READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Daniel 7:9-14
2 Peter 3:3-14
St. Matthew 25:31-46
Grace to you and peace from Him Who is and Who was and Who
is to come; from Jesus Christ the faithful Witness, the firstborn of the dead,
and the ruler of kings on earth. (Rev 1)
Who speaks to you this very morning saying,
“When the Son of
Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his
glorious throne.”
It is St. Peter, this morning, that gives us a good Sunday
joke saying, “Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be
diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.” I find
it particularly humorous coming on the coat-tails of election week where
everyone was/is at each others’ throats over something as miniscule as
politics.
And if all it takes is politics and some imaginary election
to so-called “power” to destroy our peace and get us to hate our neighbor, then
we can’t even begin to think about being without spot or blemish when faced
with everything else that is on our plates. Where is peace in that kind of
world? St. Peter the Jokester.
Last week, we talked about this fear of being “unelected” by
God and found comfort in the Atonement, but even when we look at the Gospel
reading for today, the sheep are not at peace or at least uneasy and
uncomfortable. They appear to be unsure how they will be judged and don’t even
accept the judgement they are given, though it is in their favor!
Here, St. James condemns us with God’s Law when he says, “the
one who doubts…is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6, 8).
For as much chaos and struggle that we place in our own lives, ready to turn on
our neighbor at the drop of a ballot, we also leak that into God’s Church,
where we doubt. This effectively creates a horrible life and a horrible
after-life for us.
We are double-minded and doubt. Worse than that, St. James
isn’t saying that we are of two minds and if we just change it, everything will
be ok. What he is actually teaching us is that we are double-spirited. More to
the point, double-being.
English translators can’t make up their mind about that
word. They will translate it as soul sometimes and “mind” other times, as St.
James witnessed. Such as Ecclesiastes 12:7, “ the spirit returns to God who
gave it.”
Here is this “being” and what we are taught there is that
God gives it to us. He creates our spirit, soul, being and we only get one. All
well and good. But if we only get one, where does this double-mindedness, this
double-spirited-ness comes from? Why must St. Paul depress us saying in Romans
7:
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right,
evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my
mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”
And if even St. Paul can’t make it…
Jesus, in our Gospel also makes a division of two, sheep and
goats. The epistle has the scoffers, in verse 3, and those waiting and
hastening the Day of the Lord. Daniel, too, gets into it speaking of seeing the
Beast killed in fire and “one like the son of man”.
There are not two beings. There is only one being from God.
The double is a stranger, as our Introit told us, an interloper. A fake “being”
who attempts to usurp and displace. You can’t even blame this on satan,
completely, because he also has received his being from God.
This second, false being is sin, that is the corruption of
everything God has made, the total corruption of our whole human nature, and
the false idea that there is anything besides God and what He made.
Repent. You may be double-minded, but it is your fault. Your
sinful nature just loves to take credit for God’s great work, especially when
it is your turn to feed the hungry, give to the thirsty, welcome the stranger,
clothe the naked, or visit the sick and imprisoned. “Lord we always do those
things for You!”
Hear the words of the true Being: “By this we know love,
that he laid down his being for us, and we ought to lay down our beings for the
brothers.” Jesus clears the air right away and declares that what He
offered on the cross was this being, the one and only, come from God, and given
back to Him perfectly, as Ecclesiastes 12 told us.
So perfectly, that we hear in Hebrews 10:14, 10, “For by
a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified”,
because “by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the
body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
Jesus has offered up His entire being upon the cross in
order to forgive sins, but also to finally put to death this second, stranger
being who accuses His elect day and night. For by His being, which suffered and
died, He has been approved by God such that His being has risen from the dead,
never to die again.
Thus, the Being of Jesus was and is one with God. This was
always the case, but now the true gift of God is given when we are then included
in the Great Unity! St. Paul alludes to this in Philippians 2:2 saying, “complete
my joy by being of the same being, having the same love, being in full accord
and of one mind” in Christ.
Body, soul, being, spirit, mind, heart. All go together.
There is not one without the other, just as Christ’s entire being was able to
be offered through His Body and Blood on the cross. So it will remain true that
“there is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope
that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6), because we
are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).
Therefore, the being of Jesus is the gift of God given to
us. The deathless Being of Jesus given to us, fights off death for us. The
Victorious Being of Jesus given to us, goes and sins no more for us. The
Comforting Being of Jesus given to us, works to heal us of our
double-being-ness, through His Word and Sacrament.
Dear Christians, St. James tells us to be not
double-being-ed, because we have only been given the Spirit of Christ and it is
a right and holy Spirit within us. You are not only given something as abstract
as a “renewed mind” or a “special soul”. You have been brought into deep
communion and baptized into the very being of God, in Christ.
The depth of this union is the depth of the love which God
has for you. This is not of yourself, for God is only moved to forgive sins
because He is merciful and because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins
and the sins of the whole world (1 Jn 2:2).
Returning to St. Peter’s words then in verse 14: in Christ
you are addressed by the blessed Apostle as beloved. Beloved of God Who has forgiven
you on His own. As His beloved, you wait on Him. And you are able to wait,
because since God is for you, who can be against you?
You wait for a new heavens and a new earth, not so that you
can do all the things you didn’t get to, but because the old ones were
strangers against you who sought your very being, and now they are no
more.
Your diligence, then, is not in how well you believe or
wait, but how well you let Christ do His work among you. How well you attend to
His words of salvation in baptism and forgiveness in the Lord’s Supper.
Because, once again, the Lord produces in us the diligence He desires by His
very being. It is only “In him we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he
lavished upon us” (Eph 1:7-8).
In that flood of Jesus’s blood, we find peace. In His
wounds, we find peace. In His Word and Sacrament we are so saturated with peace
that we will have to be dug out on the Last Day.
Here, the strife is fierce and the battle feels long. We
struggle with flesh and with spirit and with mind. But that sin, that evil is
the stranger, not you in your faith. That stranger will not rise up with you to
your Lord’s side forever, on the Last Day. That stranger will be refused
admittance to the Wedding Feast, our Lord declaring, “Depart. I never knew
you.”
That stranger, that other spirit, will be taken from you and
cast away as far as the east is from the west. And there will only be Christ. There
will not be evil close at hand, or a pet-sin to trip you up, or a holy work to
confuse as your own. Then, it will only be the Son of Man, in His glory, on His
glorious throne, Christ as the Head and His Church, the Body in Whom we live,
move, and have our being (Acts 17:28).
Come quickly Lord Jesus.
Amen.
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