Ezekiel 36:22-28; 1 Peter 4:7-14; St John 15:26-16:4
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
This Sunday, the Seventh Sunday of Easter, is sort of an in-between day. It marks a unique period in the life of the disciples, between the Feast of the Ascension and the transition to the Feast of Pentecost. The moment of separation from their Lord is but a few days back. The promise of the new Comforter, Helper and Guide is still to be realized. The Lord Jesus has ascended, the Comforter has not yet descended. Exaudi. From the introit. Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Leave me not comfortless, orphaned, alone. Hide not Your face from me.
And so the Gospel text takes us back, one last time these last three Sundays, to the Upper Room; to the night of our Lord’s betrayal, when He washed the disciples’ feet and instituted His Holy Supper. He prepared them for what to expect, what was to come: He would be betrayed and arrested, handed over to wicked men who would beat and abuse Him and finally end His life. But they could also expect His resurrection from the dead on the third day and His ascension to the right hand of the Father.
Before He ascended, Jesus instructed them to remain in the Holy City, awaiting the promise of His Father, the Helper, better translated, the Comforter, whom He will send. This is God the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and Son, who descends upon them at Pentecost. He bears witness to Christ the crucified and raised, the God-Man and One Mediator between God and man, whose bloody once-for-all Sacrifice atones for the sins of the whole world.
But it is precisely the world in which they will have tribulation. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Perhaps a modern rendition may say it this way: “They will put you out of the Church, taking away your tax status and religious freedom. Indeed, whoever kills your livelihood and silences your speaking in the public square and suppresses your right of conscience will think he is offering service for the greater good.”
Indeed it was the Jews who put the Apostles and the early Christians out of the Synagogues. Maligning them, silencing them, persecuting them. Peter and James were beaten by the Sanhedrin and told to cease preaching in the Name of Jesus. But they did just as the Premiere Apostle wrote, Rejoiced insofar as they shared in Christ’s sufferings. Saul sought to capture followers of the Way and return them to Jerusalem to stand trial.
The Jews did these things to their own, but it was the Roman state who killed the early Christians, thinking they were offering service to their pagan gods. Rome sacralized her state and deified her Caesars. The delicate Pax Romana was maintained by the appeasement of the gods and the peace they allowed. This peace was based on sacrifice. Not a gruesome, animal offering, but the simple pinch of incense offered by all good citizens to the genius of Caesar as the revered savior and liberator of Rome. It was a nod of the head and a bend of the knee that the Emperor was to be obeyed and tolerance was the highest virtue. So long as one publicly stepped in line, acknowledging the values of the State, one could believe whatever he wanted in his own head.
The Christians refused. This was an act of sedition. Therefore Christians were called “atheists” because they refused to worship the Roman gods. They were known as “subverters” of the State because they refused to sacrifice. They were called “traitors” because they would not acknowledge the genius of Caesar. To confess Jesus is Lord was an act of political treason. Traitors must be dealt with. They paid with their lives.
The persecution of the Christian Church is a matter of faith. You may not see it, but it is real. It takes many forms. From the bombing of skyscrapers and pop concerts which target the general public, to slaughtering of French priests during Mass and the beheading of confessing Christians on Egyptian beaches. Your brothers and sisters in Christ are resisting to the point of shedding their blood. You have not yet endured this. You may. And it will come at the hands of those who believe that killing you because you are a Christian offers service an worship their god.
But it isn’t merely Allah, the false god of Islam. It may also come by the followers of the State deities: Fascism, Scientism, Secularism. Your livelihood may be sacrificed on the Altar of Tolerance in an effort to appease the national deities and the genius of the Emperor. St Peter was right nearly two thousand years ago: The end of all things is at hand.
So what sort of people ought you to be? How shall you endure? How shall you be prepared for the persecution that is to come, for the persecution that has already come? How do protect your children, prepare their hearts and guard their minds against the thought police and the tightening restrictions of the state and the enemies of Christ? Learn your catechism. Pray the Psalms. Read and digest the Scriptures. The entire of Epistle, in fact, both letters of St Peter offer wonderful comforting advice, but today he says, Be self-controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers.
That is, neither acquiesce to the anti-Christian demands of the state, but also do not give in to willful sin. Guard your hearts and minds, keep them back from presumption and self-justification. For it is not merely terrorists and statists who excuse their wicked behavior assuming it is done in true service to God. We are guilty of such presumption as well.
You have heard the saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” We convince ourselves that if we intended to do the right thing that somehow our sins and failings are less problematic, less horrific. “Oh, he meant well.” As if that makes any real difference. We try to justify our behavior with sentiment. Jesus shows the foolishness of this way of thinking in today’s Gospel when He says, The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Does it really make it any better that someone is intending to do a good and holy work when they kill a disciple of Jesus? Of course not! In fact, it often makes it worse. The same standard is applied to us. The truth is, most of our sins are done with good intentions, too. We have this idea that engaging in our own particular sins may actually be for the good, that is can be justified in our case, that it will make things better. It will satisfy us or relieve us and it won’t really hurt anybody.
We give in to metaphors; like, “I’m just bursting to get this gossip out.” Or, “I’m just bursting with sexual desire and I need some outlet.” Or, “I’m just bursting with these angry feelings and I need to vent.” Well, we’re not steam kettles. We don’t need to vent. We need to repent. Do not comfort yourself with the thought that you were trying to do something good when you sinned, or that your heart was in the right place. This is nonsense. Sentiment. Its self-justification and not the way of repentance and faith. The reality is that sin begets sin. When we give into such things it doesn’t alleviate our lust or anger or greed or pride. It feeds it. It leads us to justify our behavior. It hardens our hearts. All our good intentions only lead to hell.
Repentance is needed. Stop trying to justify yourself and instead look to Christ alone who can justify and save us from hell and put us right again. He may have gone away, ascended to the right hand of the Father, interceding for you as the God-Man, but He has not left you alone. He has not left you as orphans. He has sent His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to help you and lead you and guide in the way of truth.
Note, then, how the Holy Spirit guides and comforts the Apostles and the early Church, for it is the same manner in which He guides and comforts you: The Spirit of truth will bear witness about Me. That is, He will preach into your ears and into your hearts the vicarious atonement of Christ for you. How He who knew no sin became Sin for you. How His death conquers and defeats your death. How He crushed the head of the Devil, destroying His power over you, over your heart and mind and conscience. The Spirit of Truth speaks this truth to your troubled conscience, forgiving you all your sins, strengthening you in body and soul amid danger and persecution and sword.
I know it seems like a moot point that the Holy Spirit speaks to your ears and heart all the while the world and Christ’s enemies are attacking and destroying your body. Your brothers and sisters are dying around the world for the Name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit just keeps preaching in the Word through the Office of the Ministry of His Gospel in the Church. But this is your greatest need. Not food or clothing, 501c3s or even freedom of religion. For this is the fulfillment of the promise of the Lord through Ezekiel: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues and be careful to obey my rules. Tertullian, 2nd Century Church Father, was right: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell (Mt 10:28).
For the issue facing Peter and James, Tertullian and Polycarp, Luther and the reformers, your brethren around the world, and even you, if one of sacrifice. To whom and what shall you sacrifice? Burn the pinch of incense to the state and sacrifice your ethics, your conscience, your beliefs. Sacrifice on the altar of tolerance and inclusivity and you’ve slaughtered your faith. Or sacrifice to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has ransomed you in love? As it is written, I appeal to you, brethen, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rm 12:1-2).
This is what “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” looks like in the new, divine economy and kingdom of Christ who has sent His Holy Spirit upon you. This is the simultaneous “yes” that submits to the authority of the emperor as put in place by God and “no” that renders a higher obedience to Christ the Lord as supreme. Our entire life must be, as Luther expressed, an eternal Lord’s Prayer in which our principal desire is for God to deliver us from evil.
The Christian martyrdom of the either the first three centuries or the last two centuries, is not to be seen as the fate of the powerless, but as a witness, a true marturia, before the State and the world, of the eschatological reality of Christ Jesus’ return from the right hand of Power to judge both the living and the dead and deliver to each according to what he has done in the body, whether good of evil (2 Cor 5:10).
For though we are in the in-between time from Pentecost to the Second Advent of Christ our Lord, He has not left you alone. Behold the right hand of the Father, His arm, strong to save, is the very Word and Sacraments, where Christ is present, by His Spirit, to deliver to you the work of His salvation on your behalf. This is His intention, to create and sustain faith by His Spirit through these means, in those who hear the Word. His good intentions toward you do not fail. Rather it lifts you up to a new and real life.
This is what His ascension means. Firstly that His Sacrifice upon the Cross is true service to God and is acceptable to Him. But also that by receiving Jesus to His side, the Father also receives you to His side. For you are in Christ; members of His body. In welcoming Jesus He has also welcomed and accepted you. You know the Father and are known by Him in Jesus Christ. You live in the in-between but you have enteral life, the forgiveness of sins, mercy and grace, the gift of the Spirit and heaven itself, right now.
He has heard your cries and has not hide His face from you. He was with you from the beginning. He loved you to the end. He shall be with you, never leaving or forsaking you, until the Last; when He shall raise you from your graves to dwell in the true Land He promised to your fathers. You are His people. He is your God.
In the Name of the Father and of + the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
This Sunday, the Seventh Sunday of Easter, is sort of an in-between day. It marks a unique period in the life of the disciples, between the Feast of the Ascension and the transition to the Feast of Pentecost. The moment of separation from their Lord is but a few days back. The promise of the new Comforter, Helper and Guide is still to be realized. The Lord Jesus has ascended, the Comforter has not yet descended. Exaudi. From the introit. Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Leave me not comfortless, orphaned, alone. Hide not Your face from me.
And so the Gospel text takes us back, one last time these last three Sundays, to the Upper Room; to the night of our Lord’s betrayal, when He washed the disciples’ feet and instituted His Holy Supper. He prepared them for what to expect, what was to come: He would be betrayed and arrested, handed over to wicked men who would beat and abuse Him and finally end His life. But they could also expect His resurrection from the dead on the third day and His ascension to the right hand of the Father.
Before He ascended, Jesus instructed them to remain in the Holy City, awaiting the promise of His Father, the Helper, better translated, the Comforter, whom He will send. This is God the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and Son, who descends upon them at Pentecost. He bears witness to Christ the crucified and raised, the God-Man and One Mediator between God and man, whose bloody once-for-all Sacrifice atones for the sins of the whole world.
But it is precisely the world in which they will have tribulation. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Perhaps a modern rendition may say it this way: “They will put you out of the Church, taking away your tax status and religious freedom. Indeed, whoever kills your livelihood and silences your speaking in the public square and suppresses your right of conscience will think he is offering service for the greater good.”
Indeed it was the Jews who put the Apostles and the early Christians out of the Synagogues. Maligning them, silencing them, persecuting them. Peter and James were beaten by the Sanhedrin and told to cease preaching in the Name of Jesus. But they did just as the Premiere Apostle wrote, Rejoiced insofar as they shared in Christ’s sufferings. Saul sought to capture followers of the Way and return them to Jerusalem to stand trial.
The Jews did these things to their own, but it was the Roman state who killed the early Christians, thinking they were offering service to their pagan gods. Rome sacralized her state and deified her Caesars. The delicate Pax Romana was maintained by the appeasement of the gods and the peace they allowed. This peace was based on sacrifice. Not a gruesome, animal offering, but the simple pinch of incense offered by all good citizens to the genius of Caesar as the revered savior and liberator of Rome. It was a nod of the head and a bend of the knee that the Emperor was to be obeyed and tolerance was the highest virtue. So long as one publicly stepped in line, acknowledging the values of the State, one could believe whatever he wanted in his own head.
The Christians refused. This was an act of sedition. Therefore Christians were called “atheists” because they refused to worship the Roman gods. They were known as “subverters” of the State because they refused to sacrifice. They were called “traitors” because they would not acknowledge the genius of Caesar. To confess Jesus is Lord was an act of political treason. Traitors must be dealt with. They paid with their lives.
The persecution of the Christian Church is a matter of faith. You may not see it, but it is real. It takes many forms. From the bombing of skyscrapers and pop concerts which target the general public, to slaughtering of French priests during Mass and the beheading of confessing Christians on Egyptian beaches. Your brothers and sisters in Christ are resisting to the point of shedding their blood. You have not yet endured this. You may. And it will come at the hands of those who believe that killing you because you are a Christian offers service an worship their god.
But it isn’t merely Allah, the false god of Islam. It may also come by the followers of the State deities: Fascism, Scientism, Secularism. Your livelihood may be sacrificed on the Altar of Tolerance in an effort to appease the national deities and the genius of the Emperor. St Peter was right nearly two thousand years ago: The end of all things is at hand.
So what sort of people ought you to be? How shall you endure? How shall you be prepared for the persecution that is to come, for the persecution that has already come? How do protect your children, prepare their hearts and guard their minds against the thought police and the tightening restrictions of the state and the enemies of Christ? Learn your catechism. Pray the Psalms. Read and digest the Scriptures. The entire of Epistle, in fact, both letters of St Peter offer wonderful comforting advice, but today he says, Be self-controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers.
That is, neither acquiesce to the anti-Christian demands of the state, but also do not give in to willful sin. Guard your hearts and minds, keep them back from presumption and self-justification. For it is not merely terrorists and statists who excuse their wicked behavior assuming it is done in true service to God. We are guilty of such presumption as well.
You have heard the saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” We convince ourselves that if we intended to do the right thing that somehow our sins and failings are less problematic, less horrific. “Oh, he meant well.” As if that makes any real difference. We try to justify our behavior with sentiment. Jesus shows the foolishness of this way of thinking in today’s Gospel when He says, The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Does it really make it any better that someone is intending to do a good and holy work when they kill a disciple of Jesus? Of course not! In fact, it often makes it worse. The same standard is applied to us. The truth is, most of our sins are done with good intentions, too. We have this idea that engaging in our own particular sins may actually be for the good, that is can be justified in our case, that it will make things better. It will satisfy us or relieve us and it won’t really hurt anybody.
We give in to metaphors; like, “I’m just bursting to get this gossip out.” Or, “I’m just bursting with sexual desire and I need some outlet.” Or, “I’m just bursting with these angry feelings and I need to vent.” Well, we’re not steam kettles. We don’t need to vent. We need to repent. Do not comfort yourself with the thought that you were trying to do something good when you sinned, or that your heart was in the right place. This is nonsense. Sentiment. Its self-justification and not the way of repentance and faith. The reality is that sin begets sin. When we give into such things it doesn’t alleviate our lust or anger or greed or pride. It feeds it. It leads us to justify our behavior. It hardens our hearts. All our good intentions only lead to hell.
Repentance is needed. Stop trying to justify yourself and instead look to Christ alone who can justify and save us from hell and put us right again. He may have gone away, ascended to the right hand of the Father, interceding for you as the God-Man, but He has not left you alone. He has not left you as orphans. He has sent His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to help you and lead you and guide in the way of truth.
Note, then, how the Holy Spirit guides and comforts the Apostles and the early Church, for it is the same manner in which He guides and comforts you: The Spirit of truth will bear witness about Me. That is, He will preach into your ears and into your hearts the vicarious atonement of Christ for you. How He who knew no sin became Sin for you. How His death conquers and defeats your death. How He crushed the head of the Devil, destroying His power over you, over your heart and mind and conscience. The Spirit of Truth speaks this truth to your troubled conscience, forgiving you all your sins, strengthening you in body and soul amid danger and persecution and sword.
I know it seems like a moot point that the Holy Spirit speaks to your ears and heart all the while the world and Christ’s enemies are attacking and destroying your body. Your brothers and sisters are dying around the world for the Name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit just keeps preaching in the Word through the Office of the Ministry of His Gospel in the Church. But this is your greatest need. Not food or clothing, 501c3s or even freedom of religion. For this is the fulfillment of the promise of the Lord through Ezekiel: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues and be careful to obey my rules. Tertullian, 2nd Century Church Father, was right: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell (Mt 10:28).
For the issue facing Peter and James, Tertullian and Polycarp, Luther and the reformers, your brethren around the world, and even you, if one of sacrifice. To whom and what shall you sacrifice? Burn the pinch of incense to the state and sacrifice your ethics, your conscience, your beliefs. Sacrifice on the altar of tolerance and inclusivity and you’ve slaughtered your faith. Or sacrifice to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has ransomed you in love? As it is written, I appeal to you, brethen, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rm 12:1-2).
This is what “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” looks like in the new, divine economy and kingdom of Christ who has sent His Holy Spirit upon you. This is the simultaneous “yes” that submits to the authority of the emperor as put in place by God and “no” that renders a higher obedience to Christ the Lord as supreme. Our entire life must be, as Luther expressed, an eternal Lord’s Prayer in which our principal desire is for God to deliver us from evil.
The Christian martyrdom of the either the first three centuries or the last two centuries, is not to be seen as the fate of the powerless, but as a witness, a true marturia, before the State and the world, of the eschatological reality of Christ Jesus’ return from the right hand of Power to judge both the living and the dead and deliver to each according to what he has done in the body, whether good of evil (2 Cor 5:10).
For though we are in the in-between time from Pentecost to the Second Advent of Christ our Lord, He has not left you alone. Behold the right hand of the Father, His arm, strong to save, is the very Word and Sacraments, where Christ is present, by His Spirit, to deliver to you the work of His salvation on your behalf. This is His intention, to create and sustain faith by His Spirit through these means, in those who hear the Word. His good intentions toward you do not fail. Rather it lifts you up to a new and real life.
This is what His ascension means. Firstly that His Sacrifice upon the Cross is true service to God and is acceptable to Him. But also that by receiving Jesus to His side, the Father also receives you to His side. For you are in Christ; members of His body. In welcoming Jesus He has also welcomed and accepted you. You know the Father and are known by Him in Jesus Christ. You live in the in-between but you have enteral life, the forgiveness of sins, mercy and grace, the gift of the Spirit and heaven itself, right now.
He has heard your cries and has not hide His face from you. He was with you from the beginning. He loved you to the end. He shall be with you, never leaving or forsaking you, until the Last; when He shall raise you from your graves to dwell in the true Land He promised to your fathers. You are His people. He is your God.
In the Name of the Father and of + the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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