Proper 16 of Series B (Isaiah 29:11-19)

“In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the twenty-ninth chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Dear friends in Christ: spiritual blindness is a crippling disease. The darkness it brings is pervasive and deep, enveloping one’s entire life. It is a hereditary disease, caused by sin, that fundamental corruption that we all carry. Sin makes us blind from birth, blind to all that our God is and says. Spiritual blindness hides our Creator from us. Spiritual blindness makes His words like a sealed book. “And the vision of all this has become for you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, ‘Read this,’ he says, ‘I cannot, for it is sealed.’ And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying, ‘Read this,’ he says, ‘I cannot read.’” Spiritual blindness hides God’s declarations of judgment and grace; Law and Gospel are incomprehensible to the blind. Therefore, spiritual blindness can only lead to empty worship. “The Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.’”

The spiritually blind worship, but their worship is empty, meaningless. They are in church on Sunday, singing the songs, praying the prayers, standing up and sitting down, but as God says, “their hearts are far from me.” Their hearts are following their own idols, thinking of other things, not the higher things of God, for they are blind to them. They do not see the glory of God, and so they glory in everything else. Their worship and prayers are empty, for their heart is far away, in other places. Why are the spiritually blind at worship? Because it is expected of them. The Lord says, “Their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.” The spiritually blind draw near to the Lord with mouth and lips, but these pious acts mask the truth. Their fear and worship of God isn’t motivated by love for their Creator or appreciation for His salvation, but a sense of human responsibility. They come because they were told to, because it looks good to others, because there is an image to uphold. The spiritually blind worship because they obey the commandments and expectations of men.

The spiritually blind go through the motions on Sunday morning, but the rest of the week they reveal how empty their worship is. The Lord accuses them: “Ah, you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’” The spiritually blind think that they can worship on Sunday morning and then live their lives their own way Monday through Saturday. The wise of this world think that they can hide their ways from God. They do their deeds in the darkness, hidden in the valleys of this dark world. They think that they can pursue their wicked acts in secret, saying “Who sees us? Who knows us?” They pretend that they can get away with the sins they commit in the darkness, far from the prying eyes of man or of God. The spiritually blind think that if they put in their time on Sunday, if they offer up their prayers, then they have a blank check the rest of the week, they can live in open defiance of God’s commands.

But the Lord knows that in their arrogance they have reversed reality, placing the creature above the Creator. “You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, ‘He did not make me;’ or the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” The spiritually blind deny the Lord’s distinctiveness, His sovereignty, and His wisdom. They deny that God is any different from them; indeed, they are the gods, they make the rules, they call the shots. They deny God’s authority, claiming that He has no ownership over them, no right to tell them what to do or how to live. They deny God’s intelligence, that He would know how they should order their lives. For this they are praised as wise, applauded by their peers for asserting themselves above God. They declare, “I know my own path, I know how I should live; I’m a law unto myself, no one, not even God, can call me a sinner or a hypocrite!”

The spiritually blind have reversed God’s orderly creation, reversing it through sin. His accusation rings true: “You turn things upside down!” The only solution for the Lord is to turn His world back, to launch a great reversal of His own. He will reverse the wisdom of the worldly wise. “Behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.” Those who hid their way from the Lord, committing their dark deeds in secret, will find their ‘wisdom’ hidden from them. For God is doing a marvelous thing, wonder upon wonder. He is coming to destroy the wisdom of the wise, to shine a light in the darkened valleys of sin. He is coming to reverse man’s reversal, to set things right again. He is coming to do this marvelous thing with the advent of Jesus Christ. He has come to enact God’s great reversal. Jesus has come to hide the wisdom of the wise, to call the arrogant to repentance.

So heed His call, you spiritually blind! Repent! Cast off your empty worship, your arrogant sinning! It is you and I who are infected with spiritual blindness, who have turned things upside down through our sinning, our rebellion against our maker, the One who formed us from the dust of the earth. Humble yourselves, making yourselves low before your Creator, your God come in the flesh. Bow the knee before your Maker, crying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Jesus will destroy the wisdom of the wise in repentance; all will be humbled by His proclamation of the Law. But that is His strange work; it is necessary, but not the reason for which He came. He brings low the arrogant and hides the wisdom of the wise with the Law so that He can lift them up again with the Gospel. Jesus has come to reverse the fortunes of the weak. “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.” That day has come with the advent of Jesus Christ. He has come to open the ears of the deaf, the eyes of the blind. He has come to give joy to the meek and to lift up the poor. He has come to exalt those who in repentance and humility trust in Him and to bring down the world’s exalted and arrogant ones. He has come to enact God’s great reversal.

“Behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, and wonder upon wonder.” Wonder upon wonder—God’s great reversal, His exaltation of the poor and humble, will be accomplished by the One who humbled Himself to be born in a stable. The great reversal defines the life and work of Christ. Wonder upon wonder—the ruler of the universe lay in a manger! Wonder upon wonder—God Himself walks this earth as a man! Wonder upon wonder—a dusty rabbi teaches with power and authority, even raising the dead! Wonder upon wonder—the holy Jesus eats with sinners! Wonder upon wonder—God the Son hangs upon the cross, suffering and dying for the sins of His creatures! To deliver you and me who had turned things upside down, God turned this world upside down. Wonder upon wonder—at the moment of the cross, in humiliation, pain, and suffering, all things are turned right again! The reversal was accomplished, you were delivered from your sin, your spiritual blindness was healed through the power of His forgiveness. Wonder upon wonder—the man who was dead now lives, the firstborn of the dead, so that all those who die in Him will live too!

Jesus has come to turn everything on its head; all that was upset by man’s sin, even death itself, will be put right again. The world is changed, and on the Last Day, the creation itself will be turned upside down: “Is it not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest?” Until that Day, the great reversal is enacted in this world through the Holy Spirit. Wonder upon wonder—water and the Word open the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, calling on you to believe on the Lord who reversed this creation’s sin! Wonder upon wonder—the Gospel goes forth from pulpits and Christian mouths to the farthest reaches of this world, exalting the humble and lifting up the poor, giving to you eternal treasure, the forgiveness of sins. Wonder upon wonder—Jesus lifts you and me up from the dust of repentance and forgives our sins, opening our spiritual eyes to see Him in faith.

Spiritual sight is a beautiful gift. The light it brings is strong and bright, enveloping one’s entire life. Jesus gives us sight in our new birth, so that we see all that our God is and says. Spiritual sight reveals our Creator to us as a God of love. Spiritual sight opens up His words to us, breaking the seals so that His grace can be proclaimed to us. Spiritual sight reveals God’s declarations of judgment and grace; Law and Gospel are the daily diet of the one who sees. Therefore, spiritual sight can only lead to true worship, worship that receives forgiveness from the Lord’s bounty and gives Him thanksgiving and praise. We worship because Christ has great gifts to give, and we need those gifts to open our eyes each day, forgiving us for our spiritual blindness and rebellion. We who are poor and meek rejoice in our God, for—wonder upon wonder!—He reversed our sin with His sacrifice, and He reverses our sin each day with His forgiveness, so that we will exult in the Holy One of Israel forever, with eyes fully open to the reality of our Lord’s grace and love in heavenly glory. In the Name of Jesus, who opens the eyes of the blind, Amen.

In Memoriam--Autumn Moeller-Wunschel (8/2/12--8/14/12)

“Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” Amanda and John, Ross and Tami, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, along with all those who lifted up Autumn to her heavenly Father in prayer throughout her short time on this earth—grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from Autumn’s Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. When tragedy strikes, we want to speak, we want to answer, we want to explain how such a thing could happen. We want to put God on trial, to acquit or condemn Him for the injustice that we see. We want to peer into His hidden will, to try to understand what kind of good He intends to bring from a mother and father burying their child. We speak pious words, words that try to express our sympathy, that attempt to give a reason for their sorrow. We mean well; we want to help, we want to bring some measure of comfort and understanding to a grieving family. But human words cannot fill the hole in your heart, no matter how heartfelt they are or how nice they sound; they cannot plug the wound.

Every explanation falls flat, every answer is unsatisfying, they cannot bring the comfort you need. All things, from a presidential election, to rain from the heavens, to the death of a child, happen according to God’s loving will, but how that will works itself out for good is always hidden to us. There is no comfort, and no answers, to be found in searching God’s hidden will. Why do tragedies strike, why are we here this morning, grieving the loss of a child who had just entered this world? The answer is simple, it is fundamental, basic to our human existence. The answer is sin. When we are faced with unspeakable tragedy, we can only say that we live in a sin-sick world, a world where terrible things happen, a world ruled by death. We live in a world that is not as God intended it. We live in a world that needs a Savior. We live in a world that needs Jesus.

That is God’s answer to our cries this morning: Jesus. We need Jesus; at no time is that more apparent than when we gather here mourning Autumn. We need Jesus. We need the Jesus who has defeated death, who shed His blood for the sin of the world, who shed His blood for Autumn’s sin. We need Jesus. We need the Jesus who is God in the flesh, come to answer the ravages of sin, the scourge of death. We need Jesus. We need the Jesus who hung upon the cross, giving Himself as the required sacrifice. We need the Jesus who rose on the third day, the firstborn of the dead, proclaiming that the grave had been robbed of its power. We need the Jesus who is God’s answer to our sin, God’s answer to death, God’s answer to our sorrow and grieving. We need this Jesus today, as we grieve and mourn for Autumn. We need this Jesus at each memory, every moment of sorrow. We need Jesus every Sunday, as He comes to us in this sin-sick world with His forgiveness proclaimed from the lips of a pastor, with His Body and Blood given to you in the Lord’s Supper as the food which gives eternal life. We need Jesus every day, every moment, for we live in a world filled with sin and death, and only He has conquered sin, defeated death, and trampled Satan underfoot.

We need the Jesus who welcomes little children. In our Gospel lesson, mothers and fathers were bringing their children to Jesus so that He would touch them. The disciples rebuked them; they thought that the little ones were beneath Jesus’ notice. When we sit here today, we are tempted to think the same thing; to the world it seems that Jesus has forgotten this little one, He has abandoned Autumn. But that isn’t true. “When Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.’” This Jesus is for children; this Jesus is for Autumn. He fights for little children; He will not let anyone keep them from Him, not the disciples, not even death. Quite the contrary, Jesus welcomes little children as our examples in the faith. In all other things they follow us, but when it comes to faith and trust in Christ, we follow them. To them belongs the Kingdom of God. They humbly trust, while doubts fill our mind and hearts; they cannot give, but only receive, while we insist on trying to bring our own merits before Jesus. Even little Autumn, in her short time on this earth, proclaimed her faith, teaching us to humbly trust in our Savior, to come before Him empty-handed, with nothing to give, but all to receive.

And Jesus gave her all: forgiveness, life, and salvation. Amanda and John, you brought Autumn to Jesus so that He might touch her with salvation, and He did. Vicar Ross fulfilled the duty of every Christian in an emergency and gave to her the washing of the water with the Word. Autumn needed the Jesus who welcomes children, and He did welcome her. He touched her with His life-giving water; He made her a member of the Kingdom of God, an heir of eternal life. Jesus took her up in His arms that day and blessed her, and He has not let go. Jesus fights for His little ones; nothing, not even death itself, will hinder them from coming to Him, for the Jesus who said, “Let the children come to me” is the same Jesus who rose from the grave on Easter morning. He conquered death not for His own sake, but so that He could draw all people to Himself. He gives His children resurrection victory; because He lives, they too will live, along with you and all who cling to this Jesus whom we so desperately need. Autumn is not dead; she is sleeping, her body resting here on this earth and her soul in the loving arms of Jesus. And because He rose from the grave triumphant over death, so she will be raised, body and soul, to live before God’s throne forever. Death cannot have her; she belongs to Jesus. Because Jesus lives, Autumn lives too, and she lives forever!

Jesus holds Autumn now, Amanda and John; He holds her until you will hold her again. You will not just see her, you will hold her, you will touch her and kiss her, you will play with her and love her. You will be with her forever. She will welcome you to the eternal glory that Jesus has won, the new heaven and new earth prepared for her, the new heaven and new earth prepared for you. She will greet you in love and then point you to Jesus, whose blood paid for her sin and yours, who made an eternity without sin, an eternity without death, a reality. That day will come, and it will be a day when all sorrow ends, when every tear is wiped from your eyes. It will be a day when all questioning ceases. We wait, laboring in our journey through this world of sin, to receive what Autumn is already enjoying. She is where we belong. She is with Jesus. We need that Jesus; today, and every day, for only He can give you true comfort, only He can fill that wound, that hole in your heart. Yes, you will still mourn, yes, you will still have sorrow. Even time, with all of its healing power, can never completely erase the pain. But because of your Jesus, because of Autumn’s Jesus, you do not mourn as those who have no hope. Like Rachel, you grieve for your child, but God promises that in Jesus, “There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country.” You mourn in hope, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. That is your comfort in this time of sorrow, and that, dear friends and family of Amanda and John, is the comfort that you give to this grieving family.

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the Kingdom of God.” Amen.

Proper 15 (John 6:51-69)

“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.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ: Jesus has a habit of saying remarkable, even strange things. We’ve heard just a few of these astonishing sayings the past three weeks. Jesus has said things like, “I AM the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” He has even said, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws Him. And I will raise Him up on the Last Day.” But the kicker comes in verse fifty-one, the final verse last week which is also our first verse today: “I AM the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Jesus has been driving toward this point; this is the culmination of all that He had to say in the Capernaum synagogue that day. And His audience doesn’t respond well at all. When Jesus challenges our thinking, when He says things that sound ridiculous, people grumble, they get angry, they even leave this dusty rabbi behind.

And there is plenty of grumbling in our text. The religious leaders grumble, which doesn’t really surprise us; we didn’t expect them to do anything else. But when Jesus is done speaking that day, another group is grumbling: His disciples. “When many of His disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” The words of Jesus cause offence: to His enemies, but even to those who have followed and learned from Him throughout His ministry. They have heard Jesus say some remarkable things, but this Bread of Life stuff is just too much! What causes such offense, what brings such grumbling? First of all, Jesus here makes a radical claim to exclusivity; He declares that only by partaking of Him can one have eternal life. “I AM the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever.”

This claim of Jesus has always offended. No one wants to believe that there is only one path to heaven, and that this Jesus is it. This is the claim of Jesus that the world has always rejected. It is their greatest complaint against Christianity: we are free to practice our religion as we please, as long as we don’t say that in Jesus we have the only way to heaven. There must be may other paths, because there are plenty of other good and virtuous people traveling them. Even Christians, you and I who follow Jesus, find it hard to stomach, especially when we consider friends and family that are walking other paths. And so church bodies or Christians tone down or explain away Christ’s words. And if that claim is offensive today, then it was even more so when He first spoke it. The crowd saw this wandering rabbi, this man standing before them, claiming that only in Him could they have heaven. ‘You mean to tell us that only you, a flesh and blood man, can give life?’

Jesus responds to this first objection by not backing down. Unlike many in the church today, His concern isn’t to avoid giving offence; it is the proclamation of the truth. “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Apart from Jesus, there is only death. Only in Him is life given. “Whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.” How can Jesus make such a claim? How can He say that only in Him can we have life? He can make this bold claim because He alone has come to conquer death and win life.

No one else has won the victory over death; only Jesus. No one else gave His life into death for you, for me, for the entire world. No one else bore the weight of the world’s sin upon His shoulders, and paid the price for them with His sacrifice. No one else endured the wrath of God in your place. No one else emerged from the tomb alive on the third day. No one else was raised up as the first-fruits of all the dead, His victory a preview of your own. Only Jesus did all this, and He did it all for you, for He loves you. If there was anyone else who had conquered death for all people, then we could take his or her path to heaven, but there is no one else. Only Jesus has won life and destroyed death, and so only in Jesus are we given life. Apart from Christ, there is no life, for no one else has life to give. He can raise others up, even you and me, because He was first raised up in Easter victory. As Jesus Himself says, “I AM the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Probably no words that Jesus spoke in the synagogue that day caused more offense than that last sentence. “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” This offends the Jews, because they were restricted by the Law from drinking blood; it offends all people, for decent folks have certain scruples against eating human flesh and drinking human blood. But the offense goes even deeper than this. They are offended at Christ’s flesh and blood; they are offended by a flesh and blood Savior. This is the great scandal of Christianity; that God would become man, taking on our human flesh to walk this earth among us. From the earliest days of Christianity, the church has been ridiculed because she worships a man as her God. The feast of the Incarnation, the Holy Supper of Christ’s Body and Blood, has especially been an object of scorn, and Christians have been called ‘cannibals’ for centuries. Embarrassed Christians have spent much time and energy explaining away the flesh and blood of Jesus, minimizing its importance to the faith. The Lord’s Supper has especially been reinterpreted in this way not just by church bodies that deny the presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Supper, but even by you and me, who struggle to believe that the wafer is Christ’s Body and the wine is His Blood.

In the face of this opposition, Jesus doesn’t back down; if anything, He ups the ante. “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. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” The only way to have life is to partake of this flesh and blood Savior in His flesh and blood. Eternal life comes from receiving Jesus in His humanity. As John would say in His first letter, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” Why is this? Why does Jesus require us to receive His flesh and blood, yes, even to eat and to drink it? What is so significant about a flesh and blood Savior?

The prologue to John’s Gospel gives us the answer. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The flesh and blood of Jesus is important because Jesus assumed it for our salvation. The flesh and blood of Jesus is important because it was the price paid for your sin. That flesh was offered up on the cross; that blood was poured out there as the required sacrifice. Only a flesh and blood Savior can bleed and die for your sin. Only a flesh and blood Savior can save flesh and blood people. A spiritual Jesus is no good; you need a flesh and blood Jesus to save you, to deliver you from sin and death. Christ cannot save what He didn’t assume. The flesh and blood of Jesus is important because it is the price of your redemption, and it is now the guarantee of the resurrection, the pledge of eternal life. Jesus said in response to the grumbling, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” Our flesh and blood Jesus ascended into heaven and is enthroned at the right hand of God, the guarantee that you too will dwell in eternal glory—with your flesh and blood—forever.

Only by partaking of our flesh and blood Savior in His flesh and blood do we have life. “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” How do you do this? First of all, by faith, by hearing and believing in your flesh and blood Savior, that He has come to deliver you from sin and death, that only He has won your salvation. Your eat and drink of your flesh and blood Savior in the faith given to you by His Father, as Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” But you also partake of your flesh and blood Savior in a unique and special way when He comes to you and gives you His flesh and blood to quite literally eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. In the Supper, you abide in Jesus and He in you, for the One who assumed flesh and blood for your salvation, who has enthroned that flesh and flood in heaven, now gives that flesh and blood to you for the forgiveness of your sins.

Those are remarkable, amazing words. They are words of salvation, words of grace, words of Gospel. And unfortunately, as we have seen throughout our text and in our world today, they are words of offense. “After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.” They followed their sinful flesh, as Jesus Himself said, “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.” The fleshly fall away, but you and I, those who have been given the Holy Spirit by the Father, boldly confess with the words of Saint Peter: “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.” Where else can we go but to Jesus, our flesh and blood Savior, who in love, in mercy, in grace, assumed that flesh and blood to offer it as the sacrifice for your sin. He has the words of eternal life, for He is the Bread of Life. In the Name of Jesus, our flesh and blood Savior come down from heaven to give life to the world, Amen.

Proper 14 of Series B (John 6:35-51)

“I AM the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, He will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ, our text this morning begins with the same beautiful proclamation of Jesus that ended our text last week. “I AM the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” What a promise! Jesus is Himself the bread that we need, the bread that endures, the bread that actually gives life. By partaking of Jesus, we have life, eternal life! Those who feast on Jesus will live even though they die! We can rejoice with the words of our Introit for today, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints, for those who fear Him have no lack!” No lack. That is what Jesus is talking about when He calls Himself the Bread of Life. No lack—of anything. No hunger, no thirst. In eternity, such things will be no more. Jesus comes that we will be filled, and filled forever. Taste and see that the Lord is good—those who fear Him have no lack!

But I have plenty of lack. I lack righteousness, I lack holiness, I lack faith, I lack confidence, I lack all that I truly need. I hear of the Bread of Life, that all who come to Him are filled, but I feel empty. How can God love me? He knows my sin, better than anyone else. He knows my other gods, He knows how my worship is empty, my prayers weak. He knows the anger I harbor toward others, the lack of respect I have for authority, for the things that belong to others. He knows how my eyes and mind wander, thinking unspeakable things of those who don’t even know it. On the outside, I may seem alright, but inside I am a cesspool. He knows how I’ve failed, how I’ve let down those who trusted me, how I’ve disappointed them time and time again. Those who were in trouble I failed to help, and those who tried to help I have hurt. I have driven away those who loved me! How can they forgive me, how can God forgive me? I am trapped in a cycle of sin, and I can’t escape, I can’t free myself. I don’t feel worthy to go to church; I know how unclean I am, even if no one else does. How can I worship Him, how can I sit amongst those who have it all together, when I know who I am, I know what I have done? What would God want with me?

I hear the absolution on Sunday morning, but I don’t believe it. If that pastor knew what I’ve done, what evil thoughts enter my heart even in this holy place, he wouldn’t say “I forgive you all your sins.” Those words are for everyone else around me, but not for me. How can God forgive someone like me? There are some sinners that are beyond help, beyond forgiveness, and I think I’ve gone too far over the line. Doubts fill me; I doubt God’s existence, I doubt His love and grace. I feel like I’m losing my faith, not because I want to, but because I don’t deserve it. My grip on Jesus is faltering, it is failing; I’m losing hold of His garments, and it seems that it is only a matter of time before He shakes off His robes and I fall. I am dwelling in darkness, thick darkness, with my sins, failures, and overwhelming guilt pressing down on me. The Psalmist says, “Those who fear Him have no lack.” Well, I must not fear Him, because I have plenty of lack; I am not full, but empty, desperately empty. How can God love me?

“You don’t know if I love you?” God asks. “I have loved you from eternity.” God’s will, His eternal decree, is that He would love you in Christ. Jesus said, “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the Last Day.” Before you did anything; before you believed, before you sinned, before you let anyone down or hurt your neighbor, He loved you. He loved you upon the cross two thousand years ago. Not one of us was there; the cross is completely outside of us, apart from us. It isn’t a figment of our mind; it isn’t subject to our changing feelings, it isn’t even affected by the sins we commit. The moment of the cross stands true for eternity as an objective fact declaring through the centuries its powerful message: God loves you! But it goes even beyond that. From eternity God has loved you. Since before time began, He has chosen you for salvation and has ordered all things to that end. That is His good and gracious will. Everything from the preservation of the promise in the Old Testament to the fulfillment of the promise in Christ’s death and resurrection to the application of that promise to you in Word and in Sacrament was set in place by God in His eternal will. But, you say, I have no faith! How can I be chosen by God? I certainly don’t feel like it!

“Your faith is failing?” God asks. “Your faith is not your own, it is my work within you.” Jesus declares, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” No human work, no human effort, no human ability or power can bring us to Jesus. Only the drawing of God can create and sustain faith in human hearts; hearts that are opposed to Him, that don’t wish to be drawn to Him. He opens hearts and minds to believe, using the means He has instituted, namely the Word and Sacraments. The proclamation of the Word, our Baptism into His Name, and His Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper enlighten our darkened hearts, teaching us the things of God, as Jesus says, “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” If faith were your own work, you would have reason for despair, but it isn’t your work at all, it’s God’s work. You are taught by God, taught through His Word, taught through His precious Sacraments; taught who God is for you. He teaches you to think of Him rightly, that He is your Savior, Helper, and Comforter; He teaches you that in Jesus you have a God who loves you, who acted to save you. He teaches you that you have a God that demands nothing, but gives all, even the faith that receives the gifts. But, you still ask, how can I keep this faith? I feel like I’m falling!

“You are losing your grip on me?” Jesus asks. “My grip on you is stronger still.” He declares, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” Jesus promises that He will not cast you out! You are in His loving hands, wrapped in His embrace, and He will not let you go. You can jump from His hands in arrogance and open rebellion, as the Scriptures warn, but He will not cast you out. If you fear that you are falling, if you are struggling to hold on, know this: Jesus will not abandon you! He will not let you go. That, too, is His Father’s will. “And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the Last Day.” Jesus is in this for the long haul. Those whom God has given to Him, those whom He has drawn to the Son in faith, are to be kept safe until the Last Day. For on that day, the One who walked out of the grave triumphant over death will raise you and all the Father has given to Him. Because your redeemer lives, you too will live, risen from the grave to live forever before Him. But, you finally protest, how can I know that you have forgiven me? My sin is too much to be forgiven!

“You don’t know whether you are forgiven?” Jesus asks. “My forgiveness is greater than your sin.” He knows your sin, He knows your failures better than anyone else, indeed, better than yourself. And He still died for you. He died for you knowing what sins you would commit, He died for you fully aware of how you would hurt others and fail to help those in need. He died for you knowing how you would sin against Him in thought, word, and deed. He died for every sin that you have committed and every sin that you will commit. His forgiveness is greater than your sin. The cross and empty tomb prove it. They stand as eternal declarations of His love. The stole upon your pastor declares it. It proclaims that you can trust the Absolution from his lips, for he has been sent to give forth Christ’s forgiveness, not his own. Do not look to yourself to see if God loves you or forgives you. All you will see there is sin, suffering, and corruption. Look instead to the cross and the empty tomb; look to the Word and the Sacraments. There, in those places, and only in those places, are you told what God thinks of you. Your God loves you, for as Saint Paul declares, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

So partake of the Bread of Life in faith, in the assurance that God has not abandoned or forsaken you. Partake of the Bread of Life knowing that you have a God who loves you. This Bread satisfies spiritual hunger and thirst; this Bread satisfies doubt, assures troubled consciences, and calms trembling hearts, for this Bread is given with a sure and certain promise: “I AM the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, He will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” You know that your Redeemer lives, and because you partake of Him in faith, because you have been given to Him by the Father, drawn to the Son by God Himself, you too will live forever. As Jesus repeats over and over again in our text, you will be raised up on the Last Day. That is His promise, His sure and certain declaration to you in this world of sin and suffering: that He will surely raise you up with the final trumpet to live where hunger and thirst will be no more. “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the Last Day.” In the Name of Jesus, the Bread of Life come down from heaven to give life to the world, Amen.

Proper 13 of Series B (John 6:22-35)

“I AM the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this morning comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ, I love the Olympics. I love the stories and personalities, I love the competition and the thrill of victory. I love watching the greatest athletes in the world take each other on in a myriad of events. What makes the Olympic Games unique is that they are on a four-year cycle. The athletes spend four long years in preparation between Games; four long years of working toward the next opportunity for gold, and most of the athletes do work incredibly hard. Just to make it to the games you have to be one of the top athletes in your country, and that kind of status doesn’t come by accident. You can’t make it to the Olympics on luck or laziness, but only through hard work and preparation. You run, you swim, you practice constantly, day after day after day. You make yourself stronger, faster, more consistent. Your coaches push you, and you push yourself, because the only way that you will achieve this goal is by putting in the work, and you know that your competition is doing the same.

The Olympics show us that we humans are capable of an incredible amount of work when we have a goal to reach toward, and we see this in our text for today as well. The crowd woke up with a full stomach courtesy of a miraculous feeding, only to find that Jesus, the provider of the miracle food, was gone! In desperation, they began to search. “Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.” The people are frantic—where has their ‘bread king’ gone? The appearance of a prophet in their midst who could multiply food was certainly worth seeking; the prospect of never having to labor for bread again was too good to give up. Where did Jesus go?

We can hardly blame them for their frantic searching, because we too work ourselves into a frenzy for earthly bread, the things of this world. Olympic athletes aren’t the only ones who work hard to achieve a goal. It has been said of Americans that “we worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.” We work, and we work hard, at our job, and at everything else; this goes far beyond paying jobs. We expend an enormous amount of energy on our work, our family, our friends, our home, our vehicles, and our hobbies. We put in long hours to provide what we think that our family needs; we make the sacrifices necessary to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves. When the goal is worth attaining, when the rewards are worth the effort, we are ready and willing to put in the work.

Do you put that same effort and work into your spiritual life? When the people find Jesus, having exerted an incredible amount of energy to seek their ‘bread king’ out, He calls them and us to account for our priorities. “Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.” We humans work so hard for the things of this world, whether for an Olympic medal or for food, shelter, and clothing for our family. And those are good, God-pleasing things; you should put forth the necessary effort into your vocations. But these things are ultimately perishing, they belong to this fallen world and someday will be no more; do you put the same work into the things that endure, the things of eternity?

As Americans “we worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.” It seems that the only thing we don’t take seriously is our worship. You have worked hard to provide a home for your family, to put food on the table; do you work as hard to make that home a place where Christ is proclaimed, a place of prayer, a place where your spouse and children, where you are fed and nourished on God’s Word? Do even your hobbies and recreation take more time and effort than going to worship and bible class? People in all sorts of occupations are willing to put in the extra work for continuing education or another degree, especially when there is the promise of advancement or additional pay; do you put that same work into continuing to learn more about God and His Word, or was confirmation enough? The words of Jesus are a stern rebuke to the crowd and to us, you and me whose priorities are so confused: “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

Jesus calls on us to work for eternal food, for food that has benefits forever, not the food of this world, which perishes. We have been rebuked and chastised by His words, and in repentance we ask with the crowd, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” What deeds are necessary for us to receive this eternal food? We are used to working for our food, the perishing food of this world, and so we are ready to work for that eternal food. But the answer of Jesus is shocking. “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” God does all the work. He sends His Son to this earth, who gives to us this “food that endures to eternal life.” Indeed, as Jesus just said at the end of verse twenty-seven, “On Him God has set his seal.” The Son of Man, Jesus Christ Himself, has been sealed as the Messiah, marked as the One through whom God will give this food which endures. All that is required to receive this eternal food is faith, to “believe in Him whom He has sent.” And that faith is the “work of God.” It is God’s work within you. He creates faith, He is the One working in you so that you can believe in this Jesus, so that you can receive and partake of the eternal food that He gives.

God works, and He works harder than any laborer, businessman, or farmer. He works harder than any Olympic athlete. He sends His Son into this world, He sets His seal upon Him, and He is the One who works faith within us. That is the hard work of creating faith within hearts that have little concern for the things of eternity, who spend all of their time running around working for bread which perishes. But He is a hard-working, stubborn God. He continues to hammer at hardened hearts, seeking to work within them faith in the Son of Man, for only the Son of Man can give what we need, the food which endures to eternal life, because His work is to bring life to the world.

The crowd in our text didn’t believe it. They were insulted that Jesus would call on them to believe in Him. “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers at the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Not so fast, Jesus. We have eaten your miraculous loaves the day before; we were part of the 5,000, but we want more. Moses provided heavenly bread for forty years; what is one meal compared to that? Jesus responds, “Truly, truly I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but Father gives you the true bread from heaven.” God only gave physical bread through Moses, as Jesus Himself gave the day before. All who ate of that bread, no matter how miraculous, would still die. But Jesus has come to give an even greater food, bread that gives eternal life to all who eat of it. Jesus has come to give us the gift of Himself, for He is that bread. “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” The feeding of the 5,000 was the sign and seal that the One greater than Moses was here, the One who had come to give eternal bread, who indeed was Himself eternal Bread. Those who partake of Him in faith will have life. Those who receive this Bread will never die.

Jesus is the eternal Bread, the Bread which gives life, because He had come to conquer death. That was the work, the labor that was ahead of Him. Jesus worked harder than any athlete, for only He could give life to the world; if He failed, all was lost. His was a race of endurance. He endured the insults of men, the temptations of Satan, the wrath of God, and even death itself. His labor was more intense, His work more difficult, than anything that you, I, or any other person has ever faced. And He conquered. He won the victory upon that cross, for there the Bread of Life was offered for the sin of the world. There the sacrifice was given that removed sin, that defeated death. And God raised Him from the dead on the third day, declaring to the entire world that death had been robbed of its power. The eternal Bread, Jesus Christ, is the Bread of Life only because He was offered up on the cross for the sin of the world; the eternal Bread, Jesus Christ, is the Bread of Life only because He was raised up on the third day. Only because of the cross and empty tomb can Jesus say to you, me, and all people, “I AM the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Those who partake of the crucified and risen One will never hunger or thirst ever again. They will be satisfied for eternity, for the new heavens and the new earth is a place where every need is provided for completely. In this life, we are constantly facing need, we are threatened by hunger and thirst. But by partaking of Jesus, the Bread of Life, you have the promise that for eternity hunger and thirst will be no more. You will be provided for perfectly, for the most important food you receive in this world isn’t the three meals a day upon your table but the eternal Bread, Jesus Christ, given to you through your Baptism into His Name, though the feast of His Word, and though the bountiful gift of His Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all work to bring you the Bread of Life, the only Bread that endures, the only Bread that gives life, and you will enjoy that Bread for eternity, for all who receive this Bread will live forever. In the Name of Jesus, the Bread of Life who came down from heaven to give life to the world, Amen.