Christ, our Redeemer from start to “it is finished”

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12  +  John 18:1-19:42

Today we celebrate the death of Christ our Lord, our Redeemer from start to finish. To celebrate something is to praise it and to make it famous. So, yes, we celebrate Jesus’ death, as we sang last night, The death of Jesus Christ, our Lord, We celebrate with one accord; It is our comfort in distress, Our heart’s sweet joy and happiness. 

The Christian Church celebrates something else today, too. March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, exactly 9 months before Christmas, the time required for the gestation of a human child. It celebrates the incarnation of Jesus, the start of our Lord’s human life, the day of our Lord’s conception by the Holy Spirit in the virgin’s womb. It’s said that the early Church recognized March 25th as the actual date of Christ’s crucifixion, and so they figured that other important events must have happened on that day, too, including Christ’s conception, Israel’s passage through the Red Sea, and even the creation of Adam.

Maybe. The dates are irrelevant. What matters is that everything truly comes full circle on Good Friday, and it’s truly worth celebrating.

God said to Adam, in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Adam ate from the forbidden tree, and in so doing, he earned death and condemnation for himself, and he became the father of an infected race—thoroughly infected with sin and corruption, so that all who are naturally born are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with the inclination to sin (Augsburg Confession: II). You weren’t born into this world innocent, or sinless, or neutral. God wasn’t waiting to see what you would do with your life, whether you would earn for yourself His condemnation or His praise. You started out life condemned and unable to do a single thing about it. Everyone does. That’s one of the most basic facts of the Christian faith.

But from the moment that Adam sinned—actually, from before the foundations of the world were laid—God set a plan of salvation in motion, a plan to redeem our fallen race—to buy us back, to rescue us from our slavery to sin, death, and the devil. And it all revolved around one Man who would be born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those who were under the law.

That redemption was pictured with the Passover Lamb, and with God miraculously parting the waters of the Red Sea, so that Israel could pass through, safe from the enemy army, crossing over from slavery to freedom, from death to life.

But the real redemption would not come through the blood of an animal, but through the blood of a spotless, sinless Man. Not one who was “naturally born,” of a father and a mother, as we are, for then He would have been born “with sin,” as we are. But a Man conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary. True God and true Man, conceived to be our Redeemer from sin.

Christ had many opportunities to turn back from being our Redeemer, to turn back from the cross, many opportunities to set aside the cup of suffering His Father gave Him to drink. But doing the will of God and becoming the Redeemer of the race He had chosen to make His own—that was His greatest desire.

So Jesus went through with it, every day of His life, from His conception by the Holy Spirit, to His birth of the virgin Mary, including the last day of His mortal life, when He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

And now, what? We sang it last night. He blotted out with His own blood The judgment that against us stood; He full atonement for us made, And all our debt He fully paid.

This is what we celebrate today, the perfect sacrifice that Jesus the Christ offered up to God to atone for our sins, and not only ours, but for the sins of the whole world, so that all people—from every nation, tribe, language and people—might plead the blood of Christ before the judgment of God, might flee in faith to Him, the Lamb of God, be baptized in His name, and thus cross over from death to life, forgiven, justified, and having a Father in heaven who is gracious and kind to us poor sinners for the sake of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

It is this Jesus whose conception and whose death we celebrate today, and, really, every time we gather together around His Word and Sacrament. And as we remember this week in our review of the Small Catechism, it is this Jesus Who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. Christ Jesus, our Redeemer, from start to “it is finished.” Amen.

 

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The Holy Supper of Christ: a Eucharist of Remembrance

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

1 Corinthians 11:23-32

As you know, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper often. Every Sunday. And in all three of these services between today and Sunday. And in practically every sermon, I urge you Christians, in the name of Christ, toward His Holy Supper, to that Holy Communion of the body and blood of Jesus. But today of all days, on this anniversary of Christ’s institution of the Sacrament of the Altar, we do well to consider what the Holy Supper is and what its benefits are.

What is the Sacrament of the Altar? We have a Catechism answer to that, and we’ll get to it in a moment. First, consider one of those other names we have for the Sacrament. It’s also known as the “Eucharist,” that is, the “Thanksgiving.” And, indeed, that’s exactly what it is: a Eucharist of remembrance.

What does Jesus do when He institutes this Supper? As He takes the bread and again as He takes the cup, He gives thanks. The Sacrament is Christ—and the people of Christ—giving thanks to God the Father for the gifts of bread and wine.

But more than that, since it comes out of the Old Testament Passover meal, it’s a thanksgiving for God’s deliverance of Israel by means of the Passover Lamb, whose blood kept them safe from death and ushered them out of slavery into freedom.

But more than that, it’s a New Covenant or New Testament in the blood of Christ. It’s a thanksgiving to God for providing a new and improved Passover (which we also call Easter)—a new Passover that leaves the first one way behind in the dust. Because we have a better Lamb—Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. In the Sacrament, Jesus gives thanks to His Father—and so do we—for sending Him to be the Lamb of God, for sending Him to suffer, for sending Him to lay down His life, for sending Him to give His body and shed His blood so that there can be blood to be painted on the doors of all hearts, to keep sinners safe from the condemnation they deserve.

But more than that, the Sacrament of the Altar is a thanksgiving for the fact that God is providing in this very meal a connection—a communion—between those who eat and drink, and the body and blood of Christ. What is the Sacrament of the Altar? It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ Himself for us Christians to eat and to drink. The once-for-all sacrifice of Christ is brought to us here, so that we might benefit from it, so that the forgiveness of sins that Christ earned for all might be applied to us here and now as we are made partakers of it, as we, with our sins, are brought into contact with the One who bore our sins on the cross. His death is applied to us; it becomes our death—the one we deserve. And His life is applied to us, too, so that we feed on the life of Christ. What do we call the Sacrament in our Confessions? The “medicine” against sin.

Truly this Sacrament is a Eucharist, a thanksgiving—Jesus giving thanks to His Father for giving Him a Church, a beloved Bride, for giving Him communicants who believe in Him and who benefit from His sacrifice; and we giving thanks to the Father for mercifully bringing us together with Christ, and forgiving our sins, and giving us life and salvation as a gift.

The Sacrament of the Altar is at the same time a remembrance. Not just a remembrance, as the Evangelicals, the Reformed, the Baptists imagine. For them, if they celebrate the Supper at all, they view it as a way of remembering that Jesus died on the cross some 2,000 years ago. That’s it. For them, His body and His blood are absent from the Sacrament, from the bread and the wine. They deny His very words, and that’s a very serious thing.

No, when Jesus calls it a “remembrance,” and when we use that word, we don’t mean that we’re calling the absent Jesus to mind. The fact is, the Sacrament of the Altar is the way in which Jesus specifically instructed His Christians to remember Him who is really present with us in the Sacrament.

We are to remember Him by taking bread, giving thanks, recognizing that this is the body of Christ that was once given for us on the cross and is now being given to us in the Sacrament. We are to remember Him by taking a cup of wine, giving thanks, and recognizing that this is the blood of the New Testament, once shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and now being administered to us for the forgiveness of sins.

Whenever you come to the Sacrament, remember the body and blood of Jesus, true God and true Man, crucified, beaten and bloodied and dead. Sacrificed. Making atonement. Earning forgiveness.

Remember that the body and blood of Christ were given and shed willingly, for you.

Remember Jesus, no longer dead, but risen and reigning.

Remember Jesus, who instituted this meal so that His people should be continually kept in communion with Him who died for us, should continually receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation.

Whenever you come to the Sacrament, you remember Jesus before the world, proclaiming His death till He comes.

But see, the remembrance He gives you to perform is not like the remembrance of a funeral, with somber sadness; not the remembrance of weeping or mourning, or of anger toward a world that hates Jesus and would crucify Him all over again, if they had the chance. The remembrance He gives us is a meal of bread and wine, body and blood; a meal of joy and gladness, a meal of forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Finally, it’s a meal of thanksgiving—a Eucharist—for one another, fellow believers in Christ who confess Him together as one; and most of all, a meal of thanksgiving to God our Father, and to our crucified and risen Lord Jesus. This is how we remember Him rightly and praise and worship Him for all eternity, as the Lamb who was slain for our redemption, as the Lamb who makes us partakers of His redemption, by making us partakers of Him in this Eucharist of remembrance, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup. Amen.

 

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The King comes lowly to save

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Palm Sunday

Philippians 2:5-11  +  Matthew 21:1-9

And so that Holy Week began, with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, with garments draped over the donkeys and carpeting the road, with palm branches waving and the crowds singing their praises to Jesus. And though Jesus didn’t speak a word to the crowds as He rode down the Mount of Olives and then up again toward the gates of the Holy City, He did communicate a powerful message to everyone by His choice of transportation. The prophet Zechariah had written centuries earlier: Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.

It seems that Jesus rode the colt. The colt’s mother was there for emphasis, so that no one could miss Zechariah’s prophecy, which mentions both the colt and his mother. These two donkeys cried out to Jerusalem, “Jesus is the Christ!”, without Him having to say a word.

As Zechariah informs us, Jesus is the King of Zion, the King of Jerusalem, the King of all God’s people, the Son of David, the Son of God. And now that He has suffered for us, God the Father has exalted Him to the highest place. There is no other true King. Every knee must bow to this One. Every tongue must confess this One as Lord. And all of humanity is divided in two by this King. There are those who are on the inside of His kingdom, and those who are on the outside; the blessed subjects of this King, and the cursed enemies of Him.

But who is who? Which is which? And how do people find themselves on the inside or on this outside of His kingdom? The donkeys tell us. There is a line from Zechariah’s prophecy that St. Matthew assumes we know: Behold, your King is coming to you. He is just and having salvation. This King doesn’t come on Palm Sunday to wipe out His enemies, or to acknowledge how good and righteous some people are. This King comes as the only one who is just, the only one who is righteous, the one who comes to bring righteousness to an unrighteous world, who comes to bring salvation to a world that needs saving, who comes to turn His enemies into His friends, to turn the children of wrath into the children of God.

He comes on a donkey to tell the world that He is “lowly.” Not the kind of “lowly” who is powerless before His enemies, but the kind of “lowly” who sets His power aside in order to allow Himself to be mistreated by His enemies, so that they might be saved. Not the kind of “lowly” who is inferior to others, but the kind of “lowly” who looks to the interests of others rather than to His own interests, who, as Paul said in today’s Epistle, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

People will sometimes depict Jesus as some kind of snobbish, snooty, looking-down-on-all-those-sinners kind of religious leader. But nothing could be further from the truth. He is lowly. He didn’t come on Palm Sunday to condemn sinners, but to show already-condemned sinners how they might change their status from condemned to justified, from lost to found, from perishing to saved.

For that, two things are required. One, that there be a sacrifice for sin, and not just any sacrifice, but a human sacrifice, and not just any human, but one who is sinless, one who is righteous, one who is innocent, one whose blood is so valuable that it’s worth more than all the blood and all the works and all the sins of all mankind. For condemned sinners to be saved, their salvation must be earned and paid for, not by them, but by the King. For condemned sinners to be saved, an atoning sacrifice must be offered: the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

And two, the sacrifice of the King must be applied to the sinner, counted to the sinner’s account. That happens through faith alone. Faith alone justifies, not because faith is some great work, but because through faith, Christ’s sacrifice is applied to sinful people. Faith is the conduit, the channel through which His righteousness flows to us and covers us. And we are brought into His kingdom. And there we are safe.

This week, we will continue to follow Jesus through that Holy Week when Christ our King earned salvation for us all. And through the Word that you hear and meditate on this week, and through the Sacrament that you receive, His saving work will be applied to you again, and God will strengthen your faith more and more. May God grant you a penitent heart and a sincere devotion throughout this Holy Week, so that you may raise your voices with joy, together the voices of the whole Church, Hosanna to the Son of David! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Hosanna in the highest! Amen.

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The foolishness that is the truth

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Judica – Lent 5

Hebrews 9:11-15  +  John 8:46-59

Four years ago today, on Judica Sunday, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, I submitted for publication my translation of Aegidius Hunnius’ Theses Opposed to Huberianism, from the year 1597. That was that little booklet in which Samuel Huber’s novel teaching of “universal justification” was exposed as fraud and rejected by Hunnius and the post-Reformation Lutheran Church. Hunnius demonstrated what the simple doctrine of the Lutheran Church—of the Christian Church—had always been. 1) All have sinned. 2) Christ died for all. 3) By His death, He made atonement for the sins of all. 4) He wants all men to be saved, not by earning our own salvation, but by trusting in Christ, who earned salvation for us. That is the Gospel. 5) His Holy Spirit works through the preaching of that Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments to create and sustain faith in Christ. 6) All who believe in Him are justified before God, forgiven, and saved. 7) All who do not believe in Him remain in their sins and remain under God’s condemnation, not justified, not forgiven, not saved.

That simple summary of Christ’s teaching, that simple truth, was called “foolishness” by the modern synods. It was called “heresy,” an “incomplete gospel,” “false teaching,” and therefore also, “demonic.” They mocked and ridiculed it. Why? Could they prove it wrong from Scripture? No, not at all. It’s the doctrine that permeates the Scriptures from beginning to end. They called it foolish because it didn’t agree with their human reason and their human philosophy, which had replaced the Word of Christ in their hearts.

But for others, for those who believed that Gospel, the ring of truth sounded loudly, and that very same summary of Christ’s teaching brought great comfort and great relief to troubled sinners, who recognized the voice of Christ and embraced it and would have gladly faced death rather than deny it.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Those words of St. Paul not only describe the situation we have encountered; they also describe exactly the situation we encounter in our Gospel, where we’re confronted with the foolishness that is the truth.

None of the Jews could convict Jesus of sin. He led a perfectly blameless life, before God and before the world. And none of the Jews could prove Jesus wrong from the Scriptures. On the contrary, the Old Testament Scriptures supported everything that Jesus was saying and doing. The inspired Word of God pointed straight to Jesus as the promised Messiah, the Christ. But they didn’t believe. They called His teaching foolish, even demonic.

Why? He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God. Oh, those words burned the Jews. That’s a direct accusation from Jesus, identifying, not only their unbelief, but what their unbelief signified—that they were not God’s children, but the devil’s seed. And the Jews got even angrier.

But to you who are of God, Jesus’ words are precious. You hear God’s words, that is, you hear and believe. When you hear Jesus offering Himself to the world as the Savior from sin, as the one who was crucified and raised from the dead, as the one who came as High Priest of the good things to come, as the one who is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance—when you hear that, it draws you to Jesus as your Mediator and brings you great comfort, because you know that, in clinging to Christ by faith, you have the forgiveness of your sins.

The Jews in our Gospel mocked Jesus in their anger: Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon? But Jesus answered, I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. And I do not seek My own glory; there is One who seeks and judges. More foolishness to the Jews, more unbelievable claims—that Jesus is the One who honors God the Father; that God the Father seeks glory for Jesus and, in fact, demands that all men honor the Son, just as they honor the Father; that God the Father will judge and condemn all those who seek Him apart from Jesus the Christ. Jesus spoke the simple truth to them, and they hated it and rejected it.

But to you who are of God, it’s blessed comfort to know that God the Father loved the world so that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You honor God the Father when you honor God the Son and hear His Words and believe them. And you know that you will not come into judgment, because Jesus said, He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

That’s especially comforting today, after our sister Mary Stacey breathed her last on Friday. And Jesus words in our Gospel are just as comforting: Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.

Now, to the Jews in the Gospel and to unbelievers in general, those words are foolish. How can Jesus say such things? Clearly everyone sees death. We see their lifeless bodies. We take them and bury them. Everyone dies, even the greatest saints in Holy Scripture, like Abraham. And yet Jesus says, If anyone keeps My word he shall never taste death.

Well, either Jesus is telling a demonic lie, or He is telling the truth. Unbelievers conclude that He is lying, that He is foolish to say such things. That death is permanent—the most dependable thing there is in this life (along with taxes, of course), and that Jesus can’t do a darn thing about it.

But believers conclude that He is telling the truth. And since we believe that Jesus is telling the truth, we believe that those who die as believers in Christ do not actually “see death” or “taste death.” That is, their souls experience none of the pain or punishment of hell, but are truly at peace with God, waiting expectantly for the day of resurrection when Christ will speak over their graves and wake them up from their sleep, just as Jesus did on many occasions during His ministry, just as Jesus Himself was raised from the dead.

The Jews in the Gospel made much of having Abraham as their ancestor. But Jesus claimed to be much more than Abraham’s descendant. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad. And, Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.

Understand the truth Jesus is speaking here. He is claiming to be, not just a descendant of Abraham, but the offspring of Abraham, the Seed of Abraham in whom all nations on earth will be blessed; True Man and the sole Heir of the Old Testament that God made with Abraham and with Israel; and also True God, Yahweh (Jehovah), the great I AM, the Word-Made-Flesh.

Such a claim will either strike a person as foolishness, or as the blessed truth. It struck the Jews as foolishness, and it made them so angry that they tried to kill Jesus on the spot, and eventually did succeed in putting Him to death. It still strikes most of the world as foolishness as people embrace any and every religion, any and every fable, myth, legend, philosophy, opinion or belief, except for the message of the cross: that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, the only Savior; that all are sinners and are justified solely by faith in Christ.

But that’s good news to you, isn’t it? Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. That is the Gospel by which we have been saved from condemnation and made heirs of eternal life. Don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t be afraid to confess it. And don’t worry about it when the world rejects you as foolish because of it. As St. Paul said, God has chosen the foolish things of this world to put to shame the wise.

The truth is, we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Let today’s Gospel make you bold to confess with the Apostle Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” Amen.

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A Shepherd who will feed you with Himself

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Laetare – Lent 4

Galatians 4:21-31  +  John 6:1-15

Every year we hear about the two times when Jesus miraculously fed thousands of His followers at once. During Lent we hear of the feeding of the 5,000, and during the summer we hear about the feeding of the 4,000. The feeding of the 4,000 emphasizes Jesus’ compassion for His believing people in providing for our earthly needs. Today’s Gospel of the feeding of the 5,000 emphasizes Jesus’ compassion for His people in providing for our souls.

Let’s consider the details of our Gospel from John 6.

Jesus had sought to get away from the crowds with His disciples for a little while. So He crossed the Sea of Galilee with them to a deserted place, as the other Evangelists inform us. But the crowds saw them leave and followed them on foot. This was a different crowd from the feeding of the 4,000, which would happen later. That crowd hung on Jesus’ words and listened to His teaching and stayed with Him in a deserted place, far from town, for several days. This crowd followed Jesus because they saw all the miraculous signs that Jesus was doing, and they wanted to see more. They were, as St. Mark tells us, like sheep without a shepherd. So Jesus had compassion on them. He was willing to be their Shepherd who would guide them into all truth and show them the path of eternal salvation—the path of repentance and faith in Him, the One sent from God to be the Savior of mankind.

At the end of the day, the apostles asked Jesus to dismiss the crowds so that they could go back to the city and get some food. But Jesus had one more lesson planned for the day, for His apostles, for the multitudes, and for us. He planned to feed them, not because they were starving—they’d only been with Him for the day, and they could have easily returned to the city to get food. He planned to feed them, not because they were poor or couldn’t afford to buy food—we have no idea how rich or poor any of these people were. No, He planned to feed them in order to teach them. The food was intended to be a sign pointing to much greater things.

First, it was a sign to teach them about their need, not for bread, but for Jesus. They were (again) like sheep without a Shepherd. They had a need to be rescued, because they all, like sheep, had gone astray. They had a need to be brought back into God’s sheepfold and to be guided and fed and protected by a Good Shepherd. They had a need that needed to be satisfied. And that need was caused by sin.

This is what God’s Law does. The Law doesn’t create sin. The Law simply reveals it. The Law doesn’t create death. It simply shows the reason for it. The Law reveals that what all people need, most of all, is the forgiveness of sins, and with it, the antidote to death.

But people live in denial of that sin. People imagine that what they really need is money. What they really need is friends. What they really need is a good education, a better government, a charismatic leader, a return to “the way things used to be,” material things so that we can have a better life on earth, a less painful life, a more prosperous life. In other words, people imagine that what they really need is bread.

  1. You need bread? Here’s bread. Bread for five thousand men, plus women and children, provided in an instant. Now, can we talk about more important things? Can we get past the bread? Can we talk about how your sins have separated you from God? How your obsession with earthly things is actually a symptom of your spiritual disease, how you don’t really fear God or love God with your whole heart or trust in God, but instead, you live for yourself and you trust in yourself and you think you’re doing fine, when really, you’re starving to death?

The second lesson Jesus was teaching the crowds, is that He was willing and able to satisfy their need. It’s what He came to do. He had righteousness enough to go around, as the One who would give Himself as a ransom for many, who would give Himself as the sacrifice for sin—the Good Shepherd, laying down His life for His sheep. As the sinless Son of God and Son of Man who would suffer and die on the cross, Jesus was doing the very things that would earn the forgiveness of sins for all men. He Himself was the living Bread sent down from heaven—as He would come right out and say on the next day—given to them to eat by believing in Him. And there would always be more than enough to satisfy their spiritual need, their need for God, their need for forgiveness, their need for a Shepherd to feed them and lead them and guide them. And, as the bread that Jesus provided on that day, it was all for free, not for sale. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

The third lesson from the feeding of the 5,000: Jesus was teaching the crowds how—in what way—He, the Bread of life, would give Himself to men to consume, and not just on one day, but every day. How did Jesus have the bread and fish given out? He gave it to His twelve apostles to distribute to the people. It’s through the ministry of the apostles that hungry sinners receive the Bread of life. Through the preaching of the Gospel, through the administration of the Sacraments. This is how the Bread of life is given to us so that we can receive Him and benefit from Him.

And along those same lines, notice what all four Evangelists emphasize after the 5,000 were fed. There were twelve baskets full of leftover pieces of bread. One basket for each of the apostles, again, emphasizing how Jesus would continue to be given to people, how the Bread of life would continue to be distributed to the world until the end of the world, through the apostolic ministry, through the ministry of the Word which is still carried out by those whom Christ has called to do it. Through the preaching of the Gospel, through the administration of the Sacraments, Jesus will continue to feed the nations with Himself until He comes again at the end of the age.

Don’t imagine for a moment that you missed out on this great miracle that Jesus performed when He fed the 5,000. The whole point of the miracle was that men of all nations, including you, should know that Jesus, who once gave Himself on the cross, is now giving Himself to you so that you may benefit from His sacrifice, so that you may hear and believe in Him and be rescued and fed and guided by Him as your Shepherd all the days of your life, so that you may dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

There’s a final warning for us at the end of this Gospel. The 5,000, who actually ate the bread and fish that Jesus provided, didn’t learn the lessons Jesus was teaching. They saw the sign Jesus performed and were so impressed by it…that they wanted to come and take Jesus by force and make Him their king. “Yes, this is what we want, every day! Bread to eat! Healthy bodies! Victory over our earthly enemies! Prosperity! This is the kind of shepherd we want—who will give us all these things!” But what did Jesus do, since He knew their plan? He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone. He wanted to have no part in their plans for earthly prosperity with Him at the helm. That’s not what He came to give.

People often seek that earthly prosperity, that emotional high, from Jesus and want nothing to do with His Word and Sacraments and spiritual gifts. “What’s that, Jesus? You want to give us forgiveness of sins? You want to mend our relationship with God? You want to do this through the preaching and teaching of sinful men? You want us to keep hearing Your Word and receiving Your Sacraments? That’s it? You want to give us spiritual things and not give us free bread every day, and perfect health, and a comfortable, prosperous life on earth? You didn’t come for that? Oh. No thanks. (But, I bet we can find a preacher who will tell us what we want to hear!)”

That’s what happened the next day, the day after our Gospel took place, as the rest of John chapter 6 reveals. Most of those 5,000 abandoned Jesus from that time on. And that’s the world we live in, too, a world that doesn’t want a Shepherd who will feed them with Himself. They have other priorities, other wants, other plans, other hopes. So the flock of Jesus the Good Shepherd, that wants to hear the truth, that wants to receive Him for the forgiveness of sins, remains little. So what? The important thing is not how many sheep remain, but that the flock most surely remains, and that Jesus remains here among us as our Shepherd, now risen from the dead. And here He gives Himself in the Word, even with His true body and blood in bread and wine. This is our reason to celebrate. This is the reason, on this Laetare Sunday, for the Church of Christ, “the Jerusalem above,” as St. Paul called it, to rejoice. Amen.

 

 

 

 

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