Quasimodo Geniti - The Second Sunday of Easter (Easter 2)

(Audio)

John 20:19-31; 1 John 5:4-10; Exodus 37:1-14

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I like Thomas. Thomas is a realist. Thomas calls a thing what it is. Thomas believes that things have meaning in and of themselves, meaning endowed in them by the very God who created them. Thomas believes that, if he observes and studies real things in the real world, he can know something about them, and thereby he can know something about the God who created them.

Do you see how radically different Thomas’ view is than the view commonly held by people today? Today, as a people, as a culture, we do not believe that things have meaning in and of themselves, and we certainly do not believe that things are endowed with meaning by God or by any other supernatural being. Rather, we assume that things only have meaning insofar as we, human beings, ascribe meaning to them. We have become like the scoffers of whom St. Peter warned us saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” Truly, this is the only way that you can arrive at a biological, chromosomal, anatomical male “identifying” as a female and legislators, lawyers, judges, the media, corporations, and all the world agreeing that this man is a woman simply because he says he is, thinks he is, or feels that he is. Somewhere in time there was a seismic shift in thinking, in common philosophy, in worldview, in common sense, away from realism, calling a thing what it is, to nominalism, calling a thing what you think it is regardless of what it really is.

Thomas is not a nominalist who calls a thing what he thinks, feels, or desires that it is, but he is a realist: Thomas calls a thing what it is, what it is endowed by God to be. “These things did Thomas count as real: The warmth of blood, the chill of steel, the grain of wood, the heft of stone, the last frail twitch of flesh and bone.” Thomas needed to see and touch and, presumably, smell, taste, and hear, in order to believe. So do I, and so do you! God created our bodies and our souls, our reason, and all our senses, good. And so, it is not a bad thing that we need to experience real things in order to believe – God made us this way – but it is only a bad thing if, after having experienced other real things that proved to be true in accordance with the Word of God, and upon hearing the testimony of trusted friends who have also experienced those same real things, also in accordance with the Word of God, we do not believe them. That is where realist Thomas goes wrong saying, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will never believe.” Now Thomas has shifted from being a realist who calls real things what they really are as God endowed them to be, to being a materialist who only counts as real material, physical things. Thomas believed in Jesus, to be sure. He believed Jesus to be dead. Thomas had seen his Lord scourged, whipped, and torn. He had seen the cruel thorns driven into His holy head. He had seen his blessed hands, feet, and side pierced with nails and spear. He had seen His lifeless body taken down from the cross and placed into a tomb. He had seen these things and he called them what they were: He called them death.

However, it was not the case that Thomas had only seen and touched His Lord in the past, but he had also seen the signs He performed, more than mere miracles, but signs confirming and fulfilling Messianic prophecies of God’s Word that he had heard with his God-given ears and comprehended with his God-given reason. Thomas had good reason to believe, not only that his Lord had died, but also that He had risen and was alive, just as Jesus had said before His crucifixion, just as his trusted friends accounted to Him that Sunday evening in the upper room. “The vision of his skeptic mind was keen enough to make him blind to any unexpected act too large for his small world of fact.” Just like that, faced with the certainty of death, Thomas became a Modernist and a Materialist. Though Thomas knew that Elijah had raised a widow’s son from death, and that he himself had witnessed Jesus raise a widow’s son from Nain, Jairus’ daughter, and his good friend Lazarus, nonetheless “His reasoned certainties denied that one could live when one had died.”

And, so it is with much that passes as science today; it is a close-minded ideology, a “small world of fact,” not an open search for truth. Only consider the debate on global warming, Neo-Darwinist evolutionary theory, novel untested gene therapies masking as vaccines, gender orientation, and identity politics. To be on the wrong side of these ideological issues is to be labeled anti-science, anti-intellectual, bigoted, sexist, and racist. But, true science requires critical thinking and intellectual honesty, the ability to admit that, when the findings disprove your hypothesis, then what you had believed, no matter how strongly held a viewpoint, is wrong. Those who truly want to support science should defend the right of all scientists — including dissenters — to express their views. Those who stigmatize dissent do not protect science from its enemies. Instead, they subvert the process of scientific discovery they claim to revere.

However, our Lord is gracious and merciful. He comes to us in our weakness of flesh and raises us up to faith and life. He breathes His Holy Spirit upon the dry bones of our unbelief and causes sinews and flesh to come upon us, and He fills us with His life and Spirit. The following Sunday, the disciples were gathered together again with the door bolted behind them. But, this time Thomas was present with them. Once again, our resurrected Lord Jesus came to them where they were. He passed through the barrier that kept them in and He spoke directly to Thomas saying, “Peace be with you. Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Then Thomas’ “fingers read like braille the markings of the spear and nail,” and Thomas believed and confessed “My Lord and my God!” If you think about it, Thomas’ confession is even greater than was Peter’s who confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God. No longer doubting, Thomas confessed Jesus to actually be God Himself. Jesus gently and lovingly rebuked Thomas for His foolish unbelief saying, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Thomas had everything he needed to believe, but, like we too often do, he became enslaved by his desire for visible and physical proof so that he forgot that God had also given him ears to hear His Word and Promise and believe.

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book.” Which book is that?  It is first the Gospel of St. John, but that book is also the entirety of the Holy Scriptures, all of which testify of Jesus. “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His Name.” This is the reason you have the Holy Scriptures. This is the reason you have as Church and a Pastor. This is the reason you have preaching, teaching, and exhortation, the proclamation of your sins forgiven, Holy Baptism, and Holy Supper – that you may believe, and keep believing throughout your life until Jesus comes again. These things come to you from outside of you. You can see them and hear them, touch them, smell them, and taste them. “May we, O God, by grace believe and thus the risen Christ receive, whose raw imprinted palms reached out and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.”

By all means, use your God-given senses to observe and study His creation, and derive its meaning. By all means, use your God-given reason to know and understand and believe. However, use also your God-given ears and listen to His Word, the Holy Scriptures, for they are the revealed Word of God and they are Truth. That which you perceive finds its meaning in God’s Holy Word, “which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” For, “if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His Son.” Don’t be a nominalist, believing that things are essentially meaningless until you give them meaning, but be a realist like Thomas, believing and confessing that all things that are are and are sustained by the creative Word of the LORD and thus testify to their Creator and to Jesus, the Word made flesh, crucified, died, risen, reigning, and returning in glory today, tomorrow, or the next day. And, to preserve you in faith until that day and hour, your Lord Jesus is present with you now that you may believe, and that believing you may have life in His Name, to the glory of God His Father. 

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.

Why is it so hard to live freely?

It is really hard to live in the freedom of the Gospel. The flesh actually likes, loves the Law. Well, ok, it's a love/hate relationship. The flesh loves the Law because it justifies itself (falsely, of course) by it. The flesh hates the Law because it forbids what it wants to do.  Like a toddler, however, the flesh rebels against the Law in part to test that it is still there. The flesh receives comfort knowing that the rules are still in force.

This plays out in interesting ways in the Christian life. How tempting it is for those who are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ to grope around for laws to follow and to impose upon others? And then there's the temptation to rebel against the Gospel itself, because it contains the Law fulfilled in Jesus. This is to say that we are free *in* the Gospel, not *from* the Gospel. The Law is fulfilled; it has not been abolished, nor did it pass away. That's a BIG difference!

Well intentioned Christians both cast the justified back into the shackles of law and teach that the law no longer applies! My heart is comforted in the proclamation that Christ has justified me in His blood, and then some yahoo comes along and says, "Now you have to do this...: evangelize, witness, read your Bible more, attend small groups, whatever." Of course, some other yahoo will come along and say, "Just go to mass, that's all."

No. Justification means something. It means that you are freed from the Law's demands that you may live freely *in* the Gospel. You see, that's a bit different from the kind of antinomian freedom some peddle. In Christ you are a new creation; that means a new life and a new way of living. It doesn't mean a sinless life, but it means a repentant life, a contrite life, a humble life. However, the works of this new life are not to be quantified or measured -- that is purely a human rationalistic idea. The fruit of faith is not to be quantified or measured, but they must be there; and they will be there, if there is faith. Christ says that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. I don't know anyone who's moved any mountains. Undoubtedly, "O ye of little faith" are amongst the best that our Lord will ever find. "O Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief," a father cried. "He who believes... will be saved." How much? How often? Doesn't enter into the equation.

"Give, and it will be given..."
"Love God...., and love your neighbor..."
"Forgive...., and you will be forgiven..."

How much? How often?
Doesn't enter into the equation.

Living in the freedom of the Gospel can only be done in continual contrition, humility, and repentance in faith and trust in Jesus Christ who is making (still) all things new. The faithful follow Him in the Way that He goes. They cannot be Him, but they are baptized into Him and He will make them like Him throughout their lives, culminating in the resurrection of their bodies on the Last Day and eternal life with Him thereafter.

What does that life look like? Perhaps it's better to say what it does not look like. The new life does *not* look like a life lived under the Law or law. It does not have a long list of "must dos" or "pieties" or "steps" or anything else contrived by human reason and sinful pride.  It does not force a rationalistic interpretation upon God's Word breaking it into "three rules" or "seven dispensations" or any other forced categorization. I suppose it might be said to look like the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount, not because they describe a new Law, rule, or guide for the Christian life, but because they describe Christ and His kingdom which has broken into this world and is day by day establishing its reign until the culmination and unveiling of Christ's glory on the Last Day.

Think fruits, not rules.
Think contrition, repentance, and humility, not works and obedience.
Think what Christ has done, not what I must do.
And, do your vocation. Be your vocation. Faithfully, in humility and repentance, every day of your life.
Live *in* the freedom of the Gospel. That is all.

"We need to stop arguing about trivial things like the truth."

Ok, so there are some problems with the red balloon handler's argumentation, but still, this video, in a simple way, demonstrates the many problems with post-modern, relativistic theories of, and denials of, truth and it also elegantly sets forth one of the chief conditions for truth: The truth is true whether you believe it or not.

A Reflection on Knowledge and Faith

Recently, frescoes dated from the 4^th century were discovered in a catacomb underneath a modern office building in Rome. Amongst the frescoes are what Vatican archeologists believe to be the oldest known portraits of the Apostles Paul, Andrew, and John, as well as another portrait of Peter that is consistent with other, earlier, iconographic images of the Apostle. Consequently, questions have been raised concerning the accuracy of images created 250 years after the death of their subjects.

This discovery has caused me to ponder, again, Epistemology, the branch of Philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. Epistemology considers questions such as: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? What can people know? How do we know what we know? These are not ridiculous questions as some are want to think, but they bear considerably upon our worldviews, history, science, religion, and, well, just about everything!

Consider the debates that occur regularly concerning the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Typically, two viewpoints prevail, though there are several others: Those holding to an Originalist philosophy interpret the Constitution conservatively, seeking to determine the author’s original intent. Others maintain that the Constitution must be interpreted in the context of other decisions. This philosophy of interpretation may be called Contextualism or Dynamic Evolution. In but a little over two hundred years there has become considerable disagreement and debate concerning what the Constitution means and what the intent of its authors was. How do we know what the authors meant? How do we know the interpretation they intended or would desire for today? Does it matter? These are Epistemological questions in the context of United States history.

Recent conversations I have had with unbelievers and atheists have born the importance of such questions about the Christian faith. Unbelievers ask: How do you know that God is three-in-one? How do you know the Bible is true? How do you know God exists? If God does exists, how do you know He has the ability to change things in the world? If God is God, why must I believe in Jesus? These are not ridiculous questions, but they deserve to be answered by Christians (1 Peter 3:15).

What questions such as these, in addition to the discovery of the portraits of the Apostles, have caused me to contemplate these past few days is the importance of tradition in conjunction with faith and reason. I tend to share the Foundationalist views of St. Augustine and Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga that all of our beliefs rest ultimately on beliefs accepted by faith. In regard to the portraits of the Apostles, we cannot know if the frescoes accurately depict the actual Apostles. However, both their antiquity and their consistency with earlier iconography, along with the tradition of the Church handed down in the writings of the early Church Fathers and other Christian traditions, lend credence to the belief that they are rather close approximations of the actual Apostles.

Ultimately, perhaps, we cannot know the answers to many questions that unbelievers might ask us; we accept them as truth by faith – faith informed by reason and evidence historical, biblical, experiential, etc. But is this not how any belief is justified, experientially? The Preacher to the Hebrews defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The Preacher uses the words assurance and conviction to describe faith; these are strong words that most would count as knowledge. This is to say that faith is no weak, unfounded belief in something that may or may not exist, but faith is objective – this is to say, you do not simply have faith, but you have faith in something. Tradition is the shared faith of a community – a family, a tribe, a nation, a congregation, a denomination, a religion, etc. Tradition serves objective faith, but it must never be the object of faith.

The questions asked by unbelievers and atheists should be answered in accord with faith and tradition, acknowledging that it is a matter of faith – reasonable faith. It is not the job of a Christian to convert anyone – that’s the Holy Spirit’s work! – but it is the job of a Christian to confess your faith before men (Matthew 10:32). There is good reason, drawn from experience and tradition, grounded in faith, to believe that the frescoes in the Roman catacomb are fairly accurate depictions of the Apostles. Can we know for certain? Perhaps not. Can we know anything for certain? We believe…., in something…., and that is faith, religious or otherwise. And faith in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is faith that is assured and convicted, it is a confession. “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33)

In Christ’s service, Pastor Ellingworth

They Once Were LOST…, but now they have found each other.

Six years ago, Oceanic 815, flying from Sydney to Los Angeles, broke apart in mid-air and tumbled to an unknown island in the South Pacific in three pieces. Incredibly, providentially (?), over forty passengers survived. The survivors soon discovered, however, that this was no ordinary tropical island. From polar bears to strange electromagnetic forces, to a malicious “smoke monster” and hostile unknown natives (“Others”), to a group of utopian hippie scientists from the 1970s called “The Dharma Initiative” and seemingly ageless, demigod personages Richard Alpert, Jacob, and “The Man in Black”, the survivors were soon asking, in the immortal words of Charlie Pace, “Guys, where are we?” Six years later, the television series has come to a closure, and fans are still asking that same question, along with countless others.

LOST was unique in television history: it was epic in narrative scope, cast, setting, even in time and space. The closest series comparable to it has to be David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” (early 1990s). Moreover, LOST was a product of our postmodern times and culture and, I believe, evolved over its six seasons into a critique of these. Chief amongst the postmodern themes in LOST include the island itself. An island has the appearance of being disconnected from other land masses, seemingly floating in the ocean. I believe that LOST utilized this idea as a critique of postmodernism, a primary tenet of which is that there are no absolutes (absolute truths), but that truth is subjective, being the product of a culture’s narrative or collective story. In the end, just as an island in reality is connected to a land mass hidden under water, it was never the island that was LOST, but it was the survivors who were lost in their lives even before being brought to the island.

In LOST, the island appeared to be disconnected, time and space appeared to be disconnected, good and evil, right and wrong, even life and death appeared to be disconnected – this is to say that LOST was thoroughly postmodern, leaving the viewer, and our survivors, awash in uncertainty of where they were, when they were, who they were, and why they were. Is that not a reflection of the world we live in today? The postmodern delusion of our time has seen us devolve into fragmented families, often separated by great geographical distances and by even greater relational distances. We have believed the lie that by eliminating absolute truth and connectedness we will truly be free. But, free to what end? Free to float alone with no meaning, no purpose, no relation to others, etc.? Many gladly court such disconnectedness, as did some of the survivors on the LOST island. In the end, however, LOST critiques this idea, I believe, by suggesting that the survivors, who were already disconnected and lost in their real-world lives, were brought to the island, not to revel in their postmodernity, but to have an opportunity to rediscover who they were, where and when they were, and even why they were in relational connectedness to each other. These strangers came to care about each other and even to love each other unto the point of sacrificing their lives, in some cases, for each other. In LOST’s end, it is relationships and connectedness that are truly important and that truly set the LOSTies free.

There were many religious themes in LOST coming from all sorts of faiths, philosophies, and traditions: good and evil, right and wrong, repentance, contrition, forgiveness, redemption, sacrifice, resurrection, and reincarnation are but a few. LOST was thoroughly pluralistic (equality of all religious views) and often Unitarian (all paths lead to God), but in the end, despite the many and varied religious symbols and motifs represented, I believe that a general western Judeo-Christian view won out. To put it simply, no one is brought into this world to live for himself alone. We are born into families, tribes, communities, and nations and are dependent upon each other. This gives us each an opportunity to die to ourselves and to live to God by loving service of our neighbor. I believe this idea was encapsulated in the oft repeated LOST mantra, “Live together, or die alone.”

Jesus teaches us that love is the fulfillment of the Law, for love does no harm to a neighbor. Further, Jesus teaches that the greatest act of love is to sacrifice one’s self for another. Postmodernists can do this as well as followers of Jesus “the way, the truth, and the life”, but ultimately their sacrifice has no meaning. Your selfless sacrifice of love, forgiveness, charity, mercy, peace, etc. is motivated by and flows from Christ’s own sacrifice of love for you. Jesus Christ is the Truth incarnate (in human flesh and form), and by knowing Him, you know the Truth, and the Truth truly sets you free.

Like passengers on an airliner, we all come into this world with the baggage of sin. Also, like travelers, we pick up a lot more baggage along the way. Jesus took that baggage upon Himself and died for our sins upon the cross. We don’t have to carry that baggage anymore. And, now that our load has been lightened, Jesus will work through us to help others believe that He has taken away their baggage to. We see that we are not alone, that we need each other, that we are not lost, and that is to be truly found.

There Are No Postmodernists In Electric Chairs

There Are No Postmodernists In Electric Chairs » First Thoughts A First Things Blog

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris on the epistemological equivalent of “There are no atheists in foxholes”:

It has become fashionable nowadays to speak of the subjectivity or the relativity of truth. I find such talk ridiculous at best. Let’s go back to Randall Dale Adams. He found himself within days of being executed in “Old Sparky,” the electric chair in Walls Unit, Huntsville Texas.

There is nothing post-modern about the electric chair. It takes a living human being and turns him into a piece of meat. Imagine you – you the young journalists of tomorrow – being strapped into an electric chair for a crime you didn’t commit. Would you take comfort from a witness telling you that it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are guilty or innocent? That there is no truth? “I think you’re guilty; you think you’re innocent. Can’t we work it all out?”

Well, the answer is: No. We can’t. There are facts. There is a world in which things happen and the journalist’s job is to figure out what those things are. Anything less, is giving up on the most important task around – separating truth from illusion, truth from fantasy, truth from wishful thinking.

And…., a great comment to the post:

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that postmodernism has been more influential outside of the discipline of philosophy than within it–where most academic philosophers in the United States think it sloppy thinking at best. Postmodernism has tended to be more influential in departments of English, history, and the social sciences–all places that placed a low premium on precise thinking or the truth of the matter and high premium on being original and even eccentric. This general observation is particularly true of Richard Rorty who has not been influential with academic philosophers but who has exercised influence outside of the philosophical rank and file. Meanwhile, one hardly thinks the French were wrong to make fun of Rorty. Consider Foucault’s attempt to carry out what might be called a Nietzchean program of analysis. Foucault was certainly aware that Nietzsche didn’t aim to make us think in a new way but rather to subvert the foundations of thought and to replace thought with will to power. What then can Foucault’s project be? It is at best Foucault having fun at the expense of those who take him seriously, when he does not meant to be so taken (he told a former teacher of mine that he was quite deliberately obtuse in all his writing). It is at worst Foucault’s own attempt to exercise will to power over his readers and over those who fall under the spell of his work. Being persuaded by him would then to become enslaved to his mastery rather than to arrive in those elysium fields of the truth of the matter. Postmodern philosophy shoots itself in the foot–and the prescient postmodern philosopher knows this and doesn’t care. Rather, he seeks to use it for his own advantage.

Atheists questioning their atheism

Gene Veith posted this on his blog Cranach: The Blog of Veith. It is a summation of an article by Chuck Colson in Christianity Today noting how several prominent atheists have changed their tunes

Well-known scholar Antony Flew was the first, saying he had to go "where the evidence [led]." Evolutionary theory, he concluded, has no reasonable explanation for the origin of life. When I met with Flew in Oxford, he told me that while he had not come to believe in the biblical God, he had concluded that atheism is not logically sustainable.

More recently, A. N. Wilson, once thought to be the next C. S. Lewis who then renounced his faith and spent years mocking Christianity, returned to faith. The reason, he said in an interview with New Statesman, was that atheists "are missing out on some very basic experiences of life." Listening to Bach and reading the works of religious authors, he realized that their worldview or "perception of life was deeper, wiser, and more rounded than my own."

He noticed that the people who insist we are "simply anthropoid apes" cannot account for things as basic as language, love, and music. That, along with the "even stronger argument" of how the "Christian faith transforms individual lives," convinced Wilson that "the religion of the incarnation … is simply true."

Likewise, Matthew Parris, another well-known British atheist, made the mistake of visiting Christian aid workers in Malawi, where he saw the power of the gospel transforming them and others. Concerned with what he saw, he wrote that it "confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God." While Parris is unwilling to follow where his observations lead, he is obviously wrestling with how Christianity makes better sense of the world than other worldviews.

Prolegomena

Exhortation of the mind to the contemplation of God. – It casts aside cares, and excludes all thoughts save that of God, that it may seek Him. Man was created to see God. Man by sin lost the blessedness for which he was made, and found the misery for which he was not made. He did not keep this good when he could keep it easily. Without God it is ill with us. Our labors and attempts are in vain without God. Man cannot seek God, unless God himself teaches him; nor find him, unless he reveals himself. God created man in his image, that he might be mindful of him, think of him, and love him. The believer does not seek to understand, that he may believe, but he believes that he may understand: for unless he believed he would not understand.

St. Anselm: Basic Writings, Second Edition. Open Court, 1962.

Luther On the Faith of Infants and the Place of Reason

Let us look at the reason why they hold that children do not believe. They say since they have as yet not come to use their reason, they cannot hear God’s Word. Children have not come to the use of their reason, you say, therefore they cannot believe. What if you have already fallen from faith through this reason and the children had come to faith through their unreason? My friend, what good does reason do when faith and God’s Word are concerned. Is it not a fact that reason resists faith and the Word of God so that because of it, no one can come to faith or put up with God’s Word unless reason is blinded and put to shame? A man must die to reason and become a fool, so to speak, yes, and must become more unreasoning and irrational than any young child if he is to come to faith and accept God’s grace, as Christ says (Matt. 18:3) “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of haven.” How often Christ points out to us that we must become children and fools and how often He condemns reason!

Again, tell me, what sort of reason did the little children have when Christ caressed and blessed and assigned to heaven? Surely they, too, were as yet without reason. Why, then, does He order that they be brought to Him, and why does He bless them? Where did they get the faith that made them children of the kingdom of heaven? The fact is that just because they are unreasoning and foolish, they are better fitted to come to faith than the old and reasoning people whose way is always blocked by reason, which does not want to force its beg head through the narrow door.

What Luther Says, 142 Objection: Unreasoning Infants Cannot Believe, p51.

Luther On Infant Baptism

I still maintain, as I have maintained, that the surest Baptism is infant Baptism. For an old person may deceive, may come to Christ as a Judas and permit himself to be baptized. But a child cannot deceive. It comes to Christ in Baptism as John came to Him and as the little children were brought to Him, that His Word may come over them, touch them, and thus make them holy. For His Word and work cannot pass by without effect; and in Baptism they are directed at the child alone. If they were to fail of success here, they would have to be entire failures and useless means, which is impossible.

What Luther Says, 139 Baptism of Infants Surely Efficacious, p50. Emphasis mine.

The Bread of Freedom

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity 26 July 2009

Mark 8:1-9 / Romans 6:19-23 / Genesis 2:7-17

Audio of sermon.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ever since the fall into sin, labor and bread go together. We all need our daily bread to live, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In the 60’s the term bread became synonymous with money, the means by which bread was acquired. Money implies work, but that same generation loathed work. The fall into sin brought the curse, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,” and then death, “till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The result of the curse is that we must toil and labor to put daily bread upon our tables. Each day is a struggle to survive – with the end result that we die. All our striving to feed ourselves and our families, to put a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs, all our striving to do the right thing, the moral thing, the good thing, leads to death. Life is short and then you die.

Notice how we call it a “fall” into sin? Almost makes it sound like an accident, doesn’t it? And of course, if it’s an accident, then we like to reason that “We didn’t mean to do it, it just kind of happened.” And that doesn’t sound quite so bad. However, honestly, man didn’t simply fall into sin, it was a choice. In fact it was man’s first free choice. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” That day is today. That day is tomorrow. That day is each and every day that you insist that you provide for yourself. That day is each and every day that you insist on determining for yourself what is good and what is evil. That day is each and every day that you insist on being god unto yourself.

In the beginning, God provided for man’s sustenance – all that he needed to support his body and his life. The fall into sin, the willful eating of that one forbidden food, the one free choice that man made of his own will in opposition to the will of God, to decide for himself what was good and what was evil, was a willful turning away from God. And from that day, and every day since, man has toiled and striven to provide for himself, physically and spiritually, daily bread – to the inevitable end, death. For the wages of sin is death – what you earn for your labor, what you earn for your striving, what you earn for your struggle, is death. From the very moment of conception we die a little more each and every day. It is what we have chosen freely. It is what we have earned.

Too much is made of human free will. There was no free will in the beginning, at least not in the way we commonly think of free will, for there was only God’s will. Man, made in God’s image, knew God’s will and shared God’s will. Man knew nothing other than God’s will. It was in the eating of that forbidden food, a sustenance that the LORD had not given man, a food that the LORD had commanded man not to eat of, it was in the eating of that forbidden food that man came to know something other than the will of God. And in his knowledge of good and evil, free will entered the picture – man no longer shared the will of God, but man knew something in opposition to God’s will – his own will. Dietrich Bonheoffer put it this way:

In knowing about good and evil, human beings understand themselves not within the reality of being defined by the origin [God], but from their own possibilities, namely, to be either good or evil. They now know themselves beside and outside of God, which means they now know nothing but themselves, and God not at all. For they can only know God by knowing God alone. The knowledge of good and evil is thus disunion with God. Human beings can know about good and evil only in opposition to God.

And so what seemed like freedom, turned out to be slavery. Man found himself knowing that he must do God’s will, and striving to do it, but without knowing any longer what God’s will actually was. And worse, man, exercising his own fallen will, began to call good evil and evil good. Man presented the members of his body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness with the result that the fruit of his efforts, the fruit of his labor and toil, was still more lawlessness: man’s striving to produce bread on his own still leads only to death.

Bread is not supposed to bring death, but life – Bread is a staple for life, bread is good for you. The poorest people on the earth eat bread and drink water and survive. But man’s bread still brings only death, not life. For man does not live by bread alone but by every, but man lives by the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And God’s Word became flesh and made His dwelling here amongst us. As in the beginning God provided man’s daily bread, so again God would provide the only Bread that truly give life – Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, our Bread King, the daily Bread of our earthly lives and the Bread that gives life that never dies.

Jesus was the Second Adam. He was sent to labor and travail and to die. By the sweat of His brow and the stripes on His back He would produce the Bread of Life. He would eat the bread of our death so that He might provide us His bread that brings life. Jesus looked at that crowd and had compassion on them because they had been with him three days and had nothing to eat. That word compassion is telling – it literally means “to suffer together with”. Jesus didn’t simply feel pity for the 4,000 plus, but he suffered with them – He suffered their toil, their struggle, and their strife, and, ultimately, He suffered their hunger and their inability to produce life-giving bread. Jesus took the meager offering of bread that they could produce – seven loaves and a few small fish – and in a way hidden from the crowd provided them food enough that they were satisfied, with leftovers to spare.

But there’s still no such thing as a free lunch and the wages of sin is still death. Shortly after the miraculous feeding of the four thousand Jesus began to teach His disciples that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” The bread He provided them in the feeding of the four thousand was but a foretaste of the bread that He would die to provide them. Jesus, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us. Even though He was innocent, sinless, holy, Jesus became our sin. He became our sin so that the wage of death would no longer be ours. He didn’t just take our sin upon Himself, He became our sin. And death was meted out to Him – PAID IN FULL. It is finished. You are free, truly free – free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight all the days of your life.

“When you were slaves to sin you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, [‘slaves of God’, see, I told you that free will was overrated] the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

On the third day He provided hungry, fainting pilgrims bread in the desolate wilderness. On the third day our Bread King was raised from the dead to give us the Bread of Life which a man eats that he may never die. And that Bread of Life is His body, given for you, and His precious blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. This bread is not food enough to keep you alive in this body forever, it’s barely enough to keep you from fainting today; but this Bread will keep the life freely given you in Holy Baptism alive forever, and it is all you will ever need.

In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.