In Christ

Jesu Juva

Ephesians 1:3-14                                                 

July 14, 2024

Proper 10B                      

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        I don’t care much for Bible trivia.  I think Bible trivia trivializes the Bible—reduces it down to obscure factoids, instead of the living, active, powerful Word of God.  But, nevertheless, here’s a little Bible trivia:  Do you know the shortest verse in the Bible? “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).  That’s the verse that every confirmation student only wishes I would assign for memorization.  But if I assigned the shortest sentence in the Scriptures I should also probably assign the longest sentence in the Scriptures—just to balance things out.

        What is the longest sentence in the Scriptures?  You probably don’t know, because all the English translations take this super-sized sentence and break it up into smaller chunks, to make it a little more manageable.  You heard it just a few minutes ago from Ephesians chapter one.  That long river of rhetoric from St. Paul is really just one, ginormous run-on sentence.  With clause after clause, this sentence just keeps going and going and going.  It’s a sentence long enough to make the hair of most English teachers stand straight up.  It’s a sentence that defies diagramming. 

        But at the heart of this massive collection of clauses is Jesus. For at least ten times by my count, this sentence is punctuated by the phrase, “in Christ” or “in Him.”  Paul uses this phrase “in Christ” repeatedly to show us where the action is.  It’s not in you or in me.  We were dead in trespasses and sin; and Paul gets to that in chapter two.  But here, the action is all “in Christ.”  That’s right where faith needs to be focused.  For if you take away all the “in Christs,” well, then the whole sentence collapses, crashes and burns.  But in Christ, this long sentence is a run-on river of blessing, splashing hope and joy into the ears and hearts of all who hear it.

        Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  That’s where your blessings are.  Not in yourselves but in Christ.  Not in earthly places, but in the heavenly places.  When it comes to earthly blessings like money and friends and good government, you never know what you’re going to get.  God gives more earthly blessings to some, and fewer earthly blessings to others.  But when it comes to spiritual blessings, you get the whole package.  “Every spiritual blessing” is yours in Christ.  Faith, forgiveness, everlasting life, peace that passes understanding—You have it all.  God withholds no spiritual blessing from you.

        How do you rate such spiritual blessings?  Because in Christ you were chosen.  He chose us.  In Christ you have been adopted.  The adoption papers have been signed, sealed and delivered.  You’re in!  But it’s not because we’re so lovable or adorable.  It’s not as though God were looking for a pet poodle from the Humane Society—“Oh, this one’s adorable.  I think I’ll choose this one to be mine.”  Nope.  Your God only adopts the “unadoptable,” the unlovable, wretched sinners destined for damnation.  Nor does God say, “Now you be good and then I’ll adopt you.”  God says, “You’re mine.  I’ve adopted you.  Now live like my child because that’s exactly who you are.”

        This adoption of yours was in the works for a long, long time.  In fact, you were predestined for adoption.  “Before the foundation of the world,” God had your salvation in mind.  Please notice that no one is predestined in wrath—only in love.  Predestination is a one-way deal—in love, in Christ, to become God’s child.  If anyone goes to hell (and some do), it is entirely against the loving will and purposes of God. 

        Some Christians have it wrong.  They believe in “double-predestination,” that God tells some “you’re in” and to others He says, “You’re out.”  Wrong.  God’s deep desire—God’s will—is for all to be saved.  The reason some aren’t saved is because they themselves reject God’s grace in Christ.  Those who reject Christ are not in Christ, but apart from Christ.  And apart from Jesus Christ there is no salvation.

        Now we’ve arrived at the white hot core of this long, long sentence.  At the center of the sentence Paul writes:  In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.  At the center of the sentence is the cross of Christ.  The blood He shed there is the blood that buys you back, the blood that covers your sin, the blood that cleans up the mess you’ve made of your messed-up life.  This blood is the very same blood which He places in our mouths for the forgiveness of sins, in the Lord’s Supper.  To be “in Christ” means that the blood of Jesus avails for you.  It means that you will be among that great heavenly multitude who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

        It’s all one long sentence, to be sure, but I think some of the best parts have been saved up for last.  Nearing the end of this sentence, all this wonderful news gets delivered to you personally.  This run-on sentence runs on to you—runs into your life with the waters of Holy Baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Paul says it better, starting with another “in Christ.”  In Christ you also . . . were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.”  Frankly, if this super sentence didn’t  run on to include this last part, we might be tempted to write it off as abstract theology—you know, something to debate over a latte at Starbucks or to write about in a term paper on world religions.  But I’m here to tell you that in Christ there is no such thing as abstract theology.  Because everything IN CHRIST is intended FOR YOU.

        St. Paul describes what it is you get with the incredibly important word, “inheritance.”  In Christ, you have an inheritance.  That’s a gospel word—a gift word.  How do you get an inheritance?  You don’t earn it like you do a paycheck.  No, someone has to die and leave it to you because you were in the decedent’s good graces.  That’s how you get an inheritance.  What you received in your baptism is a down-payment on that inheritance—a first installment with a guarantee of much more to come.

        But you can’t have it all just yet.  It would be nice, I know, but you can’t handle it.  It would be like a sixteen-year-old inheriting a million dollars.  Probably the worst thing that could happen to a sixteen-year-old would be to receive a check for a million dollars.  No one that age is ready for that kind money.  Some people my age aren’t ready for that kind of money.  No, it’s far better for that money to go into a trust fund until our teenager comes of age.  A little bit now to pay for college, with the promise of more to come later.  In the same way, our flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.  Our flesh and blood is hopelessly soiled with sin.  It can only die.  But one day we will come of age—on the day of Resurrection—when the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we will all be changed in the twinkling of an eye.  On that day, everything that you can only believe in today, you will see and acquire.  On that day, the entire inheritance becomes yours.  And you will learn the fullness of what it means to be “in Christ.”

        Beloved in the Lord, you are in Christ—although it probably doesn’t feel that way sometimes.  Many days—maybe even today—you don’t feel blessed by God—chosen by Him, adopted or redeemed.  This world is a hot mess; and the same can often be said of our own broken lives.  The debts and divorces, the trespasses and tears, the jealousies and the idolatries—it just doesn’t add up to much of a victorious life, does it? 

        But the longest sentence of the Bible teaches us that IN CHRIST, even your broken life can be a victorious life.  For God is at work to fix your broken life.  How?  IN CHRIST.  “God was reconciling the world to Himself IN CHRIST,” not counting your trespasses against you.  IN CHRIST it all adds up.  It all totals out.  His assets exceed the world’s liabilities.  The debt of your sin has been paid in full—IN CHRIST.  It’s a done deal.  It’s a promise which is yours for the believing. 

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

Hidden Power

 Jesu Juva

St. Mark 6:1-13                                                    

 July 7, 2024

Proper 9B                        

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Familiarity breeds contempt—so the saying goes.  The closer you are to people—the more time you spend with them—the more space you share—the more likely you will end up being annoyed with them.  You get a taste of this when you go on a family vacation.  You love your family, right?  But after a week of sharing the same hotel room, driving in the same car, breathing the same air, being up in each other’s business—that familiarity often devolves into contempt, or worse. 

        You may notice something similar when you return to the place where you were born and raised—the place where they knew you when you were just a whipper-snapper.   And those folks (God bless ‘em!) they still remember all the windows you broke, all the times you got sent to the principal’s office, all the things you tried to burn-down and blow up with fireworks right about this time every summer.  This is why the Psalmist prays, “Lord, remember not the sins of my youth.”  And while the Lord does indeed choose to forget your youthful misdemeanors, the folks from the old neighborhood—they sure don’t forget.  They know too much (which is why I could never be a pastor in my old hometown).

        In Mark chapter 6 Jesus goes home to Nazareth to hang out in the old neighborhood. And He brings His disciples along.  It’s the Sabbath so, of course, Jesus is in the synagogue.  And seeing as how He’s the local boy made good, a real rising start among the rabbis, the synagogue is packed to the rafters.  Expectations are high.  Maybe a miracle or two will be performed.  But as Jesus begins to teach, you start to pick up on a negative vibe coming from the hometown crowd:  Who does this guy think he is?  Isn’t this the carpenter who used to fix our tables and chairs? Isn’t this just Mary’s son?

        Mark says they “took offense” at Him.  Their familiarity with Jesus bred contempt for Jesus.  They were offended.  “Scandalized” is the literal term.  Jesus tripped them up—caused them to stumble.  He came to His own, but His own did not receive Him.  They said, “Hey, that’s just little Yeshua, Mary’s kid.” In Jerusalem they had said, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  But it seems that not even the people of Nazareth thought that the Messiah could come from there—and certainly not the kid who grew up down the street.  They stumbled because Jesus was just too ordinary—too much like them.  He didn’t glow.  He didn’t have a shiny halo.  He was just plain, old, ordinary Yeshua—the son of Mary. Seeing Him step into the pulpit scandalized the hometown crowd. 

        The whole idea of the incarnation—that God should become a man—is scandalous.  It’s just not how a respectable God ought to do things—that He should be born of a virgin, grow up in a small town, work as an obscure carpenter, be baptized by His cousin, John, and then announce to the world that He’s the Messiah, the Son of God.  Really?  And as if that’s not hard enough to swallow, His moment of glory—His hour of power—comes when He hangs from a cross on a dark Friday afternoon and rises from the dead three days later.  And if that doesn’t trip you up, then try to swallow the fact that this Jesus now comes to you, through time and space, to give you His forgiveness and love—all through the ridiculously unspectacular forms of water and words, bread and wine—and through mortal, fallible messengers like me.

        Do you see what’s going on here?  God hides His power.  You can’t go by what you see.  Seeing is not believing.  Faith comes by hearing.  We walk by faith, not by sight.  If you judge Jesus by what you see—if you judge what happens in the Divine Service by what you see—you too will stumble and be scandalized.  Or, you can hear and believe.  Trust in the hidden power of God.

        Few people have understood the hidden power of God better than St. Paul.  That’s why Paul could boast about his weaknesses, as he does in today’s reading from 2 Corinthians.  He actually boasts about how badly things were going for him.  How many preachers have you heard recently who were willing to brag about how God didn’t answer their prayers?  Three times Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove that thorn in his flesh—that painful affliction that harassed him day and night.  But Jesus did not remove that thorn.  Paul could see that thorn and feel the pain of that thorn.  But what mattered more were the words Jesus put into his ears—words that could only be believed:  My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

        There it is:  God hides His power.  It’s there!  It’s perfect! It’s working all things for your eternal good!  That power will one day steer you right through the valley of the shadow of death.  But for now, it’s hidden.  You can’t see it.  You can’t always feel it.  You can only believe and trust that the power of God is for you—for you, and not against you.  Let the thorns in your flesh remind you of the thorns and the nails that Jesus endured for you, as your substitute, bearing all your sin, leaving behind sacred scars of love.

        But as you know, it’s hard to overlook those thorns in our flesh—our weaknesses, our frailties, our pain and suffering.  When we feel the pain of those thorns it’s often tempting to question God—to doubt His power, to doubt His mercy and love.  It’s tempting to conclude that either God is working against us, or, that there is no God.  Few things challenge a baptized believer more than when our repeated prayers for relief go unanswered—and all we have left to fall back on is the promise of Jesus:  My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness.

        The church needs to remember these words of her Lord.  For everywhere you look the church of Jesus Christ appears to be getting weaker and weaker.  Everywhere you look it seems that the faithful are being swept away by the lies of our culture, trumpeted by the media, taught in classrooms, enshrined by our courts.  Everywhere you look, persecution is increasing.  Freedom of religion is decreasing.  It’s so easy to become discouraged—to be scandalized by despair and hopelessness. 

This is why.  This is why we must always remember:  God hides His power.  That power is made perfect in weakness.  His power over sin and death—His power over darkness and the devil—His power to save you and raise you from the dead—is hidden—cloaked under the cover of weakness and darkness.  “It is finished.”  But as sure as Jesus is risen from the dead, we know:  We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

What was true for Jesus on the cross—what was true for Paul with his thorn—is also true for us:  When I am weak, then I am strong.  When we are at our weakest, God’s power is at its greatest.  The crucifix behind me tells the whole story.  For it shows the glorious hidden power of God, a power made perfect in suffering and weakness, a power that conquers sin by becoming sin, that conquers death by dying, a power that keeps on praying, “My God, my God,” trusting that His grace is sufficient.

God’s grace is sufficient for you.  It’s truly all you need.  It is enough.  It overcomes your sin, your death, the devil, the world, and your own sin-filled flesh.  That power of God is hidden.  We can’t see it; but, we can hear it and we can believe it.

Right after His rejection at Nazareth—just as His ministry seemed to dead-end—just as His popularity plummeted—Jesus sent out the Twelve two by two.  Just when Jesus’ power seemed most hidden—that’s the moment He chose to send them off on a journey with no food, no luggage, and no money.  The timing here was no accident.  This timing was to teach the Twelve.  They would have nothing—nothing but the Words of Jesus on which to stand.  Their only “power” would be the promises of Jesus.  That’s how it is for every pastor and missionary sent by the Lord.  That’s how it is for you, too.  His grace is sufficient.  His hidden power propels and sustains us.  When we are weak, He is strong.   

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.