Sermon: Easter 5 - 2021

2 May 2021

Text: John 16:5-15 (Isa 12:1-6, Jas 1:16-21)

 In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

“Do not be deceived,” says James in our epistle.  “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.”  For the Christian must have an internal lie-detector.  We need to be able to know what is true and what is false, for as our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us, Satan is the father of lies, even as our Lord says, “My Word is truth.”

When Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate, the governor asked our Lord, “What is truth?”  Interestingly, we have no record of our Lord’s answer, implying that He did not verbally reply to the question.  Philosophers and thinkers across time have debated this question, “What is truth?” – as well as how we can know it.

In our own day and age, people deny that there is truth at all, rather, there is your truth, my truth, men’s truth, women’s truth, black truth, white truth, and even mathematics where the truth can be what you want it to be – even making two plus two equal to five, if saying so serves some purpose or protects someone’s feelings.

Jesus tells the disciples how they will acquire a lie-detector, how they will know the truth and recognize it.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  Jesus is the Truth in the flesh.  He is the Word that is true.  But how do we develop this knowledge of the truth, dear friends?  How do we know when we are being deceived?

In our Gospel, our Lord has been explaining that he is “going to Him who sent [Him].”  And because He was revealing the truth of His soon-to-be departure from them – His passion and death followed by His resurrection and ascension – Jesus said, “Sorrow has filled your heart.  Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.”

Again, Jesus tells us the truth, my beloved brothers and sisters, “I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.  But if I go, I will send Him to you.”

The disciples certainly did not want to see Jesus depart from their presence.  They did not seem to understand the divine plan, even though our Lord told them plainly many times.  They were in for the greatest sorrow of their lives, a great test of their faith, but also the greatest joy in seeing Him again in His resurrected glory.  But Jesus is not going to stay with them in the same way.  For forty days after Easter, He was to leave them bodily, even as fifty days after Easter, the Holy Spirit, the Helper, was to come and “guide [them and us] into all the truth.”  And here, our Lord refers to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity as “the Spirit of Truth.”

This, dear friends, is how we have a lie-detector, how we discern what is true.  The Holy Spirit guides us to the Church, where we experience Christ in His Word and Sacraments, and where we are empowered to know the truth.  Jesus also said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, “do not be deceived.”  The world is filled with shiny things to distract you, flashing lights that tell a story grounded in untruth.  The devil, the father of lies tries to manipulate you into believing the lie because he lures you from God by means of grand promises that are nothing but deception.  He told Eve, “You can be like God.”  He told Eve, “You will not surely die.”  And from that moment when Adam and Eve were deceived and when they believed the lie of Satan over and against the truth of God, we have all suffered.

Our lives are not what God originally planned for us.  We took a trajectory, a path, that is not the perfect existence that He had planned for us.  Each one of us suffers because of their sin, our sin, and the sin of the entire world.  We must walk through life as if through a minefield, for Satan lurks about in our path to deceive us.  We need not only a lie-detector but a bomb-detector.  And that is why you need to come to the Divine Service, dear friends.  You need to be here, to listen, and to partake of the Sacrament. 

For just as Satan deceived by means of the lie, Jesus frees you by means of the Word of God, truly spoken – and you are filled with the Spirit of Truth.  And just as Satan deceived by means of the forbidden fruit, Jesus frees you by means of the fruits of the earth: the wheat and the grape, consecrated by His Word to truly be His body and blood – and you are filled with the Spirit of Truth, and the fruits of the Spirit.

Our Lord offers you not only a lie-detector and the gift of the Spirit of Truth, He also frees you from your sins by means of His cross, His shed blood, His grace and mercy and forgiveness, His reconciling you to the Father.  Jesus finished this promise of the coming of the Spirit of Truth by making another promise: “He [the Spirit of Truth] will declare to you the things that are to come…. He will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

And so Jesus tells us truly that we will receive what is His by means of the Holy Spirit.  What Jesus has, He has received from the Father.  And so by means of the Holy Spirit, my beloved brothers and sisters, you will receive the gift of Jesus’ righteousness, even as He has received the burden of your sins.

There is a transfer of ownership: your breaking of the law for His keeping of it, your punishment for His reward, your participation in the lie for His victory of the truth.

Governor Pilate asked, “What is truth?” to the very Truth Himself in the flesh.  Jesus actually did answer Pilate’s question not with a statement, but with an action: the cross.

The cross is the truth, dear friends.  It is the answer to the father of lies, for the cross was the instrument that smashed the serpent’s head.  The cross is where you receive forgiveness, life, and salvation.  The cross is the truth: the truth of the proclamation that Jesus is the King, the truth that He is the “suffering servant” of Old Testament prophecy, the truth that the crucified thief would enter Paradise, the truth that He prayed to the Father to “forgive them,” and the truth that “It is finished,” His work being completed when He gave up His life for His beloved brothers and sisters, and yes even for the offer of life of the entire world.

James says, “Of His own will He brought us forth by the Word of truth.”  For at the cross, Jesus brought to fullness the truth that we heard from Isaiah, speaking the truth seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus: “Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid.” 

And because Isaiah’s prophecy is true, because Jesus is the fulfillment of that truth, because our Lord truly went to the cross and freed us from the devil’s lies, because the Spirit of Truth has been sent to us by means of the Word and the Sacraments, dear friends, we can joyfully see beyond the lies of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, and rejoice in the truth of what He has done for us, continues to do for us, and will do for us even unto eternity:

“Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth.  Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

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.