Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter
Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia! In today's Epistle, St.
Peter speaks about the on-going life and power of your Lord's victorious
resurrection from the dead. St. Peter tells you where to locate the power of
Christ's resurrection by pointing you to "the living and abiding Word of
God." After this St. Peter quotes the Old Testament for you, from the
prophet Isaiah:
All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass. The
grass withers, and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains
forever.
Then St. Peter adds, "This Word [this "living and abiding Word of God"]-is
the good news that was preached to you."
Dear Christian friends,
A man's wife woke him up one Sunday morning so he could get ready
for worship. The man rolled the other way and said, "I am not going to
church today." His wife asked, "Why not?" The man answered, "Two reasons:
the people at that church don't seem to like me and I'm starting to think
that I don't like them." The man's mother answered, "Well here are two good
reasons why you should go to church: first, you are fifty-nine years old,
and second, you are the pastor!"
A strange thing happens to many Christians when they experience personal
difficulty or hardship in their lives: they stop coming to worship. The
temptations for not coming to worship are many.
· Some Christians will stop coming to worship when they experience
financial difficulties. They feel self-conscious about being unable to give
to the offering, so they would rather stay home.
· Some Christians will stop coming to worship when they experience family
divisions and discord. They are angry at one another; they have been hurt by
one another; they feel exhausted by the constant conflict; their thoughts
are preoccupied, so they would rather stay home.
· Some Christians will stop coming to worship because they feel unnoticed
or unappreciated or overlooked; because they feel sorrowful and full of
grief; because they feel lonely and friendless, so they would rather stay
home.
· Some Christians will stop coming to worship-a bit surprisingly-because
they feel the burden of their sins; because they feel fed up or overwhelmed
or weighed down; because they feel they have tried everything and nothing
works; because they feel themselves to be at the end of their rope. Saddled
with such repetitious misery, these dear Christians do a very strange thing:
they stop coming to worship.
I call it a strange thing when Christians quit worshipping during times of
difficulty, but I don't call it strange because it rarely happens. To the
contrary, this strange thing happens all the time. Most Christians-perhaps
also you-can think of times when they personally fell into this trap
avoiding worship. They were not staying home because of bad weather, or
because of a health condition, or because of an unexpected emergency. They
were staying home because of sin.
What is so strange about staying home when we experience personal difficulty
or hardship in our lives? This avoidance of worship is strange because it is
so completely foreign to the faith miraculous gift of faith that God has
given to you. It is strange because we should be running to Jesus during
times of great personal difficulty or hardship, rather than running away
from Him and away from the "living and abiding Word of God."
· Staying home on account of sin is the stuff of Adam and Eve in the garden
(Genesis 3). They ran away from God because they did not yet believe that
theirs is a loving God and merciful Father.
· Staying home on account of sin is the stuff of King David. He thought it
best to stay away from worship during his times of inner turmoil and guilt.
However, when David avoided worship, he found that his bones wasted away and
his strength dried up as in the heat of summer (Psalm 32:3-4).
· Allowing our sin or our hardships to separate us from worship is the
stuff of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). That guy fooled himself into
thinking he no longer was a treasured member of his father's house. While
the son prefers to stay away, the Father "waits to be gracious to you"
(Isaiah 30:18).
Do you know what Luther called it when people preferred to stay away and
avoid worship? Luther called it being curved in upon yourself (AE 25, 513).
That might sound harsh, but curving in upon ourselves is, quite simply, a
major part of our sin-riddled flesh and our fallen sense of logic or
reasoning. Our personal problems fight to pre-occupy our minds. Our
financial difficulties or our health problems or our grief or our loneliness
can very quickly and very quickly become all that we think about. The
struggle or difficulty we are experiencing gets located right about where
our belly button sits, and we end up staring at it. Luther is right, for his
blunt words: sin and struggle makes us want to curve inward upon
ourselves-as if we were mentally in the fetal position-and when we do that,
we prefer to stay home.
Today's Epistle warns us that curving inward upon ourselves is
nothing other than looking to the strength of our own flesh for the solution
to our difficulty or struggle. That is the problem: "All flesh is grass."
All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass. The
grass withers, and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains
forever.
Stated another way, when we Christians prefer to stay home and to curve
inward upon ourselves, we cut ourselves off from the one and only source to
our difficulty or struggle. When we allow our temptations to overrule our
worship life, we end up placing our hope and trust in grass:
All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass. The
grass withers, and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains
forever.
"I feel hopeless and miserable," says the Christian (or the
preacher). "I prefer to stay home today. But I know what I will do to make
up for skipping worship. I will read the Bible and pray some prayers."
This sort of reasoning is a fleshly, devilish temptation, designed
to rob you of your faith and trust in Jesus. Read the Bible all you want.
Pray a dozen times per day, if you wish. Such acts are good and beneficial
to you. THEY ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR HEARING THE DIVINE WORD IN WORSHIP. St.
Peter defies our stay-at-home-to-read-the-Bible thinking in today's Epistle.
St. Peter speaks about the Word of God as being most beneficial for you when
it is PREACHED to you.
You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable,
through the living and abiding word of God; "All flesh is like grass and all
its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever."
Then St. Peter adds the parting shot in the last words of this Epistle: "And
this word is the good news that was preached to you."
Let us not misunderstand each other:
1. The importance of worship-the importance of hearing preaching-is
certainly no because of any abilities I may or may not have as a preacher or
a theologian. Stated another way, preaching is not essential for your life
because it comes out of my lips. Hearing the Word is essential for your life
and your health because it is the "living and abiding Word of God. preached
to you."
2. Again, the importance of worship has absolutely nothing to do with
what this congregation might need from you. This congregation is in horrible
financial condition. Our costs keep rising yearly, and we now have gone into
debt in order to pay our bills. But don't be fooled by that: I do not call
you to faithfulness in hearing the preached Word so that the offering will
improve. I do not look, I do not know, and I refuse to concern myself with
what you give. You and I alike will render our accounts to God, and that is
sufficient.
Why do I call you to faithfulness in hearing the preached Word?
Because "all flesh is grass. but the Word of the Lord-the "living and
abiding Word of God"-remains forever. And this word is the good news that
was preached to you." Why do I say this especially to you, who are already
gathered here for worship? I say it to you because of your temptations and
because of the temptations suffered by your absent loved-ones. I say it to
you because of your sins and because of your absent loved-ones' sins. I say
it to you because "All flesh is grass"-MY flesh is grass-and even preachers
sometimes think the grass looks greener somewhere else.
Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia! God your heavenly
Father loves you so much that He took the death-defeating, sin-cleansing,
joy-bestowing crucifixion and death of His Son, and He packed all these
benefit into Words for you. The very breath of life that enlivened Adam
(Genesis 2:7) and raised Lazarus (John 11:43) and poured out at Pentecost
(Acts 2) now has been parked and stored in Words for you.
· These Words are living words. These Words cleanse you of all your
deadly sins and these Words deliver to you the very life of God's Son.
Stated another way, God your heavenly Father has removed your sins from
you-you are forgiven every sin-by means of these Words.
· God's words are not only living Words, but they are also abiding
Words. These Words remain with you, consoling you in your sorrows,
comforting you in your fears, cheering you in your loneliness and
strengthening you in your weakness.
You might not walk out of here happier than when you came in, but
you will walk out of here with the unspeakable, indescribable joy of Christ's
resurrection from the dead, which has been poured into your ears through
preaching. You likely will not walk out of here with all of your physical
ailments completely removed and all of your family problems magically
solved, but you will walk out of here with hope of the resurrection in your
ears, in your mouth, in your heart, and by this resurrection hope you will
survive your struggle another. You definitely will not walk out of here with
more money than when you came in, but Christ is risen! (He is risen,
indeed!) Alleluia. This resurrection-which comes to you through the
preaching of God's living and abiding Word-has also secured for you "an
inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven
for you" (1 Peter 1:4). It all happens here. It does not happen anywhere
else.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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