Jeremiah 21:1-16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; St John 15:12-21
LSB 430 My Song is Love Unknown
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Precious little is known of these two Apostles, Simon and Jude. They are not among the pillars, as St Paul refers to St Peter, St James, and St John. Whenever the twelve apostles are listed, Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed our Lord, is listed last. This is an indictment against his sin, but also an acknowledgement that he was, indeed, an Apostle, as St Peter declares, He was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry (Acts 1:17).
Immediately before him, though, listed second and third to last, are St Simon, whose name is often appended the moniker, the Zealot. He was apparently part of the political movement associated with Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Judea to rebel against the Roman Empire. And St Jude, who was also known as Thaddeus; perhaps only to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot, because Jude is simply a shortened form of Judas.
Here’s where it gets really confusing: among the Twelve Apostles, now, there are two Johns, two Simons, one who is called Peter, two Judases, two Jameses, Bartholomew who has multiple names, Thomas, sometimes called Didymus, and Matthew, also known as Levi. It can be difficult to unravel the individual strands of each of these men.
Yet this much is known: St Simon and St Jude were Apostles. Which means, therefore, that they were witnesses to the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. They followed Him after His Baptism by the hands of St John in the Jordan River. They were with Him at Cana in Galilee where He turned water into wine. They assisted in the distribution of the loaves and fish at the feeding of the five thousand. They were present at the resurrection of Lazarus.
Above all, they were eye-witnesses of the events of Holy Week and Easter. They participated in the Palm Sunday procession. They were in the Upper Room when Jesus removed His outer garment, donned an apron, and taking the lowest place at the Table, washed their feet. They would have eaten the Supper with their Master and heard the farewell discourse on Holy Thursday, from which our Gospel text comes, at which St Jude asked, Lord, how is it that you will manifest Yourself to us, and not to world?” To which Jesus replied, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come and make Our home with him (Jn 14:22-23).
They traveled with Him to the Mount of Olives and fled when the soldiers came with Judas to betray Him. They were in the Upper Room once more on Easter evening when the crucified and risen Christ Jesus appeared and manifested Himself to them, showing them His hands and His side. And again, the following Sunday when He invited St Thomas to touch and see.
They were catechized along with the Twelve concerning all that was written about Jesus in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms, and were given the command to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His Name unto the ends of the earth. They witnessed the Ascension of our Lord, participated in the election of Mathias to compete their number, and were present at the miracle of Pentecost when the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord poured out His Holy Spirit upon them and they proclaimed the praises of God in languages they had never studied.
They were also arrested with all the Apostles when the high priest jealously put them in public prison, but during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, Go and stand in the Temple and speak to the people all the words of this life (Acts 5:17-21).
According to the tradition of the Church, after the dispersion of the apostles, Saints Simon and Jude traveled together as far as Persia, bringing the message of salvation to any who would hear. While there, both of them suffered martyrdom for the holy name of Jesus.
All of this, dear Christians, serves to catechize us, according to their example, in the life of faith and love according to the Word of the Lord. For though we don’t know much about the personal details of these men, what we have exemplified for us is that their entire lives were intricately interwoven with the life, death, resurrection, and ongoing work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Indeed, this is what it means to be a friend of Jesus. And for Him to call you friend. There is great risk and substantial cost for such love and friendship. When you give yourself to and for another person, you not only expend yourself, but you are open and vulnerable to being hurt. Not only in the shedding of your blood in martyrdom, like St Simon and St Jude, but also in a death by a thousand insults, in the mortification of the flesh through repentance and faith, in persecution and slander, rejection and mockery, in the grievous endurance of various trials.
For your faith, given you as a gift of the Holy Spirit through the Word and doctrine of the blessed Apostles, is a precious and holy gift.
And it came at great Risk and Cost. Not in the laying down of your own life, nor in the sacrifice of the martyrs, but in our Lord Jesus Christ, who has exercised the greatest strength made perfect in weakness, in the greatest Love, by giving Himself for you and by laying down His life for you. He chose to do so. He has loved you in this way, not because you were His friend - but even while you were His enemy! - in order to befriend you. That is to say, Christ Jesus has befriended you precisely by and with and in His great love for you, in His atoning death upon the Cross and by His glorious Resurrection from the dead.
He has paid this Cost to love you and be your Friend. He has taken this Risk to open Himself to you, to reveal and give Himself to you, and to make Himself vulnerable.
This is the message of the prophet Jeremiah when the army of Babylon was at the gate of Jerusalem: in surrender you will live. This is the proclamation of all the blessed Apostles: in laying down your life, you shall keep it. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there will My servant be also. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him (Jn 12:25-26).
Christ Jesus has served and loved you in His obedience and loving service to His Father. For He hated His life in this world, and laying it down of His own accord, He has kept it in His resurrection until eternal life. In this way He has befriended you. And bestowed upon you His rebirth from above, enlivened to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to 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.
In this rejoice. As He has chosen and befriended you, in love, calling you to Himself by His Name, so you, now, are a friend of His. You live as He lives. You love as He loves. Bearing good fruits in His Name. Such fruits are the fruits of His Cross and they are the fruits of love: that you should love one another as Jesus loves you.
You have, to be sure, tasted the risks and paid the cost of such love and friendship. Once bitten, twice shy, you are tempted to flee from your neighbors; to retreat into yourself, to guard and protect yourself, by all means, and at all costs, from everyone else.
Now, for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
So do you take the risk of loving and serving and caring for your neighbor, whatever your vocation. You make yourself vulnerable and weak. You open yourself up to hurt and rejection. All for the sake of the love of God in Christ Jesus your Lord and your Friend.
This is what the Holy Apostles did - St Simon and St Jude, and the others. That is what they did and how they lived, in going forth and bearing the good fruits of the Cross according to their calling and appointing as preachers of Christ, like Jeremiah and the Old Testament prophets before them!
There was certainly a risk to being identified as a friend of Jesus. But loving Him, and loving the world for which He died, they preached faithfully in His Name, for which they too, like Him, were hated and persecuted and put to death.
Was it worth the risk? Worth the cost? Indeed it was!
It was not pointless or meaningless. The faithful preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of Christ’s Sacraments never is. It is foolishness to the world, to be sure; sometimes, sadly, even to others within the Church, but it is the very means by which the Holy Spirit works to create and sustain saving faith in you. Faith which is lived in passive righteousness before God, always receiving, and in active righteousness before the world, always serving in fervent love.
By this ministry of the Gospel, though hated and maligned and met with such violence, good fruit of the Cross was borne, and you, beloved, even you, were brought into the fellowship of this Holy Church, the doctrine of the blessed Apostles being the foundation, with Christ Jesus Himself the true Cornerstone.
Here you share in the same hope as St Simon and St Jude, and all the saints in heaven and earth, joined in the Holy Christian Church: the promise of the free and full forgiveness of all your sins and the hope of the Resurrection in Christ Jesus.
This Church is not a “safe space” in which you are free to continue in sin, to avoid the costs and risks of love and friendship, and to set aside the Cross of Christ.
But the Church, which is the Body of Christ the Crucified, is a refuge of repentance, in which you are saved from sin, and you are set free to bear the Cross in love.
This is the life to which He has appointed you. He knows the risks and the cots and the hurts and heartaches. He knows the disappointments and deep sorrows. He knows them because He has borne them and experienced them in Himself, in His Body on the Tree.
But God has raised Him from the dead! And so does He raise you, in and through your Holy Baptism and daily repentance to sin. And He welcomes you as His friend to His Table, to be seated with St Simon and St Jude, with the Twelve and all the saints, to partake of the Food for the journey, His very Life and Love, given for you in His Holy Sacrament. Here, dear ones, the Father gives to you, in the Name of Jesus, the answer to all your prayers that you may abide in Him and He in you unto eternal life.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
LSB 430 My Song is Love Unknown
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Precious little is known of these two Apostles, Simon and Jude. They are not among the pillars, as St Paul refers to St Peter, St James, and St John. Whenever the twelve apostles are listed, Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed our Lord, is listed last. This is an indictment against his sin, but also an acknowledgement that he was, indeed, an Apostle, as St Peter declares, He was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry (Acts 1:17).
Immediately before him, though, listed second and third to last, are St Simon, whose name is often appended the moniker, the Zealot. He was apparently part of the political movement associated with Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Judea to rebel against the Roman Empire. And St Jude, who was also known as Thaddeus; perhaps only to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot, because Jude is simply a shortened form of Judas.
Here’s where it gets really confusing: among the Twelve Apostles, now, there are two Johns, two Simons, one who is called Peter, two Judases, two Jameses, Bartholomew who has multiple names, Thomas, sometimes called Didymus, and Matthew, also known as Levi. It can be difficult to unravel the individual strands of each of these men.
Yet this much is known: St Simon and St Jude were Apostles. Which means, therefore, that they were witnesses to the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. They followed Him after His Baptism by the hands of St John in the Jordan River. They were with Him at Cana in Galilee where He turned water into wine. They assisted in the distribution of the loaves and fish at the feeding of the five thousand. They were present at the resurrection of Lazarus.
Above all, they were eye-witnesses of the events of Holy Week and Easter. They participated in the Palm Sunday procession. They were in the Upper Room when Jesus removed His outer garment, donned an apron, and taking the lowest place at the Table, washed their feet. They would have eaten the Supper with their Master and heard the farewell discourse on Holy Thursday, from which our Gospel text comes, at which St Jude asked, Lord, how is it that you will manifest Yourself to us, and not to world?” To which Jesus replied, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word, and My Father will love him, and We will come and make Our home with him (Jn 14:22-23).
They traveled with Him to the Mount of Olives and fled when the soldiers came with Judas to betray Him. They were in the Upper Room once more on Easter evening when the crucified and risen Christ Jesus appeared and manifested Himself to them, showing them His hands and His side. And again, the following Sunday when He invited St Thomas to touch and see.
They were catechized along with the Twelve concerning all that was written about Jesus in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms, and were given the command to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His Name unto the ends of the earth. They witnessed the Ascension of our Lord, participated in the election of Mathias to compete their number, and were present at the miracle of Pentecost when the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord poured out His Holy Spirit upon them and they proclaimed the praises of God in languages they had never studied.
They were also arrested with all the Apostles when the high priest jealously put them in public prison, but during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, Go and stand in the Temple and speak to the people all the words of this life (Acts 5:17-21).
According to the tradition of the Church, after the dispersion of the apostles, Saints Simon and Jude traveled together as far as Persia, bringing the message of salvation to any who would hear. While there, both of them suffered martyrdom for the holy name of Jesus.
All of this, dear Christians, serves to catechize us, according to their example, in the life of faith and love according to the Word of the Lord. For though we don’t know much about the personal details of these men, what we have exemplified for us is that their entire lives were intricately interwoven with the life, death, resurrection, and ongoing work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Indeed, this is what it means to be a friend of Jesus. And for Him to call you friend. There is great risk and substantial cost for such love and friendship. When you give yourself to and for another person, you not only expend yourself, but you are open and vulnerable to being hurt. Not only in the shedding of your blood in martyrdom, like St Simon and St Jude, but also in a death by a thousand insults, in the mortification of the flesh through repentance and faith, in persecution and slander, rejection and mockery, in the grievous endurance of various trials.
For your faith, given you as a gift of the Holy Spirit through the Word and doctrine of the blessed Apostles, is a precious and holy gift.
And it came at great Risk and Cost. Not in the laying down of your own life, nor in the sacrifice of the martyrs, but in our Lord Jesus Christ, who has exercised the greatest strength made perfect in weakness, in the greatest Love, by giving Himself for you and by laying down His life for you. He chose to do so. He has loved you in this way, not because you were His friend - but even while you were His enemy! - in order to befriend you. That is to say, Christ Jesus has befriended you precisely by and with and in His great love for you, in His atoning death upon the Cross and by His glorious Resurrection from the dead.
He has paid this Cost to love you and be your Friend. He has taken this Risk to open Himself to you, to reveal and give Himself to you, and to make Himself vulnerable.
This is the message of the prophet Jeremiah when the army of Babylon was at the gate of Jerusalem: in surrender you will live. This is the proclamation of all the blessed Apostles: in laying down your life, you shall keep it. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there will My servant be also. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him (Jn 12:25-26).
Christ Jesus has served and loved you in His obedience and loving service to His Father. For He hated His life in this world, and laying it down of His own accord, He has kept it in His resurrection until eternal life. In this way He has befriended you. And bestowed upon you His rebirth from above, enlivened to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to 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.
In this rejoice. As He has chosen and befriended you, in love, calling you to Himself by His Name, so you, now, are a friend of His. You live as He lives. You love as He loves. Bearing good fruits in His Name. Such fruits are the fruits of His Cross and they are the fruits of love: that you should love one another as Jesus loves you.
You have, to be sure, tasted the risks and paid the cost of such love and friendship. Once bitten, twice shy, you are tempted to flee from your neighbors; to retreat into yourself, to guard and protect yourself, by all means, and at all costs, from everyone else.
Now, for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
So do you take the risk of loving and serving and caring for your neighbor, whatever your vocation. You make yourself vulnerable and weak. You open yourself up to hurt and rejection. All for the sake of the love of God in Christ Jesus your Lord and your Friend.
This is what the Holy Apostles did - St Simon and St Jude, and the others. That is what they did and how they lived, in going forth and bearing the good fruits of the Cross according to their calling and appointing as preachers of Christ, like Jeremiah and the Old Testament prophets before them!
There was certainly a risk to being identified as a friend of Jesus. But loving Him, and loving the world for which He died, they preached faithfully in His Name, for which they too, like Him, were hated and persecuted and put to death.
Was it worth the risk? Worth the cost? Indeed it was!
It was not pointless or meaningless. The faithful preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of Christ’s Sacraments never is. It is foolishness to the world, to be sure; sometimes, sadly, even to others within the Church, but it is the very means by which the Holy Spirit works to create and sustain saving faith in you. Faith which is lived in passive righteousness before God, always receiving, and in active righteousness before the world, always serving in fervent love.
By this ministry of the Gospel, though hated and maligned and met with such violence, good fruit of the Cross was borne, and you, beloved, even you, were brought into the fellowship of this Holy Church, the doctrine of the blessed Apostles being the foundation, with Christ Jesus Himself the true Cornerstone.
Here you share in the same hope as St Simon and St Jude, and all the saints in heaven and earth, joined in the Holy Christian Church: the promise of the free and full forgiveness of all your sins and the hope of the Resurrection in Christ Jesus.
This Church is not a “safe space” in which you are free to continue in sin, to avoid the costs and risks of love and friendship, and to set aside the Cross of Christ.
But the Church, which is the Body of Christ the Crucified, is a refuge of repentance, in which you are saved from sin, and you are set free to bear the Cross in love.
This is the life to which He has appointed you. He knows the risks and the cots and the hurts and heartaches. He knows the disappointments and deep sorrows. He knows them because He has borne them and experienced them in Himself, in His Body on the Tree.
But God has raised Him from the dead! And so does He raise you, in and through your Holy Baptism and daily repentance to sin. And He welcomes you as His friend to His Table, to be seated with St Simon and St Jude, with the Twelve and all the saints, to partake of the Food for the journey, His very Life and Love, given for you in His Holy Sacrament. Here, dear ones, the Father gives to you, in the Name of Jesus, the answer to all your prayers that you may abide in Him and He in you unto eternal life.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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