✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Ephesians 5,1-8 1616
Okuli (3. Sonntag der Passionszeit) 026 „My eyes“
The Nursing Martyrs who died caring for the sick during the Plague at Alexandria, 261-63
28. Februar 2016
1. O Lord God, Heavenly Father, who has sent Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to take upon Himself our flesh, so that He might overcome the devil, and defend us poor sinners against the adversary: We give thanks unto You for Your merciful help, and we beseech You to attend us with Your grace in all temptations, to preserve us from carnal security, and by Your Holy Spirit to keep us in Your Word and Your fear, so that unto the end we may be delivered from the enemy, and obtain eternal salvation, through the same, Your Beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One True God, world without end. Amen. (Veit Dietrich for Oculi).
2. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is, an idolater, has no inheritance in the reign of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not associate with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.
3. The Apostle Paul tells us: »You are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.« In this, St. Paul is exhorting us to follow Christ Jesus who told us: »No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the reign of God« (Luke 9,62). Luke 9,51 is the great apex in the Gospel according to St. Luke. Prior to verse 51, Luke tells us that Jesus had been teaching, preaching and doing miracles: all of which proclaimed that He is the Son of Man who was sent by God the Father to redeem the world. At verse 51 Jesus’ ministry entered the final stretch; He has set His face toward Jerusalem and journeys up to that holy city. He has put His hand to the plow, is walking up to Jerusalem and He alone is fit for the reign of God. The path Jesus walked ends with His betrayal by Judas Iscariot, His arrest, conviction of sedition against Rome and His execution upon the cross. Most of the apostles and disciples scattered in fear and went into hiding save His mother, a couple of other women and John. When the time had arrived for His apostles and disciples to stand next to Jesus and confess Him boldly and proudly as the Christ, only a few were at Jesus feet silent and sorrowful. Jesus ultimately walked this path alone, and alone He endured His Father’s wrath upon sin and bore our redemption.
4. We will never meet the high, exacting standards of God’s law, but Jesus did. We do not go to the law when our failed attempts at living up to the Christian virtues espoused by the Apostle Paul in his epistle, but we go to God’s gospel that is manifested in Christ Jesus. Striving to be more virtuous Christians does not merit in any way our justification and salvation. We should indeed strive to follow St. Paul’s exhortations with the Holy Spirit’s help to curb our vices and with His guidance to more virtuous, but we must never put any amount of trust in our striving, our virtuous behavior or our cross-bearing as something to be added to our meriting righteousness by Jesus’ sake. The gospel tells us that Jesus is the Faithful Disciple, and He Himself has merited pure righteousness; Jesus freely gives us this righteousness in our Holy Baptism, and we receive this righteousness through faith.
5. The wonderful story that unfolds within the Holy Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation is that the Lord’s people fall into sin and never live up to His strict demands simply stated in the 10 Commandments, but the Lord draws near to His fallen and discouraged people and brings them the gospel of forgiveness that is grounded upon Christ crucified and risen for our justification and salvation. Christian virtue is not about living the good, morally improving life – any philosophy, religion or self-improvement methodology can offer that – but Christian virtue is about Christ, believing in Him whole-heartedly for the forgiveness of sins and rejoicing in the amazing gospel that says you are saved, you are the beloved of the Heavenly Father – not because you have lived up to your Christian potential – but rather because Christ has lived it for you and He gives it to all of us as a free gift. It is a gift that we cannot buy or earn by our merits or virtues, but it is a gift that was earned by Christ so that He alone gives it to us through the Holy Spirit. This is the gospel, and its message is unique in all the world, and we have it by Christ alone for our eternal salvation.
6. Today’s Introit proclaims the virtue of the psalmist who writes: »My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He will pluck my feet out of the net« (Psalm 25,15). We so easily get entangled in nets. Our disdain for the Commandments and the laxity we have about our sinfulness entangles us in the net of detachment. Our determinedness to be pious and virtuous Christian also entangles us in the net of despair. The more we struggle, the more tightly we get entangled in our nets. A seasoned fisherman knows when cut his losses and just cut his net in order to free all the wriggling fish and add them to his catch. Jesus is just such a Master Fisherman. He finds us either tangled up in our detachment or our despair and He cuts us free and pulls us out of that constricting net. Jesus is the Chief Fisher of men and He has redeemed all mankind to be His. The Apostle Peter writes in his epistle: »You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Jesus who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy« (1. Peter 2,9-10).
7. Thus again St. Paul: »For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.« We are heirs of the reign of God and thus live with virtue because the world is still fallen and corrupt. God’s people are to be a light in its darkness. Amen.
8. Let us pray. O Christ Jesus, Thou Prince of the reign of God, make our Christian light shine bright so that those who are still lost may find the way unto salvation that is only in Thy Light. 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, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 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 © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
No comments:
Post a Comment