Sermon-Sunday, August 27th

John 6:51-58
Brothers and sisters, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this week’s Gospel lesson, we once again find our Lord Jesus giving a message that defies logic, reason, and conventional wisdom, not just of His time, but of any time. Once again He is giving a message that offends. Like lasts week’s lesson, He continues to speak of Himself as the bread from heaven and the very nourishment from which you can eat and receive new, and eternal life.
In referring to Himself as the living bread from heaven, He also exalts Himself above the manna that the ancestors of the very people whom Jesus is preaching to would have eaten in the wilderness, thousands of years before. This would have been extremely offensive to the people that had gathered to hear Jesus preach.
But it was more than the fact that He had lifted Himself up above the fruits of a miraculous event experienced by these people’s ancestors. What Jesus was saying was so offensive to these people because it made a hole in their world-view, and it continues to do so today to you.
Jesus’ proclamation of Himself as the bread from heaven and the only true source of eternal life continues to drive you to ask the same question that Jesus’ disciples were driven to ask; "Who can accept this?" And it’s important to note that we’re no longer talking strictly about the people persecuting Jesus. The people who are driven to ask this question of "Who can possibly accept what Jesus is saying?" are among Jesus’ disciples.
Many of these same people had previously witnessed the feeding of the five thousand, several healings and many other miraculous events in Jesus’ ministry and yet they still find Jesus’ words so difficult to wrap their minds around. It’s easy for you to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God when His divine blessings are right there in front of you. Anyone of you can be strong in your faith when you base it on the here and the now and things are going well.
Walk into any Christian book store and the most popular books will have titles like "The purpose-driven life" or "Your Best Life Now." These are books that speak favorably of a world-view where faith is based on what you see in the here and the now, and what you can do to make sure that your life in the here and the now is "blessed."
These books sell like hotcakes. And of course they do, because these books tell you what you want to hear. These books tell you that through your own powers of reason and rationale you can muster your own faith and that faith can be evaluated in the here and the now by you. However, one of the many problems with this view of faith is that it inevitably breaks down when your view of the here and the now does not go according to your plan.
But in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus isn’t just talking about the here and the now. By proclaiming Himself as the true bread from Heaven and the very source of new and eternal life, one thing He is saying is that your faith is not properly grounded when it is based in the here and the now and what you can see. Instead your faith is properly based on what you can’t see, what Christ Jesus has promised for you in the future; new and eternal life, and in what He has already done for you on the cross.
This message was offensive to the disciples and it is offensive today. It’s offensive because it takes the takes the task of your spiritual well-being completely out of your hands. Jesus knew that the disciples would be offended at the very notion of this and He even asks them "Does this offend you?" But He knows the answer to that question so He asks them hypothetically what if they were to see Jesus ascend to where He was before, and then He tells them that the Spirit gives life but the flesh is useless.
In the face of their offense, He doesn’t condemn them for it, but He also doesn’t water His message down for them. He makes no attempt to make it more palatable for them. At no point, does Jesus say anything like "Wait a minute let me put this another way." He knew that soon, as the disciples saw Him persecuted and crucified, it would become even more difficult for them to believe that Jesus
is in fact the true bread from Heaven that He professes Himself to be.
The words of Jesus cannot be grasped with your mind. No matter what steps you might take, no matter what plan you might follow, no matter how hard you might try, you can’t do faith on your own. That is why Jesus says that the flesh is useless. Martin Luther says this of Jesus referring to the futility of the flesh "Therefore reason, flesh, blood, or smartness are neither here nor there. They are not life or spirit for you; they are dead. All that you try to fathom with your reason is dead."
But Jesus does not leave you in the futility of your own reason, flesh, blood, or smartness, He sends the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit speaks to you through the very words of Christ. In today’s lesson, Jesus tells you that it is in the Spirit that life is found and not in the flesh. And then He says that the words He has given them are Spirit and life. In other words, as hard as His message might be, it is in that message, in the very words of Christ that eternal life can be found.
This is why Jesus is so calm even when He sees some of His own disciples turning back away from Him after hearing His words. He knew that soon, God’s people would be drawn through the Spirit. Soon, through the Spirit, God’s people would begin to grasp the power of Jesus’ words, through the Spirit God’s people would see that Jesus truly is the bread from Heaven.
In a rare moment of brilliant insight from Peter we get a glimpse into how this looks when Peter responds to Jesus’ asking Peter if he is also going to turn away and Peter answers by saying "Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life."
By the grace of God, the truth of the words of Christ Jesus; that He is the true bread from heaven, that in Him there is new life, that those who eat of His flesh and drink of His blood will live forever, the truth of those words have been revealed to you.
In baptism, the Holy Spirit works through the words of Christ and reveals to you the truth beyond the offense of the Gospel and the futility of your flesh, so that all that is left are the words of eternal life that leave you with nowhere to go.
If you look at today’s bulletin you’ll see a picture of a Bible with the caption "The words of eternal life." And indeed, God’s Word in scripture is where you find the words of eternal life. But, the problem with this picture is that the Bible is closed.
This is the bulletin that they’re using in Dagmar today. I like this picture better. I like it better because not only is the Bible open but someone is reading it. In this picture you aren’t just seeing a book, you are seeing the Holy Spirit at work speaking to this person through God’s word.
The Holy Spirit is certainly not bound to scripture. The Holy Spirit can speak to you in many ways. But in the Word of God, the Holy Spirit speaks to you in very the words of eternal life, the words of Christ, the words that free you by leaving you with nowhere to go but to the cross, and then to your neighbor, with the love of God and the words of eternal life.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday, August 20th

John 6:51-58
Brothers and sisters,Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.By now you have probably noticed that I tend to speak quite a bit about baptism in my sermons. In baptism we are brought into the blessed community that is the body of Christ. As the body of Christ we are a community living in our baptism, so baptism is at the heart of who we are as people of God, and that is why I talkabout baptism as much as I do. Be that as it may though, today I am going to talk about the other sacrament that we celebrate; Holy Communion.The first thing that I want you to understand about communion is that it is complete foolishness. Think about it, it is said that in communion we are literally eating and drinking the body and blood of our Lord Jesus.I went to a workshop a few months back and the leader of the workshop was saying that what makes communion unique isn’t so much that we believe that Christ is truly present, because we believe that Christ is always present. He said that what makes communion unique is the coming together of God’s people. He said that there is no difference between the presence of Christ that we experience in communion, and the presence of Christ that we experience in our everyday living.Well, he’s wrong. There is a difference. All you have to do is read today’s Gospel lesson to see that. From the opening verse, Jesus calls Himself the living bread from heaven and says that whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and that the bread that He will give for the life of the world is His flesh. Here Jesus is referring to both the Cross, where He gave His flesh for you and His supper where He continues to nourish and sustain you with His body and blood.And then later He says that unless you eat of His flesh and drink of His blood you have no life in you. So there you have it, in it’s complete foolishness. In this thing that you do every first and third and sometimes fifth Sunday where you come forward and drink the tiny little glass of wine and eat this little white wafer which seems to be completely devoid of any flavor except that of maybe cardboard, you are partaking in the body and blood of your Savior Christ Jesus. You are being nourished and sustained in your faith through the physical presence of your Lord and Savior in the meal.I told you it was foolishness. Oh you’ll downplay the foolishness of it. It’s hard for you to think about the foolishness of this with the polished communion vessels and the beautiful setting and the quiet and intimate tone that celebrating the Lord’s Supper often brings about. That’s probably why it’s done that way, to sugarcoat the foolishness of it. That is what the workshop leader who I referred to earlier was doing when He downplayed the presence of Christ in communion. He was sugarcoating the foolishness of this blessed sacrament.Think about it, as Christians we can’t even agree about what communion means. Some will say that Christ truly is present, some will say that communion is merely a memorial with a symbolic presence of Christ, and some say that it is a thanksgiving.But as illogical as it might seem to say that when you come forward and eat the flavorless wafer and drink the whine that you are partaking in the body and blood of our Lord Jesus, you know what, you believe it. You believe the foolishness.Why do you believe it? Is it because you have such an open mind? Is it because through reason and science you have weighed the evidence and come to the scientific conclusion that maybe this isn’t so foolish after all? Is it because through your own efforts, you have been able to muster up your own faith? Sorry, but no.You believe because living in your baptism, as Martin Luther tells us in the small catechism, you have been called by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. You have been enlightened with His gifts and you have been kept in the true faith.You are called to the table in faith and in the very act of doing this, your faith is sustained and nurtured. From the Gospel lesson today you read that when you are called to the Lord’s Supper and you receive the gift of this sacrament you are receiving life itself. When you partake in the Supper you are being given life. As one who partakes of this sacrament in faith, you have eternal life. In the Supper, through the Holy Spirit, Christ Jesus calls you to receive new life and on the last day you will be called to eternal life.So what then is the difference between the presence of Christ that you experience in His Supper and the presence of Christ that you experience in other ways, such as preaching? The presence of Christ that you experience in preaching is one of experiencing the voice of Christ. Through the proclaiming of His word, Christ Jesus is speaking to you. This is of course an extremely important, life-changing, and vital way to experience the presence of Christ. But it is also something that you experience primarily in your head and in your heart.The presence of Christ that you experience in the Lord’s Supper is different. Think of what happens when you eat something. When you eat bread and drink whine, or when you eat donuts and drink coffee, or pretzels and beer, or hot dogs and coca-cola, or whatever, the food you eat and drink ends up nourishing your blood which in turn nourishes every cell in your bodies.In His Supper Jesus becomes a part of your every nook and cranny. He flows through every tiny capillary in every cell in your body.The workshop leader who I referred to earlier was not completely wrong. The coming together of God’s people is an extremely important element of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It is vital and necessary. But it does not define the sacrament, instead the sacrament defines the coming together of God’s people. The sacrament is not dependent upon the coming together of God’s people, the coming together is dependent upon the sacrament.It is dependent upon the fulfillment of the promise that Christ Jesus made to be truly present in the celebration of His Supper. This is a promise that has been fulfilled over the years every time God’s people have been called to the table to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It’s a promise that will be fulfilled in a few minutes when you are called once again to partake in our Lord’s Supper.So, yes it is true that in baptism you are brought into the body of Christ, but the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is one of the ways that the very faith that you are baptized into is nurtured and sustained. In the Lord’s Supper you receive new and eternal life and our Lord Jesus fills you with His presence in every nook and cranny of your being. To paraphrase the late Gerhard Forde, in the partaking of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus you are able to see, taste, touch, and feel the forgiveness of your sins.What a truly blessed gift this sacrament is. Thankfully our Lord was wise enough to make all of us foolish enough to believe it.Amen