Semon-Sunday April 27 2008
Sixth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The words of Jesus from the Gospel lesson seem almost a little manipulative. In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus says that if you love Him you will keep His commandments. It does sound kind of like the way some of us might talk to a loved one if we were trying to maybe guilt them into doing something for us. If you love me you’d let me get a new car. If you loved me you’d take me out to dinner more often. Now if your guessing that there is a little more to this than that, you would of course be right.
First of all perhaps we should ask ‘What does Jesus mean by keeping His commandments?’ Well we know that Jesus sums up all of the commandments in His commands to us to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and to love our neighbor as our self. We also know that Jesus is soon to be handed over to the authorities, so He knows that soon He will subjected to powers and principalities that do not love but actively oppose the love that Christ Jesus brings.
Jesus was thinking of the disciples here, knowing that soon He would be gone and they would be the ones being pursued by the principalities and powers and that their lives would be at stake. Now today, publicly professing the Gospel and proclaiming the name of Christ may not mean risking our lives, as it did for the disciples, at least not in the comfort and security of North America, but we face the same sin and the same devil. Sin and the devil are just as present a reality today as they were 2000 years ago.
Sin and the devil are just as active today trying to keep us from seeing and hearing our Lord in the midst of a broken and sinful world. Jesus warns the disciples that the time is coming when the world will no longer see Him. Sin and the devil are constantly attacking us and trying to distract us from the revealing of our Lord.
And so, losing sight of our Lord, like the loveless world we live in, we find ourselves following or obeying some false idol that eventually just enslaves us. The devil knows that without Christ, God is unknowable to us and so at the same time that sin and the devil obscure us from Christ Jesus, they also offer up false hope in the form of idols, and these idol can come in many forms. Today the world offers up idols of patriotism, money, false-teaching that is embraced because it seems more loving than the truth. Our fear can also become an idol; fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear how people would react if you were to truly confess your faith to them.
In all of that we don’t just show that we sometimes can’t see Jesus, we show that when it comes right down to it we don’t trust Jesus. We don’t trust Him because He doesn’t reveal Himself to us in the manner that we would prefer and to the degree that we would have Him reveal Himself to us. And so we replace Him.
We become like the Athenians whom Paul was addressing in the lesson from Acts today, who had many objects of worship but they were not worshipping the one and only almighty triune God, creator of the universe. They were not worshipping the God who loved the world enough to send His Son to die for the world. They were not worshipping Him because He had not revealed Himself to them yet. In fact they had come to worship what they referred to as an unknown God, among all of their other objects of worship. I would suggest that the presence of this image that the Athenians referred to as an unknown God shows that even in the midst of all the other objects of worship ultimately all their idols ended up leaving the Athenians feeling isolated, alone and abandoned.
And so it is for us, no matter how many false idols we may create for ourselves, as long as we fail to see Jesus as the only truth and the only way to God then ultimately the only image that we are left with is one of ourselves alone, isolated, and even dying. No matter how many false idols we create for ourselves, sooner or later sin and the devil will win out and death will come knocking. And there is only One who can save us from that. And He comes not through any political candidate offering a new and brighter vision for America, not through the latest self-help book offered up by the book of the month club, not even through ecumenical agreements.
For as Peter reminds us in our second lesson, we are saved in baptism through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus who appeals to God on our behalf for a good conscience. And so we can hear with faithful confidence, the words of our Lord who promises that He does not leave us orphaned. In fact it was the departure that He was preparing for in this lesson that ultimately served to bring Jesus closer to you than you could imagine. Jesus refuses to leave you isolated so He isolated Himself on the cross.
Jesus would indeed soon be departing but He was going to a place where He would bear the weight of your desolation and the burden and price of your sin. He was going to the cross where the devil and the onslaught of death are defeated.
That’s right, the onslaught of death has been defeated. You’ll still face it and you still face it one way or another everyday, but because your Lord Jesus loves you so much that He refuses to leave you orphaned, you have the comfort of knowing that your death has already been defeated. You have the peace of knowing that through the waters of baptism you have been brought into the resurrected presence of your Lord.
And indeed we do still live in a world held captive to sin and the devil and they will continue to attack us. They attack us with lies and deceptions, all in the name of taking our eyes off the One who gave all for us.
But here again, our Lord comes to us with a promise. He comes to us with a promise to send the Spirit of truth. Our Lord sends to us the Holy Spirit who comes to us in His word proclaimed, indeed the Spirit of truth comes to you right now through the words of my mouth and through the sacraments where we are claimed by our Lord as children of God in baptism and where we tangibly receive the forgiveness of sin through the body and blood of our Savior given and shed for us, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
In the midst of all that, the Spirit of truth comes to us and creates, nurtures and sustains in us the very faith that unites us with each other and with our Lord. Indeed as Martin Luther writes in the small catechism, we cannot by our own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit calls us through the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts and sanctifies and keeps us in true faith.
Writing further on this in the large catechism, Luther writes, "Until the last day the Holy Spirit remains with the holy community (tr-693) or Christian people. Through it he gathers us, using it to teach and preach the Word. By it he creates and increases sanctification, causing it daily to grow and become strong in the faith and in the fruits of the Spirit."
Through Word and Sacrament we are daily reminded that the promise our Lord makes to us that because He lives we also live, has been fulfilled. And so now the Spirit brings us forth in full confidence and assurance speaking His Word through us to our neighbor. Just as Jesus has been raised from the dead, we are alive in His Spirit and this Holy Spirit which daily reminds you of the good news that you have not been orphaned and that you are a child of God, now speaks His word of promise through you to your neighbor, sharing the love of Christ with your neighbor, bringing the good news of Christ Jesus to the same indifferent world, caught up in its own desolation, that daily tries to distract you from the truth. This Spirit of truth who brings you the faith to love God and believe in the good news of salvation through His Son, by bringing this same Word of hope to your neighbor through you, enables you to see that when Jesus said If you loved Him you would keep His commandments, He was not being manipulative, He was making a promise, a promise that the Spirit of truth fulfills in us.
Amen
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The words of Jesus from the Gospel lesson seem almost a little manipulative. In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus says that if you love Him you will keep His commandments. It does sound kind of like the way some of us might talk to a loved one if we were trying to maybe guilt them into doing something for us. If you love me you’d let me get a new car. If you loved me you’d take me out to dinner more often. Now if your guessing that there is a little more to this than that, you would of course be right.
First of all perhaps we should ask ‘What does Jesus mean by keeping His commandments?’ Well we know that Jesus sums up all of the commandments in His commands to us to love God with all our heart and soul and strength and to love our neighbor as our self. We also know that Jesus is soon to be handed over to the authorities, so He knows that soon He will subjected to powers and principalities that do not love but actively oppose the love that Christ Jesus brings.
Jesus was thinking of the disciples here, knowing that soon He would be gone and they would be the ones being pursued by the principalities and powers and that their lives would be at stake. Now today, publicly professing the Gospel and proclaiming the name of Christ may not mean risking our lives, as it did for the disciples, at least not in the comfort and security of North America, but we face the same sin and the same devil. Sin and the devil are just as present a reality today as they were 2000 years ago.
Sin and the devil are just as active today trying to keep us from seeing and hearing our Lord in the midst of a broken and sinful world. Jesus warns the disciples that the time is coming when the world will no longer see Him. Sin and the devil are constantly attacking us and trying to distract us from the revealing of our Lord.
And so, losing sight of our Lord, like the loveless world we live in, we find ourselves following or obeying some false idol that eventually just enslaves us. The devil knows that without Christ, God is unknowable to us and so at the same time that sin and the devil obscure us from Christ Jesus, they also offer up false hope in the form of idols, and these idol can come in many forms. Today the world offers up idols of patriotism, money, false-teaching that is embraced because it seems more loving than the truth. Our fear can also become an idol; fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear how people would react if you were to truly confess your faith to them.
In all of that we don’t just show that we sometimes can’t see Jesus, we show that when it comes right down to it we don’t trust Jesus. We don’t trust Him because He doesn’t reveal Himself to us in the manner that we would prefer and to the degree that we would have Him reveal Himself to us. And so we replace Him.
We become like the Athenians whom Paul was addressing in the lesson from Acts today, who had many objects of worship but they were not worshipping the one and only almighty triune God, creator of the universe. They were not worshipping the God who loved the world enough to send His Son to die for the world. They were not worshipping Him because He had not revealed Himself to them yet. In fact they had come to worship what they referred to as an unknown God, among all of their other objects of worship. I would suggest that the presence of this image that the Athenians referred to as an unknown God shows that even in the midst of all the other objects of worship ultimately all their idols ended up leaving the Athenians feeling isolated, alone and abandoned.
And so it is for us, no matter how many false idols we may create for ourselves, as long as we fail to see Jesus as the only truth and the only way to God then ultimately the only image that we are left with is one of ourselves alone, isolated, and even dying. No matter how many false idols we create for ourselves, sooner or later sin and the devil will win out and death will come knocking. And there is only One who can save us from that. And He comes not through any political candidate offering a new and brighter vision for America, not through the latest self-help book offered up by the book of the month club, not even through ecumenical agreements.
For as Peter reminds us in our second lesson, we are saved in baptism through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus who appeals to God on our behalf for a good conscience. And so we can hear with faithful confidence, the words of our Lord who promises that He does not leave us orphaned. In fact it was the departure that He was preparing for in this lesson that ultimately served to bring Jesus closer to you than you could imagine. Jesus refuses to leave you isolated so He isolated Himself on the cross.
Jesus would indeed soon be departing but He was going to a place where He would bear the weight of your desolation and the burden and price of your sin. He was going to the cross where the devil and the onslaught of death are defeated.
That’s right, the onslaught of death has been defeated. You’ll still face it and you still face it one way or another everyday, but because your Lord Jesus loves you so much that He refuses to leave you orphaned, you have the comfort of knowing that your death has already been defeated. You have the peace of knowing that through the waters of baptism you have been brought into the resurrected presence of your Lord.
And indeed we do still live in a world held captive to sin and the devil and they will continue to attack us. They attack us with lies and deceptions, all in the name of taking our eyes off the One who gave all for us.
But here again, our Lord comes to us with a promise. He comes to us with a promise to send the Spirit of truth. Our Lord sends to us the Holy Spirit who comes to us in His word proclaimed, indeed the Spirit of truth comes to you right now through the words of my mouth and through the sacraments where we are claimed by our Lord as children of God in baptism and where we tangibly receive the forgiveness of sin through the body and blood of our Savior given and shed for us, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.
In the midst of all that, the Spirit of truth comes to us and creates, nurtures and sustains in us the very faith that unites us with each other and with our Lord. Indeed as Martin Luther writes in the small catechism, we cannot by our own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit calls us through the Gospel, enlightens us with His gifts and sanctifies and keeps us in true faith.
Writing further on this in the large catechism, Luther writes, "Until the last day the Holy Spirit remains with the holy community (tr-693) or Christian people. Through it he gathers us, using it to teach and preach the Word. By it he creates and increases sanctification, causing it daily to grow and become strong in the faith and in the fruits of the Spirit."
Through Word and Sacrament we are daily reminded that the promise our Lord makes to us that because He lives we also live, has been fulfilled. And so now the Spirit brings us forth in full confidence and assurance speaking His Word through us to our neighbor. Just as Jesus has been raised from the dead, we are alive in His Spirit and this Holy Spirit which daily reminds you of the good news that you have not been orphaned and that you are a child of God, now speaks His word of promise through you to your neighbor, sharing the love of Christ with your neighbor, bringing the good news of Christ Jesus to the same indifferent world, caught up in its own desolation, that daily tries to distract you from the truth. This Spirit of truth who brings you the faith to love God and believe in the good news of salvation through His Son, by bringing this same Word of hope to your neighbor through you, enables you to see that when Jesus said If you loved Him you would keep His commandments, He was not being manipulative, He was making a promise, a promise that the Spirit of truth fulfills in us.
Amen
posted by Steve at 1:07 PM
2 Comments:
Cool sermon. I love the onslaught line in there-cool word. Nice talking about the hidden and revealed God.
But Pastor Bliss, I have to say again (sigh), that you do not firmly grasp the complexities of our ecumenical agreements. For when you say, "And He comes not through any political candidate offering a new and brighter vision for America, not through the latest self-help book offered up by the book of the month club, not even through ecumenical agreements." you are not understanding what Jesus really meant that we should love. (Sigh) :>)
Thank you pastor, for preaching a faithfully Lutheran sermon, which is to say, a sermon that properly distinguishes Law and Gospel, and points us to Christ, our hope, joy, life and salvation--our greatest treasure.
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