1. Corinthians 1,4-9 5022
18. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 65
Gallus, Abbot of St. Gallen, Switzerland, ✠ appr. 646
16. Oktober 2022
1. ℣ Reward them that wait for Thee, O Yahweh:
℟ And let Thy Prophets be found faithful (Ecclesiasticus 36,21).
O almighty God, who through Thy Holy Spirit sanctifiest and rulest the whole Church: hear our prayers and graciously grant that she with all her members, by Thy grace, may serve Thee in true faith. Amen. (Martin Luther, AE 53,141 © 1965 Fortress Press).
2. »I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, so that in every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.«
3. Paul begins his epistles with God’s loving-kindness: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what he wrote to the Corinthian Christians, and it is what we hear today. This grace given in Christ had enriched the Corinthians, just as it enriches us today. And then Paul unloads with the law.
4. There are divisions in the Corinthian church. They are forgetting the gospel Paul had preached to them, and now it is manifesting in doubting the resurrection of Jesus and corrupting how they treat the Lord’s Supper. 2000 years later the Church is no better than 1. century ad Corinth. There are denominational divisions across the Church — they ultimately all stem back to some disagreement about Jesus and they often manifest in some corruption or misunderstanding of the Lord’s Supper. 500 years ago in Luther’s day it was: look to the merits of the saints for the relief of your sinful punishments. They couldn’t go to Christ because He is mean and angry at them, but the saints have a treasury of relief that they can tap into. At the communion rail they didn’t get all of the Sacrament that Jesus had instituted: they were only given the bread, but the wine was withheld from them. Only the bishops and priests received both the body and the blood of Jesus in the bread and the wine.
5. In the 21. century it’s the reverse: Jesus is never angry; He is always accepting of any lifestyle, any choice, and any vice — Jesus is love, and that means you can do anything you want and never fear His displeasure and wrath. That is just as perverted and dangerous as the angry Jesus popular in Medieval Catholicism. Except today when people say Jesus is love and accepts anyone, they don’t really mean every one. There are still the undesirables, the utterly degenerate, the unlovables, and they often are those who go against what is culturally received as the proper understanding of things. And you know who those undesirables are because the Jesus is love crowd will call them derogatory labels and shun them. For this Jesus is love crowd, the Lord’s Supper ceases to be a Sacrament that gives out forgiveness because there is nothing to be forgiven from.
6. In his epistles, Paul always brings it back full circle to the real Jesus and His true grace. He tells the Corinthians: our Lord Jesus Christ will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of His return because God is faithful. For us today, the tax collector praying in the temple courtyard knew he was sinful in the eyes of God, but he also knew that God is loving and he trusted completely in that mercy of God to forgive him, for he cries: God, be merciful to me, a sinner (Luke 18,13).
7. Decades after hearing this parable, the Apostle John wrote: »If we say we have no sin, then we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, then He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.« (1. John 1,8-9). God the Father has declared us righteous and forgives on account of His Son’s death and resurrection: from this declaration we have grace and peace. Christ has redeemed us and forgiven us. At the cross we have God’s wrath and anger poured out upon sin, and we also have God’s love and mercy on display for His wrath is poured out upon Christ whom He sent to be our Savior from His wrath. God’s anger and wrath have been poured out in full upon Christ; God’s love and mercy have been given to us in Christ, and His love is pure, glorious grace. Thus Paul says we are now guiltless because we don’t have the angry Jesus from the 16. century nor do we have the Jesus is love of the 21. century but we have the crucified and risen Jesus that the Bible tells us about.
8. The Psalmist reminds us: Blessed is the one whose delight is in the torah, the Scriptures, of yahweh, and on His torah, Scriptures, they meditate day and night (Psalm 1,2). Jesus said the Scriptures bear witness about Him (John 5,39), and to the 2 Emmaus disciples Jesus began with Moses and the Prophets interpreting to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Him (Luke 24,27). John begins his Gospel by telling us: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1,14). Jesus is the Scriptures reduced to 1. He is the Messiah promised to the Jewish patriarch, and He is the Christ promised to the Gentiles. God is faithful, and His faithfulness is fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Savior. Jesus is the one who bore God’s wrath and also showed us God’s love.
9. The Only Son from heaven,
Foretold by ancient seers,
By God the Father given,
In human form appears.
No sphere His light confining,
No star so brightly shining
As He, our Morning Star
(The Only Son from Heaven lsb 402,1 Elisabeth Cruciger 1500-35)
This is most certainly true.
10. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4,7). Amen.
11. Let us pray. O Jesus, Dearest Savior; come and dwell with us. We entrust to You the works of our hands; help us to complete them to the gory of Your Name, and grant that at evening time we may receive a blessed reward. Amen. (In Gottes Namen fang ich an elkg 769,7 2021 Salomo Liskow 1674)
To God alone be the Glory
Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, Septuaginta, Vol. I and II 2. Revised Edition © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 28. Revised Edition © 2012 Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Evangelisch-Lutherisches Kirchengesangbuch. Copyright © 2021 Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche, Hannover.
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