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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. You may be seated.
First things first, this red is not in honor of St. Louis Cardinals. Just thought I’d put it out there for you. Because being a Texan and a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Texas is difficult; you’ve got this draw to St. Louis because of the seminary and the headquarters that are there, and you’ve got this Texas Ranger loyalty. Well, that’s another story. Thank you.
We celebrate the gift of what God has given to you and to me, the truth of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, revealed only in Scripture. Now, in marriage, as you watched your parents, and you could talk to them and ask them that question, or you yourself, if you are married and have experienced this: remember the early years of your marriage? Everything was fun. Everything was new and adventuresome. Everything was joyful. Everything was awesome. Your spouse was awesome. You were awesome. You could do no wrong. It was exciting. Just like when you first became a believer. Your faith was vibrant. There were none of the doubts, the questions, the seemingly paradoxical things that caused you consternation. It was exciting.
Well, then as time moved on in your marriage… the gift of new life came into your life—your children—and things began to change. Now, all of a sudden, the husband wasn’t the apple of his wife’s eye at all times. Now the wife had other things, as well as the husband, to care for. There was always this new change in the relationship that you had with one another. Just as your relationship with God changes, meaning it gets, at times, difficult. You come across things that challenge your faith.
And just as your marriage works through those years of raising children, your faith works through those years of difficult times—whether it’s without a job, whether it is family strife, or whether it is any other kind of strife. Well, then typically in all marriages, around the 7 to 14 year mark, becomes that A Lutheran Christian sermon. In other words, as you have moved past certain things that tripped you up or challenged you in your faith, and you feel like you have accomplished and moved beyond that, then it seems like there’s something else that’s nipping at your heels and biting your ankles.
Well, the kids grow up and leave the house, and so there’s this empty nest era and midlife era in the husbands and wives. And the difficulty that still is there as well. No different than in your faith as your faith grows. Your faith and what you dealt with as a teenager compared to your faith and what you deal with as a young married person and a midlife person: three different things that you’re struggling with. The thing that you struggled with as a teenager, you’re—well, at least God willing—you’re not still struggling with it as a midlife person. Acne, we know for sure.
And then comes retirement. And some people do not know how to handle it because, well, you’re no longer that person. My father did not handle retirement very well at all. Men don’t handle it very well in general, and so do women, because it’s a change. And it changes your relationship with your spouse, too. It changes your relationship with your God. It puts you in a different perspective with God.
I’m using this relationship motif to describe, ultimately, our relationship with our Heavenly Father, for we are, as Jesus said so clearly, His bride. He chose us. He clothed us with white garments. He took away our whoredom and gave us virginity and purity again. No longer are we stained by our own sin? We are cleansed. We are His.
And that’s the interesting aspect of what Jesus discusses with these disciples. Because just like in a marriage, when at the beginning everything is exciting, it’s fun, it’s completely above everything else you’ve experienced. Then, as time moves on and you get into the day-in and day-outness of it all, whether it’s a job, marriage, or children, you get into that predictability, and it becomes not that way that it once was.
Well, notice the very first sentence from the Gospel reading. It says, Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, had believed in him. In other words, they believed him at one time, and now they’re walking away because they’re realizing that this thing called a relationship with their Lord Jesus is not always fun. It’s not always exciting. It’s not always stellar. It’s challenging at times, difficult at times, humbling at times, and always submissive.
That’s why Jesus, in his great love for these Jews, says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth. The truth will set you free.” And then he even ends that little section by saying, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” He doesn’t wash his hands of these Jews, right? He doesn’t turn his back on them and say, “Okay, lost cause, they’re not going to believe in me. Next group,” and go find someone else. He gives them a promise of his faithfulness to them.
He is saying, “I will be the father to you, my prodigal children. I will be Hosea to you, my Gomer. I will wait and woo you back, and I will be ready for you to come.” That’s great love. That’s faithfulness. And all you and I have to do in our own minds is think, in our life, how he has treated us that way. Because you and I have to admit, our faithfulness is on par with the apostles and with others of the faith.
Like in our marriage. Not implying that anybody is physically unfaithful, but have we always honored and loved our spouse the way God has intended us to honor and love our spouse? No. And does our spouse walk away from that? God be praised no, for most of us. This spouse never does, and that’s the point. Never walks away from our infidelity but gives a promise, as he did to these Jews.
Now, Jesus did say, “Abide in my word, feed upon me. Let me be that which completely clothes you and enters every one of your pores and completely consumes you. Let me be that.” And by God’s grace, that’s what’s brought you here this morning and didn’t keep you away. It’s God calling you to be abiding in Him. That’s our faithful response to His first and foremost faithfulness to us.
Like Gomer who returned to Hosea. Like Israel who returned to the Lord, her spouse. Like the church who returns to our bridegroom, Jesus. Like we who return to our spouse.
During Luther’s time, from outward appearances, it seems as if the church was unified. Everybody worshipped the same way in the same language, Latin. Everybody was a part of the same church, and anything that tried to break that unity was dealt with by the church murdering them. There were pros and cons to the time that Luther lived in. The pros were, from the look of everything, the church was beautiful, completely unified. The con was there was no faith. There was faith—not to say that there wasn’t—but the church was building herself not upon faith in God’s revealed word but upon man’s rules and regulations to create this seemingly unification of Christians.
Now you and I don’t live in that kind of a world today. We live in a world where there are multiple truths, and the only recompense upon us if we don’t cling to what the world is saying we ought to cling to is that we get a little distanced by people. There’s peer pressure. At least in our own country, we’re not put to death by the church. We’re not put to death by our government, thanks be to God. But it’s not that way in all the world, is it?
Now, the pros to having many truths is that it does really come down to faith in that promise. It’s not a block to check. The bad side of having so many truths is no one oftentimes is willing to say, “This is truth and that’s false.” Because to do so would be politically incorrect, denying someone else’s right to their opinion. But that would have no room in your marriage, would it? You would not tolerate such things.
I’m going to read a passage from the book of Luke. All of us have seen what happens when a child is removed from the presence of one of the parents for a time. Oh, that child will have a relationship with that parent, but not the same as if that parent lived with that child all the time. The only way you and I abide in His Word is by being in contact with our beloved bridegroom. Who doesn’t come to us to ridicule us. Who doesn’t come to us to list out all of our inconsistencies. But comes to receive us. Like the father to the prodigal son. Like Hosea did to Gomer. Like Christ did to Peter. “Do you love me?”
When the disciples began the church, the disciples were not always picture perfect either. You know that. Reading about them in the Gospels, they all ran away from Christ. And yet the church went through very difficult times after Christ ascended into heaven. It was never perfectly unified. It was never having all its stuff together. It had lots of frayed edges. It was at constant conflict because it was filled with conflicted sinners. It wasn’t any different than Luther’s time, and it’s no different than now.
We’re just six years away from the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. And the truth is still completely being proclaimed. And the church is still struggling over that truth. And many in the church go one way. Many in the church go the other way. And the truth is what binds us together. Not faithfulness to a building, not faithfulness to an institution, but faithfulness to what God has proclaimed to us.
“If I set you free, you will be free indeed. If you abide in my word, you will be my disciples. You will be set free. Free from guilt. Free from your unfaithfulness. Free from the disappointments you’ve caused your bridegroom, Christ, because he pays for those and forgives those.”
In your marriage and in the marriages of people whom you look up to, you cannot say that they are without scars. They cannot say that they are without scars. If it happens in a human relationship between husband and wife, it happens between a husband, Christ, and his bride, the church. You know where his scars are at. They’re for you. His scars are for you. The scars that you and I bear are not from him, but from ourselves and other sinful people.
And this is the only place where we’re set free from those scars and all the memories and all the struggles and all the tribulation. And just like in a marriage, it’s very exciting at times and very blasé at times. Your relationship with your Lord, from your perspective and my perspective, has some very exciting times and some very difficult times. None of us here can say that everybody in our family has remained faithful to the church. We all have people within our family. Some of us are spouses, some of us are children, some of us are parents who did not remain in the faith.
Like the parable of the seed and the sower at the front of the pulpit here, believed for a time and fell away, like the Jews whom Jesus is addressing in our gospel reading. Like many of the Lutherans during Luther’s time, like many of the disciples during Jesus’ time, like many people in your life and in my life in our time, Jesus handled this unfaithfulness not by completely cutting them off but not by bending either, not compromising himself nor his truth. He continues to reach out like Hosea to Gomer. He continues to reach out like Jesus did to Peter. Like the father to the prodigal son, and like your Lord to you, his bride, and calls you back.
I don’t know, nor do you, why some do not come back. But he is not stingy with his call. He is generous. Generous enough to keep you. “Abide in my word and you are my disciples and you will be set free.” If I set you free, you’re free. Free from having to think whether or not you are his child, whether or not you are his bride, whether or not you do deserve it. You don’t. And he continually affirms that by saying, “I am the one who makes you mine. No one comes to me except through me.”
The difficulty in faithfulness is remaining faithful. But like in a marriage, the difficulty in maintaining that marriage is dealing with the unfaithfulness in a forgivable way. You know how your groom, Jesus Christ, deals with your and my infidelity. You’ve been set free. You are His bride and beloved child.
As He said so clearly, “If you abide in My Word, you are My disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.”
In the name of the one who has made you his bride and set you free from all of your and my infidelity, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
