7 July 2024 - Trinity 6 - Romans 6:1-11

The Bible often emphasizes the negative side of the gospel. The negative side of the gospel, you ask? Yes.

From one angle, the message of the gospel is a pledge that God will not do certain things, because of Christ. Those who repent of their sins and trust in Christ are assured that God will not hold their sins against them. Those who have been forgiven for the sake of Christ will not be condemned.

This is an important part of the gospel. As St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Romans, “the wages of sin is death” - physical, spiritual, and eternal death. But in Christ, and for the sake of Christ, our sins are forgiven. And therefore we will not, ultimately, die.

But there is also a positive side of the gospel. “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This is that part of the gospel message that tells us what will happen now in the lives of those who have Jesus as their Savior. Will having Christ in your life - forgiving you, saving you, and living within you - make a difference in a positive way? Will things be better?

The answer is a resounding Yes! And in today’s text from Romans, St. Paul explains what that difference will be - with a focus on how these positive blessings are connected to Holy Baptism, and flow out from Baptism.

Today our confirmand was asked if she acknowledges all the gifts that God gave her in her baptism. We understand confirmation to be someone’s personal and public confession of the faith that has been growing within, since baptism.

And I will ask all of you now: Do you acknowledge the gifts and blessings that are yours - or that should be yours - in and through your baptism? Those gifts are considerable!

Baptism should not be seen simply as one small piece of the larger whole of the Christian gospel. It is, rather, the whole reality, and the whole gospel, presented and applied in a specific and special sacramental form.

Baptism does not give us only a part of Christ. It gives us the whole Christ. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” the Epistle to the Galatians tells us.

Baptism does not forgive only some of our sins, or only certain aspects of our sins, requiring works and penances from us to complete that forgiveness. It forgives 100% of all our sins. Indeed, as Christians heed St. Peter’s Pentecost exhortation, they do repent of their sins, and they are baptized “for the remission of sins.”

In the way that Jesus set things up for his church, he layers his gospel on us over and over again. And so, it is the whole gospel that is bestowed on us, in a unique way, in the preaching of God’s Word.

The whole gospel is bestowed on us in another unique way in the administration and reception of the Lord’s Supper. And the whole gospel - with all of its benefits - is bestowed on us in yet another unique way in Holy Baptism.

Baptism has the ability to bring Christ to us, and to create and elicit faith in Christ, not because of any power in the water itself - as an element - but because Baptism is “the washing of water with the word” - as St. Paul describes it in his Epistle to the Ephesians.

The saving promises of our Triune God are connected to Baptism through the Trinitarian words of Baptism. And in Baptism, those promises become personally connected to us.

Baptism is what it is, and it has the power that it has, because Baptism is a special manifestation and bestowal of the gospel. Baptism, just as with the gospel in general, unites us to Christ. It unites us to his life. It unites us to his death. And it unites us to his resurrection.

Jesus lived righteously under the law so that he could redeem us from the judgment of the law. Jesus carried our sins to the cross in order to atone for our sins by his death.

When Jesus then emerged from his grave on the third day, he was alive again - fully and irreversibly alive. When we emerge from our baptism - our baptism into Christ - we too are now alive. We are alive with a different kind of life: a higher kind of life that, in Christ, will never end.

St. Paul explains it this way in today’s text:

“We were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.”

The imagery of “walking,” as St. Paul uses it here, helps us to understand that, as Christians, we live in such a way that we are always moving, and always active. And furthermore, this imagery shows us that we are being brought forward by God’s grace in a deliberate and steady way, and not in fits and starts.

We are walking, and not standing still. But we are walking - on a journey through life to a specific eternal destination - and are not running around in circles.

St. Paul connects the idea of “freedom” to this walking - to this way of living, and thinking. He writes “that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

Christ was set free from the bonds of death and the grave when he rose from the dead. We, too, are set free from the power of death and sin when we arise from our baptism.

Before Christ came to us in his gospel to set us free in this way, we were, as St. Paul says, enslaved to sin. Let’s think for a minute about what that means.

People in human history who endured bodily slavery, such as in our country before the Civil War, were never content with their situation. They were never satisfied with their lives as slaves.

They wanted to be free. And they were often willing to take great risks to try to break loose from their chains, to run away, and to become free.

The reason for this is because it was only their bodies that had been enslaved. Their minds were still free - free to dream about a better future, and free to try to figure out a way to escape from their unhappiness, and to find the liberty that they desired.

Their earthly masters might have been able to control their bodies, and force them to perform physical work against their will. But these masters could never control their minds. They could never make them like slavery.

But the spiritual slavery of sin is much worse than this, because it is a form of slavery that does affect our minds. Someone who is a slave of sin is a slave of sin precisely in his mind.

When the human race became spiritually enslaved through the fall of Adam, it lost much more than most people imagine. Not only did we lose our freedom from the power of sin, but we also lost our ability to be unhappy about it.

We lost our ability to think in a free way, and to want to be free from sin. The natural man, who knows neither Christ nor the Baptism of Christ, lives under a heavy cloud of devilish lies. He thinks he is free, even when he is in the deepest state of subjugation to forces that are cutting him down more and more every day.

It is true, of course, that even unbelievers are able to dislike the overtly harmful consequences of sin. They don’t love the pain and suffering that come as a result of their spiritual slavery, and they try to avoid that pain and suffering.

But they cannot see the root cause of this misery. So, they continue to love their sin, to embrace it, and to walk in it, even as that sin continues to destroy them and their relationships more and more with each step they take.

But the gospel of Jesus Christ brings an end to all of that. It opens our eyes. It opens, and liberates, our minds. It allows us to see how foolish we have been. And it fills us to the brim and even to overflowing with the resurrection life of Jesus.

To be sure, our baptism, and the gospel in Baptism, does not free us from temptations. But the gospel does free us from the illusion that temptations are actually opportunities.

Our baptism gives us the ability to be honest about what we have been, and about what we have done. The freedom of the gospel opens the way for honest self-examination and reflection.

The gospel allows us the privilege of feeling miserable over how stupid we have been - but for just long enough to then see and appreciate the forgiveness that Christ has earned for us, and that Christ freely bestows upon us.

With that forgiveness comes a chance for a new beginning - for a new life. This new beginning is shaped by the risen Christ, who now indwells us. When the resurrection life of Jesus becomes a part of your life, the way you think about everything begins to change.

The often misguided opinions of other people about how you should conduct yourself become less and less important, and God’s opinion about such matters - as revealed in Scripture - becomes more and more important.

You become more secure in your sense of who you are. That is, you are less concerned about what you think you need to do to earn acceptance from other people, and instead you grow in your appreciation of the wonderful truth that in Christ God has already accepted you, and will continue to accept you.

You begin to understand more and more clearly that you don’t have to earn your way into God’s favor. Jesus has already done that for you. Your righteousness before God is an established fact - built on the immovable foundation of the Lord’s righteousness, which he has credited to you.

In Christ, our desire to achieve good and positive things is therefore not driven by a compulsion to try to become someone special in the eyes of others. We are already special, in the eyes of the one whose thoughts about us count the most: God himself.

So, in Christ, our desire to achieve good and positive things is not motivated by pride or personal insecurity. It is prompted instead by a selfless desire to enjoy the love of God, and in love to meet the needs of others.

According to the new nature that God births in us through Baptism, we know that, in our individual vocations, God has called us to stations in life in which we have responsibilities for other people: children, spouse, parents, fellow Christians, fellow citizens of our community.

Those are the people we are thinking about when we are working hard to accomplish something worthwhile. And the fact that we do what we do in order to serve and help them, and not in order to prove something about ourselves, will give shape and direction to what we do, and to how we do it.

A Christian, as a Christian, is not consumed by his work. He knows that his work, whatever it may be, serves a higher purpose. Love for God, and love for the people whom God has brought into our lives, is to be what consumes us.

But even there, perhaps “consumes” is not the right word. Because when you live a life of love and service to others in the name of Christ, you don’t become consumed, or depleted. In Christ, as you are energized and led by his Spirit, you never run out of the love that you are continually giving away.

The more you give to others in the name of Jesus, the more you are continually filled and refilled with God’s grace. When you spend yourself for others in Christ, you never become spiritually bankrupt.

All of this is a part of what St. Paul is talking about when he says that, because of your baptism, you are now able to walk in newness of life. This is what happens to you when the power of the resurrection begins to work its way through you, and when it eventually seeps into every seam and crevice of your life.

When you find yourself slipping back into an old, backward way of thinking and living, or when you sense that you are once again falling in love with sin, catch yourself, and remember what you have become in your baptism.

It’s a deception - a demonic deception - when your old nature tries to woo you back to a life without Christ, with the false allurement that this is the better life. It is not!

You have been set free from that bondage of heart and mind. Your eyes have been opened. Don’t allow yourself to be enslaved, and blinded, once again.

You have become a new creature in Christ. Therefore renounce any thought, any word, and any action that would deny or ignore this fact. Do this every day.

And if your departure from the life and faith of your baptism has become a total departure, so that you are actually lost and mired in the darkness of unbelief once again, your baptism calls you back. It calls you all the way back to where you belong: in the embrace of your Savior, and on the pathway on which your Savior would place you.

In repentance and faith, receive the free and cleansing forgiveness that Jesus offers to you in “the washing of water with the word”: for every blunder, for every misstep, and for every failure. And then press forward once again, with a thankful confidence in God’s goodness and faithfulness, to the life and freedom that he gives you.

And know that as you do press on, and live, in Christ, Christ is living in you. Christ is animating you, orienting you, and guiding your steps.

As St. Paul writes to the Philippians, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” And again, as Paul says in today’s text from Romans:

“How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Amen.

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14 July 2024 - Trinity 7 - John 6:22-35

Please listen with me to a reading from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, beginning at the 22nd verse.

On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone - however, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks - when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”

So far our text.

In his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, in a discussion of our life together in this world, and of the responsibilities we have in society, St. Paul says: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

Captain John Smith applied this principle in Jamestown, Virginia, in the early 17th century.

Many of the men who had come from England to be a part of that colony were spending most of their time digging fruitlessly for gold. Some, as aristocrats, were simply loafing, assuming that the laboring class would sustain them in their comfort and ease.

These men were not doing their share of the work that would be necessary for everyone’s survival: preparing fields for tillage, and planting and tending crops. So, Captain Smith took a page out of the New Testament, and decreed, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

A larger society as well, that does not govern itself according to this basic principle, will soon decay into poverty and starvation.

Hard-working people, and lazy people, are both tempted to transfer their respective ways of thinking - concerning life and labor in this world - into the realm of humanity’s relationship with God. In fact, these issues come up in today’s text, where Jesus is having a conversation with some people from the crowd that is now following him around - after his miraculous feeding of a great multitude, with just a few loaves of bread.

Jesus scolded this crowd with these words: “you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”

The Lord’s feeding of the multitude was intended to be a supernatural sign of a deeper truth. Jesus had not appeared on the scene simply as a attention-grabbing wonder-worker, to fill the empty stomachs of people who were too lazy to work for their own food. Rather, he had been sent from God as humanity’s Savior, to fill the spiritual emptiness of the aching souls of sinners.

That miraculous feeding did have the practical effect of satisfying the bodily hunger of the people in the crowd that day. Jesus does often help us according to our material needs.

We pray for physical healing when we are sick. We pray for a job when we are unemployed. We pray for a place to live when we are homeless. There is nothing wrong with these prayers.

But the fact that Jesus sometimes, or even often, grants such requests, is not the basis for our confidence in him. Relying on Jesus for food and drink, and for house and home, in this world, is not even close to the essence of the Christian faith.

The crowd that was following Jesus, hoping for more free lunches, obviously did not grasp that. And so Jesus, very clearly, and very firmly, began the process of instructing them in what they should actually be seeking from him, and in how they should seek it:

“Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

Even after hearing this, though, there’s a lot that the crowd still doesn’t understand. They do know now that Jesus is not going to be a continuing source of free bread. But they are also now trying to figure out what he means when he speaks of laboring for some kind of bread or food from God.

And so, with a shrug of the shoulders, they give up on trying to get a free lunch, and ask instead about what work they must perform for God, in order to receive whatever it is Jesus is talking about:

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

The answer that Jesus gave them is full of irony. The crowd had asked about “works of God,” with the understanding that they were asking about works that they were expected to perform: oriented toward God, and satisfying a requirement of God.

But the answer that Jesus gave turned that around. He told them instead about a “work of God” that is a work performed by God.

Faith in Christ is the necessary “work of God” for our receiving of the bread of heaven, because the creation of faith in the heart of an unregenerate person is a miraculous work that God’s Spirit performs - for us and in us. Insofar as our believing in the one whom God has sent can be thought of as the result of someone’s labors, it is the result of God’s labors, not ours.

We know from elsewhere in Scripture that, as far as the basis for our relationship with God is concerned, faith is the antithesis of works.

St. Paul says in his Epistle to the Galatians that “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ’; and that “we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law.” And Paul asks the Galatians: “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?”

So, when Jesus tells the crowd that believing in him, as the Savior sent from God, is the “work” that allows people to receive the food that God wants them to have, what he is really saying is that this food is not received as a result of human labors at all. This food - this bread from heaven - is a divine gift.

Jesus explains what he means:

“My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. ... I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”

We spoke a few minutes ago about St. Paul’s axiom, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” The economy of a human society that does not, as a general rule, govern itself according to this axiom, is doomed to failure and collapse.

But there are valid exceptions to this rule, if the society in question is a humane society. The elderly and the handicapped, who are too weak to work, are still allowed to eat. If people in such circumstances have not made provision for themselves, or if they have no family to look after them, the larger society will step in and make sure they are cared for.

In the kingdom of God, everyone is too weak to work for the bread of life. St. Paul teaches in the Epistle to the Romans that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

The bread of life from heaven is Jesus Christ himself. He was sent from God the Father as a gift to fallen and sinful humanity, to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification.

And he is sent as a gift from God the Father to each penitent soul: to dwell within us, to fill our emptiness, and to satisfy the deep longing of our hearts.

In our life here on earth, real bread is not like a painting of bread, that we admire from a distance. Bread is something that we eat, and take into our bodies.

And when the bread is inside of us, it does not just sit there inertly, like a coin that a child might swallow. It is digested, and diffuses its nourishment throughout the body that it has entered.

The imagery of Christ as “bread” calls all these things to mind. The gift of Christ needs to be received - to be internalized, and taken in - just as literal bread is taken into the body. That is what saving faith does.

The essence of faith, in Biblical teaching, is trust. We receive Christ, and take him into ourselves, by trusting his promises.

Faith is also a resting in God, and in God’s mercy and protection. We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that “we who have believed enter that rest.”

God’s Son promises forgiveness, life, and salvation to those who receive him in faith, because he is humanity’s forgiveness. He is, in his person, the lamb who was slain.

And he is the way, and the truth, and the life. To receive him, therefore, is to receive all these saving benefits, and to be transformed by them.

These are not abstractions or religious theories. He, concretely, is these things for us. And he fills us with them, when he fills us with himself.

And, this is all free to us, and is not a result of our religious or moral labors. As St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians:

“By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

You don’t have to work for this living bread, or for the spiritual nutrition and inner satisfaction that come from this living bread. But once this bread is in you - once Jesus is in you, energizing you and empowering you - then you will work.

The Epistle to the Ephesians goes on to say that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

The kind of laboring that we do for the food that endures to eternal life is, paradoxically, a laboring that is not laboring. It is a believing in the one whom God has sent.

But the kind of laboring that we do from that food, and as a result of having received that food, is real work. Jesus said to his disciples, not long after his discourse on the Bread of Life:

“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”

The Christian life is a life that is defined by, and filled with, God’s grace. But it is not a lazy life.

Because God loved us, we love others. Because God reached down to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ - who did not come to be served but to serve - we reach out to others, and serve others.

There is an obvious association between Jesus’ description of himself as the Bread of Life, and the Lord’s Supper that he later instituted. In the things that he said about himself as the bread from heaven, he was preparing his disciples to understand the deeper significance of the sacrament that would come later.

And as we hear these words today, he prepares us, too, for our participation in this sacred sacramental mystery, today. Jesus, who is the very bread from God, is the content of the Lord’s Supper.

That Supper is about him, because it is him. It is Jesus: supernaturally coming to you, and mystically entering into you. This Supper is the gospel, in sacramental form.

To receive this sacrament in faith, therefore, is to receive much more than a small particle of physical bread. It is to receive the bread from heaven: the Savior himself, who is the very source of life for us.

But Christ, the bread of life, is not received only in the sacrament. In the Lord’s Supper you do indeed have a very close and very intense encounter with Christ.

But since the benefits of Christ are received by faith in the gospel, those benefits can be received whenever the message of his victory over sin and death for you, is proclaimed to you. When your faith is renewed by God’s Word - in whatever way God’s Word comes to you - you once again take in Christ, and internalize him.

In these marvelous ways, God our Father feeds us. All emptiness is filled. All yearnings are satisfied. Life and hope are renewed. Salvation, by faith in our one Lord and Savior, is assured.

Lord Jesus Christ, Thou living Bread, May I for mine possess Thee.
I would with heavenly food be fed; Descend, refresh, and bless me.
Now make me meet for Thee, O Lord; Now, humbly by my heart implored, Grant me Thy grace and mercy. Amen.

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21 July 2024 - Trinity 8 - Acts 20:27-38

“For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.”

With these words, St. Paul the apostle summarizes his previous ministry with the presbyters or pastors of the church at Ephesus, with whom he was meeting in today’s text from the Book of Acts. The full meaning of what Paul says here can perhaps be brought into sharper focus for us if we look at a few other translations of this verse.

“For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”
“For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.”
“For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.”

Paul might have hesitated to tell these up-and-coming Christian leaders absolutely everything about God, about Jesus, and about God’s claim on them through Jesus, that is included in the totality of Christian doctrine.

Maybe they would be frightened away from the Christian religion, if they knew everything that God would require of them, and if they were told right away what all the consequences of their Christian faith might be for their life and relationships in this world.

So, Paul might have been tempted to hide from these men some of the harder-to-understand and harder-to-accept aspects of the Christian faith, when he was initially training them for Christian leadership.

He might have had a passing thought that he could wait until they were more firmly rooted in their acceptance of the simpler and less threatening parts of Christian teaching, before he let them in on the potentially controversial things.

The Greco-Roman society in which these men lived, and the attitudes and beliefs that were commonly held by people in that society, contradicted the Christian worldview on many points.

If these men became Christians, and especially if they became Christian leaders, the time would likely come when they would be mocked, ridiculed, ostracized, and persecuted: for not thinking and speaking in the way that everyone else thought and spoke; and for seeming to be criticizing the values, the morals, and the religious opinions of everyone with whom they disagreed.

The polytheism of the Romans was not exclusive.

They were very tolerant of the various deities that were worshiped by the other national groups that were a part of the empire: as long as those national groups were tolerant of, and respectful toward, the gods who were worshiped by the Romans; and as long as they offered worship to the genius of the emperor - as a gesture of political loyalty - together with whatever other worship they might offer to whatever other gods they might have.

But the religion of Jesus was and is a very exclusive religion - even as it is, in its own way, universally inclusive of everyone. In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus said:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

But Paul himself also said, in his First Epistle to Timothy, that

“God our Savior...desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all.”

Believing this, and confessing this, could get you in trouble with your neighbors, and with the government.

Others will not like it, and will probably become hostile toward you, when they find out that you now believe that only Jesus is Lord; and that you now think that the idols they worship are figments of their imagination at best, or demons at worse.

As a Christian you will no longer be able to participate in civic events that involve idolatrous worship. You will no longer be able to participate in the religious sacrifices that mark so many of the social activities of the various professions and crafts.

At a more personal level, if you are single, you will now be obligated to be chaste and celibate. If you are married, you will now be obligated to be faithful and monogamous.

So maybe Paul would hesitate to tell them all this, at least right away. Maybe out of fear of losing them before he even had them, he would shrink back from explaining, from the beginning, that as Christians, they will no longer fit in with the world in which they live, and they will no longer be able to conduct themselves as they once did, in many noticeable ways.

This human fear - this human lack of faith - always has been, and still is, a temptation for Christian teachers and preachers, especially when they are evangelizing or catechizing people with no background in the Christian faith or in the teachings of the Bible.

As our society is less and less friendly toward the Christian worldview, and as it is becoming more and more like the society of ancient Rome - with all of its immorality and violence - Christian teachers today might be afraid to point out that following Christ may indeed involve taking up a cross, and following him even to literal death.

The religious ideas held to by many in our time are not exactly like the polytheism of the Romans. But these modern ideas are frequently just as incompatible with the genuine Christian faith.

For many - who often tell us that they are spiritual but not religious - the only unquestioned dogma is the dogma of tolerance for everything - everything, that is, except Biblically-based convictions about objective truth and error, good and evil, right and wrong.

So, as we seek to bear witness to our faith in such an environment, and to invite people to become a part of our worshiping community in such a cultural setting, we would not want those to whom we speak of these things, to be frightened by the strangeness of them. We can be tempted, therefore, to try to make the Christian religion seem not to be so strange, and not to be so demanding, so as to draw potential converts in, and not chase them away.

And we are tempted to hide or minimize those aspects of what we believe - especially our beliefs about how God created us as men and women, and about how God wants us to live as ethical creatures who are accountable to our Maker - that may trigger some to get angry at us, to accuse us of being hateful, and to cancel us from their lives.

But if Paul was at all tempted in this way, he did not succumb to that temptation. He did not hold back.

He did not shrink from teaching everything, and from explaining everything, to the Ephesian elders. Perhaps he was encouraged and fortified in his vocation to teach the whole counsel of God to them, by these words from the Prophet Isaiah:

“Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’”

Or perhaps he took courage from what Psalm 18 says:

“As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him.”

St. Paul did trust in God. So, what he himself had heard from the Lord and learned from the Scriptures, that he spoke to these men. He spoke all of it to all of them, believing that God’s Word is able to change hearts, to enlighten minds, and to transform wills.

When the revelation of Christ contradicts what someone has always believed - about God, about himself, or about the world in which he lives - that revelation has the divine power gently to correct those errant beliefs. It’s not Paul, or any human minister, who has this power.

This power resides in the truth that is proclaimed. And so, as the Book of Acts elsewhere reports, this is why Paul “spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus,” when he did speak. He spoke without fear or crafty calculation, but with courage and forthrightness.

And he spoke the whole counsel of God - not only in his ministry with the Ephesians, but always and with everyone whom he taught. Paul, as a called apostle, unfolded for these elders and for others, the mysteries of God’s Triune existence, and of God’s creation.

He unfolded the mysteries of humanity’s fall into sin, and of Christ’s redemption and justification of sinners by his death and resurrection. He unfolded the mysteries of the preached Word, of the sacraments that Jesus instituted by the power of his Word, and of the faith that receives the forgiveness and salvation offered in Word and Sacrament.

He unfolded the mysteries of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and of the new life of service to God and man that the Spirit inspires in those who have become children of their heavenly Father.

And he unfolded the mysteries of love: of God’s abiding love for his people and for all people; and of the love that God’s Spirit works in us, directed toward friends and enemies alike; toward those who hate us and accuse us of hating them, and toward those who are hurting and crying out for help and comfort - who are often the same confused people.

The whole counsel of God is the whole purpose of God, and the whole will of God. It is not just a list of abstract doctrines that God wants us to accept as factually correct, but it is a comprehensive presentation of God’s comprehensive saving truth, to heart, soul, and mind.

It is what Jesus was also talking about, when he told his disciples:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.”

God’s counsel impacts us and all with whom it comes into contact, with the warnings of the law, which drive us to daily repentance; and with the promises of the gospel, which daily lift us up into Christ’s embrace. God’s counsel reshapes personal values, restores personal morals, and recalibrates personal priorities.

And God’s counsel takes away fear - including the fear we may have to share that counsel with others, because of how threatening it is to sinful human pride, and how strange it sounds to sinful human ears.

As Christians, we want to be in a place - in a place that we share with firm believers and with those who may have doubts - where the whole counsel of God in Holy Scripture, is preached and taught, is sacramentally enacted and devoutly prayed.

We want to be in a place - in a congregation and in a church - where we hear it all, where we are challenged by it all, and where God’s Spirit helps us to learn all of it, to accept all of it, and to be made ready to pass all of it on to others - as God’s vocation inserts us into the lives of others, and as God’s providence inserts others into our lives.

Energized by the strength that comes from God, we will not shrink from declaring to them the whole counsel of God. Emboldened by the courage that comes from God, we will not shrink from declaring to them the whole purpose of God.

Enlightened by the wisdom that comes from God, we will not hesitate to proclaim to them the whole will of God.

And as God opens our hearts, minds, and souls to believe in the wonder of our creation, in the grace of our redemption in Jesus, and in the hope of everlasting life that the Spirit of Jesus instills in us, we rejoice that the apostles in Holy Scripture, and the faithful ministers we know today, have not shunned to declare to us the whole counsel of God. Amen.

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28 July 2024 - Trinity 9 - Luke 16:13

As Americans we usually pride ourselves on the conviction that we are free. We go to great efforts to preserve our political and social freedom, and we are indignant when others infringe on our freedom.

In the realm of our civil life, we do, of course, live in a mostly free society. We do not languish under the kind of dictatorship or totalitarian police state that many people in the world are forced to endure. And certainly that is a good thing.

But at a deeper level, in terms of what we live for, and why we make the decisions that we make, are we truly free? Is it even possible to be free? Are we not instead, ultimately, all servants of a master?

In today’s text from St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says:

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Jesus makes the observation that a person can have only one ultimate master. He does not, however, leave open the possibility that it’s possible not to have any master. This is not possible. We all have a master.

We all believe in something. We all make our decisions on the basis of the conviction that there is something in this world, or in this universe, that is more important than everything else, and that we treasure the most.

The way in which we establish and organize our priorities in life, and the criteria we use for making decisions in life, testify to the master that we actually serve in life.

Something else to consider about the Lord’s statement - that we cannot serve two masters - is that the Greek word translated as “serve” has the same root as the Greek term for a slave. It refers to the kind of bond-service that a slave performs.

Jesus is saying that you cannot be a slave to two masters, only one. He is not talking about a temporary kind of service to a temporary “master.”

He’s not talking about the kind of service that is rendered to us by a waiter for the couple hours we are in the restaurant, or about the kind of service we receive from a flight attendant for the couple hours we are onboard the airliner.

He means a kind of service - a kind of commitment and fixation - that encompasses all of life, and that defines our life.

There are lots of possible “masters” to whom sinful people like you and me might submit in this world. Some people serve their carnal impulses, and their desire to use other people for selfish gratification. For them, their predatory lust is their master. That’s what they live for.

Other people serve their chemical dependency, and their need for whatever drug it is that controls their lives. For them, their addiction is their master. That’s what they live for.

In today’s text, however, Jesus focuses on a different kind of false and illegitimate master - and one that is all too common. He says:

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

In its explanation of the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” the Large Catechism points out that

“to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. ...it is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, ...that is really your God.”

The Large Catechism then goes on to make an application of this distinction between a true faith and an idolatrous faith, with the use of the words that we hear from Jesus today:

“There are some who think that they have God and everything they need when they have money and property; they trust in them and boast in them so stubbornly and securely that they care for no one else. They, too, have a god - ‘mammon’ by name; that is, money and property - on which they set their whole heart.”

“This is the most common idol on earth. Those who have money and property feel secure, happy, and fearless, as if they were sitting in the midst of paradise. On the other hand, those who have nothing doubt and despair as if they knew of no god at all. We will find very few who are cheerful, who do not fret and complain, if they do not have mammon. This desire for wealth clings and sticks to our nature all the way to the grave.”

What master do you serve? Do you serve the God who made you, and who has the right to be honored by you? Or do you serve mammon?

I think every one of us here today would say that we serve God. We believe in him, and we are committed to him. But do we say this because we have been well-catechized, and therefore know that it should be true? Or do we say this because it is true?

Remember, too, that people can still look to mammon as the master they serve even if they don’t have a lot of money or possessions. Indeed, those who lack money are probably more enamored with it than those who are financially well off.

If you think, deep down, that money is really the most important thing in life, and that it could solve all your problems, then for you that money is an idol, and you are an idolater. This remains true whether you are serving the money you have, or the money you want.

And if you are serving mammon, you are not serving God. You cannot serve two masters.

And it’s also not enough simply to acknowledge God as playing a role in your life. That doesn’t necessarily make him your master. Believing that God is around, and that he has a purpose of some kind, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are submitting to him as his slave.

Jesus also says in today’s text from Luke:

“I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”

So, while wealth should not be our master, it is something we can use in this world, for the benefit of the kingdom of God, while still serving God as master.

But there’s a popular theology out there, often blaring at us from religious television, that turns this around. Instead of using mammon for the sake of God and his kingdom, this theology says, in effect, that we should use God and his kingdom for the sake of mammon.

If we have a strong enough faith, and if we plant the seeds for our prosperity by sending in a generous donation to the right television ministry, God will bless us in return, and will give us the material wealth we want. According to this “prosperity gospel,” people are encouraged to believe in God so that they can receive mammon from God.

But even if we renounce these particular blasphemies, we might still be operating according to a softer version of this theology. If you have a set-back in terms of your physical and material well-being, do you question or accuse God? Do you feel, perhaps, that he is not protecting you or taking care of you as he should?

Do you wonder, at such a time, why he’s not being the kind of God he’s supposed to be, and why he’s not doing his job as God? You believe in him. Why doesn’t he believe in you? And bless and reward you?

Oh, for the faith of Job, who said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So again: Whom or what do you serve? Whom or what do you consider to be the most important influence in the decisions you make?

Who or what governs your thoughts, your plans, your wishes, your dreams? To whom, or to what, are you willing to surrender yourself? Jesus says:

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

But Jesus also says this, as recorded in St. John’s Gospel:

“I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

In his human nature, and in his state of humility on earth, our Lord Jesus was only and always in submission to the divine will, and to the divine plan that had sent him to the world, to redeem the world. As the eternal divine Son in human flesh, he very definitely came to serve God, and did serve God, in his life of righteousness and love, and in his work of redemption on the cross.

As our risen Savior, he in his gospel continues to do the will of his Father, as he now speaks to us: even in the midst of the confusion of our weak and distracted faith, and even in the midst of our wavering between two masters.

Jesus, our true Lord and master, speaks to our hearts a word of power and peace, assurance and restoration, which once again transports us to where we belong - with him and under him - and redirects and refocuses our faith to where it belongs: on him.

By his word, Jesus once again stakes out his rightful claim to us and to our obedience, because of the obedience to his Father in heaven that he rendered for us, in atoning for our sins. The sins for which he died include the sins of idolatry, and of misguided service to mammon, that we have often committed.

But Jesus has purchased us as his own precious possession, with the price of his blood. And his blood also washes away our sins - includng those sins.

Jesus has in fact liberated me from my slavery to sin and Satan - and to mammon - “in order that I might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness; even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.”

In bond-service to God, there is actually freedom: true spiritual freedom from hopelessness and despair, from guilt and shame, from blindness and ignorance, from pride and greed.

You don’t have to try to free yourself from these things, or from whatever false masters you may be serving, by your own efforts. Jesus is your emancipator. Repent and believe the gospel, and in that faith be free: instantly and fully free, in time and in eternity.

Whenever you may slip back into an idolatrous love for mammon, Christ’s love for his Father, and for you, will pull you back again, as his powerful and authoritative word is spoken again in his gospel.

Whenever your heart wanders away from its rightful service to God, and begins to cling once again to mammon, Jesus will pry you loose once again, and restore you to your proper loyalty. His Spirit, dwelling within you, turns you around, and brings you back to where you belong.

You cannot serve two masters, so don’t try. God has given you a heart for him. So serve him. Serve your Creator, your Redeemer, and your Sanctifier.

We close with these prayerful words from the Lutheran hymnist J. A. Seiss:

Jesus, Master, Son of God, Rich in gifts for human good,
Given Thyself for us, for all, Thou dost many servants call.
By Thy mercy and Thy love, Through Thy Spirit from above,
Plenteous grace to each is given, Grace to serve the Lord of heaven.

Amen.