Sermon for the Third Sunday After the Epiphany
One Lord, One Faith, One Sermon
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ! Amen. Today Jesus begins His public work of preaching the same
sermon John the Baptist had earlier preached. "From that time Jesus began to
preach, saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'"
Dear Christian friends,
Listen to the Words that Jesus said to His disciples at the end of St. Luke's
Gospel, just prior to the ascension:
It is written (1) that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise
from the dead, and (2) that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in His name to all nations (Luke 24:46-47).
There are two parts to these Words of Jesus. The first part is that Jesus
Christ "should suffer and on the third day rise again." The second part of
Jesus' Words there at the end of St. Luke is that the preaching of the
Church must be all about your repentance and your forgiveness of sins.
Listen again to that second part: "Repentance and forgiveness of sins should
be proclaimed in His name to all nations."
"Repentance. should be proclaimed." With these Words, your Lord Jesus sent
His beloved apostles out to continue doing the very same thing Jesus Himself
did during the days of His humiliation. As you heard from today's Gospel:
Now when [Jesus] heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into [the
region] of Galilee. From that time, Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
If Jesus' message seems familiar to you, it is because you heard
John the Baptist preach it first. Remember the Gospel from the Second Sunday
in Advent:
John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:1-2).
As you know, the time comes that John can no longer preach, having been
arrested by Herod (Matthew 14:3). Once John is arrested, Jesus picks up
where John left off, preaching the same message that John had earlier
preached. As you heard in today's Gospel: "From that time, Jesus began to
preach, saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" Then Jesus
dies, rises, and prepares His disciples for His ascension into heaven.
Before He departs, Jesus sends His disciples to carry on the preaching that
He and John did before them, saying to them, "Repentance and forgiveness of
sins should be proclaimed in His [the Christ's] name to all nations."
Here is the point: From the Old Testament prophets (e.g., Job 36:10, Isaiah
59:20, Ezekiel 18:30-32), to John the Baptist (whom Jesus called "more than
a prophet," Matthew 11:9), to Jesus Himself, to His disciples, and further
to all pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11) in the Church today, THE CHURCH'S
MESSAGE AND PROCLAMATION DOES NOT CHANGE. All preaching remains
fundamentally the same. Throughout all ages, one message sounds forth from
the pulpits of the one Holy, Christian and apostolic Church, calling all
people to one Lord and one faith: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand." Every sermon boils down to these words; if the sermon does not boil
down to these words, it is not a sermon.
Why is it so important that you and all God's people throughout time
continually hear one and the same sermon from the prophets and preachers of
the Church?
1. First, if you look at your life in this world, you might
observe that everything around you-and everything inside-you seems to grow
continually worse and worse with each passing year. The Church's unchanging
message of repentance tells you something different. The Church's unchanging
message of repentance tells us that today's sinners are really not a bit
different from yesterday's sinners. "There is nothing new under the sun"
(Ecclesiastes 1:9). All people of all time equally need this unchanging call
to repentance that God's prophets and apostles and pastors proclaim. Yes,
our days are evil; but they were also evil days, for example, when Noah
lived. In those days, God saw "that the wickedness of man was great in the
earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of [man's] heart was only
evil continually" (Genesis 6:5).
2. On the other side of the coin, if we are really no worse off
than those who lived thousands of years before us, then we are certainly no
better off, either. Many people have become deceived by the devil's powerful
lie of evolution. With their minds trapped in this deadly teaching of
evolution, these people want to think that we humans are able to improve
ourselves over time; that we are able to suppress our base motivations and
able to live more nobly or more civilly than those who have gone before us.
The Church's unchanging message of repentance tells you something different.
The Church's unchanging message of repentance tells us that today's sinners
are really not a bit different from yesterday's sinners. "There is nothing
new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). We-just as much as those who have
gone before us-we, too, need continually to be called away from the corrupt
desires and actions of our own flesh.
In summary, the Church's message of repentance never changes because our
need for repentance never changes. All preaching remains fundamentally the
same because all humans of all time remain fundamentally the same. For this
reason, Jesus preaches the same sermon John and all the other prophets
preached before Him: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For
this reason, Jesus continues to preach in the Church through His pastors:
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
By means of this one, unchanging sermon for all people of all
time, God continually speaks two divine and miraculous gifts to you. The
first gift God gives to you through this one sermon is the gift of
repentance. That is to say, God's call to repentance gives you the divine
gifts of being able to recognize your sin, of being able to develop a hatred
and loathing and sorrow for your sin, and of being able to turn away from
you sins in faith toward God. When God says to you, "Repent," He
miraculously creates in you the divine gift of repentance. God grants
repentance to you (Acts 5:31, 11:18) through the power of His Word.
But this one sermon that God has proclaimed in all the Church
throughout all ages does much more than merely create your sorrow over sins.
God's miracle of your repentance is accompanied by the miracle of His
forgiving and consoling presence with you. Through this one sermon, the
"kingdom of heaven is at hand"-that is, the kingdom of heaven comes near to
you through the preaching of the Word. Stated another way, the preaching of
the Word brings your Lord Jesus Christ to you, who had drawn you-here and
now-into "the kingdom of heaven" that He created for you through His death
and resurrection.
A lot of people think of "the kingdom of heaven" as a place to
which Christians will go some day in the future. Today's Gospel teaches us
to think differently: "the kingdom of heaven" is not someplace we will
eventually go; "the kingdom of heaven" is what our God brings to us through
the preaching of His Word. Because "the kingdom of heaven is at hand," you
now have forgiveness of all your sins; because God's kingdom has come to you
through the power of His Word, you now have assurance of a blessed
resurrection from the dead, and a life that does not end.
"From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, 'Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" All preaching of every time and every place
reduces it to this one sentence. Through this one sentence, everything that
causes your death gets removed from you, having been put to death by Christ
Himself. Through this one sentence, forgiveness and life enter into you, so
that these divine gifts may dwell within you eternally.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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