Christ is risen. Christ is King.

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord

Acts 1:1-11 + Mark 16:14-20

When doubts assail, when evil appears to triumph, when troubles abound, when the future seems hopeless, there is one short sentence that is able to break through the darkness, if you believe it: “Christ is risen.” Christ, who loved us and died for our sins, is risen from the dead, and lives forevermore. Death is defeated. Sin is atoned for. And life is assured to all who believe. You can always, always find comfort in Christ’s resurrection.

But Christ’s resurrection is only half of the comfort for the Christian. The other half is just as important, and it’s what His ascension into heaven is all about. Yes, Christ is risen. And, a truth that is just as important, Christ is King.

Before His ascension, the King gave His apostles a command, which is stated in various ways by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In Matthew’s Gospel: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

In Mark’s Gospel, which you heard this evening: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

In Luke’s account from his Gospel: Repentance and remission of sins must be preached in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

And in Luke’s account from Acts 1: You will be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

“Go, preach, teach, baptize, and testify!” Those are the King’s marching orders, to His apostles directly, and then, by extension, to His Church. Not that every member of the Church is told to do these things, but the Church, as it gathers around the ministry of the Word, is to call men, after the apostles, until the end of time, to do these things, each one in the place or the area where the King calls him through the Church. And because the King Himself has commanded it and authorized it, no one on earth has the right to tell them to stop going, preaching, teaching, baptizing, and testifying.

The King also attached a promise to this command. He said to His apostles: You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Ten days from then, to be exact, on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit would be poured out on them, giving them inner strength, assurance, and guidance to carry out the King’s command. He also attached another promise, as you heard in the Gospel: And these signs will follow those who believe: In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover. Miraculous outward signs, worked by the Holy Spirit, would accompany the apostles’ preaching among those who would believe. We see some of them already being displayed on the Day of Pentecost, and others throughout the first-century ministry of the apostles. Those signs weren’t meant to be repeated forever. Just until the foundation of the Church was built—on the foundation, St. Paul says, of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.

After giving and repeating His command and His promise over the course of forty days, the risen Christ then took His eleven apostles to the Mount of Olives—the same mount from which He began His Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem, the same mount where the Garden of Gethsemane is located—and was lifted up into the sky, while they were watching, and a cloud took him from their sight. Jesus wanted His apostles to see Him going to the Father, so that they would understand that this leaving was “permanent;” He wouldn’t keep appearing to them, as He had been doing for the past 40 days. The King was going back to the Father’s side in victory, having fulfilled His earthly mission of providing redemption for mankind. But His work for our salvation wasn’t done.

Mark tells us that Jesus ascended and “sat down at the right hand of God.” Paul tells us that the same Father who raised Christ from the dead also seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Christ ascended, not to abandon His church, but to reign over all things for the good of His Church. To be seated at the right hand of the Father is not to be restricted to a physical location, but to be given a position of ultimate power and honor in the heavenly realms, like a king sitting on a throne. And it is a throne, because Christ is King.

What is the King doing from that position of power and honor? Mark’s Gospel mentions one thing: The apostles went forth and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming the word with the accompanying signs. The Lord Jesus is not absent from His Church. He works with those whom He has sent to preach His Word. In the case of the apostles, it was the Lord Jesus who, by His Holy Spirit, performed those miraculous signs among those who believed. And notice what the signs were for! They were to “confirm the word.” A handful of men, mostly fishermen, sent out into the world couldn’t possibly convince anyone that their teaching was the only true teaching. But the power of the word itself, combined with the Lord’s outward confirmation of His word, brought men all over the world to faith in the Lord Jesus.

Today, the King still works with the preachers, or else no one would believe. His promise was to be with us always, to the very end of the age. It is still He who works through the members of the Church to call men into the preaching office, who guides and teaches them, and who works through their ministry. Wherever the ministry of word and Sacraments is being carried out, Christ, the King, is working. That’s part of His reign.

And wherever people hear and believe the Gospel and are integrated into the Church of Christ, that is where Christ reigns. That is His kingdom. His kingdom is not, has never been, and never will be an earthly kind of kingdom. When the apostles asked, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?, they showed that they still didn’t understand Christ’s kingdom. They still held to the “Jewish opinion” that the Christ would set up an earthly kingdom, whose capital was Jerusalem, that His kingdom was a matter of establishing justice and righteousness among men. But the truth is, Christ’s kingdom is not any earthly government or earthly society. It’s the Christian Church, which is made up of all who believe in Christ Jesus. As Luther puts it in the Catechism: How does God’s kingdom come? When the heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word, and lead godly lives, here in time and there in eternity.

But that’s not to say that Christ doesn’t also rule over the secular kingdoms of the world. He does. But He does it in the hidden ways of God, just as He reigns invisibly even over the devil and his demons so that they cannot do all the harm they wish they could do. The King reigns in the world, not to establish justice on earth, but to preserve His saints even in the midst of injustice, and to build His Church, seeing to it that the Gospel is still being preached, in spite of the devil’s opposition and interference, and that the souls who will believe it are still hearing the Gospel and still being served by it, in spite of the world’s desire to snuff it out.

And if the King reigns over the world that hates Him, how much more zealously does He reign over those who love Him, in the lives of each one of His kingdom-subjects, whom He has made members of His own body, for His beloved Christians—mediating for you, interceding for you, advocating for you at the Father’s right hand, justifying you, sanctifying you, preserving you, and guiding you, from the cradle to the grave, and to the life that awaits after that.

So when doubts assail, when evil appears to triumph, when troubles abound, when the future seems hopeless, remember the two short sentences that will shatter all the darkness around you: Christ is risen. And Christ is King. Long may He live! And long live all the subjects of His kingdom! Amen.

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In the day of trouble, pray!

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Easter 5

James 1:22-27 + John 16:23-30

What do you do when you have troubles, or are in trouble? What do you do when things are falling apart, and all appears hopeless? What do you do when you have some great need? There are two things a Christian should always do in such times, and sometimes there’s a third. The first thing is to turn to God’s Word, both reading it and hearing it preached. The second thing is to turn to God in prayer. Pray to your Father in heaven, which is the theme of this Sunday in the Church year. The third thing, if it’s available, is to do something about your trouble. If you need a job, don’t just read and pray. Go look for a job! If you’re hungry, don’t just read and pray. Eat something, if you can! If you’re injured, don’t just read and pray. Seek medical attention! Sometimes there are things you can do about your troubles. But often times there isn’t much you can do about them. There are some problems that you can’t fix. And so you’re left with the first two things, which are very powerful things. Let your troubles drive you back to, into God’s Word. And then turn to God in prayer.

What is prayer? Christian prayer, Biblical prayer, is talking to God, pouring out your heart to God, calling upon God for help in the day of trouble, whatever the trouble may be, asking God for the things you need. We begin every Sunday service with a prayer, an invocation, calling upon the name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—to receive our worship, to hear our prayers, and to bless our hearing of His Word. Prayer is only and can only be directed toward God, because prayer presupposes that God knows you, whoever you are, and can actually hear you, wherever you are, and that He can hear and attend to, not only you and your prayer, but every human being who is praying at the exact same time. Only God, who has the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, can do such a thing.

Who can pray? Not just anyone. The one who prays to a false god provokes the true God’s wrath. The one who prays while doubting that God hears, or while doubting God’s goodness, cannot actually pray. As James says in his epistle, If any of you (that is, you believers in Jesus) lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

So who can actually pray? Only the one who knows and who believes in the true God. Which is the same thing as to say, only the one who believes that God the Father sent His only-begotten Son Jesus into human flesh, to redeem mankind from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Only the one who believes in Jesus, who died for us on the cross, and rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, back to the Father’s side. Only the one who uses Christ as our Mediator before the Father’s throne and trusts that He will hear and help. To everyone else, the Father holds up His hand and says, “I will not hear you, apart from My Son, because you are a sinner. But through Him, I will hear you, even though you are a sinner, because, through faith in Him, I account you to not be a sinner. Approach Me through Him, and you will always have My ear!”

Why? Because the Father himself loves you, Jesus says to His disciples, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. The word for “love” in this verse is not the love God has for all men, the sincere devotion He has toward all men, desiring their salvation. No, the word for “love” here is the love of friendship, of fellowship, of common interests and common likes. The Father will hear the prayers of those who love Jesus, because He loves and accepts them as His own dear children for Jesus’ sake.

So ask!, Jesus says. Pray to the Father and ask for help in My name, and you will receive. You will receive exactly the help you need, even if it’s not exactly the specific help you asked for.

And how do we pray in Jesus’ name? It starts with using Christ as your Mediator, going to the Father through Him, trusting that the Father will hear you, not because you have earned His favor, but for Christ’s sake, because Christ has earned His favor, and His ear, for you.

Then it means to pray as Jesus prayed, trusting in the Father’s love, trusting in the Father’s goodness, trusting in the Father’s wisdom, trusting in the Father’s plan. Ask for the things you need in the day of trouble, in the day of sorrow, and trust that your Father cares and knows how best to send help, and that you will receive from Him the best help, the best fulfillment, even if the fulfillment looks different than what you specifically asked for. Trust, and also, submit to God’s care, as Jesus also did in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He prayed, “O Father, take this cup from Me! Yet not My will, but Your will be done.”

So. Are you in trouble, or do you have troubles? Pray! Are you sad, or lonely? Pray! Are you depressed, or confused about the future? Pray! Do you have a need? Pray! Are you thankful? Pray. Have you sinned? Pray, in Jesus’ name. Moms and dads, pray for your children! Children, pray for your mom and dad! Husbands and wives, pray for each other. Church members, pray for your fellow church members, and for all Christians everywhere, and for the non-Christian, too, who has no right or ability to pray for himself.

And, of course, if there is something you can do about your situation, take the strength and the wisdom God will give and do it. And, of course, don’t neglect the reading and the hearing of God’s Word. That should go without saying. Prayer that is not grounded in who God is, what He has done, what He has commanded, and what He has promised, as revealed in Scripture, is prayer without a foundation. But combine your study of Scripture with prayer. And you will have a powerful remedy in the day of trouble. Call upon Me in the day of trouble, says the LordGod. I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me. Amen.

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God reconciles the world through the ministry of the Spirit

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the week of Easter 4

2 Corinthians 5:14-21

We’ve been talking in Bible class recently about atonement and reconciliation. Well, we have both of them before us this evening in St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian Christians. “One died for all.” That’s atonement. “Be reconciled to God!” That’s, obviously, reconciliation. And what is it that ties the one to the other, the bridge between the atonement Christ made on the cross and the reconciliation of the sinners for whom Christ died? The answer? The office of the holy ministry, the ministry of reconciliation—the same ministry we talked about on Sunday morning, where Jesus promised the help of the Holy Spirit, who would work effectively through His chosen ministers. Let’s take a brief look at these verses, where we find that God reconciles the world through the ministry of the Spirit.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died. And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. The “us” here is Paul and the other ministers of the Gospel. What compels them to preach? What compels them to face one hardship after another, many of which Paul lists in this epistle? What compels them to even risk their lives, and give up their lives, in order to keep going out and preaching the Gospel? “The love of Christ compels us,” Paul says. If Christ loved the world enough to die for the world, then clearly He also wants the world to hear the Gospel and be reconciled to Him. And if Christ loved us enough to die for us, and if He has also made us alive by sending His Spirit, in the Gospel to bring us to faith, then how can we not face the hardships that go along with the ministry? How can we not take the Gospel to the world? How can we not preach? We must do these things! Because we no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. Every Christian must live for Christ, in every vocation. And for a minister whom Christ has sent out to preach, living for Him means carrying out his God-given ministry in the world, no matter the cost.

Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. In other words, since Christ died for all, and we live to serve Christ, we don’t care about external, fleshly attributes. It doesn’t matter if a person is Jewish or Gentile, old, young, rich, poor, male, or female. It doesn’t matter what country a person is from, or what the color of his skin happens to be, or what language he happens to speak. These are all earthly things, fleshly things. And we who are in Christ, we believers, and, in Paul’s case, we ministers, refuse to think of people that way anymore, as if those fleshly things were their most important quality. The most important thing now is being “in Christ,” which is what happens when a person hears the Gospel, repents of his sins, and believes in Christ. He is grafted into Christ, baptized into Christ. He is a “new creation.” All the old things about that person have passed away, not into non-existence, but into non-importance. Christ died for all, made atonement for every human being, and wants all men to be saved. That’s, by far, the thing that matters most about any person.

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. All these things come from God—the atonement Christ made, bringing people to spiritual life through faith, and remaking that person into a new creation. The apostles themselves were among the first to receive those gifts. Paul isn’t speaking about all people in this verse; he’s speaking about the order of things for himself and the other apostles and ministers. God “has reconciled us to Himself and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” The same ones who were reconciled to God have been given this ministry of reconciling others to God. Paul’s own story is well-known. He was an enemy of God when he was persecuting the Church. But God found him on that road to Damascus and converted him, bringing him to repentance and faith in Christ, and having him baptized by Ananias. And then God immediately made him a minister to the Gentiles. Each minister had own story of being reconciled to God when the Gospel of Christ was preached to him. And then each one of them, once they were changed from God’s enemies into His beloved children, was also given a ministry, an office, an official calling to go and reconcile others to God by preaching that same Gospel to them.

that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. God was in Christ. “The Father is in Me,” Jesus said, “and I in Him.” What Jesus does, the Father does. So when Jesus called out to the world, “Repent and believe the good news!,” that was God Himself calling out. When Jesus, through His preaching, brought sinners to repentance and faith, and forgave them their sins, and reconciled them to Himself, He was reconciling them to God. When Christ reconciled the Jewish tax collectors and sinners to Himself, they were being reconciled to God. And as you know, Jesus didn’t restrict His reconciling ministry to the Jews only. God was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself, inviting all people, Jews and Gentiles, to believe in the Lord Jesus and be reconciled to God through Him.

But that ministry of reconciliation didn’t stop with Jesus. He appointed the apostles to carry out the exact same ministry. “As the Father has sent Me,” He said on Easter Sunday, “so I also send you.” And so Paul says, Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. “We” does not mean all people. It’s doesn’t even mean all Christians. We refers to the apostles, to the “sent ones,” to the ministers sent out with the authority of Jesus Himself to speak in His name and to act in His name, as official ambassadors of Christ, to forgive sins to the penitent, to reconcile sinners to God, in the stead, in the place of Christ.

We implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This is the word of reconciliation that has been going out since the Day of Pentecost: We, God’s appointed ministers, implore you, the people of the world: Be reconciled to God! How? By confessing your sins, and by believing in the One, Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, who was sinless and righteous, who was “made sin” for us all, that is, who took our place as sinners under God’s wrath and received the punishment we all deserve—who gave His life as the atoning sacrifice for our sins—so that we might be brought into Him through faith, clothed with Him through Holy Baptism, and so be counted righteous in the sight of the righteous God.

This is, and has always been, the way in which God reconciles the world to Himself, through the ministry of the Spirit. All of us here have been made the righteousness of God through that same ministry. All of you have been reconciled to God through this ministry, and are no longer counted as His enemies, but as His beloved sons and daughters. This is the ministry you support with your prayers, with your offerings, with your attendance at these services where the ministry is carried out, and with your ongoing encouragement. You may not see or understand most of what God is doing in this world, but this much you have to believe: God is reconciling the world to Himself through the ministry of the Spirit, and He will see to it that the work continues, until every one of the elect, of those who will believe the Gospel, is reached with the Gospel, until His Church is completely built. Amen.

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The only sword God has given His Church

Posted on May 3, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Easter 4 – Cantate

James 1:16-21 + John 16:5-15

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, on the same night on which He was betrayed, announced to His disciples that He was leaving them (in a sense), that He was going away to the Father, who had sent Him, the eternal Son of God, from heaven, into human flesh, to redeem mankind from sin, death, and the devil. Within 24 hours, He would shed the blood that would be the redemption price, and within 72 hours He would reappear to His disciples, risen from the dead. But He was already looking past all that, to the day of His ascension into heaven, six weeks, to the day, from that Maundy Thursday. Last week we talked about the sorrows Jesus’ disciples, and all Christians, would face after His ascension, and about Jesus’ promise that the temporary sorrows would be replaced by endless joy. In today’s Gospel, the focus is on the help Christ’s Church would receive after His ascension: the help of the Holy Spirit.

Now, in these troubled times in which we live, in these days when violence fills the earth, and is coming closer and closer to home, when wars are raging and anger is building, there are voices out there, tempting Christians to use force, to “take back our nation,” to take up the sword, to climb the ladders of power, to kill or otherwise get rid of the aggressors before they can kill us, or, if not to do it personally, then to angrily cheer on those who do the killing “to keep us safe.” It’s true that God has established the secular government to keep order in our sin-ravaged societies, to protect the innocent and to punish the evildoer within its own jurisdiction, even to use the sword to put to death the one who threatens the innocent or is guilty of great wickedness, and it’s good to acknowledge that fact and to give thanks to God for it, when the sword is actually wielded justly. But it’s vital to acknowledge that that is not a sword that the Lord has placed into the hands of His Christians, as Christians, nor does He call upon us to take pleasure in the death of the wicked, because He doesn’t. He hasn’t given His Church the responsibility or the right to take back our civilization, or to fight for our earthly way of life. He has given us only one sword to use, and that is the sword of the Spirit, which is the mighty Word of God, and it’s that powerful weapon about which Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel.

So. On to the Gospel. Jesus is going away to the Father, and that knowledge has made His disciples sorrowful. But, He says, I tell you the truth: It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Jesus chose not to remain on this earth in person for the next two thousand years. He hadn’t come to set up an earthly kind of kingdom. He hadn’t come to wield the sword, to start a war, to force the nations to comply with justice or with His plans, nor had He come to teach His Church to do such things. He came to pay for our sins by giving Himself up to His enemies and allowing them to put Him to death. And His reign at the right hand of the Father, over the coming millennia, would be carried out on earth through the sword of the Spirit, who is called the Advocate, or the Helper, or the Counselor, or the Comforter—all valid meanings of this word “paraclete” in Greek. According to Jesus, it’s better, it’s more advantageous for His Church to have the help of the Holy Spirit than to have Jesus here in person.

Well, that means that the Spirit must truly be great, and powerful, and helpful. And, of course, He is, being the third Person of the Holy Trinity, as much “God” as is God the Father and God the Son. Here in our Gospel, Jesus outlines two main tasks that God the Holy Spirit would accomplish in the world. He will “convict the world,” and He will guide the Church in the truth.

When he comes, he will convict the world, or, show the world its fault concerning sin, and concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment. First of all, notice how the Spirit works. He shows fault. He convicts. And He does it, not through violence, not by the sword, but through words, through preaching, through the preaching of the apostles and those who have come after them. They would speak, but the Spirit would empower and work through their preaching to convict, to drive home to the unbelievers in the world their faulty way of thinking.

Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. The unbelieving world doesn’t like to acknowledge its sin. People can justify just about any behavior, and any attitude. But the Spirit says, All have sinned against God. And the soul that sins shall die. But, the Spirit also says that not all are counted as sinners by God. Jesus came and paid for our sins. And now, where there is faith in Jesus, God no longer counts sin against a person. Instead, He counts righteousness to the believer in Christ. He justifies the believer. But since the world does not believe in Jesus, the world must still answer for its own sin, and that answering will be done forever in the fires of hell.

He will convict the world concerning righteousness, because I go to my Father and you will see me no longer. It’s a somewhat cryptic statement, as many of Jesus’ last-minute teachings to His disciples were. The world is wrong about righteousness. People think they can be righteous enough to earn God’s favor, by living a decent life, by doing enough good deeds. For that matter, people think they can worship any god, however they want, however their own unique culture or belief system has chosen to worship him (or them!). They call themselves righteous. But the Spirit of truth reveals the truth: The only righteousness that counts before God is the righteousness of Jesus Himself. There is no one righteous, says the Spirit, except for Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. Where He is, there is righteousness. But He has gone to His Father and cannot be seen in this world anymore. How can anyone have access to His righteousness? Only by faith in Him, which, again, comes only by the ministry of His Gospel, which is the power of God, the sword of the Spirit, which both slays the unbeliever and brings some of those unbelievers to faith in the Son of God.

And He will convict the world concerning judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. Notice, once more, no swords flashing, no political ambitions, no improving of society. No, the sword of the Spirit alone will be unleashed on the world as the Spirit, through the preaching of the Word of God, shows the world its fault concerning judgment. The world thinks it will escape judgment. The world judges Christians to be the problem, the intolerant, hateful, unscientific, hypocritical troublers of this world. But the Spirit pushes back through the word of God and exposes the world for its fraud, and announces the coming judgment against every unbeliever, because the prince of this world is already judged. The devil has been tried and convicted in God’s courtroom. He’s been defeated by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Whoever is found to be on Jesus’ side on the Last Day will be safe from judgment. But whoever remains on the devil’s side will share in the devil’s judgment

And so the work of the Spirit will be to work through the apostles’ preaching in this world, right up until the Last Day, as the Church of God wields the sword of the Spirit, the powerful word of God. Of course, if the Spirit is to work through our preaching, then we’d better make sure we’re preaching nothing but the Word of God—not the traditions of men, not the ideas of philosophers, not the made-up doctrines that tragically fill the earth. That’s the devil’s doing, when the Church, that is supposed to be wielding the sword of the Spirit, ends up wielding manmade lies that conform to this world instead of exposing the world’s sin, and instead of highlighting the salvation that is found in Christ alone.

The other work of the Spirit that Jesus talks about in today’s Gospel is the guidance He would provide for the apostles, and for the Church after them.

When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand so many of His sayings. As we heard last week, they were confused and full of questions, and there wasn’t time for Jesus to explain everything, nor was that ever the plan anyway. The plan was for always for the Holy Spirit to come and to guide them, to guide them, not, for the most part, to new revelations, but chiefly to the understanding of old revelations, the understanding of the Spirit’s inspired words in the Old Testament, the understanding of Jesus’ words, and of the significance of all of it for the Church and for the world.

The apostles were the direct recipients of the Spirit’s guidance. Throughout their lifetimes, the Spirit formed and guided the Christian Church, laying the foundation that would remain in place until Jesus returns. But after the foundation is laid, no new foundation can be laid. No new doctrines can be added. No new practices can be instituted as binding or as necessary. The apostles wielded the sword of the Spirit by teaching the Church, as the Spirit guided them.

Now we, too, wield the Spirit’s sword as we are guided by the Holy Spirit, the Advocate who still lives within and among us Christians. Even as He guided the apostles to understand the Old Testament Scriptures, so He guides us to understand both the Old and the New Testament Scriptures, so that we know the truth, stand on the truth, and wield the truth of God’s Word as our only weapon in the world.

The only sword God has given to the Church is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. And it is a mighty weapon, a weapon whose purpose is not to force this world into compliance with Christianity, but to serve as a witness against the unbelieving, and as the Holy Spirit’s tool for bringing some of those unbelieving to repentance, to the Holy Christian Church, until the day when Jesus returns from the Father’s side to bring us into the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, into the true home of righteousness. Amen.

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Just a little while and things will get better

Posted on April 26, 2026 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Easter 3

1 Peter 2:11-20 + John 16:16-23

When you read a story for the first time, not knowing what happens next, you probably won’t catch the author’s full meaning as you’re going along. He’s likely dropping hints and clues, leaving open several possible outcomes, and including all sorts of details that you can only appreciate later on, after events unfold. Early on in the story, you don’t know the purpose of many of the setbacks and hardships that the main characters suffer, or where they’ll end up. Only later does it begin to make sense, when the author shows you where he was going all along. The early part of the story is usually characterized by question marks and confusion, on the reader’s part, and on the part of the characters themselves.

The same thing is true of the Christian life, where God is the Author, and we don’t know what, exactly, comes next. And if we don’t know what comes next, if we still have confusion and question marks, just try to imagine what it was like for Jesus’ disciples in the upper room on Maundy Thursday, just hours before Jesus would be betrayed, listening to Him—the Author—describe the future to them. We’re two thousand pages farther along in the story than they were. We have two thousand years of seeing how things played out, including on Good Friday, and, even more importantly, Easter Sunday. If we still have questions, you can understand why they were still so confused.

But even without knowing the details ahead of time, there is something you can know ahead of time, and that’s the point that Jesus is making with His disciples in today’s Gospel from Maundy Thursday. Life will be hard for a time. But in just a little while, things will get better.

“A little while, and you will not see me. And again, a little while, and you will see me, because I am going to the Father.” They didn’t understand what He was talking about. They had questions, and they were afraid to ask, so He goes on to explain, although still somewhat mysteriously. Jesus said to them, “You are asking one another about what I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see me. And again, a little while, and you will see me.’ Truly, truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.

There is a fulfillment of these words in Jesus’ suffering and resurrection. In a little while, within a few hours, Jesus would be taken away from them, arrested, tried, tortured, convicted, crucified, and buried. During that time, Jesus’ disciples would be sorrowful, while the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles would rejoice. The disciples would be sad, but then things would get better, when Jesus appeared to them again, in that same upper room, on Easter Sunday evening. And then they would rejoice, just as Jesus promised.

But on that evening, when Jesus talked about going away, He wasn’t only talking about going away to death and the grave. He was also talking about going away to His Father in heaven, visibly leaving this world behind until He returns at the end of the age. In a little while, that is, in 43 short days, they wouldn’t see Him anymore during their earthly lifetimes. And during that time, for the rest of their earthly lives, they would know many times of sorrow, as they and their fellow Christians faced hatred, persecution, and death. During that time, the world would rejoice, because the world would think it had gotten rid of Jesus for good, and so they could do as they pleased with Jesus’ followers, too.

And yet, Jesus says that, in a little while, His disciples would see Him, and their sorrow would be turned into joy. Things would get better! When they closed their eyes in the sleep of Christian death, if even that death were a violent one, at the hands of wicked men, their souls would be taken to Paradise, where they would see Jesus again after the sorrow of this life was done. And things will get even better, when Jesus returns at the end of the age, when all things reach their goal, and evil is destroyed, and death is swallowed up forever, when God will put an end to all sorrow and wipe away every tear from every believer’s eyes.

So there are three fulfillments of Jesus’ saying: at the time of Easter Sunday (for the original disciples), at the time of their earthly death, and at the end of the age which is still to come. But there is yet a fourth fulfillment of Jesus’ mysterious statement.

The life of every Christian is dotted with little whiles of sorrow, when, for His own reasons, God allows His children to experience sadness and sorrow and even near-despair—not the same for everyone, and that alone may cause sorrow for some! “If I’m sorrowful, what about those people?” But even those little whiles will eventually be replaced with something better. After we struggle through those difficult times, after we’re driven back to Scripture, and prayer, and humility, and meditation on God’s faithfulness, the Lord Jesus sends His Spirit again to bring comfort and joy. Here’s how Paul describes it in Romans 5: Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Do you see what this means? As we make our way through the story of this life, not knowing exactly how things turn out, we’ve been given some vital information along the way, and promises from God to accompany that information. You may be confused about the future. You may have plenty of questions. But what do we know? We know that God gave His Son into death for our sins, and that our Savior was raised back to life, and that He now lives to reign on our behalf and to justify and sanctify believers. If you believe that, then you already know that things got better for us when Jesus rose from the dead, and better still when He grafted you into Himself through Holy Baptism, forgiving you your sins and granting you eternal life.

What else do we know? We know that, no matter what sorrows we may experience in this life, things will get, not worse, but better when we fall asleep in the sleep of Christian death. And we know things will get better still on the Last Day, when Jesus raises all the dead and brings us into the home of heavenly righteousness.

What else do we know about this story? We know that, in the midst of our sorrows here, God intersperses moments of healing and comfort and joy, when the Holy Spirit allows us to experience again the joy of His salvation, to see that God truly is working all things together for good to those who love Him.

In a little while, things will get better. And not just a little better! As Jesus says, A woman has sorrow when she is giving birth, because her hour has come. But as soon as she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of her joy that a human being has been born into the world. So it is that you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. When a woman gives birth to a healthy child, things don’t just get a little better. The life that results from the labor of childbirth is immeasurably better than that brief time of painful labor, and more than worth it, as every mother knows. So, too, the sorrows we face in the story along the way will not be worth comparing with the glory to be revealed in us, as St. Paul writes to the Romans. Things will get immeasurably better when this story reaches its end, and the story of the new heavens and the new earth finally begins.

For now, knowing all that, God says, Be still. Be still, and know that I am God. In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. May the Holy Spirit carry these words deep into your heart today, so that you know for certain that what Jesus says is true. Things will get better. In just a little while. Amen.

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