Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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.
We all take—or at least probably have taken in the past—various sorts of literal journeys, such as journeys to distant destinations for pleasure or for work. Some of us made such trips as recently as this week, others may be on them right now, and still others of us may be making them in the week or weeks to come. On this Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel Reading tells both of Jesus’s beginning His final literal journey to Jerusalem and, along the way, of His teaching people then and us today, about making the literal and figurative journey of following Him, and so ultimately of being “Fit for the Kingdom of God”.
From last week’s Third Reading about the legion of demons leaving the man of the Gerasenes and going into a herd of pigs, we have skipped ahead in St. Luke’s Gospel account this week, to what is widely regarded as a key transition point: Jesus’s setting His face to journey to Jerusalem. (We do not hear it in the English Standard Version of the Reading, but the original Greek of just these twelve verses mentions Jesus’s “face” three times and “journeying” five times, and they also mention “following” Jesus three times). “Setting His face” is a rich Old Testament figure of speech that St. Luke by divine inspiration uses to tell of Jesus’s resolving to journey to Jerusalem despite the journey’s danger and difficulty. And, as the Gospel Reading tells it, Jesus immediately confronted some difficulty: a hostile Samaritan village refused to receive Him for an overnight stay, precisely because His face was set to journey to Jerusalem, what they considered to be a place of false worship. Jesus indirectly comments on that lack of a place for an overnight stay on His journey, as He next deals with the first of three people who either volunteered or were commanded to follow Him more closely but apparently misunderstood the degree of self-sacrifice involved. Jesus’s somewhat cryptic and harsh‑sounding replies to the three people challenge all those who would journey with Jesus, whether literally or figuratively and so be “Fit for the Kingdom of God”.
Where do you and I find ourselves in this Gospel Reading? We may not have refused to receive Jesus for an overnight stay like the hostile Samaritan village, but how closely are we following Jesus? Have we either volunteered or been commanded to follow Him more closely but failed to so journey with Jesus? As the Gospel Reading tells of a key transition point for Jesus, so today is a key transition point for three in our midst. With their Confirmation today, Remo, Kathy, and Leroy confess the Christian faith and express their intention to continue steadfast in that confession and the Church, suffering all, even death, rather than fall away from them. Most of the rest of us ourselves have been at this transition point; how have we followed Jesus since? Has our journey with Jesus intensified or lessened? Confirmation is never “graduation”, the “end” of instruction in the faith but rather its beginning. So, we offer Daily Bible Reading that you can do at home; here at Church we offer Midweek Bible Study and Sunday School and Bible Class, and this past week we also offered five days of Vacation Bible School for young and old. Are you and I following Jesus more closely now than before, or do we, like two of those in the Gospel Reading, instead offer excuses for why we do not? Lest those who do attend our classes think too highly of themselves, let us all remember that too often we all continue to do some if not all of the works of the flesh mentioned in today’s Epistle Reading: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (Galatians 5:1, 13-25). For, by nature we are all spiritually dead; by nature we are all like the hostile Samaritans who did not receive Jesus.
Jesus’s disciples James and John, apparently the messengers Jesus sent ahead of Him to make overnight preparations for Him in that village, asked Jesus if He wanted them to tell fire to come down from heaven to consume those Samaritans, as Elijah had once done with 100 men of King of Ahaziah (2 Kings 1:10, 12). But, this case was different. To be sure, a time of judgment came for the Samaritans and will come for each one of us; however, Jesus came not to destroy people’s lives but to save them. Jesus gave time to repent even to the Samaritans, and He also gives time to repent to us. He calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. He forgives our failure to follow Jesus as closely as we should. He forgives our countless works of the flesh. He forgives whatever our sin might be. He forgives our sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, Who set His face to journey to Jerusalem in order to suffer and die for you and for me.
As we learned in Vacation Bible School this past week, because we cannot go to God and save ourselves, God in the man Jesus comes to save us “From Above”, through such things as Baptism, bringing us into the Church, and working through us in our vocations to show love to our neighbors. As we heard in the Gospel Reading, when the days drew near for Jesus to be crucified, resurrected, and ascended, He set His face to journey to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, everything God by the prophets had written about Jesus was accomplished (Luke 18:31). There, on the cross, the Son of Man, Who had no place to lay His head, bowed His head and gave up His Spirit (John 19:30). The same love and mercy that prompted Jesus to spare the Samaritans He shows to us. In Jesus, the psalmist’s words of our Introit are fulfilled: in Jesus the Lord shows us His steadfast love and grants us His salvation (Psalm 85:7, 8-10, 13). God is present, gives us His salvation, and makes us “Fit for the Kingdom of God” not in ways we might expect—as Elijah in today’s Old Testament Reading expected God in the wind, earthquake, or fire (1 Kings 19:9b-21)—but—as with the low whisper— in ways we do not expect, God is present, gives us His salvation, and makes us “Fit for the Kingdom of God” through His Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments: preaching, Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper.
By divine-inspiration, St. Luke does not tell us in the Gospel Reading whether or not the three people who volunteered or were commanded to follow Jesus more closely actually did follow Jesus more closely. The more‑important question is not whether they heeded Jesus’s words but whether we respond in faith and persevere on the journey with Jesus. As we repent and believe in Jesus, God brings forth from us the fruits of the Spirit that St. Paul described in the Epistle Reading: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and such things. We live and walk each and every day by the Spirit, continuing to grow in the faith by studying God’sWord, and through love serving one another according to our various callings. And, according to those same callings, we thereby follow Jesus, not looking back at the world with longing but, like Jesus’s setting His face to journey to Jerusalem, setting our face to journey with Him, despite the journey’s danger and difficulty.
Perhaps unlike our various sorts of literal journeys to distant destinations for work or for pleasure, Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem was for both—His suffering and death for us certainly was unimaginable work, but, in at least some sense, He did it for pleasure—the author of Hebrews says Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2). We have realized that as Jesus, through Word and Sacrament, gives us who now journey with Him, the benefits of His death and resurrection, He makes us “Fit for the Kingdom of God”. So, when the time of judgment comes, we therefore will enter and fully appreciate His eternal Kingdom by grace through faith in Him.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +