This is the pre-quel to today’s earlier post about repentance and forgiveness. My sermon from Sunday, which one of my members could not hear, because he had a cow that had fallen into a ditch on the Sabbath, and had to get it out. (Quite literally!)
He is Risen!
Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. It’s a lofty claim. Look around you. A 24,000 mile circumference rock in space. You overcome it. But John isn’t speaking of the globe itself, as if moving to another planet would require a new victory to overcome that world. John is speaking of overcoming everything in this plane of existence. Much of the nation is travelling this weekend to see the sun blotted out. It reminds us of 5 years ago, when we were the destination for the travelers. It makes us think of things beyond this planet – this blue dot in an almost unlimited universe. And yet, John says, if you are born of God you have overcome this world – this life. The victory that overcomes everything you see, touch, feel, have learned about in the world – our faith.
Such a claim sounds like ancient superstition – as if when the moon goes in front of the sun, we shout to chase the dragon away and stop him from eating it. It’s absurd that your faith can do so much. The world teaches that faith is what you believe, while I believe something different and there is not much difference between the two beliefs, whatever they might be. It’s just your own point of view, we are told constantly. John rejects that utterly. He instructs us today: Those who believe Jesus is the Son of God overcome the world. There is a reality to the word of Jesus, and to his battle with death on the cross. It is a reality we find nowhere else. Jesus is raised, the world is overcome by those who look to him. What does this overcoming look like, because there are bills to pay, things to do, (weather that cancels church services)
Ezekiel was given a vision of the reality of this victory. It isn’t just a thought or dream of something better. Ezekiel sees the dry, bleached bones of the dead armies of Israel, and God tells him to prophesy to the bones. And the bones are enfleshed. And then Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the wind, so that it comes into the corpses now littering the ground, and he does, and the breath of the Lord is breathed into them, and they are alive again. When John tells us that we overcome the world – what he really means is, we overcome death. There is nothing left for the world to either promise us or threaten us with. There is nothing we can be given that we are not already given by our Lord Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. There is nothing this world can take from us that destroys the hope that is ours in Jesus, the gift given through Water and word: when the Word of God was spoken over you, when the minister of the Lord prophesied as Jesus commanded and spoke into you the Spirit of the living God by that water, and placed on you the name of God the Father almighty, and of Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, and of the Holy Spirit the Comforter.
In Holy Baptism those who are dead are made alive. Those who are dry bones on the valley floor are given flesh and the breath of God, and so are no longer dead. And how does this great conversion from death to life occur? By faith, which grabs hold of the promise. By faith you overcome the world, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the World. By his death and resurrection you are redeemed and set at liberty.
And what is the tool for this transformation from death to life, this resurrection – both of the soul now and the body when our Lord Jesus returns to judge the world? The difference is the forgiveness of sins. That is what the faith points to: Jesus earning us the forgiveness of sins by his death and resurrection, and God imputing that forgiveness to you – i.e. He declares it yours as if it always was yours, and was not earned by another and given to you by grace through faith. Now, when God looks at you, he sees Jesus work for you, not your work. And so the sin is truly taken away. The guilt is truly atoned for. The Redemption is truly accomplished. And death has truly been replaced with life.
The forgiveness of sins is so powerful that Satan rages against it and has since the beginning of the world. It is so powerful that the entire world has set itself against Christ and his church. Because in the church the forgiveness of sins is given. This is why the world hates the church and always has and always will. It is why the world continually tries – and fails – to overcome the church. But Christ’s church can not be overcome – in this world or any other. Just as Christ could not be overcome by death, but overcame it by his death, and now gives life to all those who believe on his name, all those who by faith overcome the world.
Do you think this is speaking too much, ascribing too much to the church and the forgiveness of sins? Let us examine our Gospel today, so that we would be strengthened and renewed in the promise, and so that we would believe in and desire – hunger and thirst after – the righteousness of God given in the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus appears to his disciples. Last week, we had the angelic promise to the women, we had the tomb empty, Jesus gone. But when we left, the women were trembling with astonishment and fear. And we had not yet seen the Lord. Today Jesus appears in the same upper room where he spoke to the disciples before his departure, where he washed their feet and commanded them to love one another, where he gave them his true body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. It is to this same room that the apostles now flee and lock themselves in. And so it is to this same upper room that Jesus appears to them and blesses them and speaks words of comfort to them.
When he appears, he begins with the blessing, “Peace be with you.” He shows them the wounds which he earned by his redemption sacrifice. No longer painful and a sign of weakness. Now the wounds of Jesus – along with the cross of Jesus – become symbols of his victory over death and the grave. Jesus breathes on them – that is gives them the Holy Spirit, who works through them in their apostolic ministry, and who works through the one holy Christian and apostolic church in all ages, by virtue of the same Spirit given through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments. We now have the peace of God and the Spirit of God spoken into us by Jesus himself.
But Jesus does not end the blessing there. He gives something concrete – something necessary to us. He gives to his Holy Church the authority on earth to forgive and to retain sins in his name. If Jesus had not explicitly spoken to us, handing over the authority to forgive sins in his name – forgiven in heaven as surely as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us himself – if he had not said “I give you this authority to do this thing in my name”, we would never presume to speak a word of absolution, because it would be blaspheme. It is only by the command of Jesus that we dare. Only because he has told us to speak his word boldly, do we speak it boldly, and yet with fear and trembling, because it is a great word spoken to us, and given to us to speak.
We are dealing not with the things of this world, but with elemental forces, eternal things. Forgiveness is no laughing matter, nothing to be taken lightly. It is the centerpiece of Christ’s work on the cross, it is the centerpiece of the work of Christ through his church. It is the work of the Holy Spirit among us – the forgiveness of sins.
The world doubts and scoffs and tells us we believe in fairy tales, that we aren’t strong enough to make it without religion as crutch. The world tells us we don’t need a otherworldly spirit telling us our sins are forgiven. We just need to love and forgive ourselves. But then look at what happens in the world around us. We live in a world of consciences so damaged they have no feeling left in them, and the damage makes minds go mad.
We are all familiar with the conscience as that sinking feeling in the gut, the tightness in the chest when we know we have done something wrong, and we cry out quietly in our soul that the guilt would be taken from us. The conscience can cut like a knife – but it might be better described as a red hot knife – touching the metal itself can burn and cause us agony of spirit. But if we burn too deeply, too long, without removing the knife of sin, then the nerves die. We can no longer feel the sting of our own sin. The conscience becomes scarred, seared, non-responsive. And yet, such a deep burn is the most dangerous burn of all. All sense is lost, all ability to determine if we are dying or living. The seared conscience leaves us unable to determine what is right or wrong, and we end up more miserable than ever.
The world is ever feeling its guilt, and so ever giving rules for righteous living, while at the same time rejecting God’s law, saying we are the ones out of touch with ourselves and the reality of this world. But the world offers no absolution, no forgiveness for its made up rules. Instead there is a never ending stream of contrition – sorrow over sin, but it leads nowhere except to it’s own virtue over the sorrow itself. The world is going mad because it knows the sin is there, but is so desensitized to it that it can no longer separate real sin from imagined sin. And the world has no concept of forgiveness. With no forgiveness, there is no place for true repentance, only false repentance – eternal sorrow, unending guilt, without the chance to grab hold of forgiveness by faith in the crucified one. It is a delusion of absolute misery and horror.
Again, do you think this speaks too boldly about the condition of the world? What do we see in the world? We live in a world where instant gratification is the norm. We have more than any generation has ever had – and we have it more quickly and abundantly than any other. But has it lead to contentment, to happiness? No. It has lead to increasing misery year after year. Increasing sadness, increasing depression. Each year the results are worse, and if people aren’t actually more miserable, they report feeling that way. Why? Because we are seeking that which can never fulfill the longing in our soul. What we see around us are the classic signs of a guilty – even a seared conscience: Knee-jerk reactions against anyone who would dare to contradict the world’s delusions, constant repetition of the sins of ourselves and our fathers, with no plan no hope of ever truly repenting and turning away from our course. We see it in a thousand rules about how to properly worship the environment, how to acknowledge the theft of land by those long dead and impute that guilt to us, we are told to confess the sins that are genetically built into us, with no hope of ever being redeemed, no thought for repentance bearing fruit and amendment of life, and no means to receive absolution if we did. The world is always confessing, never receiving absolution. One false move against the world’s orthodoxy of madness might cancel you – permanently.
Jesus offers forgiveness for sin. He calls us to something far higher than eternal guilt and shame. He calls us to turn away from the sin – real sins, not invented and imaginary ones against the planet or the universe or some imagined enemy. Our sins – as you know, actions against the 10 commandments – are easy to determine according to those commandments. It’s why the world hates the commandments so much – because they give an objective measuring stick – a ruler – to evaluate our conduct. Yes, we find we are guilty. And so Jesus calls us to repent – to turn away from them, and seek them no more. And he also – blessed relief – He calls us to receive the Holy Absolution – forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness spoken in the here and now, but don’t be fooled by appearance. It is a forgiveness that reaches to the heavens. Your sin is truly wiped off the eternal ledger book, even if in this world you live with the consequences of your sins. Your sin is gone in the eyes of God. And so forgiven, the Chrisitan can also truly forgive others.
The guilt of sin is removed, and the burden of resentment over the sins committed against you is also taken away. The entire crushing burden of the Law is gone, and is replaced with the sweet fragrance of freedom in Christ Jesus. He has removed the burden of sin by his death and resurrection, and given you a life of freedom in the Spirit.
This is what it means to overcome the world. That we are a new creation, and we do not live according to the constant striving for perfection that can never be, judging those who don’t measure up, running away from invented sins, until we are finally caught up and overcome by our own conscience, our own guilt, and driven into madness.
Instead, we live forgiven lives each day. Freed from the chains and curse of the law, and now free to serve the living God. We are not longer dead in our trespasses. Instead in Christ we are alive. Bones joined together, flesh placed on us, and called to live with the breath – the Spirit of the Living God. The same God who came into the flesh to be our Savior, and who now gives us that salvation as he comes to us in the body and blood, in the water and the word. He is the one who gives us the promise, “Whoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”
This blessing of Jesus is truth beyond all understanding in this world, “Peace be with you.”
Amen.
He is Risen!