The Spirit of Life in the Valley of Death

Whether you’ve been around and doing your thing for twenty years or one-hundred-twenty, apart from the Holy Spirit you are nothing but dust and bones, constantly returning to the ground from which you were taken. Apart from the Holy Spirit you are dead and dying; for you have no life in you — neither in your body nor in your soul — except by the Spirit of God, the Breath of the Lord.

But you have been created for eternal Life with God. That is why you’re here, and why you exist at all. Yet, you do not really live without the Spirit. Apart from the Spirit, you continue to exist, as it were, but at odds with God (your Creator, the Author and Giver of Life) and cut off from Him; which is no life at all but a persistent and eternal death, an eternal damnation.

In the final judgment, in the Resurrection of all flesh at the end of days, you shall be raised from the dust of the earth in and with your body. But if you have not received the Holy Spirit in your body of flesh and blood within your life on earth, and if you have not remained in the Spirit of Christ Jesus within this body and life, then you shall be raised, not for everlasting life with God in Paradise, but for the neverending death and damnation of hell in both your body and your soul.

In the meantime, your body is dying because of your sin, which is (at its heart) the rejection of the Word and Spirit of God and the worship of yourself instead of the Lord. You die, as all men die, because of your sin. You live at all only by the grace of God, who gives life and breath to all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, who causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on both the evil and the good, and who gives daily bread also to all the wicked. But all of this is temporary.

The Spirit of God does not strive with man forever. He continues to strive with man for a season — as He has done for twenty years through Pastor Kolaskey’s ministry, and as He has done for more than one-hundred-twenty years in the life and mission of Trinity right here in Dillsboro — because of God’s love for man, and because of His desire that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth. But that season of grace will come to an end in the hour of death and in the final judgment. Then everything will depend on whether you have received and borne the Spirit of Christ Jesus in faith, or denied and rejected the Spirit in sinful unbelief and idolatry.

The fact that you are presently dying and wasting away is a daily reminder of your sin, and thus a daily call to repentance. If you rely on yourself and persist in your sins, you will perish forever; for you cannot keep yourself from dying, and you cannot save yourself for eternal life with God. Even if you do not yet see it or feel it in yourself, consider the world around you. Do you not hear of death and destruction on a daily basis, both near and far? People get sick and die at every age.

Whether it be strangers in the news, or loved ones on their sick beds, or your own mortal flesh with all its frailties and flaws, you look about and find that you are set within the valley of the shadow of death, surrounded on all sides, within and without, by dried up bones returning to the dust.

In the very midst of all this death, your only hope is in Christ Jesus, who pours out upon you the living and Life-giving Holy Spirit through His Word of the Gospel. His Church and Ministry right here in your midst is a bastion and bulwark of Life over against the very gates of hell. And yet, you cannot see, perceive, or feel His Life and health and strength here with you. Despite the promises of God, all that you can see and feel in this world is dust and bones. So you wonder if there is any hope, or if you should give up in despair. Sadness fills your heart, sorrow permeates your spirit.

Can these bones live? These dead and dying bones of yours? These brittle and breaking bones?

Can you possibly be rescued in both your body and your soul, rescued from death and damnation, in order to live with the Lord your God in the good Land that He has promised, in the place that Christ has prepared for you, in His House, in the Kingdom of His God and Father? Can even you be raised from the dust of the earth to everlasting Life, though for now you are subject to death?

By the Word and Spirit of God, the answer is “Yes,” a loud and resounding “Yes” and “Amen.” By the preaching of Christ Jesus, you are raised up and rescued from death and the grave. Your sins are all forgiven by the grace of His Gospel, your death is undone. In the Body of Christ you belong to God the Father, you bear the Holy Spirit, and you live, body and soul, now and forever.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the almighty and eternal Son of God, anointed by the Father with the Spirit in His own Body of flesh and blood, conceived and born of St. Mary — the divine Word by whom all things are made — He has fully entered into your Death Valley. And there, by His Cross and Passion, by His innocent suffering and death, by the voluntary shedding of His holy and precious Blood, He has overcome the curse and consequences of sin, and He has won the victory for you.

He has come, this true God in the Flesh, this true and perfect Man, to bear your sins in His Body to the Cross, to suffer your death and the righteous judgment of the Law against the sins of the whole world, in order to reconcile God and Man forever in Himself, to receive and bear the Spirit in His Body, and to raise the sons and daughters of man from death to life in His Resurrection.

In perfect faith and holy love, He takes the full responsibility for your sins and hands Himself over to your death. In the confidence of His God and Father, He is crucified, dies, and is buried in the dust of the earth from which you are taken. He submits Himself to be cut off from the land of the living. He traverses the dark valley into the far country of death and the grave, even into Sheol.

For all that, appearances notwithstanding, He is not defeated in His death upon the Cross. The victory remains with Life, because God the Father does not abandon His Holy One, Christ Jesus, to Sheol. He does not leave Him to suffer decay, but raises Him and rescues Him from out of death.

Not only that, but in the Resurrection of Christ all the children of Adam are raised. The New Man is taken from the dust of the ground, and the Lord breathes His Life-giving Spirit into His Body. Thus are dead bones given new life, the dirt is remade in the Image of God, and man is saved for life with God in the Spirit. The whole Christian Church in heaven and on earth has life in Christ Jesus — and so also Trinity Lutheran Church in Dillsboro as a vital part of His Body and Bride!

As St. Peter goes on to say in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, when God raised Jesus from the dead He poured out His Spirit upon Him, just as the Father had done when the same Son, Christ Jesus, was baptized in the Jordan River. In each case, the Lord Jesus receives the Holy Spirit in His Body, that you might also receive the Spirit of God in Him, as a member of His Body, baptized in His Name. Thus are you sanctified in body and soul for the Resurrection and everlasting Life.

That is the whole point of your life as a congregation, and of your calling and office, Pr. Kolaskey: What Jesus has received on behalf of all people, you also now hand over and receive in Him by the Ministry of His Gospel, by His Word and Holy Spirit. The Atonement of His Cross has made it possible, and in His Resurrection from the dead all things are made brand new. He pours out the Spirit from the Father upon His Apostles and upon His Church, even to the ends of the earth — even here and now! — through the free and full forgiveness of sins in His Name. As all men die because all men sin, so by the Lord’s forgiveness of sins are all men made alive in Christ Jesus.

His own crucified and risen Body is the Firstfruits of the New Creation, to which you also belong by His grace through faith in His Gospel. As Jesus is anointed by the Spirit of God, so are you anointed by the same Spirit as a Christian. As Christ Jesus ascends to the Right Hand of the Father in and with His Body of flesh and blood, so are you and all His people reconciled to God the Father in the incarnate Son. You are seated with Him in the heavenly places, as He is with you here and pours out the Spirit upon you within the Household and Family of His Church in this place.

It is here in His Jerusalem, the City of God — in the Upper Room where the disciples of Jesus are gathered in His Name and according to His Word and promise — within the Church, the Body of Christ, the fullness of Him who is all in all — it is here that the Father pours out the Holy Spirit generously upon you through Jesus Christ, His Son, by the pastoral Ministry of His Holy Gospel.

God speaks to you by His Son, and in doing so He breathes the Spirit into your body and soul, into your ears, into your heart, and into your mind, unto repentance and faith in His forgiveness of sins. He calls you away from sin and death, back to Himself in Christ Jesus. He raises you up from the dust of the earth and calls you back to life in His Spirit by the Resurrection of His incarnate Son.

This preaching of Christ Jesus, crucified and risen — the preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins in His Name — that preaching is the Voice of the Holy Spirit, the Voice of the Gospel. That is the “Noise” that Ezekiel heard in the valley of dry bones, the “Noise” of a mighty wind, such as the disciples also heard filling the Upper Room in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost.

You cannot know or predict or see with your eyes where the Spirit is coming or going, but you do hear this “Noise,” this Voice of the Spirit in your own dear pastor’s preaching of the Gospel of Christ Jesus; and you are given to behold the work that your very dear Lord and Savior does and accomplishes by the preaching and ministry of His servant among you. Those who were dead in their trespasses and sin are raised up in faith to newness of life. Those who have succumbed to doubts and denials, perhaps even to despair, are delivered from the fear and the power of death and the devil. They are made to stand in confidence and hope, bold and courageous in the face of evil. They are sanctified in body and soul for life with God, both here in time and hereafter in eternity.

All of that is given to you by the forgiveness of your sins in the Name and stead of Christ Jesus. Thus do you have divine and real Life with God in Him, by the free gift of His Spirit, wherever in the world the Lord has stationed you in love. As Christ is risen from the dead and lives forever, so do you live by faith in Him, by His Holy Spirit, even here and now, regardless of appearances. Though dust and bones surround you and permeate your experience on earth, your body and life are not fruitless or futile. Your labors in the Lord are not in vain, whatever your vocation may be. In the work that God has given you to do, Christ bears in you the blessed fruits of His Spirit. You love and serve your neighbors in peace. You praise and glorify the Name of the Lord your God.

Thus do you also speak with new tongues by the Spirit of Christ Jesus, your Savior. That is to say, not only with your words, but also with your life, with your particular abilities and talents, with the work that you do, and with all that is in you, you glorify God and praise the Lord by confessing the Gospel of Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who animates your life in this way, as a true doxology, no less so than He caused those 120 disciples to praise the Lord in all those many languages — and every year that you have lived by His grace in this place is yet another chorus of that doxology!

The Gospel itself is the “New Tongue,” as it is also the “New Song” that all God’s people sing in heaven and on earth. It is the Salvation of Christ that you confess, no matter what your language or profession, no matter your talent and skill. In confessing Christ, you speak as an oracle of God. Men and women, boys and girls, disciples of all ages, you all declare the glories of Him who called you out of the darkness into His Light, as the Spirit gives you utterance by the Word of Christ.

The confusion of tongues and the dispersal of the nations after the Tower of Babel is now reversed. Not by the restoration of a single common language, but by the confession of the one Holy Gospel, the forgiveness of the Cross of Christ and the righteousness of His Resurrection from the dead. For there is one Holy Spirit who has called you by that one Gospel of Christ, enlightened you with His gifts, sanctified you in the one true faith — who keeps you steadfast in the Word of the one God and Father, in the one Lord Jesus Christ, in one Holy Baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and in the blest Communion of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, on earth as it is in heaven.

It is the Spirit who lives and abides and speaks in you by the Word of Christ, so that you confess His Holy Name in all that you say and do. That is what you are given to preach and teach and confess, Pastor Kolaskey; and that is what you dear people of Trinity are given to hear from your pastor and to confess in turn. And it is by that Word and Spirit of Christ that the dead are raised up and gathered from all the nations into the Household and Family of God. Thus do they pray and confess the Name of the Lord, together with you and all the disciples of Christ Jesus, to the glory of God the Father. They also rejoice, give thanks, and sing with you and all Christians.

Beloved of the Lord, your life and your confession are not meaningless! The life that you live by faith in Christ Jesus, and the work that you do according to your calling and station, are the work of the Holy Spirit. For He is actively present and graciously at work in the Church and Ministry of His Gospel, that your dried up, dead, and dying bones should rise and live with God forever!

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

The Love of God for You in Christ Jesus

With this Holy Gospel, we are in the Upper Room with Christ and His Apostles on the night when He was handed over to His voluntary suffering and death.  He has already fed them with His Body and His Blood, as He feeds you from this Altar with those same Gifts of Himself.  He has already humbled Himself as the Servant of all to wash the feet of His disciples, as He has cleansed you in the waters of Holy Baptism.  And at this point He is being sold out for cash by one of His own.

Such is the all-important context and setting of this Gospel.  If you absent yourself from this Upper Room, then you will not understand the Word that Jesus here speaks to you.  Apart from His Holy Supper, His Words of Love and Peace are distorted and spun out of context.  And if you forget the washing of the water with His Word, then you return to your sins and remain in them — without hope, without comfort, and without the Holy Spirit.  And if Christ Jesus were not handed over to His Sacrifice on the Cross, then all of this (and everything else in the world) would be for nothing.

In truth, none of the Words of Jesus, nor any of the Holy Scriptures, should be heard without some reference to the Ministry of the Gospel and the Means of Grace: to the waters of Holy Baptism, to the spoken word of Holy Absolution, and to the Holy Communion of His Body and His Blood.

All the more so in this present case, because these are the very things that Christ was giving to His Apostles for His Church as He was being handed over to His Cross and Passion.  Indeed, they are the Means whereby the grace of His Cross is ever given to His Church on earth.  What is more, they are the ways and means whereby the Love of God in Christ is given to you and shared with you — whereby you are taught to love Christ Jesus and to love your neighbors as Christ loves you.

The Holy Gospel set before you this morning is but one small portion of the Lord’s catechesis of His disciples on the cusp of His Passion.  Apart from that context, it would be easy enough to hear and interpret the Words of Jesus in a human-centered way, as though everything depended on you, on your decisions, your commitments, your efforts and achievements, your love and obedience.

After all, what is it that Jesus says? “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word.”  And on that basis alone, you might well suppose that everything begins with your love for Jesus and with your keeping of His Word.  What is more, you would likely hear and understand this “Word” of Jesus with reference to His Commandments and to the Law of God.  And to be sure, there are commands and laws of the Lord to be kept in faith toward Him and in fervent love for Him and for others.  But to focus on His Word of the Law, especially in this case, would be to miss the main point.

It is fundamental to note the way St. John begins his account of that Maundy Thursday evening: “When Jesus knew that His Hour had come, that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

And what follows immediately is the Feast of the New Testament Passover, the washing of the disciples’ feet, and the betrayal of Judas.  Which is to say that everything begins — not with you or anything you might do — but with Jesus and His Love and His obedience to the Father, even to His death upon the Cross.  Absolutely everything depends upon Christ Jesus.  As St. John writes in his First Epistle, “We love Him, because He first loved us.”  And He loves you to the end.

Thus, one of the first and most important points to this Holy Gospel is the critical centrality and fundamental necessity of Jesus: You love Him, and you keep His Word, because there are no other options, no other hope, no other way, truth, or life, and no other fountain and source of true Love.

And that real true Love of God in Christ Jesus, your Lord, is what you need most of all.  It is for the sake of that divine Love that you have been created, that you should first of all be loved by the Lord your God and receive His gracious gifts of Life, and that you should love as He loves you.

It was for the sake of this divine Love that God created the heavens and the earth and all things — not out of any necessity, but in the freedom of His perfect holiness He chose to share His Love with others outside of Himself.  Such Love comprises the very Being and Nature of the one true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, in the Communion of the Holy Spirit from all eternity.  But as the Father desired to share His Love for the Son with others, He created all things for the sake of that Love — and Man in particular.

Accordingly, it was not good for the Man to be alone.  For Man, created in the Image of God, was created for Love; and to manifest the true divine Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he needed to have his own beloved counterpart.  So, the Lord created the Woman from the Man, and brought her to the Man, and gave her to him as a companion and helpmate.  In the mutual love between the man and his wife, the everlasting Love between the Father and the Son is reflected.  And in the loving bonds of holy marriage are the seeds of every other human relationship of love.

It’s no secret, though, that sin has brought animosity, jealousy, and countless divisions into the human experience of love.  Even the best relationships are not immune to bitterness and hostility.  Even the best marriages are not everything they should be, whereas others erode into an empty and loveless charade.  Families are dispersed, and parents and children, brothers and sisters become increasingly distant and estranged.  If not for the grace of God, there would be no love left at all.

But just as Love has from all eternity resided in the divine Life of the Holy Triune God, so do the remedy for sin and the restoration of Love originate and emerge from within the very heart of God.  Because God the Father’s Love for His creation is an exercise and expression of His Love for God the Son, He has not permitted it to fall completely into hatred and devastating ruin, but has taken it upon Himself to fix what Man has broken.  He has reestablished and renewed His own divine Love within His creation by sending His own beloved Son into this world — on the one hand, to bear the curse and destruction of sin; and on the other hand, to bring the Son’s perfect Love for the Father in the Holy Spirit into human flesh and blood, thereby restoring the Image of God in Man.

Now, to be sure, the Love of God in Christ Jesus is uniquely manifested in His voluntary suffering and death upon the Cross.  There the one true God loved you and all the fallen children of Man with the depth of His own Being, laying down His Life on behalf of sinners — the Father giving up His own dear Son, the Son willingly submitting to the agony of His bloody Passion.  Nowhere else in all the world has Love ever been more perfect and complete, more faithful and unflinching.

Even so, as unique and all-sufficient as the Sacrifice of Christ Jesus was, it is indicative of that divine, eternal Love which never ends; accordingly, the Love of God in Christ Jesus continues in the preaching of His Cross, in the distribution of the Fruits of His Cross, and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit from His Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead.  And here, again, we must consider the context of this Holy Gospel; for you cannot love Christ Jesus or keep His Word, nor can you even know Him or come to Him, except by His coming to you, abiding with you, and pouring out His Spirit upon you.  And that is the Love of God with which He loves you in the same Means of Grace that Jesus shared with His disciples on that first Maundy Thursday evening.

God the Father comes to you in the Person of His incarnate Son, in order to make His home with you in the Flesh, as the Lord Jesus comes to you with His Body and His Blood in His Holy Supper.  Indeed, that Holy Sacrament of the Altar is what makes this building of brick and wood a genuine “House of God,” because the very Son of God is thereby present in this place.  And even more to the point at hand, the same Lord Jesus Christ gives Himself into your mouth, into your body, and thereby makes His home, His dwelling place, in you.  Hence, your body is truly a temple of God.

Do you want to learn from Christ Jesus to love others as He loves you?  To love your husband or wife, your parents and children, and your other neighbors as God commands?  Then, by all means, allow the Flesh and Blood of Jesus to feed and nurture your own flesh and blood in His Image.

Along with His Flesh and Blood, it is also by and with the Spirit of Christ Jesus that you are loved by God and learn to love both Him and your neighbors.  And to that end, the Holy Spirit is given to you by God the Father in the Name of His Son, in the Word of Christ Jesus — likewise in the washing of the water with His Word, as He washed the feet of His disciples on that night when He was handed over to His Cross and Passion.  So were you anointed with the Spirit of the Father in His Son in the waters of your Holy Baptism; which means that one and the same Holy Spirit, the personal Bond of divine Love between the Father and the Son, binds you in Love to the Father and the Son.  And the Spirit is the One who teaches you and actually enables you to love the Lord with all your heart and soul, to keep His holy Word in faith, and to love your neighbors as yourself.

The Holy Spirit “teaches you all things” in the preaching of the Holy Gospel, as the Lord Jesus promised His Apostles, and as He has faithfully fulfilled throughout the History of His Church on earth.  So, too, as a called and ordained servant of Christ Jesus, the Word that I preach to you in His Name is not mine but His, which the Father has given me to speak by His Spirit on the basis of the Holy Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles.  And by this Divine Word of the Gospel, you are given to know the Love of God as it has been lived and revealed in the Life of Christ Jesus.

The Holy Spirit likewise reminds you of all things pertaining to Christ Jesus, not only by the catechesis of His Word, but also in the celebration of His Holy Supper.  For as often as we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, the holy Body and precious Blood of Christ, the Spirit leads you to remember and confess His Cross and Passion, His Resurrection and Ascension.  And it is by the Word and Spirit of Christ Jesus that you eat His Body and drink His Blood in repentance and faith, with joyful thanksgiving, and to your abundant blessing.  It is no amount of piety or preparation on your part that does it; but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father bestows upon you in the Name of His Son, enables you to commune in the righteousness and holiness of Christ Jesus.

And as you thus receive and participate in His sacrificial Body and Blood from His Cross, you begin to live as He has risen and lives for you; to love as He loves you; to forgive as He forgives you; and to sacrifice yourself for others, as He has sacrificed Himself for you and for all people.

In all of these things, there is also the beautiful promise of Peace in the Words of Christ Jesus — my confirmation verse — echoed in the Words of Christ following His Resurrection from the dead (in the Upper Room once more), when He appeared to His disciples and said, “Peace be with you!”  Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  Thus, the Peace that Jesus gives by His Holy Spirit in the spoken Word of Holy Absolution is the true Peace of forgiveness and Life in His Cross and Resurrection.  Not as the world gives — a false sense of security in material possessions or fleeting success — but the genuine security of a Life hidden with Christ in God.

And so it is that, by the ways and means of His Word and Sacraments in the Liturgy of His Gospel, you are able to endure in the Peace of Christ Jesus in steadfast faith, confident hope, and divine Love — even as you bear the Cross in this mortal life on earth.

Sadly, it is true that, as you live by the self-sacrificing Love of God in Christ Jesus, this fallen and perishing world around you — and sometimes even your nearest and dearest neighbors — will nail you to the Cross, as it were, and otherwise spurn your love.  But as you are given the Word and example of Christ Jesus — and better yet, as He gives you Himself and His Spirit — you are able to believe and trust and cling to Him.  And in His Love for you — with which He loves you to the end — having made His Home with you, having poured out His Spirit upon you, and having made you a beloved and well-pleasing child of God, He will bring you safely Home to the Father forever.

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

Anointed and Alive by the Spirit of Christ Jesus

As a child of Adam you spend your life attempting to exonerate and justify yourself, to rationalize and excuse your behavior — to yourself and to your neighbors, and in comparison with others — and even before the Lord your God, when you’re not trying to run away and hide from Him.

And yet, for all of that, there is still death waiting for you at the end; sooner or later, it shuts down all of your attempts to make a name and a life for yourself.  You can’t argue with death.  Not really.  Not your own, nor anyone else’s.  It doesn’t matter how hard you work to ward it off, to put it off and delay the inevitable.  It doesn’t matter how careful you are in caring for your body and tending to your health.  It doesn’t matter how much you strive to protect your children and keep them safe.

If you take the opposite approach and live a crazy and reckless life, that doesn’t give you any more power or control, it only hastens your demise.  You sure don’t win that way.  You don’t beat death.

Your mortality looms so large, it casts a long dark shadow over your entire life.  Making it out of the womb is only the first of many hurdles.  Especially as you get older, it is sometimes the case that death and the grave and bones as dry as dust are all that you can see.  But Jesus you do not see.

As a Christian, you persist and persevere in hope, in the promise and assurance of things not seen.  But as a child of Adam in this fallen and failing world, you flirt with despair and court disaster.  You succumb to the dread of death and plunge yourself into faithless unbelief, whether through apathy or apostasy, bitterness or cynicism, or the stubborn denial of God’s Words and promises.  Since you cannot see what He has spoken, you feel as though it were false, and so you tell yourself to give up on God, to go it alone, or to give up altogether.  In this way your hope has perished ahead of your body and life, and you don’t even bother to pray or ask for help.

Sorrow seeps into your heart and fills it up, driving out faith and the Holy Spirit.  Not right away, but little by little, the more you dwell on your own thoughts and feelings, which seem so real and so true, instead of dwelling on the Word of Christ, which sounds so fanciful, and He so far away.

It’s not only that life is hard and you get discouraged, but in the midst of your pain your mortal flesh gets increasingly restless and afraid; and the world, full of its own sin and death, threatens and tricks you with its traps and temptations; Satan likewise attacks and accuses you, fiercely but cunningly.  Consequently, you are bounced back and forth between feeling sorry for yourself and feeling ashamed of your sins.  You know that you are guilty, and that you rightly deserve nothing but punishment and death; but that is a frightening prospect, which seems so final and inevitable.

In all of this the devil has you looking at yourself, in which there is no hope nor help to be found.

Without the Word and Spirit of the Lord, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  You feel it in your bones, and the Law of God declares it to be so.  You are dust — which is where that old serpent, the devil, would drive you or entice you, to make you eat the dust that he is forced to eat.

But, now, consider that.  The devil does eat dirt.  The would-be ruler of this fallen world has been judged, and he is cast out.  And the Spirit has come — who is the Lord, the Author and Giver of Life — because the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son, has returned to the Father who sent Him.

Jesus is the One who pours out the Holy Spirit on His Church — and upon you within His Church — because He is the Christ, the Lord’s Anointed.  He has been anointed by the Spirit in His own Body of flesh and blood.  Conceived and born of St. Mary, He too is a Son of Adam, and so His Body also is from the dust.  Yet, that same Body of Christ Jesus has also been anointed by the Holy Spirit, and filled with the Holy Spirit, for the rescue and salvation of all the children of Adam.

It’s not as though the Son of God were ever without the Holy Spirit, but in His flesh as true Man the Spirit descended upon Him and remained upon Him, so that in this Lord Jesus Christ the Spirit of God abides with Man forever.  You know that to be true from the witness of His Baptism in the Jordan River, as both St. John the Baptist and all four of the Holy Evangelists testify; for as Jesus came up out of the water the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended upon Him as a Dove.

What began in the waters of His Baptism culminated in His Cross and Resurrection from the dead.  For both the dying and the rising belong to the Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins — which the Lord Jesus underwent on behalf of all sinners and accomplished in Himself.

Thus was He driven by the Spirit from His Baptism directly into the wilderness, in order to be tempted by the devil, as Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden, as Israel was tempted in the wilderness, and in every way that you are tempted.  For Jesus is your Comrade and your Champion.

In this way, having come down from the Father in heaven, and having taken human flesh and blood like yours to be His own, He also then journeyed back to the Father with you and all mankind in Himself.  He has gathered you up in Himself, in His own Body, in order to return you to faith and life with God, and not only that, but to make you a child of His own God and Father in heaven.

It is for this reason that He has taken, not only your temptation, but all of your sins, and the sins of the whole world, upon Himself.  He has come, not only as the true Man, with His own Body of flesh and blood, but in the likeness of our fallen flesh.  He has borne and suffered the full curse and consequence of Adam’s sin, the full weight and burden of your mortality, as though every sin were actually His own, committed by Him, and as though every death were His own rightful wages.

So it is that He is convicted concerning the sins of the world.  For He is condemned and crucified under Pontius Pilate.  But it is His God and Father who hands Him over to the Cross, and it is the Spirit who fulfills the judgment of the Law in His punishment, in His bloody Passion unto death.  Thus, when it is finished, He hands over the same Spirit that He received at His Baptism; for with His death all the requirements and condemnation of the Law have been fully satisfied, in order that Adam & Eve and all the children of men might receive the Holy Spirit, not for death, but for Life.

The surety of that accomplished fact is in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.  For His death has accomplished the destruction of death and the silencing of Satan’s accusations.  Whereas the Lord Jesus did not defend Himself or answer His accusers, but in faith and love He quietly and willingly submitted to the sacrifice of His Cross, His Father has fully vindicated Him by raising Him up from the dust of the earth.  He is not guilty.  He is blameless and free.  And so are you.

The whole world is “convicted concerning righteousness” in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.  Death and the devil no longer have any rightful claim against you, nor against anyone else — not in Christ Jesus, the Savior of all mankind.  There is no condemnation for those who are in Him.

God’s judgment has been given by the Cross and Resurrection of His incarnate Son.  In Him sin is forgiven.  It is no longer counted or considered, nor is it held against you, because Christ Jesus has made Atonement with His Blood.  So, too, the whole world is justified and reconciled to God in His rising from the dead, in His returning to the Father in His own Body of human flesh.

The Holy Spirit therefore preaches these mighty deeds of God to all the nations of the world, in every language on earth, in order to make disciples of Christ Jesus from every tribe and tongue and people, and to gather men and women, boys and girls, the young and old alike, from the four winds into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  For the dried up old bones that are resurrected, re-enfleshed, resuscitated, and restored to new life are not isolated individuals but the whole house of Israel, that is, the Church, the Body of Christ.  It is precisely in His Body that all are made alive.

It is by the proclamation of the Word of Christ Jesus, crucified and risen, that the Spirit calls you daily to repentance, that is, from unbelief to faith in Christ.  By the judgment of the Law and the Gospel, He convicts you of sin and of righteousness.  He exposes your sin for the unbelief it is, and thereby removes every pretense of self-righteousness within you.  That is the truth of the Law, which condemns you.  But the same Spirit also speaks the truth of the Gospel, and by that Word He justifies you through faith in Christ Jesus and raises you from death to newness of life in Him.

Such is the Spirit’s testimony in response to all of your adversaries and accusers: Christ Jesus is your Savior from sin and death, in whom you are fully forgiven and justified.  On the one hand, the punishment of all your sin has already been carried out — in the Body of Christ Jesus on the Cross — and on the other hand, the innocence and righteousness of Christ are counted as yours.

That is the truth of the Gospel.  It is not an empty or powerless word, but the very Word of God, which is not only true, but is the Truth Itself, which establishes the truth concerning you, both now and forever.  It is a living and active Word, by which the Holy Spirit comforts you in sorrow and grants you peace in place of fear, rest from your weariness, and perfect health and strength and life.

By and with this Gospel the Spirit bestows on you everything that belongs to Christ Jesus — His righteousness and holiness, His Resurrection from the dead, and His eternal Life with the Father — all of this is given to you and worked in you, body and soul, from the waters of your Baptism.

The Spirit brings you through those waters into the wilderness, where you bear the Cross of Christ Jesus as a disciple and you live by faith in the Word and promise of your God and Father.  Here you find yourself in the midst of a desert of dry bones, and by daily repentance you are crucified, put to death, and buried.  For now you are still mortal; you get sick, you suffer, and you die.

But so are you also raised up, in and with Christ Jesus, and brought into the Land that God has promised you.  Already He has brought you into His Church, which is the Body of Christ, and here you live, just as He lives.  Not only that, but even now under the Cross you are glorified with the Glory of Christ Jesus, which shall be openly revealed in the resurrection of your body at the last.  For as Jesus returns to His Father by way of His Cross — in His Resurrection and Ascension — so are you brought to the Father as His very own dearly-beloved and well-pleasing child.

That shall be so in the final Judgment Day, in the Resurrection of all flesh at the last.  But so is it already true — even here and now — in the midst of the wilderness.  It is true for you as you hear and receive the Word of Christ, as your sins are all forgiven, as you are cleansed and refreshed by the waters that flow from His riven side, and as you are fed with His Body and His Blood.

In giving you Christ Jesus by this Ministry of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit gives you everything that Jesus has from God the Father.  And it is all by His Word.  For the Spirit guides you into all Truth by speaking what He hears from the Father in the Son, that is, your justification and forgiveness.

This Gospel of Christ Jesus, the Word-made-Flesh, is the new language of the Holy Spirit.  It is neither gibberish nor fantasy; it is the accomplished fact of the Body of Christ, crucified and risen — in which Body you also are redeemed, raised up, reconciled to God, and righteous in His sight.  That is what the Spirit says to you — and this Word does for you and gives to you what He says.

Though it seems so simple and so powerless, this Word of the Gospel fills your heart, mind, body, and soul with the Spirit of Christ Jesus, who drives out sorrow and replaces it with joy and peace.  For with this Word the Spirit refutes the rhetoric of the devil; He defends and protects you from the devil’s accusations; He comforts you with forgiveness and delivers you from hopeless despair.

And with this Word the Spirit opens your lips to show forth the praises of God, to speak the mighty deeds of God in Christ Jesus.  So that you and your children all speak and sing this powerful Word to the glory of God and to edify you and your neighbors in love.  For this Word of the Gospel of Christ is the Truth in your ears and on your lips, by which He breathes His Life-giving Spirit into your body and soul, that you and yours should not perish but live forever with Him in Paradise.

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

The Ways and Means of the Spirit of Christ Jesus

It is no wonder that you are thirsty.  For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Your lips are parched, your throat as dry as dirt, until God waters your soil with the living Waters of Christ Jesus, and so fills your body of flesh and bone with His Life-giving Holy Spirit.

Here then is your Eden, your Paradise on earth, your Oasis in a desert wilderness.  For here, from the wounded side of Christ, from His innermost being, by the divine Glory of His Cross and in His Resurrection, the Lord pours forth the Holy Spirit like water into your thirsty soul.  This Spirit is the Water of Life from the Rock of Ages, cleft for you.  It is for this Drink that you have been created, and nothing else but this Gift of God Himself will quench or satisfy your thirst.

It is for this purpose that God has come in the flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And the Son receives the Spirit from His Father in His own Body of human flesh and blood — in the waters of His Baptism and in His Resurrection from the dead — in order to pour out the same Spirit of God upon all flesh.  He receives and breathes the Spirit as true Man, that you might drink of the same Spirit and live forever with the Father in His Son.

So has the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ caused His Church to be planted and to prosper in this place, in order to pour out the living and Life-giving Waters of His Holy Spirit upon His people at Emmaus.  In fact, it was on this date in 1922 that His disciples at St. Paul, South Bend, first met and began making plans for the beginning of this congregation in the following year.

But you know as well as I do that there are plenty of nearby alternatives, many of them attractive and enticing with promises of life and health and success.  And the truth is that you are tempted and prone to sample whatever is on tap — to belly up to the bar and have a round — as often as you try to quench your thirst with other “waters,” other beverages of choice, and other “spirits.”  Maybe it’s too much of God’s good gift of alcohol.  But I’m not talking only about drunkenness or alcohol addiction.  It could just as easily be bottled water and a health food diet that you make into your personal well spring, in the hopes of saving yourself and securing your body and life in the world.  It is whatever you rely on to satisfy your thirst, to wet your lips and whet your appetites, to fill the empty hollow in your belly — even though any other water than the Spirit of Christ Jesus will not enliven your flesh but will leave you dying of thirst, like trying to live on salty sea water.

Repent of such foolish idolatry, which is not only sinful but deadly.  Rather, come to Christ and drink freely and fully of the Holy Spirit, whom He pours out generously, without measure and without cost, for all who believe in Him.  When you drink of Him, not only do you have abundant life with God in both your body and your soul, but then you are also able to receive, to use rightly, and to enjoy the good gifts of His whole creation.  When your thirst is quenched and you are filled with the living Waters of the Holy Spirit, then, whatever your own beverage of choice may be, and whatever your diet is like, you eat and drink in faith and with thanksgiving to the glory of God.

The Spirit who proceeds from the Father in the Son is the Author and Perfecter of Life.  He is worshiped and adored with the Father and the Son, because He is one and the same true God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.  He bestows the true beauty of divine Wisdom in the world, as He gives growth and good order to all of creation; and by the Word of the Gospel of Christ Jesus He establishes the Church, the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.

Come to Christ, therefore, and drink of this living and Life-giving Spirit of God.  Not by your own wisdom, reason, or strength, but where and when and how it pleases God, in the ways and means whereby the Lord reveals and gives Himself to you and pours out His Life-giving Spirit upon you.

It is by faith in His Word that you come to Christ.  For the Holy Spirit calls you by the Gospel, and by the preaching of the Gospel He brings you to Christ Jesus, even as He lays this same Lord Jesus Christ upon your heart, mind, body, and soul, with His free and full forgiveness of all your sins.

Come to Christ by hearing and heeding His Word, which is preached to you by His Spirit in His Church.  For the Church is the Body of Christ, the fullness of Him who fills all things; and the Spirit of His God and Father rests and remains upon His Body. His Church is the true Mountain of God, which surpasses both Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion.  Here is the Tabernacle of God among men.  Here is the Temple of the Holy Spirit in the one Body of Christ Jesus, in His Means of Grace.

By your Holy Baptism you are united with Christ in His Cross and Resurrection, and you receive the Holy Spirit in the external bodily means of water and the Word, as Christ received the Spirit in bodily form as a dove at His Baptism.  So, too, you come to Christ and drink of His Spirit as often as the Lord returns you to the remembrance and significance of your Holy Baptism by way of repentance and faith in His forgiveness of sins, especially by His Word of Holy Absolution.

What is more, the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus are your Spiritual Food and Drink, given and poured out for you in the Holy Communion.  Here at His Altar you come to Christ and receive Him and His Holy Spirit, as He comes to you and gives Himself to you by His Ministry of the Gospel.

As you are thus taught by the Gospel in Word and Sacrament to know and love the Lord your God, to believe in Jesus Christ and come to Him, and to receive and drink deeply of His Holy Spirit, so do you also pray, praise, and give thanks in the Name of Jesus.  You confess His Word and call upon His Name, and you are saved.  For the Lord is merciful to all who call on Him, even as He has taught you and invited you to pray to Him in Peace, in the confidence of His Resurrection.

The teaching of this Word of Christ is not random or haphazard.  It is beautifully arranged and laid before you, just as all of creation is ordered according to God’s glorious grace and wisdom, by His Word and Holy Spirit.  The Gospel is unfolded for you in the story of Christ Jesus in the Flesh, in the pattern and progress of the Church Year: from Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, through Lent, Holy Week, and Easter, into the ongoing Life and work of Christ in the Time of the Church.  Not only the stuff of creation, but the hours, days, weeks, and years, and all the seasons of your life on earth, are sanctified by the Gospel of Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit in and with that Word.

Thereby, within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, the prayer of Moses is answered in the Body of Christ Jesus.  That is to say, the Spirit of the Lord is poured out upon all flesh, and He rests upon all of the people of God, because Christ has been glorified by the Father in His Cross and Resurrection.  So it is that you and all the disciples of Christ Jesus are taught by God, by the Gift of His Spirit.  And you speak the Word of the Lord, confessing what He has spoken to you.

Still, there is an ordering of the Church’s life in Christ.  All are one, and all are equal before God in the righteousness and holiness of Christ Jesus; for there is one Lord, one Spirit, and one God and Father of all, one faith, one Baptism, and one Body of Christ.  Yet, the unity, equality, and harmony of His Body, the Church, is not that of undifferentiated sameness, formless and devoid of character.  No, the Kingdom of God is ordered and arranged, like the artistry of the human body, like the genius of God’s good creation, with a great variety of different gifts, a wondrous panoply of sizes, shapes, and colors, of sights and sounds, and of beautiful contours and textures.

Not all are Moses.  Not all are ordained elders in the Church.  Not all are pastors and teachers, bishops, or deacons.  But there is a diversity and distribution of the many gifts of the one Holy Spirit.  There are different offices within the life of the Church, each of which bears the necessary graces of the Spirit for the fulfillment of God’s holy will and purposes.  With such a variety of “voices,” with such a multiplicity of “languages,” the one Holy Gospel is confessed and is heard in all the world, from the rising of the sun to the place of its going down.  So also here at Emmaus.

It is for this faithful confession of the Word of Christ Jesus that all Christians, with all their vast array of differences in personality, ability, interests, and skills, are each and all anointed and filled with one and the same Holy Spirit.  So are they united to one another within the Holy Communion of the Body of Christ.  Not to erase or eradicate all differences between them, but to give life to the entire household and family of God in Christ, to the praise and glory of His Holy Name.

Those who are thus given to drink of the Spirit of Christ, who are filled with such living Waters of the Lord, become springs of living Water and fountains of the Spirit for others, each of them within his or her own callings, in his or her own particular office and station in life.  So, also, each one of you, in your own place, is a fountain of living Water for your neighbors in the world.  And Emmaus is a part of that, too.  Not a mirage, but a true oasis in the desert, despite any appearances or experience to the contrary.  For the Word and Spirit of the Lord flow out from this holy place.

It is in, with, and under the Cross that such Waters spring up in you and water the earth; for it is by the Cross that Christ Himself is glorified, and by and from His Cross that the Spirit is given.  Your place in life, your words and works, are consequently despised by the world — and by the fallen old man in yourself and others, too.  Taunts of drunkenness are leveled at you.  Even the New Wine of Christ, His holy and precious Blood, is blasphemed and disregarded in this way.

But do not be dismayed, and do not give up hope or grow weary of doing good.  The Lord Himself is with you in, with, and under His Cross.  As you are thirsty, come to Him and drink.  You belong to the Kingdom of God, and the Spirit of God rests and remains upon you in Christ Jesus.

Blood and Fire and Vapor of Smoke, the Pillar and Cloud by night as by day, and all the signs of the Cross and Passion of Christ Jesus — these are not a denial or contradiction of God’s Kingdom here with you; they are signs of His Power and His Glory and of His gracious Presence.

The Kingdom of God has been established in the crucified and risen Body of Christ Jesus.  Not only once upon a time, nor only here and now, but forever and always.  His Body abides for all the years yet to come, even to the close of the age, unto the Resurrection and the Life everlasting.

Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, anointed by the Spirit in His own Body of flesh and blood, is the fulfillment and perfection of the Lord’s Old Testament Liturgy of grace, and so also God’s ordering of time and space.  He is the true Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed for you.  His Blood has redeemed you, it marks your door to guard and protect you from death, and it is poured out upon your lips and tongue and down your throat to quench your deepest thirst.  And His Flesh is given you to eat for the freedom of forgiveness and faith.  The same Lord Jesus Christ is the true Pentecost, the Firstborn from the dead, the Firstfruits of the New Creation.  His Body and His Blood are the Atonement by which you are reconciled to God, received by the Father, and able to rejoice in Him who is your Lord and Savior.  For He is the Tabernacle of God who abides with you, and you with Him, from the wilderness into Canaan.  He breathes the Spirit of Life into your body by His Word of the Gospel, and He pours out the same Spirit from His side in the Water and the Blood, in order to cleanse and refresh you within and without, in your body and your soul.

All of this that He has done for you and for all people was promised and prepared for by the times and epochs ordained by the Father in the Old Covenant, in the pilgrim festivals that He instituted through Moses.  But now they have been accomplished in Christ Jesus, and they are bestowed upon you in the Sundays and Seasons of the Church Year.  Not as a new Law, but as the Gospel, from Jubilee unto Jubilee, in the gladness, joy, and righteousness of the Resurrection.  This Lord’s Day — and every Day of Grace — is shaped, defined, determined, and filled by the Word of Christ Jesus, and thereby sanctified by the Holy Spirit as your true Sabbath Rest in Him who loves you.

So, then, although you do not know when that great and final Day of Judgment will come upon all flesh, the fullness of the time has come and is here for you in the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.

Here is the last, great Day of the Feast: The eternal Eighth Day of the Resurrection and of the Life everlasting.  The Lord has brought you thus far by His grace, by His Word and Holy Spirit, to believe His holy Word and live a godly life here in time and hereafter in eternity.  And according to His steadfast loving-kindness, He feeds you here and now with His Spiritual Food and Drink.

Are you hungry?  Take and eat the Body of Christ.  And you who are thirsty, come and drink the Blood of Christ, poured out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of all your sins.

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

Speaking Peace and Love by the Spirit of Christ Jesus

If anyone loves the Lord Jesus, he (or she) will keep and cherish His Word.

Do you love Christ Jesus?  Know that His Word speaks Love to you.  And Peace.  And comfort.  And the forgiveness of all your sins.  It is by and with the preaching of His Word that He draws near to you, and God the Father draws near to you in Him.  And it is through His Word that He pours out His Spirit upon you.  So does the Holy Triune God come and make His abode with you.

Keep and cherish His Word, therefore.  Be gathered together in the House where His disciples are, in the City of God, established on His holy Mountain.  Listen to what He says, and remember what He has spoken to you.  Call upon His Name.  Pray, confess, and sing His Word.  And speak peace to one another, in love for one another, counting your brothers and sisters in Christ better than yourself.  Speak forgiveness to those who sin against you, as your Father in heaven forgives you all your sins for Jesus’ sake.  Comfort those who are troubled in heart, mind, body, soul, or spirit.

Speak the Gospel.  Speak Christ Jesus.  That is the language of the one true God, which sanctifies all the tongues of men, Hebrew and Greek, Latin and German, French and Italian and Spanish, English and Swahili, Russian and Chinese.  All the languages of earth are sanctified by the Word of the Gospel, by the Word of Christ, as it is spoken and confessed, prayed and sung in all of those languages under heaven.  That is the universal language of the Holy Triune God, with which He establishes His City here on earth, as it is in heaven, to the Glory of His holy Name.  For so does He save sinners by His grace, and so does He call men and women, young and old, slave and free, Jews and Gentiles from all around the globe, into His one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.

That Word of Christ, that Word of the Gospel, that is the Word that breathes and bestows the Spirit of God and gives life to you and all people, indeed, to all of creation, and makes all things new.

It is not your native tongue or the language of your heart to begin with.  It is a divine language that is taught by the Spirit through the preaching of Christ.  It is the language of your new Father, who has spoken to you by His Son, and who has granted you His Spirit through the adoption of sons.

But you have known a different language before this, the tongue that is native to all men because all men sin, a common way of speaking which knows no borders or boundaries.  You have known the language of selfish pride, of covetous lust, of towering ego, of envy and jealousy, of gossip and greed — the language and law of the jungle, which teaches you to look out for yourself above all.

That is the language that all people share in common by their inheritance from Adam.  And yet, it separates and scatters them.  It sets them at odds with each other.  It is the kill-or-be-killed language of the city of man, with which you strive to name yourself.  With it you contend and compete.  You speak with cunning self-interest.  Nothing bridles your tongue or stays your hand.

There is no genuine or real love in that language of man, but only selfishness and self-interest.  There is no peace, but constant war and strife.  There is no comfort, but endless grief and torment.  There is no forgiveness of sins, but debts that can’t be paid, grudges that are never let go, bitter resentments, angry and hurtful revenge.  Thus are you poisoned by your own venomous tongue.

You know how the words of others can sting and hurt you, but you do not take to heart that your words likewise sting and hurt your neighbor (and then rebound in consequences upon yourself).  You know how powerful ways of speaking are — whether to calm things down or stir things up — and you still speak in ways that tear the house down, that tear your brother or sister down.

When the whole world speaks that language of man, then all efforts fail, towers crumble, and cities fall; nations are divided, and families are scattered.  There is no house or home that provides any lasting safety.  There is no dwelling place of peace, but persistent anxiety and amorphous fears.

But now the Lord has come down to see this travesty which the sons of men have spoken and have made for themselves.  He punishes their sin with their own sin.  He scatters them to the four winds, dividing them by their own common language of selfish pride.

He does so in mercy — that is what moves Him — that He might gather all the sons and daughters of man to Himself by His own divine language of the Gospel.  In all the tongues of all the nations, He speaks the one Word of His Son; and through that Word He breathes the Spirit who gives life.

Consider, then, how near that Word of the Lord is to you — it is in your ears even now — and in your heart — and in your mouth, as well, to confess and pray and sing, and even to eat and drink.

For this Word that God the Father speaks — His own dearly-beloved Son from all eternity — has become Flesh and dwells here with you.  So does the Lord your God abide with you, sharing in your flesh and blood.  More than that, He has also taken your sin and death upon Himself, into His Body.  He has borne the whole curse of the Law for you.  He has suffered the righteous wrath and judgment of God, and the assaults and accusations of men, their cruel mockery and bitter conceit.

But in the midst of all that He has borne and suffered in your place, He has not blasphemed or cursed God.  He has not reviled in return, nor has He shouted in anger.  Nor has He grown surly and silent.  Neither has He spit venomous ire at His enemies.  But in prayer and confession, He has remained faithful.  He has spoken the Word of His Father and called upon the Name of the Lord.

And to you He speaks forgiveness and peace, such as this world does not know and cannot give.  The Lord Jesus comforts you in His compassion for you.  He loves you with His language of the Gospel, and He has mercy on His lips.  That is what proceeds from His mouth into your ears.

That is the language of love which you learn from your new Father in Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, who is your own Brother in the Flesh and in the Spirit.  For this language is spoken to you in bodily form, but it is alive and life-giving with the Holy Spirit.

The Word of Holy Absolution, that is, the forgiveness of your sins — like the water and the Word of Holy Baptism and the Word-made-Flesh in the Holy Communion — that Word breathes the Spirit of God into your very body, into your flesh, into your blood, into your heart, mind, and soul.  That Word of God breathes the Spirit into you, so that you are filled with the very Life and Light and Love of God.  Thus do the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come to make Their abode with you.

This is the true divine Peace of which Christ Jesus speaks, which He grants to you by His speaking.  It is reconciliation with God through the free and full forgiveness of all of your sins.  He sets you free from your sin and death, and He grants you that Peace of harmony and unity in the love of God Himself; for not only does God make His abode with you, but He grants you to abide with Him.

Not only does Christ come near to you, and not only does He bring you into the presence of His God and Father in heaven, but more than that, in His own Body — and with His own Holy Spirit breathed into your body through the Gospel — He shares with you the Life of the Holy Trinity.

So then, speak that same language of divine love to your neighbors in the world.  Forgive those who trespass against you.  Say it out loud: “I forgive you.”  And ask forgiveness for your sins.

Serve your neighbor with your hands and with your feet.  Run to him, run to her, and stretch forth your hands in love.  But in all of that, do not fail to speak.  Say, “I love you.”  Say, “I care.”  Speak forgiveness, and so be reconciled and at peace with those who have been at odds with you, whether you have hurt them or they’re just being difficult.  Be reconciled with them.  Take the first step, and speak the first word.  And let your word be a word of love, such as Christ Jesus speaks to you.

As He comes to you in meekness and gentle kindness and loving compassion for you, so speak with gentle kindness and tender compassion for your neighbors.  Speak peace to them, as Christ Jesus speaks peace to you.  And you fathers and you mothers, in particular, teach your children to speak in this way, to confess and to pray the Word of the Lord, and to rejoice, give thanks, and sing to the praise and glory of God.  For so does God the Father speak to you by His Son, and so does He give the Holy Spirit into your ears, into your heart and life, and upon your lips and tongue.

So it is that, with that Word of Christ, which is the language of God, you bestow the Holy Spirit upon your neighbors in peace.  For the Words of Christ that you speak are Spirit, Truth, and Life, and they convey the grace of God.  Therefore, do not ever suppose that you have nothing with which to serve your neighbor, even if your hands and your pockets and your cupboards are bare.  When you speak of Christ Jesus, you bestow the Holy Spirit on your neighbor.  You build a house and a city of love with such Words.  You raise the tower of the Cross of Christ, by which all men are drawn to Him.  You confess the Name of the Lord, by which you and your neighbor are saved.

For not only does the Holy Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, draw near to you by the speaking of the Word of Christ.  But as the Holy Spirit lays Christ upon your hearth through the Gospel, and as Christ Jesus breathes His Spirit into your body and soul, so does the same Lord Jesus Christ bring you in and with Himself to the Father in heaven, to the very bosom of the Father.

It isn’t a matter of traveling some great distance by planes, trains, or automobiles.  It isn’t a matter of geography, or aeronautics, or space travel.  It is, rather, the true Spiritual Life in communion with God, which is given to you in the Word and in the Flesh of the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus.

As you abide in Him and His Spirit abides in you, so do you abide in and with the Father, hidden with Christ in God.  That is where your life is: Safely and securely hidden with Christ in God, seated with Him in the heavenly places, even while you sojourn here on earth under His Cross.

It is for that life with God the Father, for the sake of His own divine love and mercy, that Christ Jesus keeps on speaking Peace to you, forgiving you all of your sins and granting you His Spirit.

Do not be afraid.  For these Words in your ears are not my own, but those of Him who sent me.  As He has given Himself for you on the Cross, and as He has been raised for your justification, so does He give Himself to you here, together with His Spirit and with all His gifts and benefits.

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

The Water of Life from the Body of Christ

The high and holy Feast of Pentecost is of course a day of the Holy Spirit, as we confess and give thanks for His presence among us, and for His creation and preservation of our faith.  Today is therefore also a day of the Church; for whenever we confess the Holy Spirit, we also confess the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.  Indeed, the Holy Spirit and the Church go together, hand-in-glove, in such a way that you neither have nor confess either one without the other.

But the Feast of Pentecost Day, like every day in the life of the Church, is above all a day of Christ.  For the faith that is worked in you by the Holy Spirit is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; and the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church of the Holy Spirit is the Body & Bride of Christ Jesus.

The singular aim and purpose of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Christ as the Son of the Father, as the Word-made-Flesh, and as your Savior from sin, death, and the power of the devil.  That is what the Spirit does —  by the preaching of the Gospel, in the life-giving waters of Holy Baptism, and around the Table of our Lord in His Body and His Blood.  That is what the Holy Spirit does on this great and glorious Day of Pentecost, and that is what the Church now celebrates in the Spirit.

Pentecost is arguably the most ancient liturgical feast of the Church, since it was a Jewish Feast already prior to the coming of Christ.  Celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover — just as we celebrate today on the fiftieth day of Easter — the Jewish Feast of Pentecost was one of three major pilgrim festivals observed each year in Jerusalem, as per the Word of God.  The other two were the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, the latter of which is central to this Holy Gospel.

The Jewish Feast of Pentecost was primarily a festival of the harvest.  On this day the Jews would offer the first-fruits of their wheat harvest to the Lord, and thus acknowledge Him as the Source of all creation, life, and growth.  And along with that confession of the Lord’s ongoing providence, the Jewish Pentecost also commemorated the covenants of the Lord — from His Covenant with Noah and the whole creation following the Flood, to His Covenant with Israel on Mount Sinai.

For the Church today, the new and greater Feast of Pentecost celebrates the life of the Church in the new and greater Covenant, that is, the New Testament of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, given and shed for the life of the world.  So also do the Holy Apostles, by the Spirit of Christ, harvest and offer, not wheat, but three-thousand people as the first-fruits of His Holy Gospel.

To understand this fulfillment of the Old Testament Pentecost in the Gospel of Christ Jesus, it is helpful to consider the Feast of Tabernacles, which is actually the context and the setting of this morning’s Holy Gospel from Saint John.  Knowing what’s going on with that occasion reveals a great deal about Christ, His Salvation, and the gift of His Holy Spirit.

The last, great day of the feast, mentioned by St. John, was the eighth day, the “Day of Rejoicing.”  But on each of the preceding seven days of the feast, the priests marched in procession from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple and poured out water at the base of the Altar.  This daily water-ritual was the central and most important activity in the week-long Feast of Tabernacles.

The public reading of the Scriptures at this feast included Prophecies from Zechariah and Ezekiel, which taught that rivers of living water would flow from the Temple and bring life to all the earth.  Hence the significance of the water-ritual, and the even greater significance of our Lord’s Word.  He stands up in the middle of the feast, and He cries out a sermon on those Prophecies of living water, identifying Himself as the true Temple of God, and His own Body the Altar of Sacrifice.  Out of Him flow the living waters of the Holy Spirit.  Whoever is thirsty must drink from Him.

Immediately following this Word of Jesus, St. John clarifies that the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified on the Cross.  But in due time we hear the fulfillment of His Word.  For in the perfection of His Sacrifice, the Lord Jesus hands over the Spirit from the Cross.  It is not that He simply breaths His last, but that He bestows the Holy Spirit as a gift to all those who believe in Him and look to His Cross for life.  And it is also in that same Hour, as He is glorified in death, that blood and water flow from out of His wounded side, comprising the very River of Life that He prophecies this morning at the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.

With the water from His side He has washed you in your Holy Baptism and poured out His Holy Spirit upon you.  And the blood from His side He pours out for you, and for the many, for the forgiveness of your sins, and for life and salvation.  As St. John also writes in his first Epistle:

“This is He who came by water and blood: Jesus Christ.  Not only by water, but by the water and the blood.  And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is Truth.  For there are three which bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood.  And these three agree as one.”

Now, keep these words in mind as we consider three things that happened at once in that Jewish water-ritual during the Feast of Tabernacles.  One priest would enter the Temple with a golden pitcher full of water from the Pool of Siloam; another priest would enter with a pitcher of wine for the drink-offering; and both of these men would come to the Altar for the burnt-offering sacrifice.  The water was poured into a funnel on the east end of the Altar, the wine into a funnel on the west, and both emptied out at the base of the Altar.

There can be no mistaking the fulfillment of this entire water-ritual and its significance in Christ.  For He is both the Temple and the Sacrifice, the Lamb of God who gives Himself entirely to the Father in death for the sins of the world and for your salvation.  His Cross is the Altar.  The water flows out of His side, and with it is poured out the Holy Spirit.  The wine is likewise poured out for you as His Blood, which flows as a River of Life from His crucified Body into all the scattered nations of the earth.  Thus are all of the Prophecies and Promises of God fulfilled in Christ alone.

So it is that St. Peter’s Pentecost sermon focuses on Christ.  For everything begins and ends with the Person and work of the incarnate Son of God, crucified, risen, and ascended in the flesh.

St. Peter pulls no punches in his preaching of the Law.  For the crucifixion of this Man of God, Christ Jesus, he calls the people of Jerusalem to repentance.  And by the Cross of Christ you are also called to repent, to confess your sins and believe the Gospel, since it was for your atonement and salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ was handed over to His voluntary suffering and death.

But that is not the end of the story, nor the end of St. Peter’s sermon.  He moves from judgment and the Law to the sweetest Gospel of forgiveness.  For God raised this same Jesus from the dead for your justification.  It was impossible for death and the grave to hold Him.  By His death, He has destroyed the power of sin and death; and so it is that you shall be raised in His Resurrection.

As Adam was first given life by the Breath or Spirit of God, so did Christ Jesus receive the Breath or Spirit of God in His own Body of flesh and blood like yours — at His Baptism in the Jordan River, and in His Resurrection from the dead — in order to bestow the same Spirit upon you and all who are baptized into Him.  Thus does He pour out the Spirit upon you, and breathe the Spirit into your body and soul, through His Word of the Gospel, His Holy Absolution of all your sins.  Thus are you a new creation in Christ Jesus, and thus do you live a new life by the Spirit of God.

Repent, therefore.  Confess your sins, and give heed to the Word of the Gospel.  Return to the significance of your Holy Baptism.  Or, if you have not yet been baptized, submit yourself to be baptized by the washing of the water, Word, and Spirit of Christ Jesus.  And according to His Word, as sure and certain as His Cross and Resurrection, you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  This promise is for you and for your children, and for all whom the Lord calls to Himself.

That is the significance of Pentecost for you.  It begins with Christ Himself, with His Baptism in the Jordan River, when He received the anointing of the Spirit in the form of a Dove; and with His Sacrifice on the Cross, when He poured out the Spirit for His Church in the water and the blood.

But this true Pentecost continues, even to the close of the age, in the Holy Baptism of each new Christian in the Name of this Lord Jesus Christ, and in the New Testament of His Blood.  By these fruits of His Cross, you receive the living and life-giving Spirit of God in both body and soul.

That great River of water and blood, from the crucified Body of Jesus, continues flowing in the Church at all times and in all places, wherever the Ministry of the Gospel is carried out in the Name of this same Jesus.  It became an overwhelming Flood on Pentecost, a cascading waterfall of Spirit and Life, a raging rapids of forgiveness and salvation, and, most important for you and for your children, a gracious washing of regeneration and renewal in the waters of Baptism.

Nor does it stop there, but it springs up in you and overflows for others.  The Spirit of Christ is alive and breathing in you, in such a way that you have also become a part of His River of Life.

To begin with, your Baptism is not a private or family affair; it ushers you into the Church as a member of the Body of Christ, just as it did for those several thousand Christians who were baptized on that first Christian Pentecost.  St. Luke goes on to describe their ongoing life within the Church in this way:  “They devoted themselves continually to the Apostolic doctrine and fellowship, to the Holy Communion, and to the prayers of the Church.”

So, too, in your life as a disciple of Christ Jesus, baptized in His Name and catechized by His Word, you continue to live as you continue to devote yourself to the Life of His Church in the Liturgy of His Gospel.  And it is the same Spirit of Christ Jesus who unites you with the Apostles, with the Christians of all times and places, and with your brothers and sisters in Christ to this day.

Outside of the Church, apart from the Body of Christ, there is no Holy Spirit, and there is no life, but only sin and death and hopeless despair.  Breathing your own air, stewing in your own juices, you are consumed by your sins; you cut yourself off from God and suffocate without His Spirit.

But as you drink from the spiritual fountains of Christ in His Church, and as you breathe the Spirit of God in the hearing and confession of His Gospel, you are given an indestructible life in the crucified and risen Body of Christ Jesus.  You are filled with the Spirit of hope and confidence in Him, who strengthens and sustains you through faith in the Gospel.  And by your words and deeds of faith and love, you confess the Lord your God and His great Salvation.  You inhale and exhale the Spirit of the Living God, and you give the spiritual drink of the Gospel to those who thirst.

As you live through all the ups and downs of your pilgrimage on earth — as you suffer through the hardships and frustrations of so many different kinds of trouble, through infirmity and sickness, your own mortality, and the death of your loved ones — you do so in the confidence of Christ, your crucified and risen Lord, who has ascended to the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty, where He ever lives to intercede for you in love.  This Lord of lords and King of kings, He has made His enemies a footstool for His feet, including that last great enemy, death, which has already been defeated by His Cross and in His Resurrection, and which is soon to be swallowed up forever!

Here, then, is a pure River, the Water of Life, as clean and clear as crystal, proceeding from the Throne of God and from the Body of the Lamb who was slain, and yet, behold, He lives.  Thus do the Spirit and the Church say, ‘Come!’  And so let him who hears this Word say, ‘Come.’  And let everyone who thirsts, whoever desires, come and drink freely, without cost, this Water of Life.

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

The Language of Love

What is the language that you speak?  What are the words on your tongue?  How do you talk to and about God, your Father in heaven, your Lord Jesus Christ, and His precious Holy Spirit.

What is the language, and what are the words with which you speak to your neighbor?  To your spouse and your children.  To your parents.  To the people you work and live with in the world.

You might say, English.  Maybe you know some other language.  But that’s not really the point.

Do you speak the language of God?  That is to say, do you speak the language of love?  Are the words on your tongue words of faith, and of love for your neighbor and your God?

Or is the language that you speak rather that of the sinful world?  Words of selfishness and of self-righteousness; of pride and conceit; of envy and bitter resentment.  Hurtful words.  Unkind words.

Jesus says, if anyone loves Me, He will keep My Words.

You learn to speak as you hear, and as you listen.  So it is that you do love Jesus, and you do speak His Word.  For you pray and you confess as He has taught you, as the Holy Spirit has taught you.  As you remember your Catechism (though maybe not as well as you should).  As you daily give attention to the Word of God (though perhaps you sometimes forget).  As you pray the Our Father day by day, and as you confess the Creed each morning and each night.  As you sing the Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs of the Church, which proclaim Christ and praise His Name.

But what about the other words that you speak in the course of your days?  What other language proceeds from out of your heart and out of your mouth?  What is the sort of babble that you listen to and then allow to come rolling off your own lips and tongue?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones.”  That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it?  “But words can never hurt me.”  What a load of bologna!  That could not be more wrong, and you know it.

Words are the most powerful thing of all, whether for evil or for good.  Cuts and bruises heal, but there are words that you have spoken that you cannot take back.  And words that have been spoken to you that have cut more deeply than any sticks or stones could ever reach.

And this is not by accident, that words are so powerful and bear such consequences.

The Lord God Almighty created all things by His Word.  And apart from His Word there is nothing at all.  His Word created and still upholds all things in heaven and on earth.

And as you are made in His Image and Likeness, you are a rational and logical creature.  Which means, in large part, that you’re designed to listen to words, to speak words, and to think in words.  You are created to hear and receive the Word of the Lord, and to live by faith in His Word.  So it is that words teach you the faith: For faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.

But words are also used to tempt you, and to lead you astray.  And the words that you speak are not always the Word of God, but words that proceed from out of your own sinful heart and mind, echoing the lies of the devil, hurting and harming your neighbor instead of giving him life.  For it is with your tongue and with your words that you curse and swear, attack and accuse.

Think of it.  The same mouth that prays and confesses the holy Word of God, the same mouth that receives the very Body and Blood of Christ, the Word-made-Flesh — it is with that same mouth that you take the Lord’s Name in vain.  With that same mouth that you bear false witness against your neighbor.  That you utter harsh and hurtful words; that you gossip and pervert the truth; that you criticize and complain, though your words should be holy and set apart from sin and all evil.

Repent of your blasphemous and sacrilegious words and language.  Repent of the idle and useless chatter that comes rolling off your tongue.  Repent of everything that you take upon your lips that is not put there by the Word and Spirit of Christ Jesus!

It is the Word and Spirit of Christ — which always come and go together — for where the Word of Christ is, there is the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit does not deal with you apart from that Word of Christ — it is that Word and Spirit of Christ Jesus that call you to repentance, and bring you to repentance; that shut your mouth to evil, in order to open your mouth and fill it with God, to fill it with His language of life and love.  It is the Word and Spirit of Christ that save you from sin and all evil, from death and damnation, and from the terrible power of the devil and his lies.

It is the Word and Spirit of Christ that scatter you like dust, in order to gather you together into the one Body of Christ, His holy Church.  Not simply as news and information, but as the very work of Christ Himself, the Son of God, the Word by whom all things are made, who is now made flesh and blood for you and all the children of men; and blessed by the Spirit of God in His own Body; and crucified for you, for your transgressions; who is also risen again, and ascended to the Father, making the way for you, and opening the way.  He is the Word of God, and He is your Savior.

For by this Word, by this Christ, God the Father speaks to you in holy love and reconciles you to Himself in peace.  He recreates you for the life that He intended from before the foundation of the world, and He reunites you with Himself in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  And every bit of this He does by the Word of Christ, His only-begotten Son, also in His very flesh and blood.

Think back to the beginning, when God first created man out of dust from the ground, and He formed him from that earth.  Beyond that, He did something else, by which He made the man into a living being.  The Lord breathed His Breath or Spirit into man.  That is what gave him life.  Apart from that Breath, apart from that Spirit of God, there is no life or health or any other blessing.

But what has your sin done?  It has exhaled the Holy Spirit and driven Him out of your lungs, out of your body, and out of your life, so that you suffocate and die; for you cannot live without Him.

Your sin is like a spiritual asthma.  It chokes you and suffocates you, so that you can’t catch your breath.  It’s like putting a plastic bag over your head, cutting off your air and killing you.  It’s like those old sitcoms where people get locked in bank vaults, and the air is running out, and they cannot save themselves.  That is your predicament, as well.  But it’s far worse than suffocating.

It is eternal death when the Spirit of God is driven out of your heart and life.  For the Spirit is God Himself.  He is the perfect and personal Bond of Unity between the Father and the Son.  And He is the very Love of God, the Love of the Father for the Son, the Love of the Son for the Father.

To receive the Holy Spirit, therefore, is to receive the Life of God.  The Spirit is the “Glue,” so to speak — if it is not irreverent to say so — He is the Glue that unites you to God, that binds you to the Father in the Son, within that same divine Love forever and ever.  That is your sanctification.  That is your holiness.  That alone is your true, divine, eternal Life, in and with the one true God.

But you cannot receive this Life-giving Holy Spirit; you cannot breathe this Air; you cannot speak this Language; and you cannot live this Life, except by the redemption of your Savior, Jesus Christ, which is the forgiveness of your sins and your reconciliation with His God and Father.

Apart from the atoning sacrifice of His Cross, you cannot receive the Holy Spirit.  You are closed and shut to Him.  But that is the dire situation that Christ Jesus has undone and rectified by His own voluntary suffering and death.  And the faith and life and love of the New Creation, of Man made new by the Holy Spirit of God, Christ has manifested in His Resurrection and Ascension, and now He pours out generously from heaven through the Gospel in His Church on earth.

It is indeed this great salvation of your dear Lord, Jesus Christ, which the Holy Spirit bestows upon you from the Father through the preaching and Ministry of the Gospel.  It is the Gospel above all else that is the language of God, the language of divine Love, the language that saves you.  For it is by that Word that He forgives you, fully and freely, all of your sins.

As His Word brought all things into existence, what He speaks is so.  “Let there be,” and there is.  When He says you are forgiven, you are forgiven.  And by that Word of forgiveness, He creates and sustains faith in your heart, and love in your heart for the Father, and for the Son, and for the Holy Spirit — and love also for your neighbors in the world, for your fellow sinners, and for your fellow redeemed children of God — like the love of God for you, though you do not deserve it.

It is by the Word of the Gospel, the forgiveness of your sins, and through faith in this Gospel, that God the Holy Spirit reconciles you to the Father in Christ Jesus, the beloved Son, and grants you that Peace which surpasses all human understanding.  It is a Peace the world does not know and cannot give.  A Peace that is more than the end of war, more than the end of an argument.  It is the genuine Peace of reconciliation with God, so that you can now call Him your own dear Father.

It is by this Word of the Gospel that the Holy Spirit is your Advocate and Defender, your Defense Attorney, your Counselor, and your Comforter.  And He stands with you and for you.  He speaks on your behalf.  He pleads Christ in the face of the devil’s accusation and the Law’s accusation.  He pleads Christ for you, and that is a better defense than any lawyer in the world could provide.

Sin, death, the devil, and hell can no longer accuse you.  God Himself no longer accuses you, but defends you and speaks well of you.  There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  And the Holy Spirit, by the Word of the Gospel, puts you in Jesus, even as He lays the same Lord Jesus on your heart.  In and with Him, you are safe from everything that would hurt you.

It is by this Word of the Gospel, this Word of Christ and His Spirit, that you are taught to confess — to say the same thing that God has spoken to you in Christ, and thereby to speak His language.  Because, as the Psalmist prays, and as we pray with the Psalmist, the Lord thereby opens your lips to show forth His praise, to pray, and to confess, and to call upon His Holy Name.

This is what He has done, and what He continues to do, for all of our catechumens, young and old, whether they be seven, or seventy, or a hundred and seventy.  Even as He feeds your mouth and theirs with the same Word made Flesh, that is, the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, your Savior.

That Word of Christ and His Holy Spirit — that Word of the Gospel — that Word is the Love with which the Father loves you.  The Word of God does not simply teach you about His love.  His  Word loves you.  It embraces you.  It holds you fast and will not let you go.

That Word of the Gospel is the true and essential unity of the Church in heaven and on earth.

Apart from that Word, apart from that Gospel, there is no life, there is no love.  Then there is only babble.  Then there is only confusion and separation, and ultimately death and eternal damnation.

But let not your heart be troubled; neither let it be afraid.  For here and now, the Lord Jesus Christ is still speaking His Word to you.  And He’s going to keep on speaking His Word to you, and breathing His Spirit upon you and into you.  Hear what He says, and be at Peace in Him:

Take, eat; this is My Body.  It is for you.  It is for the forgiveness of all your sins.  Drink from this Cup.  It is the New Testament in My Blood.  It is poured out for you, and for My whole Church, for all of My disciples from every nation.  It forgives your sins, and with that forgiveness it gives you life and salvation.

This is the “remembrance” of Christ Jesus to which the Spirit brings you by and with His Word.  It is a remembrance not only of the heart and of the head, but one that He gives into your mouth and into your body, both now and forever, in the Peace that passes all human understanding.

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

Made Alive by the Spirit in the Body of Christ

As a son or daughter of Adam & Eve, you spend your whole life trying to exonerate and justify yourself, to defend and excuse your behavior: to yourself, to your neighbors, and in comparison with your neighbors, and even before God when you’re not trying to run away and hide from Him.

But for all of that effort, there yet remains the unavoidable fact of death, which shuts down all of your attempts to make a life for yourself.  You can’t argue with death.  Not really.  Not your own, nor anyone else’s.  No matter how hard you work to ward it off or delay the inevitable.  No matter how zealous you are in caring for yourself and trying to protect your children from harm.

Sometimes, death and the grave are all that you can see, and there is no help to be found.

As a Christian, a child of God, you persist and persevere in hope, in the promise and assurance of things not yet seen.  But as a child of Adam in this fallen world, you flirt with despair and court disaster.  You succumb to the dread of death and plunge yourself into faithless unbelief, whether through apathy or apostasy, bitterness or cynicism, or the stubborn denial of God’s Word and promises.  Since you cannot see what He has spoken, you feel as though it were not true, and so you tell yourself to give up on God, to go it alone or give up altogether.  In this way, your hope has perished ahead of you, and you don’t even bother to pray or ask for help.

Sorrow seeps into your heart and fills it up, driving out faith and the Spirit.  Not right away, but inch by inch, the more you dwell upon your own thoughts and feelings, which seem so immediate, so real and so true, instead of on the Word of Christ, which sounds so fanciful, and He so far away.

Without the Word and Spirit of the Lord, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  You feel it in your bones, and the Law of God declares it to be so.  You are dust.  And that is where that old serpent the devil would drive you or entice you, to make you eat the dust that he is forced to eat.

Bear that in mind: The devil does eat dirt.  The would-be ruler of this fallen world has been judged, and he is cast out.  And the Spirit has come — who is the Lord, the Author and Giver of Life — because the Lord Jesus, the only-begotten Son, has returned to the Father who sent Him.

Jesus is the One who bestows the Holy Spirit upon His Church, and therefore upon you within His Church, because He is the Christ, the Lord’s Anointed, who has been anointed by the Spirit in His own human body of flesh and blood.  He received His body from the flesh and blood of St. Mary, a daughter of Adam, and so His body also is one of dust; yet, that very body of Christ has also been filled with the Spirit and anointed by the Holy Spirit for the rescue and salvation of all flesh.

To be sure, it’s not as though the Son of God were ever without the Holy Spirit.  But now also in His flesh as true Man He has received the Spirit, who descended upon Him and remains upon Him, so that in this same Lord Jesus Christ the Spirit of God abides with Man forever.  You know that to be true from the witness of His Baptism in the Jordan River.  So do St. John the Baptist and all four of the Holy Evangelists testify that, when Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit came down upon Him in the form of a dove.

What began there in the waters of His Baptism culminated in His Cross and Resurrection from the dead.  For both the dying and the rising belong to this Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, which He underwent on behalf of all sinners, and which He has accomplished in Himself.

Thus was He driven by the Spirit from His Baptism into the wilderness, in order to be tempted by the devil: as Adam & Eve were tempted in the Garden, as Israel was tempted in its own wilderness, and in every way as you are tempted.  So, then, He is your true Comrade and your Champion.

Having come down from heaven from the Father, and taking human flesh and blood like yours to be His own, He embarks upon His journey back to the Father with you and all of us in hand.  He gathers all people up into Himself, into His Body, in order to return us to faith and life with God, and not only that, but to make us the children of His own God and Father in heaven.

He has taken, not only your temptation, but all of your sin and the sins of the whole world upon Himself.  He has come, not only as true Man with His own body of flesh and blood, but in the likeness of fallen flesh.  That is to say, He has borne and suffered the full curse and consequence of Adam’s sin, the full weight and burden of your mortality, as though every sin were actually His own, committed by Him, and as though death and the grave were His own rightful wages.

So it is that Christ is convicted concerning the sins of the world.  He is condemned and crucified under Pontius Pilate, but it is God the Father who hands Him over to the Cross, and it is the Spirit who fulfills the judgment of the Law in His punishment, in His bloody passion, in His death upon the Cross.  Thus, when all is finished, He hands over the Spirit He received at His Baptism.  For by the death of Christ, the requirements and condemnation of the Law have been fully satisfied, so that Adam & Eve and all their children may now receive the Spirit, not for death, but for life.

Do not doubt that it is so.  For the truth of it is manifest and openly declared in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.  Here is what His death has accomplished for all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve: It has destroyed death and silenced Satan’s accusations.  The Lord Jesus did not fight to defend Himself, nor did He answer His accusers, but in faith and love He quietly and willingly submitted Himself to suffering and the sacrifice of His Cross.  And see, His Father has exonerated Him and fully vindicated Him by raising Him up from the dust of the earth.

He is not guilty.  He is blameless.  He is set free from sin and death forever.  And so are you.

The whole world is “convicted concerning righteousness” in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.  Death and the devil no longer have any rightful claim against you, nor against anyone else, not in Christ, the Champion and Savior of all men.  There is no condemnation for those who are in Him.

God’s judgment has been given by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.  In Him, sin is forgiven; it is no longer counted or considered, nor is it held against anyone, because it is atoned for by His Blood.  And the whole world is justified and reconciled to God in His rising from the dead, in His returning to the Father in our human flesh: crucified and risen, glorified, and now immortal.

Now the Holy Spirit preaches these mighty deeds of God to all the nations of the world, in all the languages of earth, in order to make disciples of Christ Jesus from every tribe and tongue and people, and to gather men and women, boys and girls, the young and old alike, from the four winds into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  For the dried up old bones that are resurrected, re-enfleshed, resuscitated, and restored to new life, are not isolated individuals but the whole house of Israel, that is, the Church, the Body of Christ.  It is precisely in His Body that all are made alive.  And as a member of His Body, you are made alive in Him.

It is by the proclamation of His Word — by the preaching of this Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen — it is by this proclamation that the Spirit calls you daily to repentance, that is, from unbelief to faith in Christ.  For there is no conviction of any sin except for that of unbelief, which sets you outside of and apart from Christ Jesus and His salvation.  Your unbelief is your rejection of His righteousness in favor of your own, despite the fact that apart from Him you shall not stand.

But the Spirit calls you to repentance, convicting you of sin and of righteousness by the judgment of the Law and of the Gospel.  He speaks the truth in love.  He exposes your sin for the unbelief it is, and He thereby removes every pretense of self-righteousness within you.  That is the truth of the Law, which condemns you.  But the Spirit also speaks the truth of the Gospel, which is Christ, and by this Word He justifies you through faith and raises you from death to newness of life.

This is the Spirit’s testimony and His defense on your behalf against all of your adversaries and accusers: that you are a sinner, yes, but that Christ Jesus is the Savior of sinners, and that you are freely and fully forgiven and justified by Christ, by His Cross and Resurrection.  On the one hand, the punishment of all your sin has already been carried out — in the Body of Christ Jesus on the Cross — and on the other hand, the innocence and righteousness of Christ are counted as yours.

That is the truth of the Gospel.  It is not an empty or powerless word, but the very Word of God, which is not only true but Truth Itself, and it establishes the truth concerning you, both now and forever.  It is a living and active Word, by which the Holy Spirit comforts you in sorrow, and grants you peace in place of fear, rest from your weariness, and perfect health and strength and life.

The Spirit brings you through the waters of Baptism with Christ into the wilderness, where you now also bear the Cross as a Christian, as you live by faith in the Word and promise of your Father.  Here you find yourself in a desert of dry bones, and you yourself are crucified, dead, and buried.  That is what daily repentance entails.  And, yes, you are still mortal; for now you get sick, you suffer, and you die.  That should come as no surprise, nor is it a denial of the Resurrection and the Life that are yours in Christ; for you know that He has also experienced and suffered all of this.

So surely are you also raised up in and with Christ, and you are brought into the Land that God has promised you.  Already He has brought you into His Church, which is the Body of Christ, and here you live, just as He lives.  Not only that, but even now under the Cross you are glorified with the Glory of Christ Jesus, which shall be openly revealed in the resurrection of your body at the last.  As Jesus returns to His Father by way of His Cross in His Resurrection and Ascension, so are you brought to the Father as His dear child: as His very own, dearly-beloved, and well-pleasing child.

That shall be so in the final Judgment Day, in the Resurrection of all flesh at the last.  And so is it most certainly true here and now, even in the midst of the wilderness, as you hear and receive the Word of Christ; as your sins are all forgiven; as you are cleansed and refreshed by the waters that flow from the side of Christ; and as you are fed with His Body and His Blood in His Supper.

In giving you Christ Jesus in these means of grace by this Ministry of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit gives you everything that Jesus, the Son of God, receives and has from the Father.  He does so by the proclamation of the Word of Christ.  He guides you into all Truth by speaking what He hears, which is the Truth of the Gospel, namely, your justification and forgiveness.

This new language of the Holy Spirit is the Gospel of Christ Jesus, the Word-made-Flesh, and that is neither gibberish nor fantasy but the accomplished fact of His Body put to death and raised again to life eternal.  In His Body you also are redeemed, raised up, reconciled to God, and righteous in His sight.  That is what He says to you, and that is what His Word does for you and gives to you.

Though it seems such a small and simple thing, and it may seem as though it were powerless to change anything, this Word fills your heart and mind, your body and soul, and even your mouth with the Spirit of Christ Jesus, who drives out sorrow and replaces it with joy and peace.  For with the Word of Christ, the Spirit refutes the rhetoric of the devil; He defends and protects you against the devil’s accusations; and He comforts you, in order to deliver you from hopeless despair.

With this Word of the Gospel, the Spirit opens your lips to show forth the praise of the Lord, to speak the mighty deeds of God in Christ.  So it is that you, your sons and daughters, your nursing infants and young children, speak and sing this powerful Word to the glory of God and to the comfort of one another.  For this Word of the Gospel of Christ is the Truth, also in your ears and on your lips, by which He breathes His Life-giving Spirit into you and your children, and to your children’s children, that you and they may live forever in the one Body of Christ Jesus.

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