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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.
There is little doubt that in our time the mainline Christian denominations as we observe them in our country are shrinking. The apparent loss of members is a problem that affects even the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, down to our very own Pilgrim congregation, which statistically is smaller today than it was one year ago. Of course, there are a number of reasons for our congregation’s reduction in size, including four so‑called “transfers to the Church Triumphant”, as well as transfers for various reasons to other congregations, and the congregation’s dealing with those who, in many cases, have turned away from the Church. Yet, modern statistical losses seem to pale in comparison to the loss that Jesus Himself experienced in today’s Gospel Reading, essentially having gone from more than five‑thousand followers down to twelve, a loss of more than 99 percent. Considering today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we realize that “God the Father grants that we come to Jesus for eternal life”.
As you may recall, earlier in John chapter six, Jesus had miraculously fed more than five‑thousand men, not to mention women and children (John 6:1-14). The next day, Jesus taught the crowds that followed Him about Himself as the Bread of Life (John 6:22-71), portions of which teaching we now have heard as the Gospel Reading for three consecutive Sundays. Notably in response to that teaching, some of the Jews hearing Jesus at first grumbled among themselves (John 6:41-42) and then, as we heard today, they disputed among themselves about how Jesus, Whom they thought they knew, could give them His flesh to eat. And, as Jesus went on about the need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, many of His disciples likewise grumbled, took offense, turned back, and no longer walked with Him, seemingly leaving Jesus only with the Twelve.
Perhaps even more startling about Jesus’s “statistical loss” that day in Capernaum is that Jesus knew that His larger group of disciples was grumbling and taking offense at what He had already taught, and, instead of taking it back or trying to explain it to them in a way that they might accept, Jesus puts forward to them something potentially even more offensive, seemingly “causing” them to turn back and no longer walk with Him. ¡One might wonder how loving and gentle that was! Yet, believing as we do about our Lord’s sinlessness, we are hard pressed to fault Him or His true teaching for the “loss”. The problem must have been in His hearers then, as the problem most often is in hearers of His true teaching today. ¡Certainly we do not expect faithful pastors to take back controversial teaching about Jesus or to explain it away!
As the Divinely‑inspired St. John the evangelist tells us, Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, but we have to judge on the basis of people’s words and deeds: their grumbling, disputing, taking offense, turning back, and no longer walking with Jesus in the fellowship of His Church. Of course, we too easily may think about those who are absent this morning without a valid excuse, when we should also and first think about ourselves. About what or whom do we grumble, dispute, or take offense—in regards to Jesus’s teaching, in regards to His Church, or in general? Is Jesus’s teaching hard (or unheard of, blasphemous), or are our hearts hard (unwilling to listen to Jesus, unrepentant)? Are we in danger of turning back and no longer walking with Jesus in the fellowship of His Church? Because of the fallen sinful nature we all inherited, we are unable to hear Jesus’s Word on our own (confer John 8:43). By that nature, we have not life in ourselves but death. And, on its own, our sinful human nature is no help at all in spiritual matters. We cannot save ourselves from our fallen condition or even decide to believe in Jesus.
But, “God the Father grants that we come to Jesus for eternal life”. God the Father, through the Words of His Son, by the power of His Holy Spirit calls and enables us to turn away from our sin and to trust Him to forgive our sin. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives all our sin—our grumbling, disputing, taking offense, turning back, and no longer walking with Jesus in the fellowship of His Church. God forgives our sin whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In disputing among themselves about how Jesus could give them His flesh to eat, some of the Jews hearing Jesus may have missed it, but God the Father, through the Words of His Son, by the power of His Holy Spirit reveals to us that Jesus is true God in human flesh, personally united in such a way that all things are possible even for His human nature. At such revelation Simon Peter confessed belief in and knowledge of Jesus as the Holy One of God. Likewise we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us in Jesus Christ (1 John 4:16). Jesus is the Bread of God come down from heaven to do not His own will but the will of the Father Who sent Him and so to give life to the world (John 6:33, 38). Betrayed by Judas the son of Simon Iscariot (John 6:70-71) and lifted up on the cross (John 3:14-15; 8:28; 12:23), Jesus gave Himself for the life of the world—for you and for me. Jesus died the death we deserve in our place, so that we do not have to die eternally. When we, enabled by God, come to Jesus, believe in Him, and feed on His flesh and drink His blood, then we have eternal life.
The fruits of Jesus’s death on cross are there on the altar for you and for me. There our Father answers our petition for daily bread (for example, Luther, AE 42:54). There bread is the Body of Christ given for you, and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for you; you say “Amen!” and receive them. Jesus’s flesh is true food, and His blood is true drink. Baptized and individually absolved, we necessarily not only consume Jesus’s Body and Blood spiritually by faith, but we also consume His Body and Blood orally by mouth (Formula of Concord, Epitome VII:15), in an incomprehensible supernatural manner (Formula of Concord, Epitome VII:64). Whoever so comes to Him will not hunger, and whoever so believes in Him will never thirst (John 6:35). Unlike the manna, which the Jews’ forefathers ate and still died, whoever feeds on this bread from heaven will live forever. ¡The Sacrament of the Altar is the medicine of immortality! And, until the Last Day, all those who feed on Jesus’s flesh and drink His blood abide in Him, and He abides in them, and they bear much fruit, as branches that abide in a vine (John 15:4-5).
At the reconfigured LeTourneau University Church Fair yesterday there were lots of invitations—invitations not unlike that of today’s Old Testament Reading (Proverbs 9:1-10)—invitations extended to the University’s incoming freshman, by a wide variety of area congregations, including ours. One student’s mother asked me to explain briefly the purpose of our congregation, and I told her that we existed to distribute freely the forgiveness of sins that the God‑man Jesus Christ won for us on the cross, in the ways that He intends for that forgiveness to be distributed, namely through His Word and Sacraments. She said that was not the answer she was getting from other congregations, and I said that I did not imagine that it was! Other religious traditions at a minimum reject both Who Jesus is and how He gives us the benefits of what He did for us! Yet, “God the Father grants that we come to Jesus for eternal life”. Through Jesus as the Bread of Life, the Father comes to us to whom the Spirit gives life (Scaer, CLD VIII:137), by enabling us to turn from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin and also to believe even what otherwise might seem to be hard sayings.
As we live our lives and extend God’s invitation to others, we do not take back or explain away controversial teaching about Jesus, and at times, like Jesus, we might even put forward something potentially more offensive. We recognize that there is no place else to go for Jesus’s Words of eternal life. As described in the Epistle Reading (Ephesians 5:6-21), we walk as children of light, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with our hearts, steadfastly following His steps in the way that leads to life eternal (Collect). We do not grumble, dispute, take offense, turn back, or no longer walk with Jesus in the fellowship of His Church—and, if we do, then we repent and live in God’s forgiveness of sins for those and all such failures, until, having fed on Jesus’s flesh and having drunk His blood, we are raised up on the Last Day. Then and there we will more fully realize that the Church only appears to our human eyes to be shrinking now but, in fact, as God pleases (Augsburg Confession V:2), His Church grows even now, as He adds to its number those who are being saved (for example, Acts 2:47), who now, as then, join in the eternal liturgy, with us and with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +