Sermon: Quasimodo Geniti (Easter 2) and Baptism of Nicholas Guthrie - 2019

28 April 2019

Text: John 20:19-31 (Ezek 37:1-14, 1 John 5:4-10)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Our Lord chose appropriate words for us to hear as we opened our Divine Service today, dear brothers and sisters: “As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the Word.”  It’s not very clear in the English translation, but this isn’t a description of babies, but rather a command for the adults!  This is how we live the Christian life: become like a newborn: one who desires milk – and the milk that we need, and the milk that is supplied to us by our mother, the Church, is the pure milk of the Word.

The best Christian among us is the newest Christian among us: Nicholas Guthrie, Jr.  For he desires milk.  And he trusts his mother to provide for him.  He isn’t too proud to receive her help and the help of other family members and friends.  He has not yet learned how to assert his self-will or to say “no.”  He is the perfect Christian because he receives the milk, and he desires that milk.

But he is not the perfect Christian because he is perfect.  Not by a longshot!  For “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Like all of us, Nicholas was born sinful.  He inherited it from his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all of his ancestors back to Adam and Eve.  The temptation is to see babies as completely innocent.  But we really know better.  Babies are selfish.  They insist on their own way.  They cause others to lose sleep and to have to rethink their priorities.  And worst of all, babies, like the rest of us, are mortal.  

And this is why we drowned Nicholas’s old man, his sinful nature, in baptismal waters today, so that a new man might arise.  He has died with Christ, and has risen with Christ.  His sins have been laid on the shoulders of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, and Nicholas is now numbered among the redeemed.  

When the disciples were arguing about who is the greatest, Jesus took a very young child, and then told the disciples to turn and become like him.  For once again, Nicholas desires milk, and he receives it with the humility of a child.  For he hasn’t yet learned how to doubt the Word of God.

For an example of why Nicholas is a better Christian than all of us who are not newborn babes, consider Thomas from our Gospel reading.  His story is painful.  When the risen Lord first appeared to His disciples, Thomas “was not with them when Jesus came.”  And when the other disciples said, “We have seen the Lord,” Thomas was indignant in his denial.  Instead of desiring the pure milk of the Word like a newborn babe, Thomas had the adult feeling of doubt, and perhaps humiliation.

For one of the things we learn in this fallen world is to doubt.  We think we know everything.  We think miracles are impossible.  We think science has all the answers.  We think that dead people don’t come back to life.  We think that water and the Word of God don’t do anything.  We think that babies can’t have faith.  And we also have the annoying adult trait of never trusting anyone.  In this fallen world, we get scammed, we get lied to, we get manipulated.  And so we get cynical.  Whereas if we tell a young child that when their parents eat the wafer and drink of the cup, that it’s actually Jesus, the young child believes, because he trusts.  It’s only as we grow up that we trust reason more than the pure milk of the Word, and we behave more like doubting Thomas than like newborn Nicholas.  It is only when we get older that we convince ourselves that other things are more important than the Divine Service, or that the Word of God is something you can just take or leave.  Little Nicholas knows that he must have milk to survive.  And he trusts that it will be delivered to him through the love of his mother and other family members.

And if Nicholas is raised that we go to church on Sunday, we listen attentively to the Word, we go to the rail and partake of the body and blood of Christ – that is just what we do – He will desire the pure milk of the Word.  And he will know that Jesus is miraculously present, because Jesus says so, and Nicholas will trust Him.  If his parents read the Bible to him, teach him the catechism, and pray with him, he will desire the pure milk of the Word his whole life long.  If he sees his family pray before meals and live a life of forgiving others and being forgiven – then he will desire the pure milk of the Word his whole life long, and will one day see to it that his own child is baptized, catechized, and raised to desire the pure milk of the Word.

As for St. Thomas, he was indeed forgiven.  For that is why Jesus came in the first place.  Jesus had commissioned the disciples – and he commissioned Thomas as well: “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”  St. Thomas was forgiven of his doubting.  He confessed of Jesus: “My Lord and my God!”  And the Lord told him: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  It seems that St. Thomas evangelized as far away as India – where there are ancient churches named after him to this day – as Thomas’s preaching brought forth belief from people “who have not seen.”  For they received the Word “as newborn babes,” and they trusted in Thomas’s word, for he spoke to them the Word of God, baptizing their newborn babes and adults alike, forgiving their sins and bringing Christ to them in the sacrament of the altar.  And Thomas trusted the Word even unto death.

For that is what the Christian faith is, dear friends, believing the Word of God, come what may, believing Christ when he says that we are forgiven, believing Christ’s Word spoken by His servants who preach and teach and give us the body and blood; who baptize us, cleansing us from our sins by the pure milk of the Word; forgiving us as called and ordained servants of the pure Word.

The Christian faith is also that pile of dead, dry bones that were given life anew by the Spirit, the breath prophesied to them – the milk of the Word of God: “Prophesy, son of man,” – preach the pure milk of the Word so that the children of God should desire it, for it beings them back from the dead and gives them a second birth, a new life, life that never ends.  

This is what it means to believe, dear friends: to desire the pure milk of the Word, and to trust in those who give it.  Watch little Nicholas as he eats.  See his desire and his trust – especially in his mother.  And think of our mother, the Church, the womb that gives us new birth in the font, a new birth in Christ, the living Word of God, He who came not only by water, “but by the water and the blood” – the blood of the cross.  The blood of Christ shed on the cross is delivered to Nicholas and to all of us at the font – the water and the Word deliver the forgiveness won for us by the blood of Christ at the cross.  The old man dies with Christ, and the new man emerges from the baptismal water.

And, dear friends, let us become like Nicholas, who desires the pure milk of the Word, without doubting, without pride, without claiming credit for himself.  For who is greater than he in the kingdom?  Let us believe that Nicholas believes.  He has faith because Jesus gave it to him, and Jesus says that Nicholas is one of these “little ones who believe in Him.”  

For “whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.”  Let us kindle this spark of faith in Nicholas, bringing him up in the Word of God, whether as his parents, grandparents, relatives, or as his brothers and sisters in Christ.  And let us hear the Lord’s gracious invitation, calling to mind our own baptism and the gracious promise that God will “raise [us] from our graves” and according to the Word of God, our sins “are forgiven.”  We are indeed blessed, though we have not seen, and yet have believed – and “by believing, you may have life in His name.”

“As newborn babes, Alleluia, desire the pure milk of the Word.  Alleluia.  Alleluia.”  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.