Category: Sermon Page

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 12, 2021

“To What Shall We Compare the Tongue?” (James 3:1-12)

Do you know you carry around with you, all the time, a very dangerous weapon? It’s not very big, but it can do a lot of damage. And it’s a weapon that can be very hard to control. In fact, you and I quite often do not use it as carefully as we should. What is this dangerous, hard-to-control, little weapon you have on your person? Of course, I’m talking about your tongue. And so is St. James. He’s talking about it, also, in our Epistle reading for today. So let’s look at that now, under the theme: “To What Shall We Compare the Tongue?”

James starts out by talking about how pastors use their tongues. He says: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” In other words, those who teach in the church have a special–and heavy–responsibility. They must know the right doctrine and teach it correctly. A pastor should be careful about what he says, for how he speaks will influence people–hopefully in the right direction in their faith and life, and not in the wrong.

Then James goes on from there to expand his scope from pastors to all Christians and to the things that we say. He writes: “For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.” We all stumble. That includes you and me. We all mess up, especially in the things that we say. The tongue is the hardest thing in our body for us to control.

To what shall we compare the tongue? Well, James makes several comparisons. He first compares it to the bit and bridle used to control a horse: “If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.” Think of the size of a bit that is put into a horse’s mouth. It’s not very big. It doesn’t look like it could do very much. But with it, a rider is able to guide a huge and powerful horse that weighs over a thousand pounds. The rider can make that horse go in whatever direction he chooses.

Your tongue is like that bit and bridle. How you choose to use your tongue can steer the whole direction of your life. You can go down the straight road or you can veer off into a wrong turn, all depending on how you use your tongue. Are there things that you have said that you later regret? Words that have ruined relationships? That have cost you a job or a promotion or a career advancement? Words that have cost you a marriage? We need to think before we speak and use our tongues wisely.

James goes on with another comparison: “Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.” A giant ship is controlled by a relatively small rudder. By controlling the rudder, the captain can avoid dangerous shoals and the rocks and the reefs. If he doesn’t–if he’s not alert, if he turns the rudder just a slight bit in the wrong direction–he could hit an iceberg and go down like the Titanic.

So it is with the tongue. We need to be aware of how we’re using our tongues at all times. “Loose lips sink ships,” the saying goes. And that applies not only to battleships but to other ships as well. Loose lips sink friendships. Loose lips sink relationships. Loose lips can even sink church fellowships. A loose tongue can sink all of those “ships.”

James continues with another comparison: “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.” Think of it: Just a small match or an untended campfire, a few smoldering embers–if you combine that with a tinderbox of dry wood, the next thing you know, you’ve got a big blaze, out of control. Think of those wildfires out west that always seem to come up around this time of year. The land is dry, the temperatures are hot, and it just takes a careless camper to set off a forest fire.

Smokey the Bear used to say, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Well, maybe you can’t, not by yourself, that is. Maybe you need some help. See, it’s not “only you,” but it’s the new you, the new person you are in Christ, who can better stop those fires from starting.

You need help. James says in our text, the tongue is “set on fire by hell.” The devil tempts us to use our tongue in evil ways, to deny our Lord and to damn our brother. Besides the devil, the world around us–what we hear from the media and the surrounding culture–the world would lead us to use our tongues in wrong, ungodly ways. Then there’s our own sinful flesh. Our tongue wants to speak according to our selfish desires. “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of,” and that’s true whether for good or for ill.

Brothers and sisters, we need God’s help to control our tongues. To what shall we compare the tongue? Well, compare it to the tongue of Christ, and you’ll see a great contrast. In the Old Testament Reading for today, the prophet Isaiah speaks of the Servant of the Lord, which is a prophecy about Jesus. And this Servant says: “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught.” How Jesus used his tongue was always wise, never inappropriate. When Jesus was being tempted by the devil, he overcame the tempter with the word of the Lord: “Thus it is written,” he said. When Jesus needed to denounce the scribes and the Pharisees, he called a spade a spade and said, “Woe to you, you hypocrites!” or “You brood of vipers!” Christ could justly speak a prophetic condemnation when that was what was called for.

But Jesus also used his tongue to comfort troubled sinners and to bring them a word of peace and forgiveness and refreshment. Again, from the Isaiah prophecy: “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” This is just what Jesus did with his tongue. Remember how he said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Jesus is speaking this comforting word to you today. Dear friends, listen to his voice. Are you weary from the weight of your sins? Come to Jesus your Savior. Are you loaded down with the burden of your conscience, knowing how often you have not used your tongue in the right way? Knowing how you have hurt the people around you with your words? How you’ve messed up your own life by the stupid things you have said? How you have failed to give God the glory he is owed?

Beloved, come to Christ today and lay your burden down. Jesus took the weight of your sins and the burden of your guilt, and he carried it to the cross for you. He died in your place, the holy Son of God did, taking all the judgment on himself, so that it would not fall on you. Jesus speaks a word of forgiveness for us sinners: “Father, forgive them,” he says. He speaks the word of forgiveness to you, into your ears: “Take, eat; take, drink; this is my body, this is my blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” And with this forgiveness, you have life, live everlasting and a new life even now.

A new life, and a new tongue. Now the Holy Spirit will lead you to use your tongue in new and creative ways. Not to tear others down, but to build them up. To bless others with the things that you say. To praise God for his many mercies. To pray for our world and for those in need. The Spirit gives us tongues to speak words of blessing, words that will be helpful, not hurtful. You have been given a new tongue, my fellow baptized.

And we have a new awareness of our old sinful nature, with which we still need to contend. We pray the Lord’s help to control our tongues, for even as Christians “we all stumble in many ways.” Our prayer will be like that of the psalmist who said: “Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord, and guard the door of my lips.” Or as we sang in the hymn: “Keep me from saying words that later need recalling; guard me lest idle speech may from my lips be falling.” We can pray a prayer like this: “Lord, help me to control my tongue, to keep it from uttering wrong and hurtful things. And forgive me for the times I have done that. Help me to use my tongue to speak forth good and helpful things. For that is your will for me, and you have given me a new nature and a new tongue to do just that.”

Brothers and sisters, God will answer such a prayer. He does indeed forgive you. And in a moment, you will receive on your tongue the very body and blood of Christ with which he won your forgiveness. Be assured of that.

To what shall we compare the tongue? A bit? A rudder? A fire? Now in Christ we can make a new comparison. When it’s a tongue that has been drenched in the waters of Holy Baptism–and yours has–your tongue will be like a spring of fresh water, bringing blessing and refreshment into the dry places of life, for you and those around you. For in your tongue, God has given you a wonderful instrument with which you can praise your Lord and bless your neighbor. It is small. It is powerful. And you carry it around with you at all times. I’m talking about your tongue.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 5, 2021

“Jesus Speaks His ‘Ephphatha’ to Us” (Mark 7:31-37)

In the Holy Gospel for today from Mark 7, people bring to Jesus a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Jesus says to him, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” And, sure enough, the man’s ears are opened, his tongue is loosed, and he speaks plainly.

Now what you’ll often get in sermons based on this text is something like this: “Friends, our ears are deaf to God’s Word, and our tongues fail to speak plainly the good news to our neighbors. We need Jesus to speak his ‘Ephphatha’ to us and open our ears and loose our tongues.” In other words, the preacher just spiritualizes the text and basically ignores the physical healing.

We ought not to do that. The physical healing itself is important. Oh, we can get to a spiritual application also, but we shouldn’t skip over the actual healing of the man’s hearing and speaking. And we won’t. Today we’ll see how Jesus heals us both physically and spiritually, under the theme: “Jesus Speaks His ‘Ephphatha’ to Us.”

So the first thing we should say about this miracle, this healing, is that it really happened. Jesus really did open the deaf man’s ears and loose his tongue. This was a real physical healing. Sometimes we’re so eager to “spiritualize” this miracle and make applications about “opened ears” and “loosened tongues” that we forget the primary point, which is that Jesus really did a physical healing, enabling the man to hear and to speak clearly.

Listen, God our Creator cares about our bodies as well as our souls. The fact that our bodies are messed up and don’t work right is a symptom of our deeper spiritual problem, which is that we have sinned against God and come under the curse of futility and death. Our bodies are breaking down and dying as a result. But God cares about us in our misery. He has mercy upon us. This is why Christ, the Son of God, came down from heaven: to heal our souls and our bodies, to redeem us from sin and all its terrible consequences.

And so Jesus healing this deaf and dumb man’s infirmities is a sign. It’s a sign, a signal, pointing to who this man Jesus is and what he has come to do. It tells anyone who knows their Bibles that Jesus is fulfilling the great messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. For the Lord God had promised to send the Messiah, who would usher in a great age of blessing and restoration. We heard one of those messianic prophecies this morning in the reading from Isaiah 35. We heard that these signs would accompany the arrival of the Messiah: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”

“The ears of the deaf unstopped”; “the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” This is precisely what Jesus is doing in our text. The message is clear: This man Jesus is the Messiah. He has come to do the work of healing our bodies and restoring creation and bringing in the end-time age of blessing.

And so it is. Jesus fulfills the Isaianic signs, as they are called, and thus demonstrates that that he is indeed the Messiah. God’s kingdom of blessing has come in his person. These miracles of restoration and healing are an advance down-payment, a sneak preview, a guarantee, of the restoration in full that Christ will do when he comes again at the last day. For now, we have these examples recorded in Scripture to tell us what is in store for us and to give us hope and encouragement to carry on until that day.

God has mercy on us in our misery. Jesus is the proof. Sometimes we may think that God has forgotten about us, that he doesn’t care about our hurts and our sorrows. But then we look at what Jesus is doing in the gospels–restoring creation, forgiving sins, healing broken bodies–and we’re reminded that God really does care. If we wonder, “Well, why doesn’t Jesus heal us now? Why just those people back then?” Well, even back then, not everyone who was sick got healed, and those that did get healed would end up dying from something else later on. But these examples of Jesus healing the sick that we have tell us what’s awaiting us, and on an even grander scale.

And that’s because Jesus deals with the underlying problem beneath all our problems. There is a deeper spiritual problem that underlies all our physical ailments. And it is that we all are born sinners, and therefore things don’t work right. The particulars vary from person to person, but the basic problem is the same. We all have sinned. We have not listened to God’s Word, our heart has not trusted God, and we have rebelled against his will. It is that sinful nature we all have, which produces all kinds of actual sins. And for that to get fixed, God has to do the job. We can’t fix it on our own.

That’s why Jesus came. He is the one who fixes it. Christ cared for us so much that he went to the cross to get the job done. The Son of God dying for sinners is the only solution that works. “He has done all things well,” the people said when Jesus healed the deaf and dumb man. Yes, and even more so! Jesus has truly done all things well. As in the work of creation, we see what God has done, and we say, “and behold, it was very good.”

“He has done all things well.” And the supreme thing Jesus has done well is to rescue and save a world of dying sinners. He rescues and saves you! Jesus died for you! He rose for you! He forgives all your sins. He will heal you of all your diseases. When he comes again, he will raise up your lifeless body, even as he himself rose from the dead. You have this hope even now. That’s what the healing of the deaf and dumb man is telling you today.

Assured of our physical healing, now we can move to the so-called spiritual application of our story. Jesus speaks his “Ephphatha” to us, so that our ears would be opened spiritually, opened to hear God’s Word aright. “Ephphatha”: Jesus says this word to us, so that our tongues would be loosed to glorify God and sing his praise. Jesus speaks his mighty “Ephphatha” to us, and his gospel word opens our ears to hear and our tongues to sing.

In the ancient church, at the time of St. Ambrose in the fourth century, when a person was baptized, the pastor would take his fingers and touch the person’s ears. The pastor would say that very word “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” The application was clear: God is at work in Holy Baptism. The Holy Spirit opens our ears spiritually, to be able to hear God’s Word in the way we ought. Dear Christian, this is what happened in your baptism. Your ears have been opened. The Spirit calls you to repentance, and you hear what he’s saying. The Spirit assures you of God’s forgiveness for Christ’s sake, and you hear that good news and sing for joy. Your ears have been opened and your tongue loosed.

Opened ears and loosened tongue, spiritually. Martin Luther makes this point in a sermon he preached on this text. Luther says: “Christ shows us that he opens ears and unbinds tongues. He seeks to perform this work daily in his church. . . . To this day the greatest miracle and mightiest work is giving a person ears that gladly hear God’s Word and a tongue that honors God and does not blaspheme.

“Many people are a thousand times worse off than this poor deaf and dumb man. They have ears that are really stopped up. They hear God’s Word and yet really do not hear it, nor do they want to. But those who hear God’s Word gladly and to whom Christ says, as to the deaf man, ‘Ephphatha,’ are helped. . . . God has shown us no other way by which we can come into heaven than through his precious Word, the Holy Gospel. Whoever gladly and diligently hears and receives it and who loves and delights in it will be helped.

“God also stirs our tongues and causes us to speak. . . . [But] our tongues will not be loosed, our ears opened, faith in our hearts begun, without the outward, oral preaching of the Word and external Sacraments. For parish pastors and preachers are the fingers of our Lord God, the servants and spittle through which he looses our tongues and opens our ears. When you hear them, God says to your heart, as to this deaf man, ‘Ephphatha!’ so that your ears are opened, your tongue unsticks, and you become a hearing, speaking person, no longer deaf and mute.”

Brothers and sisters, Jesus says to each one of us today, “Ephphatha,” “Be opened.” And our ears are opened to hear the good news. It is good news both physically and spiritually. Healing of both body and soul is the gift that Christ has for us. He forgives all our sins by his blood shed on the cross. He will raise up our bodies whole and fully restored, everything working the way it should, in the resurrection at the last day. This is our faith. This is our hope. And this is what causes our tongues to sing for joy. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 29, 2021

“Put on the Whole Armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-20)

These days many people have taken up a variety of precautions and protections to guard against the Covid virus and its variants. They have put on face masks. They have put on face shields. They sanitize their hands. They keep social distance. They take zinc and an assortment of vitamins. They get injected with a vaccine and maybe now a booster shot as well. All these precautions and protections to guard against a virus.

But friends, there’s something much more dangerous and deadly than a virus going around. As St. Peter puts it, “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” That’s the more deadly danger going around. But I don’t think as many people are as concerned about this threat as they are about the virus. Most people are not taking up the protections they need to guard against the danger the devil poses.

But you can. And St. Paul tells us how. In the Epistle reading for today from Ephesians 6, Paul urges us to guard against “the schemes of the devil” and “the spiritual forces of evil.” And we do well to heed this advice and to put on and to take up the protections that God provides. We do so today under the theme, “Put on the Whole Armor of God.”

Our text begins: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” Notice, we are called to be strong not in our own strength. That won’t cut it. We won’t be strong enough to resist the devil by relying on our own might. “With might of ours can naught be done, soon were our loss effected.” We win the battle not by drumming up our own inner toughness, nor by gritting our teeth in grim determination.

No, we become strong “in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” “In the Lord,” in Christ–this is where our power lies. The Christian life is lived in Christ, in connection with him. He conquered sin, death, and the devil for us. By his victorious death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, and ascension into heaven, where he now lives and reigns to all eternity–this is how we win the fight. It is in our Lord that we are strong.

Paul then explains how that happens. He says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” The idea of “putting on armor” brings to mind a soldier getting ready for battle. Do you ever think of yourself in that way? That you are a soldier engaged in battle? But that’s who you are as a Christian in this world. We are at war. The enemy is out to get us, and we need to be ready. If we aren’t ready, if we aren’t prepared, if we aren’t equipped, we’re going to be in big trouble. That’s why each one of us needs to put on the armor that God supplies.

Notice, it is the “whole” armor of God we are to put on. Not just a little bit of the armor, a piece or two here or there, but rather the whole thing. The soldier going into battle doesn’t know which piece of equipment will be the one that will save his life. The smart soldier arms himself with all the resources at his disposal. Remember the story of Achilles: Achilles was invulnerable at all points except for one, his heel. Of course, that was exactly the spot where he was hit. So, put on the whole armor. And notice that it is the armor “of God.” This is the armor that God supplies. He is our heavenly quartermaster, who provides us with all that we need, for every situation we face.

What are the dangers we will be facing? According to our text, there’s some pretty stiff opposition: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

First of all, a reality check: Is there really a devil? Yes. Not only in Ephesians, but also throughout the Bible, we read about a very real, personal devil. Satan is the evil one, the tempter, a fallen angel opposed to God and God’s people. Jesus calls the devil “the father of lies” and “a murderer from the beginning.” And the devil has other unclean spirits, demons, in league with him, likewise doing their worst to harm us. The fact that our Western rationalistic mindset dismisses the devil’s existence doesn’t make him any less real, any less evil, or any less dangerous.

To not believe in the existence of the devil is a serious error that only serves to lower your guard against his evil attacks. The battle is real, and it is on. It began at your baptism, when you became one of God’s people. The cross traced upon your forehead and upon your heart marks you not only as one redeemed by Christ the crucified, it also marks you as a target for Satan’s attacks. The devil has you in his crosshairs.

“Therefore,” Paul continues, “take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” None of us knows when our particular “evil day” may come, that especially dark day when the devil seems like he’s going to knock us off our firm footing. It may come more than once: The day we are assailed by doubt. The day when sickness or misfortune drives us to the brink of despair. Maybe the lure of temptation will seem too strong to resist. Our faith seems ready to topple. It is for evil days like these that we need the armor of God. But with the whole armor that God provides, not only will we be able to withstand the devil’s attacks, at the end of the day we will be the ones left standing as victors.

The whole armor of God: Our text lists the various pieces of this Gospel armor. Let’s take a brief look at them now, piece by piece:

1) “Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth.” What is the truth, against all the devil’s lies? The divine reality is that now because of Christ, we are forgiven. Satan’s accusations therefore are powerless. God is for us, not against us. This truth is like a strong belt, girding up our loins for battle.

2) “and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.” No righteousness of my own is able to protect me. Only the perfect righteousness of Christ, my sinless Savior, protects my heart and cannot be pierced.

3) “and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.” The gospel of peace–the good news that in Christ we are at peace with God–this gives us the readiness and the firm footing we need to succeed in battle.

4) “In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.” The Christian faith is the long-shield we take up to block the fiery darts the devil shoots at us. His flaming arrows will not set us ablaze.

5) “and take the helmet of salvation.” We have been saved from sin and death, and we are being kept safe by God’s power. This salvation is acting as a helmet to guard our head from fatal blows.

6) “and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Think of Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. How did he cut down the devil? With the word of God. “It is written,” our Lord said in reply to each temptation. God’s word is the offensive weapon we have to wield against the wicked one.

Actually, all of these pieces of armor are simply different ways to describe the same word of God. The difference lies in how the word works for us in battle–whether as a belt, a breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet, or sword. But there is another piece of equipment that doesn’t quite lend itself to the armor imagery:

7) “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication,” and so on. Prayer is a vital part of our equipping. To pray is to call upon God’s power for help in the battle. And so we pray, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us not into temptation.” “Deliver us from evil” and from the evil one. We pray for ourselves. We pray for our fellow Christians, all our fellow soldiers in God’s army. We pray for all ministers of the gospel, that they may proclaim it boldly, as they should. Prayer completes our gospel armor.

Dear friends, people are taking the precautions they deem best to protect against a virus. But don’t forget to take the protection you need to guard against a far greater threat. “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” The devil’s schemes are indeed dangerous. “The old evil foe now means deadly woe; deep guile and great might are his dread arms in fight; on earth is not his equal.” But in heaven is the devil’s equal, nay, more than his equal: Christ Jesus, our Lord, our mighty champion and Savior. And he comes to help us. We are weak, but he is strong. And, connected to him, we become strong, too. The devil may have his dread arms in fight, but we have the whole armor of God, which is far greater. Let us put on that gospel armor. And at the end of the battle, when the dust settles and the smoke clears, we shall stand triumphant.

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 22, 2021

“This Is a Hard Saying” (John 6:60-69)

For the last couple of weeks, the Holy Gospel has been Jesus’ famous “Bread of Life” discourse from John chapter 6.  And last week I preached on the appointed text, under the theme, “Eat This Bread and Live Forever.”  But last week I only got through the first half of that text.  What I didn’t get to was the reaction to what Jesus said.  And that’s what I want to take up this morning.  And so our sermon text today is what is printed in your bulletin, namely, John 6, verses 60 through 69, as follows:

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”  But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?  Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail.  The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  But there are some of you who do not believe.”  (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.)  And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.  So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”  Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

This is our text.  Note especially the first reaction to Jesus’ words:  “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’”  And Jesus knew that his disciples were grumbling about this.  So notice that the people doing this grumbling are called “disciples.”  In other words, these were people who had been following Jesus.  They had seen his miracles.  They had heard his teaching.  Now these were not the twelve disciples, but they were many in the outer ring of his followers.

So, it is possible for people who have some sort of outward attachment to Jesus to not accept what he has to say.  You know, Jesus speaks elsewhere, in the parable of the Sower and the seeds–Jesus speaks of those who receive his word at first with joy, but then when times get hard because of the word, their faith dries up and withers away.  That is similar to what happens here with this group of unbelieving, walking-away disciples.  And the danger is, this same sort of falling away can happen today among church members.

But let’s get back to what their complaint was.  They say:  “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”  Well, what was so hard about what Jesus had said?  After all, had he not made some beautiful promises?  He had.  Think of it:  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.”  Live forever!  That’s a beautiful promise!  But who is this Jesus to claim that he has come down heaven?  And to say, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”?  Well, that seemed rather puzzling.  “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

So Jesus had given them plenty of beautiful promises.  For example:  “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  “Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”  Beautiful promises of eternal life!  But they’re all tied to belief in Jesus, to partaking of him by faith.  Indeed, that it is only through faith in Jesus that one can have eternal life.  There’s no other way.  It is the exclusivity of this claim that people find so hard to accept.  “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

This is what people back then, this is what people today, find so hard to accept.  It is the idea that I am not pleasing enough to God on my own to merit eternal life.  If you ask most people, they will say, “I’m a pretty good person.  I’m not a bad person.  Oh, I’m not perfect; nobody is.  But I’m certainly not as bad as. . . .”  And then they rattle off their favorite bad guys that they’re better than–child molesters, mass murderers, tax collectors or prostitutes.  “If there is such a thing as everlasting life,” they think, “I’m just as good as the next guy to get in.”  Well, you may be just as good as the next guy, but guess what?  He’s not good enough, either.  Relative righteousness–righteousness by comparison–is not good enough.

So this is what people find most unacceptable about Jesus:  that he claims to be the only way to have the righteousness you need to gain eternal life.  Otherwise, you have no life in you.  This is indeed a hard saying for us sinners to swallow.  But it’s the truth.

“Do you take offense at this?” Jesus asked the people back then.  And many of them did take offense. “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”  But Jesus’ question still holds true today:  “Do you take offense at this?”  Do you, 21^st century America–do you take offense at this hard saying of Jesus?  And the answer is, in most cases, yes.  Most people today do take offense at Jesus.  That’s why they’re not coming to church.  They don’t think they need Jesus.  They don’t think they need what he has to offer.  They don’t think they need to keep hearing his voice and listening to what he has to say to them on a weekly basis.  “There are too many hard sayings.  And I’m a good enough person on my own.  So long, Jesus!  Goodbye, church!”

For the past 80 years, the Gallup organization has conducted a poll on church membership in the United States.  In 1940, 73% of Americans belonged to a church.  And it remained around 70% up until around the year 2000.  But since then, church membership has plummeted.  From 70% in 1999, to 61% in 2010, now down to a shocking 47% in 2020.  That is an extreme drop-off in just the last 20 years.  Only a minority of Americans now belong to a church.  Most people do take offense at Jesus, they don’t think they need him, and they have turned their back on him and are no longer walking with him.  Otherwise, we would see them here in church, here where Jesus meets with his disciples every Sunday.

So, others are walking away from Jesus.  How about you?  What will you do?  When Jesus tells you that the only way you will have eternal life is through him, that you are not good enough on your own–when he says those kinds of hard sayings, the question remains:  “Do you take offense at this?”  Or instead, do you realize that you are indeed a poor miserable sinner who has broken God’s commandments, that you deserve nothing from God, and that the only thing you have earned is death?  Do you know that Jesus is your only hope, your only way into God’s presence, that he is your only Savior?  If you do know these things, that is called repentance, that is called faith.  And this is evidence of God guiding you in the way of the truth.  “No one can come to me,” Jesus says, “unless it is granted him by the Father.”  Thank God for giving you the gift of faith!

After the others walked away, Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked them, “Do you want to go away as well?”  That’s a relevant question today, isn’t it?  “Do you want to go away as well?”  I mean, that’s the trend these days, isn’t it?  More and more people in our society are not following Jesus.  Church membership continues to drop.  Don’t you want to follow the crowd?  Or will you instead continue to follow Jesus?

When Jesus asked that of the Twelve, Peter spoke up for the group.  He said:  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”  Dear friends, I hope Peter speaks for all of us here today.  We may have puzzlements about certain hard sayings of Jesus, or other hard sayings in the Bible, but we trust our Lord to make clear what we need to know.  And what we do know is that Jesus has the words of eternal life.  His promises are true.

And Jesus backed up his words with his actions.  He went to the cross and gave his flesh for us into death, to make the sacrifice that atones for the sins of the whole world, for your sins and mine.  This is what I need, this is what you need, this is what the whole world needs:  forgiveness for our sins.  And then Jesus rose from the dead, in victory over death and hell and the grave.  And now Jesus gives his life to us–his eternal life–in the very means of grace that we receive here in his church:  in the preaching of his gospel, in the blessed sacrament of his holy body and blood.  Like Peter said, we believe, and we have come to know, that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

“Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  Dear brothers and sisters, you have many options on where you can go these days.  Lots of your friends and neighbors and family members are opting to go elsewhere.  But I know, because Jesus says so, that this–this place right here–is the best place to go.  Because this is where Jesus speaks his living and live-giving words to us on a regular basis.  Our Lord Jesus Christ has the words of eternal life.  And they do exactly what they say.

“Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.”

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 15, 2021

“Eat This Bread and Live Forever” (John 6:51-69)

The world’s oldest living person is a woman in Japan by the name of Kane Tanaka. She is 118 years old. She has held the title of oldest living person for over three years, which is unusually long for someone to be the world’s oldest living person. Usually, they relinquish the title before that long. What is Miss Tanaka’s secret? “Eating delicious food and studying,” she says. Her nurses say, “She has a strong appetite and likes eating chocolate and drinking Coke.” Well, I have a strong appetite, I like eating delicious food, including chocolate, and I do a lot of studying. But maybe I should take up drinking Coke.

Then there’s the world’s oldest male, Emilio Flores Márquez of Puerto Rico. He just turned 113 one week ago. Señor Márquez says of his life: “My father raised me with love and taught me to love everyone. He always told me and my brothers and sisters to do good, to share everything with others. Besides, Christ lives in me.”

“Besides, Christ lives in me.” Well said, Señor Márquez! And that is the guarantee that Emilio is going to live past 113, past 118, even past 120. Sure, Emilio is going to die–probably fairly soon. But, because Christ died for him and now Christ lives in him, Emilio is going to live forever. And guess what, dear friends? So will you!

Live forever? It doesn’t look like that, does it? Death is all around us. The names of our friends and relatives end up in the obituaries. Yesterday I did the funeral service for Carol Toenjes of St. Matthew-Bonne Terre, and tomorrow I’ll do the service for Sharon Blakely of Grace-De Soto. Death is right in front of us, staring us in the face. There’s a tombstone up in Chicago waiting to get my name on it. Death is at work in us. Our bodies are in the process of dying. Our immune systems wear down with age. Our bodies don’t heal as well when we get older. The risk of infection is ever-present. The upper limit on age seems to be about 120, and that’s only for a few people who happen to pick the right parents.

Then again, we can eat right, exercise, be in top shape–and we could step off a curb and get hit by a car. Some drunk driver could cross over the yellow line. Dr. Atkins, the famous diet doctor, died after he slipped and fell on an icy street. Diet cannot prevent dying.

But there’s a worse death than just the physical death of the body. Oh, physical death is a part of it, to be sure. That’s the end result of an even worse death, and that’s the death of the soul. Spiritual death. Spiritual death happens because man sins, and that includes every one of us. Spiritual death first set in when we decided we knew better than God, our Creator. We wanted to be our own god, making our own decisions about what’s right and wrong, good and evil. That was the fall into sin. And with it, death set in. That fallen Adamic nature infects us all. We all are like that. Sin and death, both spiritual and physical death–and eternal death, separated from God forever, under his condemnation–that is our natural condition, that is our common lot. It doesn’t matter what how healthy you may eat, how much you exercise, you cannot escape death. Unless. . . .

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,” Jesus says. What does Jesus mean by this? Well, he tells us: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

The first thing it means is to realize that on your own, you have no real life within you. Jesus’ diagnosis is correct. Look inside yourself, apart from Christ, and will find no life there. No life that’s right with God. No life that can overcome your sins. No life that can overcome the grave. “You have no life in you.” Unless. . . .

Unless that life comes to you from outside yourself. Unless that life comes from God, from heaven to earth and into you. That’s how it goes. This is what Jesus offers. To you.

It starts with who Jesus is. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says. This man speaking in the synagogue at Capernaum–this is no ordinary rabbi. His identity, his origin, is one of a kind. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Jesus is the very Son of God, the eternal Word, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. “I am the living bread.” In him was–and is–life. Jesus has life in himself. He is full of life. He gives and imparts life. “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven.”

But why does he say “bread”? Well, bread is often called “the staff of life.” “Bread” is a universally understood way to say, “that which sustains life.” Nourishment, food, sustenance, what you need in order to live–all of that is conveyed by the word, “bread.”

And Jesus had just fed the multitude with bread, 5000 people from just a few loaves, with plenty left over. This was a sign, to show that Jesus came to give life, and to give it abundantly. But people misread this sign and were only thinking of free food for their bellies. But Jesus came to give life in the fullest sense. Spiritual life. Life through the forgiveness of sins, healing the rift between us and God. Life that overcomes death in every form: the deadness in our relationship with God and with others; the physical death that cuts our life short at 35 or 70 or 120; and the eternal death that our sins deserve. Jesus overcomes all of that death with his abundant life. Jesus is the true Bread of Life, the living bread from heaven.

Jesus gives us his life and overcomes our death by giving himself into death for us. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Christ gave his flesh for the life of the world by going to the cross. In going to the cross, Jesus offered his flesh to the blows of his enemies and the flogging of the soldiers. He offered his flesh to the nails driven through his hands and the spear thrust in his side. His holy, precious blood poured forth and paid the price that we owed but could not pay. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave his flesh and shed his blood as the perfect sacrifice to atone for the sins of the whole world.

This is the only way to have life. There is no other. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Unless you partake of Jesus by faith, unless you receive him and trust in his sacrifice for your sins–there is no other way to come before God, other than the one and only way that God provides, namely, through Christ’s offering of his flesh and blood on the cross.

But come to him, believe in him, receive him, and you will live! This is his promise, and his word is sure! “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” Here is what you truly need to live past 113 or 118. You need Jesus Christ. Eat this bread and live forever! “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Notice: “has” eternal life, which is present tense, right now! You who trust in Christ, you have eternal life even now! It’s already yours, by faith in Christ.

You have eternal life now, and so the little death that we will face at the end of however many years we get–that is not the end. Our bodies may rest in the grave, but there is another day coming. Jesus speaks of this day. His promise for the believer is this: “And I will raise him up on the last day.” Even as Christ is risen from the dead, so will he raise our bodies, new and glorified forever, on the day when he returns.

So until then, continue to feed on him. Be nourished by Christ with the life that he gives. “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” This is Jesus’ promise to you today. He promises to be with you, in the closest way possible, as we journey through this wilderness on the way to the promised land. Jesus even gives–he literally gives his own body and blood here in this Sacrament. With the bread and with the wine, Christ gives us his very body and blood to eat and to drink. Here is true food and true drink, exactly what you need to sustain your life in Christ.

In the book, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” part of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as the company is about to set out from Lothlorien, they are given gifts of food and clothing for their journey. The food is in the form of very thin cakes. “We call it lembas or waybread,” the travelers are told, “and it is more strengthening than any food made by Men.”

So it is here today. Here in this Sacrament, our Lord Jesus Christ gives you his “waybread,” food for your journey ahead. He himself is the Way, and he himself is the living bread from heaven. This bread of life is more strengthening, more life-giving, than any food made by men.

So come and eat! Come to Jesus and receive from him! Eat this bread and have eternal life even now. Eat this bread, and you will live forever!