READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 55:10-13
2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9
St. Luke 8:4-15
Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
“Now the parable
is this: The seed is the word of God”
“It is also necessary for everlasting salvation,” we confess
in our Creed, “that one faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
When it comes to the Son of God, Jesus Christ, there are
similar disagreements between people when you ask them Who He is, as there is
when asking about God. However, historically speaking, Jesus is, or should be,
the common point of all Christians, that is that He is true God and true man,
that He suffered and died to reconcile us to the Father, and that He was raised
to reign over all and to justify and sanctify all believers, as our Creeds
confess.
But who believes that old junk anymore? That is in the past.
We need to move forward, progress, and update our beliefs according to modern
times and scholarship. Indeed, that is what the world and the pop Christianity
that follows the world, has done. It is no longer the sugar-coated, rose-colored
glasses Jesus that people invented to believe in. That Jesus was not enough.
Though there are still holdouts, clinging to this saccharine
Jesus, the majority have moved on to someone better. A person who actually
listens and understands. Someone who says agreeable things and promises that
things will get better. Someone who is so sticky sweet and affirming that all
of humanity can unite under him, if they just hear him out.
This someone is the devil, of course. Made up Jesus is just
that, made up, and is no good. It is because of this Jesus that people are
leaving churches. But the devil is real and he has real things to say about
equality and unity and acceptance and peace. The “now”. How we get things done
is by making sure everyone is equal, or else. How we come together is by accepting
everything, or else, and finding true peace in that beautiful one-thought-world,
or else.
You thought the punk rockers of the 70s and 80s were devil
worshippers for dressing up and acting as they did. No. Those were just
LaRPers, live action role-players, acting simply to get a rise out of you and
sell their records. It worked.
But that is not devil worship. The real worship comes in the
form of fear, love, and trust. Do you fear the God Who “…can destroy both
soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28)? Sounds arrogant. Maybe He should try
being sweeter, like this other guy.
Do you love Jesus “with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:37)? Here He is in front of you,
looking suspiciously like a regular bloke, talking about farming today in the
Gospel. Maybe He should speak more plainly.
Do you trust? You should, but “Why are you discouraged?
Why are you restless? You should trust the Lord” (Ps 42:5). You should, but
God is very fickle with His help and everyone keeps asking where He is, when you
don’t even know. You’d rather have the here and now. You’d rather have the
immediate gratification.
Repent. As you practice these things, you are just as guilty
of trampling God’s Word as are those you yell at on your Television, which you
should stop because those people are all paid actors. The devil doesn’t win if
he is on TV. The devil wins when you, yes you have to do it, when you bring all
this into the Lord’s Bride, His Church.
When you fear worldly success and numbers more than Word and
Sacrament, the devil wins. When you love your private preferences more than the
Church’s historic preferences, your sin wins. When you trust in your judgement
as judgement from God, sowing hate and wicked feelings among the Baptized of
Christ, the world has converted you.
God has given us to be stewards of His Creation, but we have
ruined it. We have ruined it in such a way that we think we are doing God a
great favor, instead of hearing and believing His Gospel.
It is so ruined, that when Jesus comes to sow His own Word
from His own mind and lips, He finds more places where it will not grow, than
places it will grow. He finds the path, the rocks, and the thorns where all
should be good. He finds unbelief, suffering, and wickedness in your life and
in your hearts, where there should only be what He created, that is things that
are “very good”.
And when God comes down, what do you suppose He should do
with such wicked servants? “[Jesus asks] When therefore the owner of the
vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will
put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other
tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”
If there is one aspect of Jesus that we have lost in
today’s age of pop-religion and religious freedom, its the serious Jesus. He is
not only serious about worship being only offered to Him, which includes all
our fear. love, and trust. But He is also serious about how Good His Creation
is and when He finds what He has made suffering and dying in sin, He is the God
Who acts.
Yet to such destroyed, irredeemable soil, only the
blood of God can bring it back. But God is God. He doesn’t have blood. He takes
His own. His own Body and His own Blood and offers it as fertilizer for you.
The Incarnation of Jesus is the Incarnation of God, in order that He be the
seed thrown away for a miserable death, substituting Himself in place of all
wretched sinners.
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but
whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in
the name of the only Son of God” (Jn 3:18).
And that Name is Immanuel
Crucified. God with us, through His suffering, death, and resurrection.
“Through
this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you” (Acts 13:38).
What is ruined is recreated, in Christ. Jesus’s Blood
is redemptive. It does not go on someone and they remain just as they are. They
are changed. They are changed the same way the soils of the Sower were changed,
in the Gospel.
Those on the path gave the path purpose. No longer was it
just to be walked all over, but it was meant to hold the seed out to feed the
birds. Those on the rocks gave purpose. Who thought rocks could grow anything
except moss? Not these rocks. Yet when the Word is thrown at them, they come
alive.
And what did the thorns have to choke, before the sprouting
seeds came along? Even the good soil was empty before Jesus filled it. It is
the Word that is the power of salvation, the Word of the Crucified Jesus. And
that Word creates life and light, through Faith, which it also gives.
And in that Faith, we believe that the Lord’s forgiveness is
our forgiveness. So continue to bring all your sin into Church, for now that
you are found in Christ you hate it, you confess it, and you rid yourself of it
in Confession. That is how Jesus made it to be, for here is the dumping ground.
Jesus, both God and man, still makes Himself available for all your sins.
Though you bring numerous sins daily to Him, His sacrifice
was enough for all of them and more. He gave Himself as a ransom, even for the
devil worshippers, for if they repent, it is a forgivable sin.
And He is so serious about this, that He is willing to go at
it Himself and confront and defeat any and all crazy the world or you can throw
at Him. And He does this by the same method today: offering His Body and Blood
to a world full of nothing but God’s enemies.
At the fullness of time, God sent His very own Son, Who is
mocked, scourged, and crucified. But three days later rises again, afterward He
ascended into heaven that He might sit on the right hand of the Father, and
forever reign and have dominion over all creatures, and sanctify them that
believe in Him, by sending the Holy Ghost into their hearts, to rule, comfort,
and quicken them, and to defend them against the devil and the power of sin (AC
3:4-5).
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