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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.
God continues to bless me through all of you. For example, just this past week, two families showed me hospitality in their homes, and another family again gave me fresh produce from their garden. I really have no complaints about how this congregation as a whole regards me as its called pastor. Yet, today’s appointed Gospel Reading presents us with St. Luke’s unique account of the sending and return of the Seventy-two, and this account certainly speaks to us as pastor and people. Months ago, the Day of Pentecost reminded us of the Holy Spirit’s “first” gathering of believers into the New Testament Church, and the whole Season of Pentecost continues to focus on the Spirit’s growing the Church. So, there is no surprise that, on this Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, with its appointed Gospel Reading, we have the sermon theme “Laborers and the Lord’s Harvest”.
Last week’s Gospel Reading leads us right into this week’s Gospel Reading and to our theme “Laborers and the Lord’s Harvest”. You may recall that last week we heard how, when the days drew near for Him to be taken up, Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem and sent messengers before His face to a Samaritan village that did not receive Him because His face was set for Jerusalem. James and John, two of the twelve apostles, asked Jesus if He wanted them to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume the people of that village, but Jesus rebuked them. This week, we hear how next the Lord appointed seventy-two others and authoritatively sent them before His face, two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to go. With Old Testament precedents for the practice, Jesus gave the 36 teams of itinerant missionaries both authority and detailed instructions for their urgent work, in part the instructions were so that they would depend on God to provide for them through those who would receive the message. Imagine two poor and powerless men’s coming into a community proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near! Although Jesus wanted people to receive them, His detailed instructions anticipated some individual houses and even whole communities rejecting those He sent, and so He told those He sent what to do in such cases.
With our observances of July Fourth this past week, some of us may have recalled the original ideals behind this nation’s independence, which throughout history have led others to think of this nation as the New Jerusalem, the glorious city on a hill for all to see. Sadly, more‑recent developments in our country’s 237-year history may have led us to think of this nation as a new Sodom, increasingly approving the same sin for which God rained down from heaven sulfur and fire that destroyed that city and its neighboring city of Gomorrah (Genesis 18:20; 19:4-5, 24). Yet, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus says that even such judgment here in time is “more bearable” than judgment on the last day for rejecting the laborers the Lord has sent out into His harvest, sifting wheat from chaff. Whether people then lived in predominantly‑Jewish Chorazin, Bethsaida, or Capernaum, or in predominantly-Gentile Tyre and Sidon, and whether people now live anywhere else—such as Henderson, Kilgore, or Longview—Jesus in the Gospel Reading says that what mattered then and matters now is how people regard the laborers the Lord has sent out into His harvest. How people regard the laborers Jesus has sent out into His harvest matters because that is how they regard Jesus, and so, how they regard the laborers Jesus has sent ultimately is how they regard the Father Who sent Jesus.
Improper regard for the laborers, Jesus, and the Father is not a new problem. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus and those He sent had to deal with the problem, and later so did St. Paul and those he sent—St. Paul in one of his letters even seems to quote Jesus’s statement in today’s Gospel Reading (1 Timothy 5:18). Similarly, the Small Catechism’s “Table of Duties”, apparently with permission from The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, quotes Jesus’s statement in today’s Gospel Reading when discussing “What Christians Owe their Pastors”. And, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will have to deal with improper regard for the laborers, Jesus, and the Father at its upcoming Convention this month, even as we have to deal with it now in our daily lives. When we are honest with ourselves and with God, we must confess that we all at times are at least indifferent to the laborers, Jesus, and the Father, if we do not outright reject them. Imagine one poor and powerless man’s coming into a community proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near! According to our sinful nature, we are so perverted and corrupt, that we do not believe that we are hearing God’s Word when He speaks to us through such a man, when such a man washes us with water, when he says that he forgives our sins, or when he gives us bread and wine. From such improper regard for the laborers, Jesus, and the Father, God calls us to repent. He calls us to turn in sorrow from all our sin, to trust He forgives all our sin, and to want to do better than keep on sinning. Whether or not we sit in sackcloth and ashes to show outwardly the humiliation and grief we feel inwardly, when we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our all sin for Jesus’s sake.
As we sang in the Hymn of the Day (what is hopefully becoming a more-familiar hymn, if it was not already familiar), “Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal”. Jesus is “Alpha, Omega, Beginning and End” for in Him “Godhead” and “humanity” truly are a “union supernal”, and He is the “great Redeemer”, Who comes “as our friend.” He is the “master” of Satan, the “wicked one”, whom He defeated on the cross. As St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 6:1-10, 14-18), we can boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. By Jesus’s death on the cross, the head of Satan, the old serpent, has been crushed, as prophesied (Genesis 3:15). By Jesus’s death and resurrection there is peace on earth with God and those of His good pleasure, as the angels sang (Luke 2:14). So, the Seventy-two and all laborers the Lord of the harvest sent and sends can not only say but also effect peace—the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, for all those who receive them in faith. For, when we believe Jesus died and rose for us as an individual, then God forgives our sin—our sin of improperly regarding His laborers, Jesus, and Himself, or whatever our sin might be.
God forgives all our sin and brings such peace now as He did then: through the laborers He has sent into His harvest. Such laborers preach peace. Such laborers baptize in His Name that the Gospel Reading mentions, bringing about the “new creation” St. Paul in the Epistle Reading says counts for everything. (As Jesus says elsewhere [John 3:5-6], unless one is so born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God such laborers say has come near.) Such laborers’ words forgive our sins, and we believe their voice “no less than we would believe a voice coming from heaven” (Apology XII:40), for, when we hear them, we hear Jesus, and when we hear Jesus, we hear the Father Who sent Jesus (Matthew 10:14; John 14:24). And, in, with, and under bread and wine, such laborers give us Jesus’s body and blood, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Though the laborers He has sent into His harvest, God works in such a way that Jesus could say He repeatedly saw Satan being more and more defeated.
When we are forgiven in such ways, we, as St. Paul describes in today’s Epistle Reading, do good to everyone, especially to those who are of the household of faith. When we are forgiven in such ways, we—from the abundance of time, talent, and treasure that God has given us—provide for the work of His Kingdom in this place. When we are forgiven in such ways, we might even consider being one of the laborers the Lord sends into His harvest, though we know that all face persecution and rejection, which ultimately are persecution and rejection of Jesus and of the Father. Yet, Jesus says nothing ultimately shall hurt us. In all such afflictions, God comforts us—today’s Old Testament Reading says He comforts us as a mother comforts a child (Isaiah 66:10-14). He comforts us especially with the forgiveness of sins that is ours by grace through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
To be sure, the harvest is the Lord’s, and, as He continues to send laborers into His harvest, so He continues to reap its fruit. Far more important than the blessings of hospitality and produce, which through you all God has given me—far more important are the fruit of His harvest that He has reaped here at Pilgrim. In the last two months, the names of twenty-two souls have joined the other namess written in our membership records, and for that we do rejoice, but, as Jesus says in the Gospel Reading, we especially rejoice that their names and ours are written in the Book of Life in heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +