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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
“Choice” is the theme for this sermon. “Choice” is a topic in today’s Gospel Reading: Jesus says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you”. And “Choice” also seems appropriate for this Sunday that our society observes as Mother’s Day; for example, a popular parenting technique encourages giving small children choices, choices such as “You have the choice of either eating your dinner or going to bed without dinner.” Some choices are better than other choices, and apparently having some choice is better than having no choice. Yet, no choice is precisely what Jesus in our Gospel Reading says we have when it comes to Him. Jesus has the choice, not us. He says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you”. And, a few verses after our Gospel Reading, Jesus similarly says that He chose us out of the world.
Jesus’s explicit statements about our not choosing Him but His choosing us are unique to St. John’s Gospel account, and they come in the context of Jesus’s identifying both Himself as the vine and us as its branches, context that we heard last week. We might say that in last week’s Gospel Reading Jesus gave a framework that He fills in in this week’s Gospel Reading. To be sure, branches hardly have a choice about the vine to which they are attached, but, in Jesus’s day, disciples normally chose the teacher to whom they were attached, but Jesus says in His case that is not so.
Like small children, we like to have choices, so we do not like not having a choice. For example, when it comes to carrying a baby to term, popular culture emphasizes the mother’s so‑called “right to choose”, never mind that the mother’s so‑called “right to choose” completely shuts out the baby’s “right to life”. When it comes to spiritual life, popular religion thinks we are more like the mother than the baby: that we “decide for Jesus” or somehow choose to believe in Him. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus essentially says that nothing could be further from the truth. He says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you”. Well before our Gospel Reading, St. John’s account says that believers are born not “of the will of the flesh nor the will of man but of God”. (Ask infertile couples Whose “choice” their having a child really is!) We are unable to choose. By nature, we are, as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, dead in trespasses and sins. The few places in the Old Testament that might seem to suggest that people choose to believe are ironic, in some sense sarcastically stating the opposite of what is true. Since our first parents’ fall into sin, and before we are converted to faith, human free will (or choice, reason) in spiritual matters inclines only towards evil. In the Hymn of the Day, The Rev. Doctor Martin Luther confesses the truth well, with such phrases as “Fast bound in Satan’s chains I lay”, “In sin my mother bore me”, and “My own good works all came to naught, / No grace or merit gaining; / Free will against God’s judgment fought / Dead to all good remaining.”
Yet, all is not lost! We sang in that same Hymn of the Day, “But God had seen my wretched state / Before the world’s foundation, / And mindful of His mercies great, / He planned for my salvation.” The Hymn of the Day goes on to describe how God carried out that plan for our salvation. So, today His Word calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin and believe that He forgives our sin. His Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. For, in the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
In extremely dire circumstances, some mothers are faced with choosing between their own lives and the lives of their children. Some mothers choose to lay down their lives for their children, akin to what Jesus describes in the Gospel Reading as the greatest love, one’s laying down his life for his friends. Yet, Jesus’s love for us is even greater. For, Jesus, our Good Shepherd, not only laid down His life for us—and that while we were still sinners and so His enemies—but Jesus also took back up His life for us. The Father’s love for us is so great that He sent His Son, Whose love for us was so great that He died for us and rose again for us. God’s love leads Him to forgive our sins by grace through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. So, when we turn in sorrow from our sin and believe God forgives our sins for Jesus’s sake, God does just that: He forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be, and He even forgives our sinful natures themselves.
Jesus says that we did not choose Him, but He chose us, and He says that He chose us so that we should bear fruit and that our fruit should abide. Once He raises us from the death of trespasses and sins, once He gives us spiritual life, despite our being described as choiceless branches in the vine, in some sense we do have choices about remaining in the vine and bearing fruit, though the fruit of good works should follow automatically from our faith. We face countless temptations every day, and we choose whether or not to give in to them. Popular culture and even popular religion in some cases may tell us otherwise; for example, some say that being gay is not a choice, and so they say that, instead of resisting the temptation to homosexual acts, people should give in, be gay, and even be able to “marry”. Such acts and such a “marriage” are contrary to the Father’s and Jesus’s commandments, as are countless other things that you and I do. When it comes to deserving death now and for eternity, no sin is greater than another, and breaking even one commandment in thought alone is the same as breaking them all in word or deed. If we had to rely on our keeping the commandments to know whether we are abiding in God’s love, we could only conclude we are not abiding in God’s love.
Thanks be to God that we do not have to rely on our keeping the commandments to know whether or not we are abiding in God’s love. We do not have to despair! Rather, His Word, especially in its sacramental forms, makes known and effects the Father’s will for us. As today’s Epistle Reading put it, “there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree”. In preaching and Absolution, the Spirit declares and effects the forgiveness of sins Jesus won for us on the cross. In the water of Holy Baptism, we are born of God. In the body and the blood of the Sacrament of the Altar, God abides with us and in us. Just as you and I might have a meal with our friends, here, at this rail, Jesus is friend to us and eats with us, as He was friend to and ate with sinners of old, as we heard in today’s First Reading. From His Word and Sacraments, we “can conclude with certainty that the Father has no other plan and intention toward [us] than to save [us] if we have [faith in Jesus Christ].” From His Word and Sacraments we see how much He loves us and “what friendship, glory, joy, consolation, and assurance” we have from Him and from no one else. Our abiding in Christ and in His love, our keeping His commandments, our being full of joy, our bearing fruit that abides, our loving one another as He has loved us—all these things are the result of God’s grace at work in us. He Who began this good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
My own mother thinks, as I am sure many mothers think, that the sermon on Mother’s Day should talk about mothers. While this sermon has talked a little about mothers, perhaps it has not done so as some might have liked. To be sure, we thank God for and pray God’s blessings upon all mothers—those who have given birth to their children, those who have adopted them, and those who have in some other fashion taken in and raised others’ children. Perhaps like “choices”, some mothers and children may be better than others, but all believing mothers and all believing children live in the forgiveness of sins, with daily repentance and faith. (And, there is forgiveness for all sins, including that sin of choosing not to carry a baby to term.) Mother’s Day, like many other days, might not be the day that we hope for. Choices of cards, gifts, phone calls, and visits may disappoint, as may the drudgeries and afflictions of our lives every other day of the year. Such is the nature of worldly happiness. True and complete joy, even if we do not always feel it, comes from abiding in Jesus, Who loved us and so chose us for salvation in Him. In Jesus alone are God’s commands to love both Him and our neighbor resolved with His love for us in Jesus, His love that brings about our love of both Him and our neighbor. To our loving God—Father, Son, and Spirit—alone be all glory forever.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +