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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.
This morning we heard our Lord Jesus Christ continue to teach about Himself as the Bread of Life, teaching apparently set in a Capernaum synagogue, teaching largely unique to the Divinely-inspired St. John’s account, and teaching that we heard the beginning of last Sunday and that we will hear the end of next Sunday. As we heard this morning, at least some of Jesus’s original hearers grumbled about His claim to have come down from heaven. Apparently they were so fixated on the question of where Jesus was from, that they largely missed His teaching about why He came and, at least in this section, how He gives the benefits of His work. Those three questions—where Jesus was from, why He came, and how He gives the benefits of His work—are closely related, and the questions’ answers were not only a source of controversy when Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel Reading, but the questions’ answers are also a source of controversy today as we hear the word’s of the Gospel Reading. As we consider the Gospel Reading this morning, we do so under the theme, “Christ came down to raise us up”.
Now, to be sure, Christ came down to raise up all people to eternal life, but, sadly, some will be raised up not to eternal life but to eternal death, that is, to never-ending torment in hell. As Jesus makes clear in the Gospel Reading, those raised up to eternal death see Him only the way a spectator does, do not believe in Him, and do not come to Him. But, those raised up to eternal life perceive Who He is, believe in Him, and come to Him. The Father speaks to them, teaches them, draws them, and gives them to Jesus, and Jesus neither loses them nor casts them out. The critical issue for us is which are we: an unbeliever or a believer?
The apparent unbelievers in the Gospel Reading grumbled about Jesus because He said that He came down from heaven. They thought that they knew Jesus’s father and mother, and they may well have known Joseph and Mary as people, but they apparently did not know about both Jesus’s conception by the Holy Spirit and His subsequent virgin birth. We may well believe and confess Jesus’s conception by the Holy Spirit and birth of the Virgin Mary, as we confessed belief this morning in the Apostles’ Creed, but that confession does not mean that we do not still grumble about Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God, may not meet our expectations of a savior in any number of ways, or we may be dissatisfied with God the Father or God the Holy Spirit for still other reasons. We may not unconditionally accept Who God is, what He does, and how He works.
In fact, in the Gospel Reading Jesus says that no one can come to Jesus unless the Father draws the person. With the Small Catechism’s explanation of the Third Article of the Creed, we believe that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, or come to Him. By nature we are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 4), or, as the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul put it in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 4:17-5:2), we are darkened in our understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in us, due to the hardness of our hearts, callous and given up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve nothing but temporal and eternal death.
But, out of His great love and mercy, God the Father speaks, teaches, and so draws all people to Jesus in order to give those people to Jesus, in order for them to come to Him, for them to look to Him in faith, to not be cast out, to not be lost, and to be raised up to eternal life. When we turn in sorrow from our sins, trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all our sins, whatever our sins might be.
As we heard Jesus say in the Gospel Reading, the will of God the Father is that Jesus should lose nothing of all that the Father has given Him but raise it up on the Last Day and that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life and be raised up on the Last Day. That will of God is effective and accomplished in all who do not reject it for themselves (confer Luke 7:30). That will of God is driven by God’s love for us even while we are still sinners (Romans 5:8), though God hardly wants us to remain sinners, so He forgives and transforms us. That will of God was going to cost Jesus His life, and yet Jesus willingly submitted to that will of God—we might especially recall His repeated prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane: not My will but Thine be done (for example, Matthew 26:39, 42, 44). The Christ, the Son of God from eternity, came down from heaven and was incarnate as the man Jesus; He carried our sin to the cross, and there He died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. On the cross, Jesus gave His flesh for the life of the world, and, in the Sacrament of the Altar, the resurrected Jesus gives His flesh as the living bread that came down from heaven for us to eat and not die but live forever.
In today’s Gospel Reading we are reminded that whoever comes to Jesus shall not hunger and whoever believes in Jesus shall never thirst. We receive the benefits of His death on the cross by faith, but we who believe receive those benefits of His death on the cross through His Means of Grace: His read and preached Word, and that Word connected with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in individual Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are His Body given for us and His blood shed for us. Because they are personally united with His Divine nature, the human Body and Blood of Jesus can be so present and give life to those who receive them in faith. And, we who hear God’s Word and receive His Means of Grace in faith are sure that we are among those whom the Father has given to the Son not to lose but to raise up on the Last Day—we are so sure not because of our subjective feelings but because of these objective marks.
At times we may feel like Elijah in today’s Old Testament Reading (1 Kings 19:1-8): discouraged and beaten down by opposition and persecution (Nocent, 4:234). We may be afraid; we may run for our lives, as it were; and we may wish that we could die. We may even think that we have been cast out or otherwise lost by our Lord. In some sense, the journey through this life is too great for us, if we try to go it alone, but, the journey through this life is not too great for us when God is with us and miraculously feeds us. We may well suffer physical death before the Lord comes again in glory—that Jesus speaks of “raising up” almost seems to presuppose such physical death—but those who believe in Him will live, even though they die before He comes, and those who believe in Him and live until He comes will never die (John 11:25-26). We do well to note that Jesus does not speak of a separate “resurrection of the just” or “rapture” as if He would secretly return before seven years of tribulation, nor does Jesus speak of a visible return and judgment before a one‑thousand‑year reign, nor does Jesus speak of a separate “resurrection of the unjust”; rather, Jesus speaks only of raising people up on the Last Day (confer Pieper, III:526). On that Last Day, unbelievers will be raised up to eternal death, that is, to never-ending torment in hell, and believers will be raised up to eternal life, including never-ending joys in heaven.
“Christ came down to raise us up”. Controversy then and now aside, Jesus Christ truly is the eternal Son of God in human flesh, Who died on the cross for the sins of all people, and Who is able to give and, in fact, does give His Body and Blood with bread and wine for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. As we sang in today’s Introit (Psalm 34:8-10; antiphon: Psalm 145:16), taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +