Luke 16:41-48; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Jeremiah 8:4-12
In the Name
of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The peace
movement of the 1960s was fueled by the realization that war is a huge
money-making business. Truly, nothing will bring a nation out of a recession or
a depression like a great war. Wars create jobs, increase gross national
production, and focus people upon the enemy “over there” instead of the
problems right here at home. And so, youth growing up in the 60s rebelled
against war, and they advocated for peace. They adopted the famous “peace sign”
as the symbol of their movement, a symbol designed in the 1950s as the logo for
a British campaign for nuclear disarmament. They held rallies and sit-ins
protesting the Vietnam War, and they practiced the ideals of what they believed
would make for a peaceful society and world: Free love and free drugs, freedom
from clothing (and from deodorant and shaving too!), freedom from work, from
money, and from laws, etc. John Lennon exhorted his generation to simply
imagine a world without heaven or hell, countries, religion, and possessions,
as if imagining could change reality. But, it couldn’t. Still, there were greed
and hunger, poverty and suffering, racism, and hatred. For, you can imagine all
you like, still there is no peace. Imagine as you may, the things that make for
peace cannot be found in worldly mammon or by your own works and merit. For, before
there can be peace with your fellow man, there must first be peace with God,
and peace with God is not something that you can buy, or merit, or even imagine
into being, but peace is something that God has worked, that God has declared,
and that God has realized in His Son Jesus Christ upon the cross for the life
of the world.
God’s peace
incarnate approached Jerusalem and wept over it saying, “Would that you, even
you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!” For, when He
entered the temple, God’s house of prayer, He beheld that men had made it to be
a den of robbers. The people were trying to purchase or merit peace with God by
their sacrifices, by their tithes, by their prayers, and by their works. But,
such things cannot make for peace with God. In truth, they rob from God, for
all things belong to Him, yet men feign to buy His favor and peace by offering
Him His own gifts as the sacrifice of their own hands and hearts. Jesus wept
because He foresaw the judgment that would soon fall upon them: “For the days will
come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and
surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you
and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in
you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” For, the wrath of
God against human sin is very real, His holiness and His righteousness
literally cannot tolerate a speck of it, and God’s Peace incarnate, the only
peace possible, Jesus, was approaching Jerusalem in the prophetic knowledge
that He would be rejected. When God’s Peace makes His visitation, there can be
only two possible outcomes: Receive Him in faith to your great blessing, or
reject Him in unbelief to your judgment and condemnation.
Jesus wept
over Jerusalem, the city of God’s Peace, because He knew that He would be
rejected. He taught daily in the temple, and many were drawn to Him and to His
teaching, but “the chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the
people were seeking to destroy Him.” They, the religious leaders of the people
of Israel, took a “lying pen” to the Law of God and bent it and distorted it,
making it into a lie. They lowered the bar of the Law’s expectations in order
to make it appear more do-able and keep-able, and they preached that men could
justify themselves by keeping it, so that men sought peace, not in the LORD of
hosts, but in their works and in their merits. The chief priests and the
scribes and the principal men of the people healed the wound of God’s people
lightly, saying, “Peace, peace,” where there was no peace.
The Peace of
God incarnate, Jesus Christ, had come to visit His people. The only question
was, would He be received in faith or rejected in unbelief? In the same way,
the Peace of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, visits His people today. Here, in
this holy fellowship, the Peace of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, visits you, His
people, in Holy Word and in Blessed Sacrament. How will you receive Him – in
faith, to your great blessing, or in unbelief to your judgment and
condemnation? The Peace of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, is the two-edged
Word-Sword of God, cutting both ways, for the healing of the faithful and for
the judgment of unbelievers. “Once He came in blessing, all our sins
redressing; came in likeness lowly, Son of God most holy; bore the cross to
save us; hope and freedom gave us.” But, “Soon will come that hour when with
mighty power Christ will come in splendor and will judgment render, with the
faithful sharing joy beyond comparing.”
What will
God’s Peace incarnate find when He makes His visitation? Will He find that the
Lord’s “house of prayer” has been made a “den of robbers,” or will He find His
people waiting for Him in faithful patience, watching for Him in hopeful
expectation, fearing His holiness and righteousness with reverence, loving and
trusting in Him for His goodness and faithfulness to all generations and for
forgiveness and life and salvation? As the early Church confessed in the
Didache, “There are two ways, the way of life, and the way of death, and there
is a great difference between the two ways,” so there is no fence-straddling
when it comes to your peace with God – it is in and through faith and trust in
the Peace of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, or there is no peace with God, period.
There is no agnostic middle way in which you can avoid making a commitment, for
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me
scatters.” There is no yin-yang blending of black and white, darkness and
light, good and evil, faith and unbelief that results in ambiguous greyness,
for the Peace of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, is the Light of the World that
scatters the darkness. In Him there is no darkness at all.
Therefore, do
not look to find peace with God in your works and in your merits, in your
tithes, or even in your faith, but receive the Peace of God incarnate, Jesus
Christ, as He comes to you to forgive your sins, to strengthen your faith, to
commune with you in body and blood, and bestow upon you life, salvation, and
sonship with His Father. Indeed, you have but two things to do in this life –
and, really they are one and the same, and they are not even things that you
do, but they are things that you are: Fear, love, and trust in God above all
things, and love and serve your neighbor as you love and serve the LORD.
Now, you have
tremendous, incredible, and amazing freedom in this, for there is no Law
against love. However, “your enemies will set up a barricade around you and
surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you
and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in
you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Now, Jesus was
referring to the destruction that would befall Jerusalem in less than a generation
when the Romans would lay siege to Jerusalem for four years and finally
completely destroy the city and all who remained in it in 70 AD.
However, you,
too, have enemies who barricade you and surround you and hem you in. They are
the wise men and false prophets who continually say to you “Peace, peace when there is no peace,”
telling you that all is well for you, even as you disregard the LORD’s Word and
Commandments and follow your own way and the ways of the world. Do not regard
them or give heed to them! For God’s Peace incarnate, Jesus Christ, comes to
you today in blessing through Word and Sacrament to forgive and to heal and to
strengthen and to save, but He will come another day, on a day that you will
not know, to judge the wicked and to save the faithful. His blessed visitation
now is meant to prepare and to keep you for that day that you need not be
afraid.
Come now, and
be clothed anew in Jesus’ blood and righteousness. His gracious visitation now
is your peace with God today and tomorrow, and for as many tomorrows as he may
grant you. This is the gate of heaven, and it is open to you through God’s
Peace incarnate, Jesus Christ, that you may be partakers of His heavenly
treasures.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment