READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 16:2-21
Galatians 4:21-31
St. John 6:1-15
Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
“When the people
saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘“’This is indeed the Prophet who is
to come into the world!’”
Today we hear what God wants us to hear in His Word. Part of
that may be that you hear your own feeding done today, in the Divine Service,
at His Hand. God speaks His Holy Supper to us, because He wants us to believe
that it is His true Body and true Blood, that it gives forgiveness of sins, and
that it should be the central focal point of our entire lives, even if we only
attend His Service more often.
Such an amazing event is the Feeding of the 5000. What a way
to produce faith. I wish I could have been there to get such faith. How could
anyone be a witness to that and not believe?? And just because Jesus doesn’t
work like that anymore today, doesn’t mean we can’t be His hands and feet to others,
because we’re better!
I would point you to later in the 6th chapter of John (v.66)
to show just how easy it is to not believe, even if Jesus comes back from the
dead. As we ponder the feeding of the 5000 and all of John 6, we find God
including this in His Word in order to point us to a rigorous, fruitful life of
faith. The life of a Christian is no easy thing, so we should not only become
fit enough for it, but also help to strengthen the weak, which mainly happens
at this rail.
When we approach the Lord’s Sacrament of the Altar, we
think: “so easy”. It is so easy to just show up and receive. I just come at the
proper time, sit in my usual seat, fly under the radar, and bing bang boom, I’m
a wonderful Christian!
If faith is so easy why don’t you try it? I mean really try
it?
At first it may seem very easy to be saved by simple faith. To
those who have not tried it seems a very easy matter indeed to receive
forgiveness of sins by doing nothing more than simply believing. "If only
I were called upon to do good works in order to attain it!" Faith seems to
be a trifling matter.
But try how easy it is; then you will see that faith is a
divine power and not the power of a man. Although it is thought to be so easily
performed, a Christian will say: What a difficult art it is to believe these
words! For when your eyes rest on death, sin, devil, and world, and your
conscience struggles when the battle is joined, I dare say you will break into
a cold sweat and say: I had rather swim the ocean with a millstone than suffer
this anguish.
The faith seems a trifling matter to folk who live without
temptation and are secure, “tough” people. But the Christian says in
temptation: Be quiet, my conscience, death, sin, world, and devil. I do not
hear you. I will close my eyes and cling only to these words of Promise. Then
you will see whether faith is a trifling art.
Otherwise people think: Doing good works is a heavy task,
but believing is something that is soon done. To be sure, faith does seem to be
an easy matter; but it really is a difficult art. Temptation and experience
certainly teach that clinging to God's Word so that the heart is not afraid of
sins and death but trusts and believes God, is a far more bitter and difficult
task than observing all the rules of them who are super-spiritual.
Reason can easily put up a yard sign, can let the hair be
cut off, can mumble, pray, and fast in the name of some ideal or other.
Natural, worldly powers are [all] that’s needed to accomplish these “holy
works”. But none of them know the art of turning the heart about and boldly
relying on God's Word in the agony of death so that a person does not fear
death but rejoices when it comes. (“What Luther says”, 1426)
Repent! We believe faith is so easy that we don’t even need
to approach the Altar to approach God. We imagine that we can find God anywhere
we want, which usually means anywhere we feel the most comfortable and can make
believe that God approves. Thus, God becomes just another idea on the buffet
table of ideas, to be chosen on the third or fourth plate. Maybe.
We kneel in Church and at the Communion rail, not just
because its meet and right so to do, but because the closer we are to God the
heavier our cross becomes. We actually feel our sinfulness in the presence of
the Lord, because He has truly come down, as the words and promises of God
declare. You cannot “try faith” without bearing the cross.
But that cross was carried before us. There is not a thing
we do or encounter that Jesus has not encountered before us. In Christ, we bear
the cross in hope, because like Jesus’s cross, there is Easter afterwards.
Thus, when we bear the cross of following Jesus, at His Word, there is
consolation.
Our Lutheran Confessions quote St. Ambrose on consolation:
“Go to Him and be absolved, because He is the Forgiveness Of Sins. Do you ask
who He is? Listen to Him when he says, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever
comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty’ (John 6:35).
Here he testifies that the forgiveness of sins is offered in
the sacrament and ought to be received by faith.” (Ap XXIV:75)
From 1 John 1:7: “the blood of Christ cleanses us from
all sin,”. This refers not only to the merit achieved on the cross once for
all, rather, St. John states in this very place that in the work or action of
justification, not only the divine nature in Christ but also His blood, really
cleanses us from all sin. Thus, according to John 6[:48-58] the flesh of Christ
is a food that gives life. On this basis the Council of Ephesus [of 431 AD]
also concluded that the flesh of Christ has the power to give life. (FC SD
VIII:59)
So there is a twofold eating of Christ’s flesh. First, there
is a spiritual kind of eating, which Christ treats above all in John 6[:35-58].
This occurs in no other way than with the Spirit and faith in the proclamation
of and meditation on the gospel, as well as in the Supper. It is in and of
itself useful, salutary, and necessary for all Christians at all times for
their salvation. Without this spiritual reception even the sacramental or oral
eating in the Supper is not only not salutary but also harmful and
damning.
This spiritual eating, however, is nothing other than faith,
that is hearing, accepting with faith, and applying to ourselves God’s Word,
which presents Christ to us as true God and true man along with all his
benefits (God’s grace, forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life).
These he won for us with his flesh, which he gave into death for us, and with
his blood, which he poured out for us.
Moreover, this faith means relying firmly upon this comfort
(that we have a gracious God and eternal salvation for the sake of the Lord
Jesus Christ) with unshakable assurance and trust, holding on to this assurance
in every difficulty and tribulation.
Seems easy enough, but now for the not-so-easy:
The other kind of eating of Christ’s body is oral or
sacramental, when all who eat and drink the consecrated bread and wine in the
Supper receive and partake of the true, essential body and blood of Christ by
mouth. Believers receive it as a certain pledge and assurance that their sins
are truly forgiven and that Christ dwells in them with his power. Unbelievers
receive it, too, but in their case as judgment and condemnation. (Solid
Declaration VII:61-63, p. 604)
This is a hard saying, who can believe it, says John 6?
Submitting to this kind of means of salvation is beneath the sinner, simply
because he cannot earn it or pay for it.
[Even]...eternal life associated with justification is
offered not on account of the law or the perfection of our works but through
mercy on account of Christ. As Christ says [in] [John 6:40], “This is indeed
the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have
eternal life”; and elsewhere [John 3:36], “Whoever believes in the Son
has eternal life.” (Apology IV, p. 166)
[So it is that] “All good gifts come from God” (James
1[:17]). No one can come to Christ “unless drawn by the Father” (John
6[:44]). “No one knows the Father except...the one to whom the Son reveals
him” (Matt. 11[:27]). “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy
Spirit” (1 Cor. 12[:3]). “And without me,” Christ said, “you can
do nothing” (John 15[:5]). (Solid Declaration II:26, p. 549)
“Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away”
[John 6:37], Jesus says. Though faith seems heavy, His yoke is easy and His
burden is light. How can this be? Because all glory, laud and honor are His.
His is the heavy lifting. His is the rescuing. His is the sanctifying and His
is the keeping of the one true Christian Church in the one true faith, on
earth.
It is correct and true when it is said, “No one comes to
Christ unless drawn by the Father” [John 6:44]. But the Father does not
intend to draw us apart from means. Instead, he has preordained his Word and
sacraments as the regular means and instruments for drawing people to himself.
It is not the will of either the Father or the Son that people not hear the
proclamation of his Word or have contempt for it, nor should they expect to be
drawn by the Father apart from Word and sacrament. According to his normal
arrangement, the Father draws people by the power of his Holy Spirit through
the hearing of his holy, divine Word, as with a net, through which the elect
are snatched out of the jaws of the devil. (Solid Declaration XI:76, p. 652)
His easy yoke is not your flesh and blood on the cross, but
His; and His light burden is not your living sacrifice presented for the sins
of the world, but His; given and shed for you, as the Divine Word draws us to
believe exactly what it says.
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