Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: 1. Corinthians 13,1-13. Quinquagesima

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum

1. Corinthians 13,1-13 1216

Estomihi (Quinquagesima) 022

Richard, King of Wessex, England, father of Walpurga, ✠ at Lucca, Italy 722

7. Februar 2016

1. O Lord God, Heavenly Father, who did manifest Yourself, with the Holy Spirit, in the fullness of grace at the baptism of Your dear Son, and with Your Voice did direct us to Him who has borne our sins, so that we might receive grace and the remission of sins: keep us, we beseech You, in the true faith; and inasmuch as we have been baptized in accordance with Your command, and the example of Your dear Son, we pray that You strengthen our faith by Your Holy Spirit, and lead us to everlasting life and salvation. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for the Quinquagesima Sunday)

2. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect arrives, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

3. The apostles in today’s Gospel pericope certainly proved the wisdom of Paul’s statement to the Corinthians: »When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully.« The Apostle Peter had rebuked Jesus for telling them that the Christ would suffer, die and rise again. Jesus’ interpretation of the Scriptural prophecies and Messianic expectations were at odds with the conventional wisdom of the day among the Jews. The other apostles agreed with Peter: the Christ would establish His reign and rule in victory, not be condemned and killed by the very religious leaders of Judaism.

4. The gospel that Jesus preaches is a suffering, dying and resurrecting Christ. This was difficult for the apostles to hear. The Christ was prophesied to destroy the enemies of the Lord, not be overcome and killed by those enemies. The apostles didn’t follow Jesus to suffer and die along side of Him; no, they expected princely thrones and places of honor for being the Chosen Ones who had followed Jesus from the beginning of His ministry. Had we been in the apostles’ sandals we would have expected nothing less as well.

5. Jesus proclaims that the gospel involves faithful cross-bearing: »If anyone would go after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it« (Mark 8,34-35). This is not the preaching you will hear from American televangelists. Our Christian airwaves constantly downplay the cross-bearing Christian and hold up the prospering Christian. This is wise salesmanship but it is not the gospel. Yes, in many ways we prosper and are richly blessed by Jesus as His Christian disciples, but the good times don’t always roll. We bear the cross alongside of Jesus. Trials, tribulations, suffering, sickness and even martyrdom are the common lot for Christians here and around the world.

6. The apostles had a good three-year run with Jesus’ public popularity. Their fortunes changed after Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost. They had the great joy of preaching the risen Christ and absolving sinners in His Name, but they also bore their own cross and suffered. Their proclamation was ignored, they were ridiculed and all the apostles save John died as martyrs with the gospel of Christ on their lips.

7. Grace truly is not easily understood. St. Paul’s exhortation in his epistle is a balm for our weary souls: »Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.« The apostles endured hardships and they put their trust in Jesus. Read some time these next fifty days Paul’s hardships he writes of in 2. Corinthians 11. [1] He then proclaims: »But God said to me: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2. Corinthians 12,9-10).

8. We are strong because of faith, hope and love. Jesus Christ is the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12,2). Christ is the Hope of Jews and Gentiles (Romans 15,8). God so loved the world that He gave His Only Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3,16). This love is the greatest: Jesus loves us and He proves this by dying on the cross to redeem us back to God and raising us up to new physical, eternal life. Jesus is our Faith, Hope and Love. We believe in Jesus as our Only Savior from sin, death and hades. We hope in His promise to return and raise us up as He has raised Himself up. We love Jesus who first loved us (1. John 4,19)!

9. For whoever is proud of Christ Jesus and of His words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be proud when He arrives in the Glory of His Father with the holy angels (Mark 8,38). »We believe in and hope for this second advent of Jesus. For God, who said: Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2. Corinthians 4, 6.8-10).

10. Samuel Crossman’s popular Lenten hymn summarizes this Divine love:

My song is love unknown,

My Savior’s love to me,

Love to the loveless shown

That they might lovely be.

Oh, who am I

That for my sake

My Lord should take

Frail flesh and die?

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so Divine!

Never was love, dear King,

Never was grief like Thine.

This is my Friend,

In whose sweet praise

I all my days

Could gladly spend! (LSB 430 1.7). Amen.

10. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, who went up to Jerusalem to accomplish everything that is written about the Son of Man by the Prophets, fill us with faith, hope and love so that we remain always and only grounded upon You for our life and salvation. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Soli Deo Gloria

✠

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

[1] this link provides a good outline of those verses: http://www.biblecharts.org/apostlepaulcharts/15%20-%20The%20Sufferings%20of%20Paul.pdf

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, February 8, 2016

1. Corinthians 13,1-13. Quinquagesima

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