Isaiah 40:1-11; 1 Peter 1:1-25
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
He addresses them as though they were there. Pentecost. Perhaps they were. The regions listed correspond closely to those listed in Acts chapter 2; those devout Jews dwelling in Jerusalem only 50 days after the Passover. They saw with their own eyes the tongues of fire resting upon Peter and the Twelve. They heard with their own ears the proclamation of the mighty works of God in their own mother tongues.
Though they were not Hebrews by birth they were grafted into the vine stock of Israel. Elected by grace, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ, in whose obedience they received adoption as sons, being set apart by the Holy Spirit. Grace and peace flowing from the Blessed Holy Trinity is multiplied unto them who now live as strangers in a strange land. As foreigners and exiles, not merely from Jerusalem and Israel, but sojourners wending home to the heavenly Jerusalem and the New Israel even while they lived in the hinterlands of the Empire.
What about you? You who live in the hinterlands of Indianapolis. You are not a Hebrew by birth. You were most certainly not present at the first Pentecost where the Lord God graciously condescended to be made known in human languages. But for you that language has been translated and transmitted and retranslated and over and again. It is now a derivative of a derivative. How do you know it can even be trusted unto salvation?
For one you have the prophets who prophesied concerning the coming grace, the undoing of the curse, both of Babel and of Eden, and the proclamation of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. These prophets spoke from God as they were carried along in the Spirit.
And it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, nor only the Church of the Apostolic age, but you. For the Good News is preached to by the self-same Holy Spirit, who was once sent from heaven at Pentecost, and who even now, goes forth from the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ through His inscripturated Word.
And the angels who peer into the mystery of the Incarnation, are joined to you here with archangels and all the company of heaven, all the elect, both exiled and home, to peer into the mystery of the Body and Blood of the self-same Jesus Christ here upon this Altar. Our Lord who has once dispersed His people at Babel has restored them - both they and we - in the common tongue of the good confession and the holy liturgy.
This is your mother tongue, your heart language, according to your rebirth from above by water and the Spirit. You learn to speak from hearing your Father in heaven who loves you and from your Mother the Church on earth who nurtures and feeds you. According to this genesis, this begottenness, you await an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the Last Time.
Presently, however, you are grieved by various trials, both from without and within. You are buffeted and tried, sore afraid and tempted. Your flesh rages within you and the world and its prince scowl all around. Only cling in faith, dear Christian, to the promise of salvation, “despising everything on earth, and acknowledge that all worldly reason, wisdom, and holiness are nothing. The world will not be able to tolerate this. Therefore you must be prepared to be condemned and persecuted. In this way St Peter sums up faith, hope, and the holy cross; for one follows from the other” (AE 30:16).
For your faith, which is a gift from God, is more precious in His sight than gold which perishes though it is tested by fire. “Fire does not impair the quality of gold, but purifies it, so that all alloy is removed. Thus God has imposed the cross on all [His] Christians to cleanse and to purge them well, in order that faith may reman pure, just as the Word is pure, so that one adheres to the Word alone and relies on nothing else” (AE 30:17).
Therefore do not despair, dear ones, for though our Lord who throws you into the flames and the fire, He allows trial and hardship to befall you, He likewise speaks comfort and consolation in the midst of suffering. Comfort, comfort, My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. He answers your call in prayer. He rescues you and honors you.
Indeed He has ransomed you from your futile ways, from the cunning and deception of the world, from a false freedom and a vain hope. He has released you from the passions of your flesh by His own Passion in the flesh. He redeemed you, not with perishable things such as gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.
You are His own. You live no longer under the domain and rule of darkness, but in the kingdom of the Lamb who was slain yet behold He lives, under the reign and rule of His Father in the Spirit. You are beloved children, far from home, yet not alone, having your hope set fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
How ought you to then to live, beloved? As obedient children. That is, in fear, love and trust as little ones who are under the gracious Word of your loving Father, who has begotten you from above, not of perishable Seed, but of the imperishable Seed of His sole-begotten Son, the Seed of the Woman, who is the living and abiding Word of the Lord. All flesh is indeed like grass, withering and fading away, and its glory and righteousness like the flower that is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven. But Verbum Domini Manet en Aeternum, the Word of the Lord endures forever.
This is the Word of the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins that is preached to you. Pushed into your ears and takes root in your heart. It alone creates and sustains a saving faith that “changes us and makes us to be born anew of God. It kills the old Adam and makes us altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers; it brings with it the Holy Spirit. It is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. [To be holy, as your Father in heaven is holy.] It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them.
Whoever does not do such good works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are. Yet he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times. This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all creatures. And this is the work the Holy Spirit performs in faith. Because of it, without compulsion, a person is ready and glad to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, out of love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace. Thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire” (FC SD IV 10-12).
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
He addresses them as though they were there. Pentecost. Perhaps they were. The regions listed correspond closely to those listed in Acts chapter 2; those devout Jews dwelling in Jerusalem only 50 days after the Passover. They saw with their own eyes the tongues of fire resting upon Peter and the Twelve. They heard with their own ears the proclamation of the mighty works of God in their own mother tongues.
Though they were not Hebrews by birth they were grafted into the vine stock of Israel. Elected by grace, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ, in whose obedience they received adoption as sons, being set apart by the Holy Spirit. Grace and peace flowing from the Blessed Holy Trinity is multiplied unto them who now live as strangers in a strange land. As foreigners and exiles, not merely from Jerusalem and Israel, but sojourners wending home to the heavenly Jerusalem and the New Israel even while they lived in the hinterlands of the Empire.
What about you? You who live in the hinterlands of Indianapolis. You are not a Hebrew by birth. You were most certainly not present at the first Pentecost where the Lord God graciously condescended to be made known in human languages. But for you that language has been translated and transmitted and retranslated and over and again. It is now a derivative of a derivative. How do you know it can even be trusted unto salvation?
For one you have the prophets who prophesied concerning the coming grace, the undoing of the curse, both of Babel and of Eden, and the proclamation of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. These prophets spoke from God as they were carried along in the Spirit.
And it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, nor only the Church of the Apostolic age, but you. For the Good News is preached to by the self-same Holy Spirit, who was once sent from heaven at Pentecost, and who even now, goes forth from the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ through His inscripturated Word.
And the angels who peer into the mystery of the Incarnation, are joined to you here with archangels and all the company of heaven, all the elect, both exiled and home, to peer into the mystery of the Body and Blood of the self-same Jesus Christ here upon this Altar. Our Lord who has once dispersed His people at Babel has restored them - both they and we - in the common tongue of the good confession and the holy liturgy.
This is your mother tongue, your heart language, according to your rebirth from above by water and the Spirit. You learn to speak from hearing your Father in heaven who loves you and from your Mother the Church on earth who nurtures and feeds you. According to this genesis, this begottenness, you await an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the Last Time.
Presently, however, you are grieved by various trials, both from without and within. You are buffeted and tried, sore afraid and tempted. Your flesh rages within you and the world and its prince scowl all around. Only cling in faith, dear Christian, to the promise of salvation, “despising everything on earth, and acknowledge that all worldly reason, wisdom, and holiness are nothing. The world will not be able to tolerate this. Therefore you must be prepared to be condemned and persecuted. In this way St Peter sums up faith, hope, and the holy cross; for one follows from the other” (AE 30:16).
For your faith, which is a gift from God, is more precious in His sight than gold which perishes though it is tested by fire. “Fire does not impair the quality of gold, but purifies it, so that all alloy is removed. Thus God has imposed the cross on all [His] Christians to cleanse and to purge them well, in order that faith may reman pure, just as the Word is pure, so that one adheres to the Word alone and relies on nothing else” (AE 30:17).
Therefore do not despair, dear ones, for though our Lord who throws you into the flames and the fire, He allows trial and hardship to befall you, He likewise speaks comfort and consolation in the midst of suffering. Comfort, comfort, My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. He answers your call in prayer. He rescues you and honors you.
Indeed He has ransomed you from your futile ways, from the cunning and deception of the world, from a false freedom and a vain hope. He has released you from the passions of your flesh by His own Passion in the flesh. He redeemed you, not with perishable things such as gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.
You are His own. You live no longer under the domain and rule of darkness, but in the kingdom of the Lamb who was slain yet behold He lives, under the reign and rule of His Father in the Spirit. You are beloved children, far from home, yet not alone, having your hope set fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
How ought you to then to live, beloved? As obedient children. That is, in fear, love and trust as little ones who are under the gracious Word of your loving Father, who has begotten you from above, not of perishable Seed, but of the imperishable Seed of His sole-begotten Son, the Seed of the Woman, who is the living and abiding Word of the Lord. All flesh is indeed like grass, withering and fading away, and its glory and righteousness like the flower that is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven. But Verbum Domini Manet en Aeternum, the Word of the Lord endures forever.
This is the Word of the Gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins that is preached to you. Pushed into your ears and takes root in your heart. It alone creates and sustains a saving faith that “changes us and makes us to be born anew of God. It kills the old Adam and makes us altogether different men, in heart and spirit and mind and powers; it brings with it the Holy Spirit. It is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. [To be holy, as your Father in heaven is holy.] It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them.
Whoever does not do such good works, however, is an unbeliever. He gropes and looks around for faith and good works, but knows neither what faith is nor what good works are. Yet he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times. This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all creatures. And this is the work the Holy Spirit performs in faith. Because of it, without compulsion, a person is ready and glad to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, out of love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace. Thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire” (FC SD IV 10-12).
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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