"More to Come!" (Luke 20:27-40)

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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

“There came to [Jesus] some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked Him a question …” (Luke 20:27-28a).

 

Just as the Sadducees asked Jesus a question, I would like to ask you all a question: What is the leading cause of death? Ponder that one a moment. Is it heart disease? Could it be a stroke? What about cancer or diabetes? What is the leading cause of death? It’s actually conception. The leading cause of death is being conceived. You see, as soon as God formed you and began knitting you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), you are on the way to death. Is this the point in life? Is this it?!

 

For the Sadducees who came to Jesus to ask Him this question about the resurrection, they believed that was it. They believed the thought of any bodily resurrection was utterly ridiculous. They could not fathom the idea that people would rise out of their graves and their bodies would live again. 

 

One play on words that I have heard and taught about these Sadducees is that they were sad, you see, because they didn’t have anything more to look forward to than what happened before death. For the Sadducees, when death came, they had no joy and they had no hope, since that’s all she wrote. Again, they were sad, you see.

 

So, these Sadducees ask Jesus an elaborate question as to prove to Jesus that the resurrection was preposterous: 

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife”(Luke 20:28b-33).

 

My first thoughts when preparing this sermon was: what a mess! This sounds more like a daytime talk show. Instead of asking, “Are you the father?” It’s like Maury asking, “Who is the true husband?” This is a perfect script for a daytime talk show. And all too often, those daytime talk shows aren’t exactly truthful. This is also the case here.

 

But I will say this, there is some truth to this question of the Sadducees. You see, they are bringing up what is known as the levirate marriage law from Deuteronomy 25, which states: “If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go into her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel”(Deuteronomy 25:5-6).

 

Now, clearly, these Sadducees realize how outlandish their question is, even with the levirate marriage law. They are asking this question only as a gotcha question. And this question is not about marriage. It is centered on the resurrection. They are trying to show how ludicrous the resurrection is if such a scenario could result in the life to come. So, “at the resurrection,” they ask, “whose wife will she be?”

 

They think they have trapped Jesus between a rock and a hard place. 

 

But then Jesus says to them essentially, “Your question isn’t going to matter, since there will be no more need for marriage at the resurrection.”

 

You see, Jesus solves this question by distinguishing between two ages: the present age and the age to come. 

 

The key purposes for marriage in the present age are for procreation, the raising up of children in the fear and knowledge of God, and, of course, companionship. None of these will be needed in the resurrection because we will not die, and we will be in perfect communion with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

In the age to come, there will be neither birth nor death. And there will be no marriage. We will simply be sons and daughters of God, sons and daughters of the resurrection.

 

But Jesus is never content in just answering questions. He digs deeper to the root cause of their question: unbelief. Jesus digs deeper as He brings up Moses at the burning bush – today’s Old Testament lesson. He recalls that day when He spoke to Moses as He told him to take off his sandals for where Moses stood was holy ground. He said to Moses: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). To the Sadducees, Jesus adds: “Now He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him” (Luke 20:38).

 

Keep in mind, as God spoke those words to Moses, these three patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – had been long dead. But how does God speak of them? Jesus speaks of His relationship to them as being present. This means that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still living! 

 

So, what the triune God is proving to Moses and the Sadducees is that human relationships certainly end with death, but the relationship a person has with God lives on forever. Or to put it another way: The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of God endures forever (Isaiah 40:8; 1 Peter 1:23-24).

 

What Jesus is saying is that there is still more, much more, than what we may realize. We weren’t created by God just to die. We were created by God to live.

 

The Sadducees rejected the resurrection, which is maybe why there were two Sadducees – Annas and Caiaphas – who ended up orchestrating Jesus’ arrest and ultimate execution. They thought by simply eliminating Jesus would fix the “Jesus problem.”

 

Now, you may not be denying the bodily resurrection, but the spirit of those Sadducees of yesteryear still lives on among us. Have you ever thought that this life is all that there is? Sometimes, those doubts are there. The grave looks so final. How could I bodily resurrect through a casket, a vault, and all while being six feet underground? Could this life be it? Am I just to ultimately become worm food? That is the Sadducee spirit swirling around in our hearts and minds.

 

And if you’ve thought that, you are in good company. Remember what Christ’s apostles were doing that first Easter? They were hiding behind locked doors out of fear of the Jewish authorities. They were like the Sadducees then. They were denying all those times Jesus taught them that He would rise again the third day. 

 

Then suddenly, Jesus appeared to them, and He calms their fears. He said, “Peace be with you”(John 20:19) and then showed them His hands and His side. He let them touch Him. The apostles went from there was no more, to there is so much more!

 

Like the apostles, we need to believe our God is the God of the living and not of the dead. The resurrection is all about Jesus turning our losses into victories, our death into life, our sorrow into joy, our weaknesses into strength, our futility into glory.

 

That day, the living God was standing before those Sadducees. Soon they will kill Him. But even though from eternity, the Second Person of the Trinity had no physical body, this God would not even now shed His physical body, but He would take it up again. Christ’s death would restore the day when we “cannot die anymore, … being sons [and daughters] of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36).

 

Today, the living God is here, although to the naked eye, He is hidden in His Word and Sacraments. Jesus says to us this day that there is more to come, a lot more to come! Today, He comes to give us the medicine that forgives our sins, known as the Medicine of Immortality. He says to us, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:53-56).

 

In Christ, there is life – eternal life, after death!

 

So, repent and believe and receive the fruits of His cross and of His resurrection: forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation for there is so much more to come – yours and my resurrection! For if you are in Christ, you will live forever! Amen.

 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

 keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.  

+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +

"Lord, Teach Us to Pray" (Luke 11:1-13)

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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

“Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray…’” (Luke 11:1).

 

Prayer is one of the essential ingredients for fueling a life that is busy doing the will of God – even for God Himself. You see, Jesus, the Son of God, who is fully and completely God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, spent much time in prayer. 

§  Even at His Baptism, when He fulfilled all righteousness for mankind, He was praying (Luke 3:21-22).

§  Even before Jesus chose His Twelve Apostles, “He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night He continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12).

§  And even when Jesus took with Him Peter, James, and John atop the Mount of Transfiguration, He prayed (Luke 9:28-36).

§  And who can forget Jesus praying at Gethsemane as He spoke to His Father about His coming crucifixion at the hands of sinful men to which He would atone for the sins of mankind through His death (Matthew 26:26-46).

 

Jesus prayed. He prayed a lot. And His disciples caught on to Jesus’ prayer life. They observed the very active prayer life of their Lord and Master.

 

Now, to be sure, a rabbi, or teacher, praying was nothing new. Abraham himself prayed. As we heard in today’s Old Testament lesson (Genesis 18:17-33), Abraham prayed to God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. He pleaded to God to deliver those cities for the sake of the righteous who might dwell there.

 

Prayer was nothing new. However, each rabbi had a particular way of petitioning God, and Jesus’ disciples are aware that John the Baptist had taught his disciples how to pray. And not only John, but some Pharisees had taught their hearers to pray (Luke 5:33). But for some reason, Jesus had not yet taught His disciples how to pray.

 

So, one of His disciples asks Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). It is interesting that the Lord’s Prayer or “The Our Father” is actually evoked by a request, a request by one of the disciples. And some trivia is found here. As this is the only occasion on which any of the disciples ask Jesus to teach them anything. I find that very interesting.

 

So, there is something to Jesus saying later, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:9-11). So, ask. Because a disciple asked, Jesus gives. He gives by teaching them and us how to pray.

 

Now, before I get into Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, it is worth noting that his version is shorter and more direct than Matthew’s version – the one we recite each Lord’s Day. So, why is there a difference? 

 

Well, Matthew’s version was part of the Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s version follows the event with Mary and Martha on the proper way to worship. It could be that each Lord’s Prayer telling were completely different events. And it could be that Jesus wanted to focus on different petitions of the Lord’s Prayer for the right occasion. Anyhow, each version does have same basic structure. For both Matthew and Luke’s account, the Lord’s prayer is a petitionary prayer, and it is used to teach us a pattern, or an outline, on how to pray.

 

First, Jesus teaches us to petition God as Father because Our Father is the giver of all good things. Now, calling upon God as Father can only happen when the Father first bestows sonship. Jesus is only able to address God as Father because of His eternal relationship as the Son of God. So, by Jesus teaching the disciples to call God their Father, He is placing them – as well as us – into that same relationship with God the Father as He has – from eternity. 

 

Only Jesus can teach them and us to pray this way, because Jesus is the One who makes us, who are poor, miserable sinners, into God’s children. We can only call God our Father because Jesus has reconciled us back to Him through His death on the cross. 

 

By Christ’s blood shed for you and me, which atones all sins, He invites us to petition God as Father. So, when you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be Your Name” (Luke 11:2). Here, we petition our Father first by who He is. God’s Name has been given to us. He gave you His Name when you were baptized in His Name, which makes you, His child.

 

“Your kingdom come” (Luke 11:2). This is what God does. He reigns. His kingdom comes in two ways. First, here, through His Means of Grace – His Word and Sacraments; and secondly, through eternal life given to us. This kingdom of heaven has been given to us through the King of kings, Jesus Christ, our Lord, through His defeat of the power of the devil, sin, and death upon the cross.

 

“Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:3-4). In these final three petitions, Jesus teaches His disciples to pray for blessings that we need as we live out our lives here on earth. There is a need for daily bread. There is a need for forgiveness. There is a need for divine help against the temptations that will come. And the most critical of these temptations is the danger of falling away from faith and losing the eternal reward. 

 

It can be said these three final petitions correspond well with table fellowship – both temporal (now) and eternal (forever). God gives the daily bread. He gives us forgiveness. He gives us divine help against temptation.

 

Physical bread is needed for life in this world now; and divine bread, which provides the life to come even now. Today’s daily bread includes everything that belongs to our entire life in this world, such as food and drink, clothing, house, home, sound body, good wife, children. And not only that, daily bread also includes our work, our craft, our occupation, and good friends, as well as a good government, and protection from all enemies, including the devil. Also, we cannot forget that Jesus Himself is the Living Bread that came down from heaven, so anyone who eats of this bread, will live forever. And the bread Jesus is referring to is His flesh (John 6:51).

 

God gives and He gives, and He gives. He gives what we need for our temporal needs – again, food, shelter, and the like – and He gives what we need for our eternal needs through Word and Sacrament.

 

And like I said, these three final petitions do correspond well with table fellowship. The forgiveness of sins balances the petition for bread. So, just as bread is the essential staple of physical and spiritual life, so forgiveness is the essential sustenance of spiritual life, and the need for forgiveness is constant and ongoing, which is why the Lord’s Supper is the regular meal that provides forgiveness. And it is only because of that forgiveness that fallen man may call on God as Father, and His kingdom comes through the forgiveness of sins.

 

And like bread that is both heavenly and earthly, forgiveness involves our relationship to God and to fellow man. And because Christ has forgiven us, we are called by Him to forgive one another without limits.

 

Both bread and forgiveness of sins shed light on the final petition: “And lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:4b). The Father who gives all good gifts allows even His Son to be tempted by Satan in the wilderness. So, trials and sufferings will come because we are in Christ. We will be rejected just as He was rejected. But what we are to pray here is to not succumb to that temptation. So, as we are assailed by the devil, the fallen world, and our own sinful nature, we are to pray to God our Father so that He would preserve us from falling away from the one true faith.

 

Now, taken together, these last three petitions help us be kept in the one true, saving faith, so that we may prevail and gain the victory. In short, Jesus encourages us to be persistent in our prayer petitions. He says that no matter the circumstance, God is honorable and gracious, as He supplies what we need. He says He is the giver of all good gifts. So, keep asking! Keep seeking! Keep knocking! God the Father is not reluctant to give. He is eager to give. He is eager to answer every prayer. All we have to do is: ask. So, when you pray, say: 

Our Father who art in heaven,      hallowed be Thy name,      Thy kingdom come,      Thy will be done on earth           as it is in heaven;      give us this day our daily bread;      and forgive us our trespasses           as we forgive those           who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,      but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom      and the power and the glory      forever and ever. Amen.

 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

 keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.  

+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +

"If Anyone Keeps My Word" (John 8:48-59)

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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

Jesus said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death” (John 8:51).

 

Today’s Gospel reading picks up in mid-conversation between the Jewish religious authorities and Jesus. These Jewish religious authorities have been bombarding Jesus with question after question as to catch Jesus in a lie. But the problem for them is, Jesus only speaks the truth.

 

Earlier in John 8, Jesus was telling these Jewish authorities things that did not fit into their self-made notions of religion. So, Jesus told them that they were of the world, but He was not of this world (John 8:23). Jesus also told them, “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free” (John 8:21).

 

Now, in today’s Gospel text, Jesus tells them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death” (John 8:51). To His hearers, they were likely thinking, “Who does Jesus think he is?! Our Father Abraham died! The prophets died! Everyone dies!”

 

So, who does this Man think He is? Well, since the question has been asked, Jesus is the Son of God, the eternal Son of the Father, the One who was with the Father before all things were made. He is the One who became incarnate, who came into our world, who took on our flesh. He is the One who came so that He could sympathize with our weaknesses, our fears, our illnesses. He is the timeless One, the One who existed before Abraham, and yet He also became Abraham’s descendant. He is the One, the only One who can say, “If anyone keeps My word, He will never see death.”

 

Jesus goes on saying, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). So, what exactly did Abraham believe about Jesus?

 

Well, Scripture gives no record of Abraham saying anything about Jesus, but Abraham certainly believed in this very word of promise. Abraham believed it. He kept it. He held on to it. 

Remember how Abraham saddled his donkey and took his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, to the mountain as the Lord had directed him? Remember how he took the wood and laid it on the back of his son, his only son, Isaac? Remember how he built an altar and then tied up his son, his only son Issac on the top of that altar?

 

Abraham held onto the Word of the Lord. Abraham believed and kept the Word of the Lord, and on that day, his son, his only son Isaac did not see death.

 

God did all of this to test Abraham. God did all of this to test Abraham’s faith. And this test of Abraham served as a preview of another son of Abraham, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself.

 

Jesus is the promised Son who carries the wood of His cross upon His back. He goes up Mount Calvary to make the great sacrifice to rescue us from the infection of our sin. He is the beloved Son who willingly bound Himself and laid upon the altar of the cross to deliver us from death. Jesus is the Lamb provided for the burnt offering. Jesus is the Lamb who is offered for us, who willingly caught Himself in the thicket of our sin and wears the crown of thorns upon His head. 

 

So, on Mount Calvary, it is Jesus who provided our deliverance from everything that infects us: sin and death.

 

So, how can Jesus say, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death”? He can say that because He came to see death for us and to give us His life. He came to drink the cup of suffering in order that we may be released from death’s grasp. He came to be our Great High Priest to sacrifice not a sheep or a goat, but His holy precious blood, so that He would purify our consciences.  

 

So, if we keep His Word, by clinging to His Word, we are rescued from the power of sin, which is eternal death.

 

We have His Word. You hear His Word each Lord’s Day. You read His Word through Bible study and devotion. You sing His Word through hymnody and liturgy. Since we have His Word, let us keep His Word. Since we have His Word, let us hold onto His Word with our dear life. Remember, it is Jesus who also proclaims: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though He die, yet shall he live, and everyone who believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:25-26) and “I am the way, and the truth, and life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

So, if you cling to Jesus as your Lord, you will live forever. For St. Paul proclaims, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). So, nothing ever can take away eternal life away from you as long as you cling to Jesus and His Word!

 

But as poor, miserable sinners, how do we keep His Word? For we are so much better at not keeping His Word as we ignore Him, and listen to false voices and our own hearts. We are so much better at dishonoring Jesus. We so often fear, love and trust in created things rather than in God, the Creator. We so often do not fear God’s wrath by avoiding every sin. We often hold grudges and harbor resentment against our neighbor. We have all lied, cheated, and stole what did not belong to us. We have all sinned in thought, word, and deed by our own fault, our own grievous fault. So, we are all not too good at keeping Christ’s Word.

 

So, if we can’t keep His Word, Christ will keep it for us. Jesus is the One who promises: “Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:54-55). So, that is the answer. That is how we keep His Word so that we will never see death. We keep His Word through the reception of His Means of Grace, His Word and His Sacrament. So, if you are united to Jesus in His Holy Supper of His true Body and His true Blood under bread and wine, you already have the victory over death, because His risen and glorified Body and Blood gives you His life, now and forever.

 

Jesus gave you faith in His Word through the holy waters mixed with His Word in Holy Baptism. There, you were born of water and the Spirit. There, you were united to Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. There, you were “united with Him in a death like His” so that you would be “united with Him in a resurrection like His” (Romans 6:5). 

 

Again, Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death.”Jesus is also the One who sends His called and ordained servants to “forgive the sins of any,” and those sins “are forgiven them” (John 20:23). 

 

 

So, when you hear those sweet words, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by His authority, I therefore forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” your sins are removed from you. When you hear those words, you are at peace for Christ has blotted those sins away through His death.

 

On this Holy Trinity Sunday, Jesus also puts the icing on the cake for us. He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). You see, through Jesus, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit is recognized in its fullness. The very Son of God enables us to see the Holy Trinity by Him becoming flesh. So, when we see Jesus and hear Jesus and touch Jesus, we also see, hear and touch the fullness of God. In Jesus, we have the Holy Trinity. And so, we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity (Athanasian Creed).

 

As we confessed the Athanasian Creed earlier, some of you may be thinking about the ending of that creed with its anathemas, its curses. We spoke, “And those who have done good will enter into eternal life” – you may like that. But what did you think about: “And those who have done evil into eternal fire”? What are we to make of that?

 

Well, what does Jesus say? He says to cling to Him. He says to trust in Him. He calls on us to grow in faith. And how do we grow in faith? By keeping His Word. And we can only keep His Word through receiving His gift of forgiveness through His Means of Grace, His Word and Sacrament.

 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death.” You have His Word. So, keep it and hold onto it. For He who promises is faithful: “Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life … Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him” (John 6:54, 56).

 

So, keep His Word as Christ unites Himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit with you in His Supper! Amen.

 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

 keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.  

+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +

"He Loves Us To The End" (John 13:1-17, 31b-35)

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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come 
to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

 

Jesus utterly loved His apostles. Jesus utterly loves you. He loves His whole creation.

 

Tonight is Maundy Thursday, or also called, Holy Thursday. The word “maundy” is derived from the Latin word mandatum, which means command. For it was on this night that Jesus gave the command to His disciples saying, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

 

“God is love” (1 John 4:16). John 3:16-17 sum up God’s love for us: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”

 

It was out of God’s love that caused Him to create the world in the first place. And His love endures forever. Jesus is the embodiment of this love. He is love in human flesh.

 

But we are the opposite of what God intended us to be. Instead of truly loving God and loving our neighbor, we are curved in on ourselves. We love ourselves. We would rather be served by others than to serve. We daily sin against the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods,” since we want to be God. We grasp equality with God as Adam and Eve did. We follow right in line with the original sin. We all want to be almighty God. This is supreme idolatry.

 

We so often fail at love. But what are we best at? We are best at being selfish. We are best at putting ourselves as the center of the universe and that everyone else should love and serve you. We use people. We manipulate people for our own benefit. A holy and just God would have every reason to give us what we truly deserve: eternal death apart from God. May we repent of our selfishness.

Because of our sinful condition, we cannot change ourselves into holy and righteous people. All we can do is possibly turn us poor, miserable sinners into sinners. Maybe, we could sin less, but we will continue to sin. And all sin separates us from God. It’s our sin that pulls us away from God’s love, while God is reaching out to us in His love. Our sinful nature wants nothing to do with God and His unconditional forgiveness.

 

For us to change, we must die and be born again as new people, with new minds, new thinking, and a new disposition. Clearly, we cannot do that. We can’t kill ourselves and make ourselves alive as holy people.

 

But God is love and as a loving God, He “desires all people to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4a). So, how does God show this love so that people would be saved?

 

We see this love in the Son of God who came down from heaven to serve, give everything, even Himself. He was born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin and placed in a feeder’s trough. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head”(Matthew 8:20). Jesus was willing to leave everything behind and empty Himself of all the glory of heaven and the treasures of the entire universe to live among us and one of us.

 

What man covets; God laid aside. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

 

We all try to serve. We attempt to lose ourselves in service to our fellow man, but ultimately, self-righteousness and a self-serving attitude win the day.

 

But Jesus loves us to the end. On that first Maundy Thursday, Jesus used that occasion to demonstrate His complete, unwavering love for them and for us, a love He bore to the very end. The Passover dinner was underway, and this would be His last. On this night, He would institute the Lord’s Supper for the forgiveness of our sins and to strengthen our weak faith. On this night, He knew that He would be betrayed. Yet, Jesus was still in control. Heaven’s plan was coming together. It was now up to the Son of God to see it through.

 

So, Jesus, gives His disciples an old commandment, to which He renews. He speaks the words of Leviticus 19: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), to which He had previously renewed elsewhere in the Gospels. But Jesus uses this occasion to not just speak of this commandment, but to show this commandment in action.

 

So, Jesus rose from dinner and served His disciples as a slave would serve his master and his master’s guests. He washes their feet.

 

Now, is Jesus instituting a new sacrament? No. For He says, “I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15). What Jesus is doing serves as an object lesson, a pattern of humility for Christians to follow, that still applies to us. You see, a true leader, a true friend, a true neighbor, is one who serves others. This act of washing His disciples’ feet tells us that a follower of Jesus will act in humble service as Jesus did.

 

This new commandment is not being spoken about, but shown. And by showing His love in action, He is giving this commandment a fresh and new quality. So, Jesus’ command was to love one another as He had loved them by lowing Himself to a servant. And from that night on, Jesus’ disciples were to practice that love in the light of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

 

This love is called “agape.” This love sacrifices for others. Jesus is the embodiment of this love. He gives and He gives, and He gives. He gives of Himself tonight in His very body and blood under bread and wine to forgive your sins.

 

Later that night, Jesus would “give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28) as He would “give for the life of the world [His] flesh” (John 6:51). 

 

As Jesus hung on the cross one day later, He took upon Himself all our wickedness, all our iniquity, all our brokenness, all our pain. He reconciled you and me back to God the Father. He changed us. He took all our selfishness upon Himself. He made a way to reconciliation. He made peace by the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20).

 

God loved you so much that He died for you. And God did not remain dead. He rose, so that you would also rise. In Christ alone, you are a new creation. In Christ alone, you are born again. This is what happened at your Baptism. It was through the water and Word that the Holy Spirit gave you a new mind with new thinking and a new disposition. 

Now, through Christ’s love, you are able to look outside yourself. You are now able to serve your neighbor in agape love – sacrificial love. You don’t ask for anything in return. You just serve out of love. You serve in loving service to God.

 

God’s heart is one of eternal love, of sacrificial love. He loved you even before you loved Him. For “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

 

God loves us to the end. He loves by serving. Serving is what defines the one true God. He serves us sinners with His forgiveness in Word and Sacrament. He serves us life and salvation. May we all repent of our selfishness and receive Christ’s love through the forgiveness of sins. And may He continually empower us to “be imitators of God, as beloved Children” walking in love as Christ loved us (Ephesians 5:1-2) by giving and serving our neighbor in sacrificial love. Amen.

 

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

 keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.  

+ SOLI DEO GLORIA +