Ezekiel 26:22-28; 1 Peter 4:7-11(12-14); 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. The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord, His going to the right hand of the Father, is a few days back, the Feast of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit is yet to be realized. Our Lord Jesus has ascended. The Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, has not yet descended. Today is Exaudi; taken from the Introit, Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Leave me not abandoned, orphaned, alone. Hide not Your face from me.
And so the Gospel lesson takes you back, as these past three Sundays and again next, to the Upper Room; to our Lord’s farewell discourse. He is preparing them for what to expect, what is 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.
The Church, in her wisdom, has so ordered these texts as to reiterate the promises Jesus made. The promise of His presence, the promise that your prayers are heard, the promise of the Comforter. Before His ascension, Jesus instructed the Eleven to remain in the Holy City awaiting the promise of His Father. The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me. He will testify to the crucified and risen Christ, 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 is it precisely in the world in which they will have tribulation. They will put you out of the synagogue. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Perhaps a modern paraphrase might render it: “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.”
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. Instead they Rejoiced insofar as they shared in Christ’s sufferings.
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 pax Romana was only maintained at the pax deus and the appeasement of the gods. This peace was based on sacrifice. Not a gruesome, animal offering, but the simple pinch of incense offered by all good citizens to the genus 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 Christian refusal was an act of sedition. They were labeled as “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 genus of Caesar. To confess Jesus is Lord was an act of political treason. Traitors must be dealt with. They paid with their lives.
You will bear witness, Jesus says. The Greek word for witness is where we get our word martyr. Marturia. They testified with their blood. The persecution of the Christian Church did not end with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313. It is a real and present danger unknown by most Westerners, especially Americans. Your brothers and sisters in Christ around the world are resisting to the point of shedding their blood.
You are not put out of your churches, not yet. You are not being killed for your beliefs. You may. Presently you feel it in your conscience and sense it in the hostility that surrounds you. In your apprehension to speak the truth for fear of less physical, but still actual reprisal: job loss, public ridicule, private rejection. Devotees of Allah may not take your life, but statists and secularists may take your livelihood. It will be sacrificed on the Altar of Tolerance in an effort to appease the national deities and the genus of the emperor. St Peter was right nearly two thousand years ago: The end of all things is at hand.
But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you. I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away. The Helper, the Spirit of Truth, will testify of Me. The Holy Spirit helps you not by freeing you from such persecution and suffering, but by preaching Christ to you in the midst of such circumstances. I know it seems like a moot point that when you are being crucified upside down, or dragged before the Sanhedrin or Senate hearings, or stripped of your livelihood or tax exempt status, or merely when your relatives mock you for your beliefs that the Holy Spirit helps by preaching a good, Christ centered, Cross focused sermon into your ears and heart, but this is what you really need.
This is your greatest need. Not food or clothing, 501c3s or freedom of religion, not even your home or job or life. Your greatest, most desperate need, not only in the midst of suffering and persecution, but at all times, is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the full and free forgiveness of all your sins, and comfort of the Holy Spirit and a good conscience. This is not to say the other things don’t matter. They do. Jesus knows you need them and your heavenly Father grants them according to His Word and will.
But even when He doesn’t. Even if your heart bypass doesn’t result in a full recovery, or your cancer isn’t completely removed, or you don’t get the promotion, you still have what you truly need: the comfort of the Holy Spirit in the preached Word of Christ and His holy Sacraments. You have the forgiveness of sins, eternal life and everlasting salvation in the shed blood of Jesus the Christ, your faithful Martyr and Paraclete before the Father. You have the scandal of His Cross which keeps you from falling away. You have the witness of His apostles and prophets, the Holy Scriptures which make you wise unto salvation.
In the face of such external persecution or internal suffering, you are able, then, by the conviction of the Spirit and the courage of faith, to confess with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who, when threatened with death by the fiery furnace if they did not worship the golden image of the king, answered, If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up (Dan 3:17-18).
“He will save us from the fiery trial or He won’t. Either way, He is the true and living God and we are called, in the obedience of faith, to render service and worship to Him alone.” Such confidence is does not come from within, from the will or determined heart or mind, but results a fruit of the promise given by the Lord through His prophet Ezekiel: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues and be careful to obey My rules.
This promise if fulfilled in your first martyrdom: your baptism into Christ’s own death and life. There the Lord took you from the pagan lands and gathered you into His own land, into His Christendom. He sprinkled clean water on you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and cleansed you from all your idols and uncleanness. He has given you a new heart and put His Spirit within you. You are a people living in the joy of the Resurrection, the comfort and assurance of the Ascension, and the confidence of the Eschaton, through you are surrounded on all sides by slander and betrayal, persecution and death.
This is what St Peter is getting at when he exhorts you: The end of all things is at hand: therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. This is true sacrifice and service. This is the liturgy and spiritual worship of the Christian in the face of a hostile and rejecting world. As it is written, I appeal to you, brethren, 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).
For the Lord is your Light and your Salvation. Whom shall you fear? The Lord is the stronghold of your life. Of whom shall you be afraid? Jesus says, 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). Fear Him, yes. But also love and trust in Him above all things. For He has sent the promised Holy Spirit upon you, who preaches into your ears and heart by His external Word. He grants you a good conscience in the vicarious death, life-giving resurrection, and glorious ascension of Jesus Christ.
As you live in the in-between time since Pentecost until His Second Advent, hold fast His Word and the promise of His Holy Spirit. He is your Redeemer, your Armor and heart’s dear Hope. And behold, Food for your journey, Rations for your fight, the Strength of the Lord and the Medicine of Immortality, the Body and Blood of Jesus, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins. This is nourishment in both body and soul. This is God’s faithful service to you and the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Come, dear Christians, eat and drink and do not fear. You are His people and He your God. Remember that He still says to you, “I love you. I forgive you. I shall keep you from falling away. You are blessed for My Name’s sake. Rejoice and be glad, dear child, you share in My sufferings. You shall also share in My eternal glory.”
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. The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord, His going to the right hand of the Father, is a few days back, the Feast of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit is yet to be realized. Our Lord Jesus has ascended. The Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, has not yet descended. Today is Exaudi; taken from the Introit, Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud. Leave me not abandoned, orphaned, alone. Hide not Your face from me.
And so the Gospel lesson takes you back, as these past three Sundays and again next, to the Upper Room; to our Lord’s farewell discourse. He is preparing them for what to expect, what is 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.
The Church, in her wisdom, has so ordered these texts as to reiterate the promises Jesus made. The promise of His presence, the promise that your prayers are heard, the promise of the Comforter. Before His ascension, Jesus instructed the Eleven to remain in the Holy City awaiting the promise of His Father. The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness about Me. He will testify to the crucified and risen Christ, 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 is it precisely in the world in which they will have tribulation. They will put you out of the synagogue. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Perhaps a modern paraphrase might render it: “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.”
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. Instead they Rejoiced insofar as they shared in Christ’s sufferings.
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 pax Romana was only maintained at the pax deus and the appeasement of the gods. This peace was based on sacrifice. Not a gruesome, animal offering, but the simple pinch of incense offered by all good citizens to the genus 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 Christian refusal was an act of sedition. They were labeled as “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 genus of Caesar. To confess Jesus is Lord was an act of political treason. Traitors must be dealt with. They paid with their lives.
You will bear witness, Jesus says. The Greek word for witness is where we get our word martyr. Marturia. They testified with their blood. The persecution of the Christian Church did not end with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313. It is a real and present danger unknown by most Westerners, especially Americans. Your brothers and sisters in Christ around the world are resisting to the point of shedding their blood.
You are not put out of your churches, not yet. You are not being killed for your beliefs. You may. Presently you feel it in your conscience and sense it in the hostility that surrounds you. In your apprehension to speak the truth for fear of less physical, but still actual reprisal: job loss, public ridicule, private rejection. Devotees of Allah may not take your life, but statists and secularists may take your livelihood. It will be sacrificed on the Altar of Tolerance in an effort to appease the national deities and the genus of the emperor. St Peter was right nearly two thousand years ago: The end of all things is at hand.
But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you. I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away. The Helper, the Spirit of Truth, will testify of Me. The Holy Spirit helps you not by freeing you from such persecution and suffering, but by preaching Christ to you in the midst of such circumstances. I know it seems like a moot point that when you are being crucified upside down, or dragged before the Sanhedrin or Senate hearings, or stripped of your livelihood or tax exempt status, or merely when your relatives mock you for your beliefs that the Holy Spirit helps by preaching a good, Christ centered, Cross focused sermon into your ears and heart, but this is what you really need.
This is your greatest need. Not food or clothing, 501c3s or freedom of religion, not even your home or job or life. Your greatest, most desperate need, not only in the midst of suffering and persecution, but at all times, is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the full and free forgiveness of all your sins, and comfort of the Holy Spirit and a good conscience. This is not to say the other things don’t matter. They do. Jesus knows you need them and your heavenly Father grants them according to His Word and will.
But even when He doesn’t. Even if your heart bypass doesn’t result in a full recovery, or your cancer isn’t completely removed, or you don’t get the promotion, you still have what you truly need: the comfort of the Holy Spirit in the preached Word of Christ and His holy Sacraments. You have the forgiveness of sins, eternal life and everlasting salvation in the shed blood of Jesus the Christ, your faithful Martyr and Paraclete before the Father. You have the scandal of His Cross which keeps you from falling away. You have the witness of His apostles and prophets, the Holy Scriptures which make you wise unto salvation.
In the face of such external persecution or internal suffering, you are able, then, by the conviction of the Spirit and the courage of faith, to confess with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who, when threatened with death by the fiery furnace if they did not worship the golden image of the king, answered, If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up (Dan 3:17-18).
“He will save us from the fiery trial or He won’t. Either way, He is the true and living God and we are called, in the obedience of faith, to render service and worship to Him alone.” Such confidence is does not come from within, from the will or determined heart or mind, but results a fruit of the promise given by the Lord through His prophet Ezekiel: I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues and be careful to obey My rules.
This promise if fulfilled in your first martyrdom: your baptism into Christ’s own death and life. There the Lord took you from the pagan lands and gathered you into His own land, into His Christendom. He sprinkled clean water on you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and cleansed you from all your idols and uncleanness. He has given you a new heart and put His Spirit within you. You are a people living in the joy of the Resurrection, the comfort and assurance of the Ascension, and the confidence of the Eschaton, through you are surrounded on all sides by slander and betrayal, persecution and death.
This is what St Peter is getting at when he exhorts you: The end of all things is at hand: therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. This is true sacrifice and service. This is the liturgy and spiritual worship of the Christian in the face of a hostile and rejecting world. As it is written, I appeal to you, brethren, 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).
For the Lord is your Light and your Salvation. Whom shall you fear? The Lord is the stronghold of your life. Of whom shall you be afraid? Jesus says, 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). Fear Him, yes. But also love and trust in Him above all things. For He has sent the promised Holy Spirit upon you, who preaches into your ears and heart by His external Word. He grants you a good conscience in the vicarious death, life-giving resurrection, and glorious ascension of Jesus Christ.
As you live in the in-between time since Pentecost until His Second Advent, hold fast His Word and the promise of His Holy Spirit. He is your Redeemer, your Armor and heart’s dear Hope. And behold, Food for your journey, Rations for your fight, the Strength of the Lord and the Medicine of Immortality, the Body and Blood of Jesus, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins. This is nourishment in both body and soul. This is God’s faithful service to you and the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Come, dear Christians, eat and drink and do not fear. You are His people and He your God. Remember that He still says to you, “I love you. I forgive you. I shall keep you from falling away. You are blessed for My Name’s sake. Rejoice and be glad, dear child, you share in My sufferings. You shall also share in My eternal glory.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
RSS Feed