✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Jeremiah 29,1.4-7.10-14 5118
21. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 066
Ursula with her companions, Virgins, Martyrs, 453
21. Oktober 2018
1. О God, our Lord, help us to constantly keep before our eyes the love of Jesus, who prayed for His enemies and did good to them, so that we likewise follow His example pure. Amen. (Starck 133)
2. »These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. „Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: „Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, so that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you My promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and draw near and pray to Me, and I will hear you. You will seek Me and find Me. When you seek Me with all your heart, I will be found by you, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.“«
3. Jeremiah was one of the last prophets sent to Judah before and during their exile to Babylon. Along with his contemporaries, Ezekiel, Zephaniah and Obadiah (597-570 bc), he urged Judah to repent of its idolatry and other sins. Jeremiah furthermore told the Jewish exiles to expect a lengthy diaspora before the Lord returns them to Jerusalem. He instructs them to settle in and build new lives in Babylon, for it will be 2 generations, 70 years, before the Lord’s punishment upon their sin is satisfied.
4. 2000 years later, Martin Luther proclaimed another exile: he said there is a Babylonian captivity of the Church. Lutheran chastised the Roman Church and her papacy for holding the Church in captivity. He argued that Rome’s theology and sacramental system held Christians in bondage instead of setting them free. When people were baptized, did penance or received the Lord’s Supper, Roman theology and practice kept the promise of God’s forgiveness from them until they had done enough good works to merit His mercy. Instead of trusting in the loving kindness of God who freely forgives His people, Medieval Christians were forced to earn that love and forgiveness from God. Lutheran knew from personal experience and anguish that basing one’s forgiveness one works of penance simply does not suffice. Our conscience will continue to wonder if we have truly done enough to be sure we have merited God’s grace and forgiveness. This doubt is soon followed by angst, anguish and Anfechtung (tentatio). Luther faced numerous times of Anfechtung in his life; he writes at times of overwhelming trials, terrors, despairs and crises of faith that caused him great angst and grief so that he only saw Jesus as a wrathful judge who would condemn sinners such as himself.
5. The exiled Jews faced a national Anfechtung. Nebuchadnezzar had deposed their king, exiled many of the best and brightest to Babylon, plundered the temple and razed Jerusalem. The Jews were downtrodden and despaired. Their punishment was right and just, for they had broken the Sinai covenant, refusing to repent of their sins and the Lord simply activated the clause in His covenant with them: »Moses went and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with 1 voice and said: we will do all the words that the Lord has spoken. Moses replied: if you act corruptly by worshiping idols and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord, then you shall perish from the land of Canaan, and the Lord will scatter you among the nations and you will be few in number« (Exodus 24,3; Deuteronomy 4,25-27). The Lord enforced this clause upon His unrepentant people and exiled them to Babylon.
6. The Lord told Israel: »I visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the 3. and 4. generation of those who hate Me, but I show steadfast love to 1000s of those who love Me and keep My Commandments« (Exodus 20,5-6). Nevertheless, the Lord would not, and did not, forsake His exiled people in Babylon. »When 70 years are completed, then I will visit you and I will fulfill My promise to you and bring you back to Jerusalem. You will call upon Me, and I will hear you.« This same loving God promises to show us His mercy and grace.
7. Many Christians face Anfechtung and feel as if they have been exiled. This is further compounded by our sinful nature that distorts the Word of God: the law is too harsh and demanding; the gospel of Christ crucified is too offensive. So we are drawn to a gospel that is mixed with the law and simply becomes a „gospel“ that is less Christ crucified and more exhortations and moral lessons. Dietrich Bonhöffer called that sort of mixed gospel „cheap grace“. He begins his book, The Cost of Discipleship, stating: „Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.… Cheap grace means the justification of the sinner without the justification of the sinner“ (Bonhoeffer 45). God’s grace is costly grace, for it cost God everything; it cost Jesus His life. God spared no expense to save us. He sent us His Only Son to die for us. Jesus gave His sweat, blood and tears to redeem us. God died on the cross so that we would live. Costly grace is not something we can purchase for a pittance of penance and a few good works. Costly grace is not something we can dilute with moralism and virtue. Costly grace is Christ’s grace, and He gives it to us for free with all its costliness. Costly grace forgives all our sin and justifies the sinner. St. Paul boldly tells us: »The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes« (1. Corinthians 1,23). Costly grace justifies and sanctifies us: our sin is forgiven and the Holy Spirit now daily works in us to create good works that will benefit our neighbor.
8. Christ welcomes the exiled, gives peace to those in distress and restores the sinner back to our Heavenly Father. His gospel gives us the absolute certainty that God loves us and forgives us. We stand before Him in the righteousness of Jesus given to us by that very Jesus. Amen.
9. Let us pray. O Lord, Your steadfast love and justice endure forever. Do not forsake the work of Your hands. Keep the doctrine pure in our midst, the gospel free and the offerings liberal, so that the proclamation of Christ crucified may continually be proclaimed from this corner.. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
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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 28. Revised Edition © 2012 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
Bonhöffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Copyright © 1959 SCM Press Ltd.
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