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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.
How was your Fourth of July? I imagine that many observances yesterday were different from those of previous years, largely on account of restrictions related to the coronavirus, but perhaps also due to political polarization and division that seem to permeate even the patriotism of what otherwise might have been a unifying secular holi‑day. There is a different kind of polarization and division addressed in the Gospel Reading today, in which we heard Jesus speak of things hidden from the wise and understanding but revealed to little children. As we consider that Gospel Reading, on this churchly holy-day that is the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, we realize that “Jesus reveals rest to the repentant”.
The un-repentant were the focus of Jesus’s words that immediately precede today’s Gospel Reading in St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account. Skipped over in our more‑or‑less continuous reading of St. Matthew’s account during this particular part of our series of Readings in this particular Church Year, those words of Jesus to the un-repentant condemned the cities where most of Jesus’s mighty works had been done, because, despite His so revealing Himself to them, they did not repent (Matthew 11:20-24). Closely-connected to Jesus’s preceding condemnation of the un-repentant is what comes next, which we heard in today’s Gospel Reading: Jesus’s prayer thanking the Father for hiding and revealing according to the Father’s gracious will, Jesus’s declaration about His revealing the Father as He wills, and Jesus’s invitation to all those of the crowd who labor and are heavy laden, to come to Him for rest.
To the people at that time, as perhaps to people today, Jesus’s ministry, like that of John the Baptizer before Him, and like that of His apostles and their successors after Him, may have seemed, or may seem, to be failing. All of those mighty works, and still there were all of those people who did not repent. All of the faithful preaching of the Gospel and administering of the Sacraments, Christian Education, in-reach and out-reach efforts, and Pilgrim is still about the same size as it was a decade ago. If not only at least some of those whom we try to serve, perhaps also some of us ourselves are, or at times can be, those whom Jesus referred to as “wise and understanding”, whose self‑regarded knowledge, hostile attitude to Holy Scripture, arrogance, and self-dependence keep us from receiving God’s initial or subsequent revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ and so keep us from repenting, and thereby risk God’s hiding spiritual things from us!
Of course, God wants all people to be saved, as is evident in Jesus’s extending His invitation to come to Him for rest to all those of the crowd who labor and are heavy laden (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration XI:28, 70). The Gospel Reading does not specify precisely how such people are laboring or with what they have been heavy-laden, but our Lutheran Confessions seem to think primarily of laboring and being heavy-laden with contrition, anxiety, and terrors of sin and the death that sin warrants (for example, Apology of the Augsburg Confession XII:44). True repentance combines such contrition over sin with faith that comes only to Jesus (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXI:17-18), seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sin for Jesus’s sake. Jesus calls “little children” those who so receive God’s initial and subsequent revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ, but there is nothing inherent in those little children that saves them. On our own, not one of us would be able so to come to Jesus, if God did not will to and, in fact, reveal Himself to us and thereby enable us to come to Jesus. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 145:1-14; antiphon: v.19), the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (or, “mercy); He fulfills the desire of those who fear Him, He also hears their cry and saves them.
Out of His great love, the Lord saves us by grace for the sake of Jesus Christ, through faith in Him. Jesus Christ is the Son of God in human flesh. According to His human nature, all things have been handed over to Him by the Father. The Son and the Father know each other—and also the Holy Spirit, for that matter—and the Son reveals the Father to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Triune God saves us by God’s power alone, but that power was displayed in the most unusual way! As we heard prophesied in today’s Old Testament Reading (Zechariah 9:9‑12), our King came to us righteous and having salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey; He cuts off the chariot, war horse, and battle bow and speaks peace—peace that He made between God and us by His death on the cross for us, in our place. At Jesus’s birth a multitude of the heavenly host praised God proclaiming such peace on earth among those of His good pleasure (or, “gracious will) (Luke 2:13-14). Now, enabled by Him, we come to Him—we take His yoke upon ourselves, we learn that He is gentle and lowly in heart—seeking to receive in faith the rest that is the benefit of His saving for us, which He gives us with the Holy Spirit through His Means of Grace, His Word and His Sacraments.
The “little children” to whom Jesus says the Father has revealed things of salvation may make us think of infants, minors, and those untaught, and, indeed, such little children are born from above and so made God’s children, as are people of all ages, through the water and Word of Holy Baptism. The baptized confess the sins that they know and feel in their heart for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from their pastor as from God Himself. And, those so absolved are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is Christ’s Body given for us and wine is Christ’s Blood shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. To this Altar and its Rail Christ tenderly invites those who labor and are heavy-laden with contrition over their sin and who come to Him with true faith that they here might receive His rest (Large Catechism V:67; Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:69-70).
Unlike God’s im-mediate summons from the grave on the Last Day, God’s mediate invitation to and through His Means of Grace is resistible. And, indeed, some people do resist, choosing to decline His invitation, and so they are not saved, because they reject His Means of Grace. However, we who repent receive His Means of Grace, we are forgiven and saved, and so we also take His yoke upon ourselves and learn that He is gentle and lowly in heart, and we ourselves at least try also to be gentle and lowly in heart. We recognize that the success of His Kingdom that is the Church on earth is more than the number of people in any one single congregation, and even than all congregations put together. More important than the political battles in our country and even the medical battle against the coronavirus, is what today’s Epistle Reading described as a war being waged between our redeemed and sinful natures, our wanting to do good but continuing to do evil (Romans 7:14‑25a). We truly thank God, Who gives our redeemed natures the victory in that war through our Lord Jesus Christ (confer 1 Corinthians 15:57). On the Last Day, we with glorified bodies and souls together will have the fullest appreciation of His rest and of the peace and joy that comes with it!
Until that Last Day, we live every day with contrition (or, “sorrow”) over our sins and trust in God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, and we regularly receive His Means of Grace and are thereby forgiven. As we have realized considering today’s Gospel Reading, “Jesus reveals rest to the repentant”. Our nation may celebrate its in-dependence from the British Empire, but we celebrate our de-pendence on God. In the words of today’s Psalm, we extol Him, our God and King, and we bless His Name forever and ever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +