was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ commanded His disciples not to let their hearts be troubled, and He likewise commands us not to let our hearts be troubled, commanding instead that His disciples and we believe in God the Father and believe in Him, God the Son, and so have his peace (confer John 14:27). Just before today’s Gospel Reading in St. John’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account, Jesus Himself had been troubled in His spirit and testified that one of His disciples would betray Him, and Jesus had spoken of His going somewhere and the disciples’ not being able to come at first but following afterward (John 13:21‑38). Then, perhaps drawing on the Passover meal’s context before the Exodus, Jesus, as we heard, spoke repeatedly of His going before, and His being the way to a place prepared for, His people (Brown, ad loc John 14:104, p.625).
Jesus’s disciples’ hearts were already troubled, and they were about to be even more troubled. Jesus’s commands to stop letting their hearts be troubled and to continue believing in the Father and the Son, ultimately for God to take the disciples to the place prepared for them, presumably should have comforted the disciples. But, instead, Jesus’s statements raised a question from Thomas and a demand from Philip, whose knowledge and beliefs Jesus indicated had to be corrected, before Jesus promised that His followers, by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16‑17, 25-26; 15:26-27; 16:7-15), would do greater works than the works that the Father was doing through the Son, especially as the disciples prayed that the Father might be glorified in the Son.
As I mentioned, there are a lot of things that might trouble our hearts. Jesus’s commands to stop letting our hearts be troubled and to continue believing in the Father and the Son, ultimately for God to take us to the place prepared for us, presumably should comfort us. However, even on this side of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection and of the Holy Spirit’s coming at Pentecost, too often we act like we do not know the way, or we demand more information than we need, maybe even demanding more information than we possibly can have. Like Jesus’s disciples in today’s Gospel Reading, our knowledge and beliefs also need to be corrected. Yet, we might be unwilling to submit to Holy Scripture and to make the Lutheran Confessions our own confessions. Or, for any number of reasons, our faith may be discouraged. Of course, by nature we do not know God or trust in Him but are hostile towards God in our ignorance of Him. We think, say, and do what we should not, and we fail to think, say, and do what we should. For our sinful nature and for all of our actual sin, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, apart from the Holy Spirit’s working through preachers such as John the Baptizer in order to prepare in us the way for the Lord (for example, Matthew 3:3). For truly, God Himself works in us Jesus’s empowering commands not to be troubled but to believe.
When, as a boy, I heard and had to recite Jesus’s saying that He went to prepare a place, I wondered what exactly Jesus had to prepare. Was heaven unfinished? Did heaven need to be remodeled? Did heaven’s guest beds need to be rolled out and made, like we sometimes had to do at our house when we had overnight guests? Earlier Jesus Himself said that the Kingdom had been prepared, in at least in some sense, from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:34). So, when Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading said that He was going to prepare a place for us, we understand Him to be referring to His death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave that prepare eternal salvation for all people (for example, Grundmann, TDNT 2:705). When we are sorry for our sinful nature and for all of our actual sins and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us, and that eternal salvation is ours. In such ways God loves us for Jesus’s sake and gives us His peace and joy! In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus commands the acts of believing in God and believing in Himself in such a way that emphasizes the believing, and then, later in the Reading, Jesus twice gives an example of the content of such belief, namely, believing that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus—part of the mysteries of both the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation.
As Jesus told Philip, the bases for our believing and for the content of our belief are God’s Word and works, which we know overlap and are worked by any and all of the three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity. Arguably in some ways anticipating today’s Gospel Reading, after Jesus had found Philip, and Philip had found Nathanel, Jesus told Nathanael, presumably in Philip’s presence, that Nathanael would see greater things than Jesus’s telling Nathanael that Jesus had seen him under a fig tree (John 1:43-51). Truly greater are God’s multiplying believers among Jews and Gentiles after Jesus’s resurrection. Through God’s ministers in His Church, God works faith and the forgiveness of sins through both the reading and preaching of His Word to groups such as this group and the application of the Gospel to individuals: with water in Holy Baptism, with touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper, given and shed for you and for me for the forgiveness of our sins.
Through these Means of Grace, we know and, at least by faith, see all three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity, and They make Their home and abide in us. Through these Means of Grace, God strengthens our faith. So, as described in the Epistle Reading (1 Peter 2:2-10), we offer spiritual sacrifices of praise to God, as we did in today’s Psalm (Psalm 146:1; antiphon: v.2). We believe and confess as we should, despite the consequences to us, as Stephen did in today’s First Reading, including his, as a part of the faithful church, calling out the impenitence of the unfaithful church of his day, even though his doing so resulted in his earthly death (Acts 6:1-9; 7:2a, 51-60). We should expect that our doing works as Jesus and Stephen did ultimately can bring us the kind of opposition that Jesus and Stephen met, and we should be willing to meet such opposition! In keeping with Jesus’s revealed will, and so in full confidence that He will do it (confer Matthew 21:22; Mark 11:24), we pray that the Father may be glorified in the Son by the Spirit at work in us. And, with daily sorrow over our sin and trust in God’s forgiveness, we live as those who are, at the same time, both justified and sinful.
As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, God makes the minds of His faithful to be of one will, and He grants that we may love what He has commanded and desire what He has promised, so that among the many changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joys are found. That place where true joys are found is certainly the sufficiently abundant, permanent, and indestructible rooms in our Father’s house, where God will take us, and where we will dwell forever with Him (John 12:26; 17:24; 1 Thessalonians 4:17), if that place is not also He Who is our True Joy. So, “Do not be troubled but believe”.
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 + + +
