24 May 2020

Welcome Home to Your Father in Christ Jesus

Where do you live?  Where do you find your life?  Where is your home?  They say that “home is where the heart is.”  So, where is your heart?  What is it that you love, and where do you reside?

As a Christian, your heart and your home are with Christ Jesus, already here and now within His Church on earth, because He is here for you with His Word and Holy Spirit.  It is in and with Him that you live, by His grace, by faith in His Gospel, the free and full forgiveness of all your sins.

Of course, that was true for Judas, too.  He was a disciple of Jesus, baptized with the Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of his sins, and communed by the hand of his Lord.  He had a place in the Lord’s House, a place at the Lord’s own Table.

But Judas turned aside and went to his own place.  He gave up the place that he had been given with Jesus, and he took back his own place in a field of blood, a place to which he returned by the path of his wickedness, because his heart loved money more than Jesus.  He saw to that himself.

Whatever excuses he made for himself, whatever rationalizations Judas used to justify his choices and decisions, they resulted in despair and death.  It would have been better for that man, our Lord Himself says, if he had never been born.  That is a sobering word and a serious call to repentance.

You also have been baptized and given a place at the Lord’s Table.  But where is your heart?  Where is it that you live?  And where are you headed?

What is it that you cling to and chase after?  What is it in your life that you love more than Jesus?

Maybe it’s money, as it was for Judas.  Maybe you’re desperate to keep what you have.  Or maybe you’re convinced that, if only you had more, then you could be happy, then you could really live.

But maybe it isn’t money at all.  Your idols and temptations may be altogether different.  Maybe for you it is leisure time, or being able to travel and take nice vacations.  Or maybe it’s popularity, perhaps that is the false god for which you would be willing to sacrifice your place with Jesus.  Maybe it’s your family, your house of brick and wood, or your hobbies and entertainment.  As if any of these things mattered or made any difference at all apart from Christ Jesus.

The tragic fact is that your sinful heart is characterized by a wanderlust that is so easily bored with Jesus and desperate for something new and exciting.  Something better.  Something you can take and keep for yourself.  So you are tempted by your own covetous lust and desire, tempted to turn away from the Lord your God, to go to “your own place,” instead of living and abiding in the place that Christ Jesus has graciously gotten for you and given to you by the Ministry of His Gospel.

Thankfully, though, in spite of all that, the heart of God is turned toward you, and His great heart of love is still wide open to you in Christ Jesus.  He desires nothing so much as your salvation and your eternal Life with Him.  He does not covet riches.  Indeed, your Lord Jesus did not count His equality with God a thing to be grasped; though He was rich, for your sake He made Himself poor, that you might inherit the riches of God in Him, and live with Him in His Kingdom.

For the sake of His divine and holy love, the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, has come down from heaven.  He has left His own place in order to descend into the depths of your place of sin and death.  He has made His bed in your field of blood, and He has slept in it, so that, in His bodily Resurrection, you also are raised up from death and the grave in and with Him.  And in His Ascension you are carried to the Right Hand of the God who is now your Father in Christ Jesus.

The Son of God has come down, in order to take you up.  He has left His home, in order to fetch you back to the Home that He has prepared for you with His Father in heaven.

You get a glimpse of how He has accomplished this great salvation if you consider St. Peter’s preaching and catechesis to those one-hundred-twenty disciples in Jerusalem.  In choosing a new Apostle to take the place of Judas Iscariot, the potential candidates needed to be eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life from His Baptism in the Jordan River to His being taken up.  For it is especially from His Baptism that Jesus began His great good work of bringing you and all the people back to God.

There in His Baptism, as He descends into the water, He is already lowering Himself down into the depths of your sin and death.  And as He comes back up, He raises you up with Himself.

Already in His death upon the Cross He is lifted up, in order to draw all men to Himself.  For it is by His Sacrifice that He atones for the sins of the world and reconciles the world to His Father.

And so it is that He is lifted up in His Resurrection, and He is lifted up in His Ascension to the Right Hand of God, where He ever lives to intercede for you in His Body and with His Blood.  And where He is, there you are and ever shall be, also, both body and soul, in and with Him.

He has blazed the trail for you.  He has come down to where you are, so that, in His lifting up, you are lifted up to be with Him where He is.  By and from His Baptism, He has entered into your house of death and doom; and by His lifting up on the Cross He has turned everything around for you, and He has brought you with Himself back to His own God and Father in heaven.

All of this that He has accomplished is given to you in Holy Baptism.  It is given to you by the Apostolic Ministry of the Gospel — that Ministry which began with Christ Jesus Himself, and then continued with His holy Apostles, with Peter, James, and John, and then also with Matthias.  By the grace and mercy of God, that Ministry of the Holy Gospel goes out to all the nations, to the ends of the earth, even to the close of the age, to make disciples by the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in the Name of Jesus, by the catechesis of His Word, and by Holy Baptism in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, just as He has spoken.

You share the Name and Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, the beloved Son, because you are baptized in His Name and with His Word and Holy Spirit.  You are a Christian, because Christ has anointed you with the Spirit of God, and He has named you with His own Name — the Name that is His from God the Father from all eternity, which He has also received as true Man in His own Flesh.

He has been given that divine and holy Name in His Flesh, in order to bestow that Name of God on you.  Thus do you bear the Name of Christ in your flesh, in your body and soul, both here and hereafter, and thus are you a Christian, a disciple of Christ Jesus, a child of His God and Father.

By your Baptism you also share His Cross, and sharing His Cross you share His Resurrection and Ascension, His Father, and His Spirit.  Everything that belongs to Him, He now shares with you.

Sharing His Cross, you share His Life and His Glory, His Home and Family.  When you suffer for the sake of Jesus, when you bear the Cross in your callings and stations, when you are persecuted for the very name of Christian that you have been given to bear — in all of this you are glorified with the Glory of Christ Jesus.  You share His Glory, the Glory of the Father manifested in Him, which is the Glory of His Cross and the sure and certain hope and promise of His Resurrection.

The Cross and suffering are certainly not enjoyable or fun.  That is not what the Glory of God is all about.  The Cross and suffering are painful and difficult, and it is only by the grace of God that you endure to the end and are saved.  But as you share the Cross and suffering of Jesus, He teaches you and trains you not to become too friendly or familiar with this perishing world of sin and death.  His Cross and suffering teach you not to fear, love, and trust in that which does not last.

If your heart abides in the world, then your heart makes it bed in the dust of the earth.  But when your heart abides in Christ Jesus by faith in His Word and promises, then your heart is already in heaven — and that is where your body and your soul shall be also in the Resurrection at the last.

It is in Christ Jesus that you live, no matter where on earth you may be.  Your true home is not here in this world.  Yet, even here and now, the Lord Jesus Christ — who has overcome this world with all its trials and tribulations — He is with you always.  He is with you in your suffering, especially in that which you suffer for His Name’s sake, as you bear the Cross for the sake of His Gospel.

It is in Christ Jesus that you are already at home with your Father in heaven.  You already live and abide there with God in Christ Jesus, even while you are still on your pilgrimage here on earth.  Here you are a stranger in a strange land.  You are still on your homeward journey through the wilderness.  But in Christ you have already reached your goal.  There is no doubt as to the ending.

Because He has become and is your Good Shepherd, so are you a sheep of His pasture.  So does He feed and nurture you in peace and safety.  He leads you beside the quiet waters.  He keeps you in your Baptism.  He pastures you with His Word.  He feeds you with Himself at His own Table.

Believe that it is so, and do not let your heart be troubled.  Be at peace, for you are in Christ Jesus.

In all of your going out and coming in — with all that you say and do — confidently bear the Name that Christ has given you to bear.  It is your Father’s Name.  It is your Patronymic.

Wherever He has sent you to serve His household and family here on earth, confidently bear that Name with which He has so graciously named you.  In your vocations you are firmly established within His household.  You are not far away from Him, because He is ever near and close to you.

And as often as you wander away from Him — as often as you get yourself lost because your eye latches onto something in this world and leads you astray — as often as you return to your own place, instead of remaining in the place that Christ has gotten for you and given to you — turn back, and come home.  Repent.  Be lifted up with Christ Jesus, your Savior, by His Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead.  For He has built His House, and He has established a place in it for you — a place that He keeps on giving to you by the preaching of His Gospel of forgiveness.

Do not let your heart be troubled.  Do not be afraid.  Do not despair when you consider your sin and shame.  Though you may be lost, Christ is still near.  You shall not die homeless and alone.  For here you are already home in Christ.  Here you already live with Him and with the Father.

You live here in His Church, because your sins are all forgiven by His Word.  Your feet are firmly planted in Christ Jesus, and your heart is safely hidden with Christ in God.  “Welcome home.”

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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