16 May 2018
Text: John 15:26-16:4 (Ezek 36:22-28, 1 Pet 4:7-14)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
“I
have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away….
Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is
offering service to God.”
This
prophecy was to come true very quickly, as Christians became subject to
persecutions: first by the Jewish authorities, then by Roman state, and later
at the hands of radical Islam. This
latter persecution persists to this very day.
“Whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.”
Jesus
doesn’t tell us this so that we would despair, but rather so that we would
rejoice at the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Our Lord also said, “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to
you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he
will bear witness about me. And you also will bear
witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”
The
Helper is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.
He is not our own spirit. He is
not an emotional shot in the arm. He is
not enthusiasm. He is the Third Person
of God, sent to us in an objective way to guide us into all the truth, and to
keep us from falling away. He inspires
the Scriptures to be written, and He comes to us in Word and Sacrament. He keeps the Church faithful, and He draws
individual believers back to the Father by pointing them to the Son. And as the Lord Jesus Christ was revealing
this to the apostles, the Holy Spirit was yet to unleash His might upon the
Church and the world at Pentecost. We
have the blessing of 20-20 hindsight, knowing what the coming of the Helper
truly meant to them, and means to us today.
The
Holy Spirit’s presence, unlike the false claims of false teachers, doesn’t mean
that you will never suffer, never doubt, never struggle, never wrestle with health
issues, and never endure poverty. The
Holy Spirit is not a genie in a bottle that does our bidding because we are so
wonderful. The Holy Spirit’s ministry is
not to dole out mansions, yachts, and private jets to prosperity preachers on
TV.
That,
dear friends, is a great lie. For what
does our Lord teach us about the ministry of the Spirit? Once more, the Lord tells us that the Spirit
comes to us because we will be harassed and hounded, put out of polite society,
and be dehumanized and demonized, so that even our lives and the lives of our
children might be taken from us.
Doctor
Luther described “the cross” as one of the marks of the Church. Asia Bibi, who has been in prison on death
row in Pakistan for her Christian faith, bears that cross; Joyce Meyer and
Jesse Duplantis, false TV preachers who have gotten rich off of diabolical
lies, do not bear the cross, but rather inflict that cross upon the true
Church.
Dear
friends, the Christian life is a warrior life.
We realize that we are under the constant attacks of the devil, the
world, and our sinful flesh. We resist,
led by the Holy Spirit, armed by the Word of God, fortified by the Holy
Sacraments, and fighting under the command and protection of our King, the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Evil
is all around us. We are constantly
being lied to: by the culture, by the state, by the once-Christian institutions
of entertainment, media, and education.
Our faith is under constant assault, even here where we have not yet
gotten to the point where we are allowed to be killed. Instead, we are bullied and browbeaten to
abandon our faith and just go with the flow of the culture of death and the
ways and works of the devil (which we have renounced at our baptisms, as the
Holy Spirit descended upon us to protect us from the evil one).
For
at our Holy Baptism, the Lord sprinkled us with clean water, and we were cleansed
from sin and death. The Lord removed the
heart of stone, the cold, dead mind of sin that is our heritage as sons of Adam
and daughters of Eve, and He replaced that malignant heart with a heart of
flesh, the pure, renewed flesh of the resurrection. Indeed, this renewal is also the work of the
Holy Spirit, and His reclamation of our bodies and souls is an ongoing project
that will not end until we have been raised from the dead to eternal life, the
life that will itself have no end.
St.
Peter exhorts us: “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be
self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.” In this fallen world, this culture of death,
because of our stony hearts, we are out of control and we are anything but
sober-minded. But the Holy Spirit comes
to us to being about a profound change, a re-orientation toward the holy: the
good, the true, the beautiful; to the restoration of our true humanity,
shedding off the evil shell like a serpent shedding its old skin. The Spirit comes to us in Word and Sacrament,
and blesses us, even as we grow ever closer to the Father – both in the sanctification
of the conduct of our lives, and in the hallowing of the time we have left in
this life.
St.
Peter reiterates our Lord’s words about both persecution and the Holy Spirit: “Beloved,
do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you,
as though something strange were happening to you. But
rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also
rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are
insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of
glory and of God rests upon you.”
The
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of glory, enables us to rejoice even in the midst of
persecution – which should not come to us by surprise. “Above all,” says the apostle, “keep loving
one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”
Indeed,
love – the love of our Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross to atone for us
and for the sins of the world – “covers a multitude of sins.” By the grace of Christ and by the ministry of
the Spirit, according to the will of the Father, we live in this love that has
been poured out upon us lavishly, like the water and blood that issued from His
side, like the water of Holy Baptism and the blood of the Holy Supper to which the
Holy Spirit draws us according to our need.
Let
us take our rest in the Holy Spirit and in His gathering together of the flock of
the Lord’s people, the called and the forgiven, that is, the Church. Let us receive this love and pour out this love
with equal liberality.
And
by the Spirit’s guiding, let us remember the words and promises of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that we may remember that He told them to us, now, and even unto eternity.
Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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