Catechesis

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Advent III Midweek – “Koinonia” – Matthew 20:1-16

14. December 2011
Advent III Midweek
Matthew 20:1-16

A preaching series based on and drawn from John Pless’s outline and Al Collver’s Bible study materials. 

Advent is about God drawing near to humanity to save and rescue, to reconcile the world to Himself by the blood of the cross. He gathers into one family, those who were left alone in their sins—suffering alienation from God and estranged from one another. The imagery for life together in Advent is Jerusalem, God’s holy Zion where the redeemed are safely gathered around their Lord. Not forsake and left desolate in their sin, they are brought to rejoice in the marriage feast of the Lamb in the New Jerusalem. This is not a community that we create by our will to fight loneliness but a communion established by the Triune God who has called us to fellowship with Himself and therefore one another in the Gospel.

Koinonia, fellowship, and life together are perhaps both the easiest and hardest to describe in the Church. Certainly the Church has fellowship and a life together in Jesus. As we have been made part of His Body through Baptism, Jesus shares His divine life with us. This defines how we live together as His people.

Through Jesus, we have fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, who creates and maintains fellowship in the church. According to 1 John 1:30, we have fellowship with “the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” We are kept in fellowship with the Trinity by Word and Sacrament.

Gathered together in His name, we hear Him speak and preach His Word to us. Assembled around His Supper, we receive the body and blood. In this intimate communion with our Lord, there is life—the Lord’s own life, which He share with us. From this fellowship and life together with Jesus, the church expands outward into the world carrying Jesus’ own life—the life-bestowing Gospel in Word and Sacrament.

Because of this koinonia, fellowship, and life together in the Holy Trinity, we are joined to all in Christ. The Holy Scriptures describe us as a “priesthood,” “a holy nation,” “a people for His own posession” (1 Peter 2:0). We are joined together both horizontally with the church on earth and vertically with “angels and archangels and … all the company of heaven.”

The Bavarian pastor Wilhelm Löhe (1808-1872) wrote: “The church of the New Testament is no longer a territorial church but a church of all people, a church which has its children in all lands and gathers them from every nation. It is the one flock of the one shepherd, called out of many folds (John 10:16), the universal—the truly catholic—church which flows through all time and into which all people pour” (Three Books on the Church, 59).

We share a life together, which is thicker and deeper than nationality, ethnicity, or language. We share life together, bound together in Christ by a common redemption mediated by the one Baptism instituted by our Lord. We hear and confess the same apostolic Gospel and we eat and drink of the same body and blood in the sacrament of our Lord’s new and eternal testament.

There is no middle ground when it comes to our life together. A person is either in fellowship and participates with the true and whole Jesus, or he participates with demons. Jesus said, “no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24). A person who has life together with Jesus and His church cannot be joined to other religions, that is, to other gods (really, demons). Hence, St. Paul writes, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Corinthians 10:21). This is why Christians do not pray with non-Christians.

What is the Holy Communion and how does Jesus Himself use it to create life together among a common confession? Luther writes: “For just as the bread is made out of many grains ground and mixed together, and out of the bodies of many grains there comes the body of one bread, in which each grains loses its form and body and takes upon itself the common body of the bread; and just as the drops of wine, in losing their own form, become the body of one common wine and drink—so it is and should be with us, if we use the sacrament properly.”

Receiving the Lord’s Supper expresses unity of teaching, as well as sustaining fellowship among us. We only commune with those whom confess the same Christ, from alpha to omega. Your communing is a proclamation or witness to the world.  The verba, that is, the words of institution are not just spoken to remember what Christ did. They are powerful proclamation of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins. So also, when we gather together around this altar, we are proclaiming our Lord’s death until he comes. Our life together is our witness. Our witness builds our life together.

Sharing together in this fellowship, makes us many parts of one body. Therefore we care for one another, just as we would our own body. When another Christian harms us, we do not seek to destroy that person. Because Jesus, the head forgives us, his members, so we forgive each other. Even so, we are joined throughout eternity to all those who confess His name.

That is not to stop us from a heavenly homesickness, when a dear spouse, family member, or friend dies in the Lord. Our lives, while we yet remain sinners, are full of heartache, pain, absence, and brokenness. Yet, just as our life together in Christ Jesus is not broken by geography, so it is not by death. There is one church that spans heaven and earth, transcending sickness, pain, and even death.

“There is therefore one eternal church, part to be found here and part to be found in eternity. Here it becomes smaller and smaller; but there it becomes ever larger, for the yearning, struggling band is always being gathered to its people… From it death shall not separate [us], but death will for the first time bring [us] to complete enjoyment of love and fellowship. To it all things draw [us] and nothing hinders [us], whatever it may be. Praise be to God!” (Löhe, 54).

By God’s grace we are part of this church. The church is a long river that constantly moves from its headwaters to the ocean: “Springing up on Pentecost and Calvary, the church flows through the ages like a river, and the same river and no other will flow unchangingly on through the ages until that great day when it will empty completely into the famed sea of eternal blessedness” (Löhe, 55).

Our life together is not based on human preferences or attractions of particular personalities but in Christ Jesus, who has redeemed us by His blood, called us by His Spirit working through the Gospel, and incorporated us into His body with the washing of the water with the Word. Jesus Christ is both the source and the end of our life together.

Hidden under the cross, we live trusting in the forgiveness of sins purchased and won at Calvary and distributed in preaching and the Sacrament. It is this absolution that binds us to Christ. He is the friend of sinners and glues us sinners to one another in that holy community which is the church. We cannot create or engineer our life together—it is a gift, unmerited and undeserved. This is of God’s merciful donation so that sinners are not left utterly alone in their sin.

Life together is jeopardized when it is grounded in anything other than the forgiveness of sins given by Christ Jesus. This is why we confess in the Catechism that the Holy Spirit in this Christian Church “daily and richly forgives my sins and the sins of all believers.” For the Christian, life is one long Advent season, waiting patiently for the final day. Advent teaches us how to live in this church by repentance and faith, even as we cry out “Come, Lord Jesus” in anticipation of the resurrection of our bodies to eternal life together in God’s eternal Zion.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

Advent 2 Midweek “Diakonia” – Luke 1:54-55; 1 Peter 1:3

07. December 2011
Advent II – Midweek
Mercy (diakonia)

A preaching series based on and drawn from John Pless’s outline and Al Collver’s Bible study materials. 

This year’s midweek Advent services will consider the latest emphases from the praesidium of our Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod: Witness – Mercy – Life Together. These are helpful tools for us to consider what it means to be Christ’s church. This time of Advent is a time of preparation as the bride for her husband, a time of waiting as those virgins for bridegroom, and a time of hopeful expectation like Simeon in the temple. Our Lord has come, He is yet coming, and will come again.

During this time of waiting, our life is conformed to the way of the Father’s Son. Our life is transformed by the great gift of Christ’s justification, begun in the promise to Eve, incarnate in Mary’s womb, and finished with death at the Cross. This is the source and foundation of who we are in Christ. We are bearers of Christ, the very ones who delivered Him unto death but who now bear witness to Him unto eternity. This truth is not self-evident. It must be spoken, verified, and heard before it is believed. Thus, we spoke of nothing else than Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Just as our witness must be learned, so must also the life of mercy. Mercy is not natural but comes only in the life lived in Jesus. Christians are therefore different; they are known by the work of Christ in them. When Christians see someone in need, they don’t ignore the person. Rather, Christians have compassion, going to their neighbor and helping him. Whenever people came up to Jesus and said Kyrie eleison (“Lord, have mercy!”), Jesus had compassion on them. Jesus fed, healed, and consoled those in need, proclaiming to them that the kingdom of God was near. Like Jesus, Christians hear their neighbors’ cries with compassion and respond by providing for them.

The word for mercy is diakonia. The Greek word diakonia is usually translated as “service” or “ministry.” Service and even ministry are loose terms with little meaning of themselves. They do not describe specific kinds of service. Diakonia is not another word for the Office of the Holy Ministry, that special office instituted by Christ for the church that she would have a man in each place whom He has chosen and sent for preaching, catechesis, and pastoral care. Diakonia is properly associated with mercy.

The word mercy is firmly rooted in the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won on the cross. In Jesus we see true mercy, that God would forgive us by the death of His own son. Mercy, diakonia, means feeding the poor, taking care of the sick, and caring for orphans and widows. Diakonia is caring for our neighbor in concrete and effective ways because of what Jesus has done for them—and for us. Filled with Christ’s love and Spirit, Christians serve their neighbor mercifully.

As the theologian Oswald Bayer writes, “Mercy is not self-evident… On the contrary mercy is actually something that is won and something that, emerging, happens unpredictably. And as this justifying God is not simply and in principle merciful, so also is sinful man not simply and in principle on the receiving end of mercy.”

Mercy was not self-evident to the virgin Mary in tonight’s Gospel. She was “greatly troubled” (Luke 1:29) until the angel comforted her with the good news that the son she would conceive and bear is the Son of God. Only then were Mary’s lips unlocked to magnify the Lord, declaring the scope of His mercy for all who “fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50). Having received mercy, Mary was enabled to confess her God and Savior who helps “His servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever” (Luke 1:54-55).

It is this Lord who has “According to his great mercy… caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Mercy is not self-evident for sinners; it is not something that the guilty expect, even to His servant Mary. Mercy comes only by God’s doing in the crib and on Calvary.

Can a holy and vengeful God come and dwell among sinners? Thomas Aquinas said that “Christ cannot enter into living communion with a sinner.” Yet, Luther argued on the opposite: “Christ dwells only among sinners.” At the core is a difference in understanding God’s mercy, His diakonia.

The great 20th century Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse said: “Every page of the New Testament is indeed testimony of the Christ whose proper office it is ‘to save sinners’ (1 Timothy 1:15), ‘to seek and save the lost’ (Luke 19:10). And the entire saving work of Jesus—from the days he was in Galilee and, to the amazement and alarm of the Pharisees, ate with tax collectors and sinners, to the moment when he, in contradiction with the principles of every rational morality, promised paradise, to the thief on the cross—yes, his entire life on earth, from the cradle to the cross, is one unique, grand demonstration of a wonder beyond all reason: the miracle of divine forgiveness, of the justification of the sinner.” Advent announces the arrival of this Christ who makes divine mercy certain for sinners. Thus, it is true, that “Christ dwells only among sinners.”

Jesus’ actions demonstrate the love of God for humankind. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Out of love for us and in obedience to the Father, Jesus suffered and died; “love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be” (LSB 430:1). This is a transformative love. First, God the Father forgives our sins for Jesus’ sake and credits to us Christ’s righteousness; we apprehend these gifts through faith. Then, through the Means of Grace, the Holy Spirit makes us lovely to those whom we show love, mercy, and compassion in their time of need.

The apostle John writes in his first epistle: “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16-18).

A unique word is used in verse 17, splánchna. Originally, spláchna meant the internal organs of an animal used in ritual sacrifice. In ancient Greek temples, these internal organs would be “read” in order to “tell the future.” Spláchna is onomatopoetic, meaning it sounds similar to what it means. When the internal organs were removed and thrown to the ground, they made a “splat,” hence splánchna. By the New Testament era, the world spláchna has become associated with compassion or mercy. Our English phrases “butterflies in the stomach” and “gut reaction” convey somehow how our emotions affect our bodies.

The love of God is known chiefly in mercy. His mercy is known by His compassion. All throughout the Gospels, the love of God that leads Him to mercy is show in Jesus’ compassion. He has compassion on them for they were sheep without a shepherd (Mt 9:36-38). He had compassion on them and fed the five thousand and four thousand (Mt. 14:13-21; Mt. 15:32-39). He had compassion on the two blind me (Mt. 20:29-34), on the leper whom He cleansed (Mk 1:40-45), before casting out the deaf and mute spirit (Mk. 9:14-29), and raising of the widows son (Luke 7:11-17). Two of the most beloved parables feature love yielding mercy that begets compassion. The Good Samaritan had compassion, splanchnidzomai, on the man in the ditch (Lk. 10:29-37). The father ran to his prodigal son and had compassion on him (Lk 15:11-21).

Diakonia, mercy, is really all about service. In Christ, we see diakonia take a most real and concrete form. It is most clearly seen in His sacrificial death for you. It is seen in His great acts of compassion. It will been seen on the last day when in He welcomes you into the eternal paradise. And it is being seen as the Lord serves the church now. In His Divine Service, He serves us and delivers to us the forgiveness of sins. Sunday morning is primarily about the Lord serving us and then our response of praise and thanksgiving.

Compassion, service, and mercy begin with Jesus. The Lord came to redeem the entire person, body and soul. Forgiveness of sins is about the here and now and it is about the life to come. The ailments of the body—even death—are the result of sin. Jesus forgives sins and then shows compassion on those who are in physical need. In His earthly ministry, Jesus healed the lame, made the blind to see, and raised the dead. He undid the effect of sin both by forgiving and healing. Living forgiven in Christ, we have compassion first on those nearest to us and then on others as we encounter them in our day-to-day lives.

The Lord serves His Church. Having been served by the Lord, we go into the world wherever the Lord has placed us and serve Him by caring for those He has put in our lives. Thus, our lives are living witnesses of God’s own mercy in Christ for us and for the sin of the whole world.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

Advent 1 Midweek “Marytria” – 1 John 1:1-8ff

30. November 2011
Advent 1 Midweek
1 John 1:1-8ff

A preaching series based on and drawn from John Pless’s outline and Al Collver’s Bible study materials. 

This year’s midweek Advent services will consider the latest emphases—systematized, packaged, and illustrated—from our Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Witness-Mercy-Life Together. You may recognize them as I introduced them last year and used these emphases to provide focus to our 2012 budget and its proposal. We are not considering them because they are Scripture. Nor are we considering them because they are a full summary of our faith. They are not another catechism. They are simply another set of memory tools to help us teach and learn what the Scriptures teach, specifically aimed toward refocusing the Missouri Synod and her member congregations on the Biblical doctrine of the church. Will they work? Only the Spirit knows, when and where He blows.

Tonight we begin with the first emphasis: witness. In 1872, CFW Walther preached to the Synodical Conference, that “the chief object of [our] joint labor” in the kingdom of Christ is “the salvation of souls.” That is not to say that this is our work. No, it is the Lord who saves souls by the witness of His Gospel. He locates this Gospel in the church and the people of His church are used as instruments of the Gospel to save others. Or, to put it another way, the Holy Spirit creates and sustains saving faith through the witness of the Gospel by others in the church. This good news, this Gospel, is the persona and work of Jesus Christ, who through His life, sufferings, death, and resurrection earned for us forgiveness of sins and eternal life. (Collver)

The Greek word martyria is a term taken from the courtroom; it originally meant something similar to “eyewitness testimony.” In the New Testament, martyria describes eyewitness testimony made by the apostles and others who saw and heard Jesus preach, teach, and heal. At His ascension, Jesus told His apostles, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8, cf Is 43:12). The testimony about Jesus and His Gospel began with His eyewitnesses and expanded to include those who came to faith through their preaching and teaching. We Christians today are beneficiaries of their witness. As the body of Christ, the church continually bears witness to Jesus. Likewise, every Christian bears witness and testifies about Jesus in the vocations to which God has called him. Further, in the Early Church, those who gave their lives for the sake of the Gospel, that is, bore witness about Jesus through their deaths, were called martyrs, derived from the Greek word martyria. (Collver)

“Bearing witness” says Luther “is nothing but God’s Word spoken by angels or men, and it calls for faith” (AE20:213). In Acts 1:8 the risen Lord says of His apostles that they will be His witness in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and beyond those borders to the end of the earth. It is the apostles who with their own eyes have seen the Lord, touched Him with their own hands, and heard His voice with their ears who are designated witnesses. We are witnesses only in a derived sense that our words echo the reliable testimony of the apostles. To bear witness is to speak not of ourselves but of another—Jesus Christ. (Pless)

[St. John writes in his first epistle: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— 2 the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4 And these things we write to you that your joy may be full” (1 John 1:1-4)]

The great witness of Advent is John the Baptist. “The prologue [of the Fourth Gospel] says that God sent John to be a witness (1:6-8). A witness speaks in contexts where the truth is disputed. If everything is clear, there is no need for testimony” (Koester, The Word of Life, p. 34). The witness of John the Baptist is twofold. He bears witness to human sinfulness which separates man from God. In no uncertain terms he names sin for what it is, showing his hearers their inability to recognize the One who stands among them is their Messiah. [John answered them, saying, “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. 27 It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose” (John 1:26-27).] (Pless)

John is not sent to bear witness to himself; he is the voice crying in the wilderness. [19 Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” (John 1:19-23)]

John is neither the light of the world (John 1:6-8) nor the Christ (John 1:20) but the one sent to bear witness. Thus he proclaims Jesus Christ as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Our witness is always this same confession of Jesus Christ.

32 And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. 33 I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:32-34)

This first-hand testimony reveals the truth, because John saw and heard and now bears witness. The Holy Trinity are all active in Jesus’ Baptism. The Holy Spirit specifically points to and directs us to see Jesus, the Son of God. This cannot come by our own reason or strength, as we confess in Luther’s explanation to the Third Article, but “the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel.” The Holy Spirit directs us through the Word of testimony, of witness, to see Jesus. This Word of Jesus creates faith in you when it is heard. By the working of the Holy Spirit through this Word, with John, we recognize Jesus is the Son of God.

We need the witness to believe and to remain in this faith until the end. St. Paul says: 14 How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?” 17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:14-17).

Some think that only those who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ should receive the Church’s witness. However, people in the Church and people in the world need the Church’s witness! [We need to be converted, yes, but we also need this witness to keep us in the faith.] What is the chief content of that witness? God’s gracious and free forgiveness of our sins for Jesus’ sake.

St. John writes in his first epistle: This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one. 

All three, the Spirit, the water, and the blood testify, or bear witness, to Jesus. Or to put it another way, the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments bear witness to Jesus. For the sake of Jesus, God forgives our sins through the Word, both preached and in Holy Absolution; and through the water of Holy Baptism and the body and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper. In order to witness what the Lord has done for us, we Christians need first to be fed by God’s Word and be forgiven our sins through these means of grace. (Collver)

Thus, we, too, are witnesses with the apostles. We have heard and we see by the testimony they have given and the work of the Holy Spirit. Our duty is to bear witness to Jesus, true. But first, let us receive this witness through preaching, instruction and catechesis, and through the receiving of Christ’s forgiveness in the blessed sacraments. This is precisely where Jesus, the Word, locates Himself for you, His people. By receiving, we testify to Jesus. By the work of the Holy Spirit, by the water of Baptism, by the confession of Christ’s death and resurrection for us, and by the Lord’s Supper, the world will know what Jesus has done. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Cor 11:26). Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana