Life on the Vine

The Holy Triune God has planted His people on earth to be a choice and productive Vineyard, that they might share in His divine Life and flourish in His loving care for them, bearing good fruits according to His own good and gracious will. So it is that you are called to live by faith in Him, to receive His Life into yourself, and to bear the fruits of His Love by sharing His Life with others.

This is what it means — and this is what it looks like — for you to be a branch of the true Vine and a part of the Lord’s Vineyard: To rely on Him and to receive your life from Him alone, to live in love for your neighbor, and so to bring forth the fruits of the Vine to the glory of God’s holy Name.

The Office of the Holy Ministry is the way and the means by which the Lord conveys His divine Life to the branches of His Vine and to His whole Vineyard. And it is certainly the case that His servant, Don, has been — and is — such a gift to His Church and to His people; for it is by Pastor Stock’s faithful preaching and ministry over these past many years that your gracious God and Lord has bestowed His Life and Love upon you and many others, to the glory of His Holy Name!

By way of contrast, to withhold life and love from your brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, to harbor bitterness or resentment against your neighbors in the world, to flatter and pamper yourself, or to serve yourself and seek your own glory — all such practices, wherever and whenever they occur, would indicate that you have severed yourself from the Vine and do not abide in faith and love within the Vineyard. For the Lord has planted His Vineyard to produce good grapes — not the sour grapes of wrath, but the good grapes of faithfulness, gentleness, kindness, and mercy.

So, how’s that going for you? Maybe not so good? After all, take a good look all around. Consider the daily news from all over the world and from the cities and towns of our own United States. Think about your routines, and about your relationships — not just the ones you favor and prefer, but all of those roles and relationships to which the Lord has called you. It isn’t all coming up roses. Nor is it the harvest of faith and love that God commands and requires of His Vineyard.

The soil has been cursed on account of sin. The ground from which you have been taken is stained with blood, and the earth itself quakes with the weight of death. Plants do not grow easily or well. The grass withers and fades, and all flesh dies. Thorns and thistles infest the Vineyard. The whole world is polluted, the sun beclouded, and the rain is either insufficient or else too much at once, so that it drowns and destroys what has been planted. The branches on the Vine produce more foliage than fruit, and the fruits they do produce are wild and sour, idolatrous and selfish.

The Lord looks for the fruits of faith and love in His Vineyard, and so also in you. But you do not fear, love, and trust in Him above all things; and neither do you love your neighbor as you should.

Yet, the Father in heaven still cares for His Vine, and so He cultivates His Vineyard by pruning the branches and removing those that bear no fruit, casting them into the fire. He does this cutting so that the Vine itself may survive and thrive, and that it should live and grow in faith and love.

But who, or what, or where is that true Vine which is able to survive the curse of sin and death? Who, or what, or where is that Vine which can thrive and give life to the entire Vineyard? For the curse is so complete, so comprehensive, and so devastating, surely the pruning and removing of branches must continue until there is nothing and no one left. For there is no good in any of us.

But, no, there is hope and help to be found in Christ Jesus. He is the true Vine, the planting of His Father, who willingly dies the death of sin and is buried like a Seed into the dust of the ground, in order to redeem and sanctify the soil, the earth, the whole creation. He is the One who is cut off from the land of the living and cast into the deadly fires of God’s righteous wrath and judgment. He Himself is pruned to the point of crucifixion, in order to purge the Vineyard of sin and death.

He removes what is wild and wrong in your body and life, and He bears it away in His own Body.

And this same Lord Jesus Christ also rises from death to life, to be a vital and productive Vine. He abides in faith and love, and He bears good fruit to the glory of His Father and for your benefit.

Again, it is by His Ministry of the Gospel that He bestows the good fruits of His Cross upon His Church on earth; and so has He done for many years now through Pastor Stock, in order that you should hear and receive the forgiveness of your sins and be enlivened by His grace in holy love!

The Cross of Christ, upon which He suffered and died, has become the Tree of Life for all the nations. Because His death atoned for the sins of the world, His Blood does not stain but cleanses the earth, and His Body, crucified and risen from the dead, is the First Fruits of the New Creation.

It is into Him that you are grafted, both your body and your soul, into His Body of flesh and blood, to be a branch of the true Vine. For you are buried with Him through your Baptism into His death, in order that, having been planted with Him in the dust of the ground, so do you live and grow and bear good fruit in Him, as well. Like the Ethiopian eunuch, you have been baptized into the Cross and Resurrection of the same sacrificial Lamb of God, who was lead to the slaughter and slain for your sins, who has also risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity, never to die again.

Abide in Him, therefore, as He abides in you with His Word of the Gospel; and so bear good fruit. For apart from Him, you are dead. The good fruits that you bear — the fruits of faith and love — are the produce of the Life that you receive and have and live in Him, as He Himself is your Life.

That is true for each and every one of you as Christians, and that is true for each and every pastor, as well. And so it is that Pastor Stock has been able to love and serve and care for you with the blessed Fruits of the Cross of Christ, because he has first of all received them as means of grace for his own life and salvation, and then also as a sacred stewardship for the life of the Church.

What he has received from the Lord from those who have gone before him, he has also handed over to you — as a minister of the grace of God — in the Word and Sacraments of Christ Jesus!

It is by the Word of Christ, by the hearing of His Word, that you live and abide in Him; for it is by and with His Word, by the preaching of His Word, that He is with you always and abides in you.

It is by the washing of the water with His Word that you are grafted into Him in Holy Baptism. So, too, it is by His Word, by His preaching of repentance and forgiveness, that you are daily returned to the significance of your Baptism; and by His Word that you are “watered” with the living and Life-giving Spirit, who keeps you and the whole Church united with Christ in the one true faith.

You are already clean by the Word of the Gospel that Christ has spoken to you, but so does He daily “wash your feet” and “water your soil” with the catechesis of His Word. With His Law and His Gospel, He teaches you the Way of Life — to be fruitful in faith and love, as He is fruitful.

Where you daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment, He does not cut you off, cast you away from His presence, or destroy you. He does prune your life with His Law, not for death but for the discipline of love, that you should rely upon His gifts of Life and so be nurtured and sustained by His grace. For His Word of the Gospel, which is the forgiveness of your sins, fills you with the vitality — the life and health and strength — of His Resurrection from the dead.

By the merit and means of His own dying and rising, He does not remove you from the Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts, but He raises you up from death and the grave, from the dust of the earth, and from the idolatry and unbelief of your sin, to bear the fruits of peace and joy, of faith, hope, and love, to the glory of His God and Father. As He Himself glorifies God with the abundant Fruit of His Cross and Resurrection, so does He glorify the Father in you, and He glorifies you in Himself.

So has He also glorified Himself and His Father — and the Holy Spirit — in His servant, Pastor Stock, first of all as a beloved and well-pleasing child of God, and then also as a faithful minister of His Word. It is a remarkable thing, indeed, that any of us poor, miserable sinners, fallen and fallible men of mortal flesh and blood, should be given such a privilege and such a responsibility, to preach and teach the Word of Christ and thereby to bestow divine, eternal gifts to His people.

It is likewise with His Word of the Gospel — by the human hands of His called and ordained servants — that He also feeds you and all His disciples with the Fruits of His Cross, that is to say, with His own sacred Body, crucified and risen for your Salvation, and with His holy and precious Blood, poured out for you from this true Vine as a better Vintage than this world has otherwise known. So does He abide in you, both soul and body, and you abide in Him by faith in His Word.

This Sacrament of the Altar truly is the Feast of Holy Love, because these gifts of the incarnate Christ, His flesh and blood, are the Produce of His Propitiation, the Communion Meal of His Self-Sacrifice for Atonement, Absolution, Reconciliation with God, and the perfect Peace of His Spirit.

I expect that you would readily agree, Pastor Stock, that, along with the preaching of the Gospel, the administration of the Lord’s Holy Supper is one of the most profound and greatest privileges  — and one of the most important responsibilities — that we are given as ministers of Christ Jesus. Although we carry out this high and holy calling in the confidence and courage of our dear Lord, we do so in the fear and trembling of repentant faith, in recognition of what we here place into the mouths and bodies of His beloved people, that He should thus abide in them, and they in Him!

It is indeed the case that, by these Fruits of Christ the true Vine, you are enlivened in heart and mind, in body, soul, and spirit. And as He thereby gives you life with God in Himself, so do His Fruits produce good fruits in you after their own kind: Not only in your thoughts and feelings, but in your words and actions, and with your hands and feet and lips and tongue. So does He bring forth in you the fruits of faith and love toward God, with which you worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, and fruits of love for your brothers and sisters in Christ and for all your neighbors.

In much the same way, the ministry of the Gospel is itself a labor of holy faith and holy love, and it is right that we should recognize and give thanks for the love that Pastor Stock has exercised for  the Lord and for His people in this sacred calling and station. It is no easy task, but a worthy one!

Such love sometimes requires speaking up when it is difficult or even dangerous to do so, in order to defend what is good and right, to decry what is wrong, and to protect one neighbor from another. Never with a spirit of vengeance or violence, nor for the sake of destruction, animosity, or hatred, but by the Spirit of Christ Jesus, with the confidence and courage of His Resurrection, and with the charity and compassion of His Cross, for the sake of repentance and forgiveness in His Name.

And all such fruits of faith and love are a confession of Christ the Crucified, that He is the one true God in the flesh, and that He is your Life and your Salvation. By the speaking of His Word, and by your living in accordance with His Word — by what you patiently bear and suffer in steadfast faith, and by your tangible gifts and works of love for those you are called to serve — you testify of Christ Jesus, and you bear the fruits of His Cross and Resurrection in your place.

Thank you, Pastor Stock, for being a faithful instrument of such love in the Name and stead of our one Lord, Jesus Christ, and for serving His dear people in this place with His Word of the Gospel.

It is that Word which bears His fruits in each of you by forgiving all your sins, by granting you His own Life and love and faithfulness, and by lighting your path in the way that you should go.

That path of life is one of grace and mercy, of compassion and kindness. Above all, it is the path of forgiveness, even as God in Christ forgives you. Thus, you proceed along that path, bearing the Cross to the glory of God the Father, in the joyful hope of Christ and His Resurrection from the dead. Abiding in Him, as He abides in you, so do you live, and so do you love as He loves you.

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

The One Who Believes and Is Baptized

St. Mark was an Evangelist, in the first place, because he was a preacher of the Gospel. He is said to have gone to Alexandria and preached the Gospel there. The Church identifies the Apostles and Evangelists with particular places, because the Gospel and the Church are historically grounded and located in real space and time. Christ has sent His preachers of the Gospel into all the earth, into the whole world, to make disciples of all nations, and yes, in fact, to preach the Gospel to all of creation, since all of creation is made new in the Resurrection of Christ, in His flesh and blood.

St. Mark is an Evangelist because he was such a preacher. But he is also one of those four holy Evangelists by whose hand the Lord has given us the written Gospel of Jesus, a record of our Lord’s words and actions, of all that Jesus began to do and teach. It is not only an historical record, but a theological treatise, and really nothing less than the preaching of Jesus, in which He is actively present, breathing His Holy Spirit upon His Church. These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, you have life in Him.

St. Mark begins his record of the Holy Gospel — the Gospel of Jesus Christ — with the ministry of St. John the Baptist. He came in the wilderness preaching a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, because the Kingdom of God was at hand in the Person of Christ Jesus.

Then Jesus came and submitted Himself to St. John’s Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And after He was driven out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for forty days, He also began to preach, “Repent, and believe the Gospel, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

Repent, therefore, each one of you. Believe the Gospel, and do not forget your Baptism, but daily wash yourself in it by way of repentance, by trusting the Word of Christ, by receiving His means of grace. Be put to death each day, and rise again with Christ each day.

Trust the Lord your God. Look to Him who is your Father, who has called you His own dearly beloved and well pleasing son. Look to Him who promises to give you all good things in Christ, and pray as He has taught you. Do not doubt but firmly believe that your prayer is heard and answered with a resounding “Yes and Amen!” in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.

And that you may believe and pray in this way, hear and heed the Word of God. Rejoice to hear His Word and the preaching of it, the preaching of the Gospel, as St. Mark wrote by inspiration, and as your pastors to this day preach into your ears, into your heart, and into your body and life. This Word is true. It is Spirit, and it is Life. Do not doubt it. Be not unbelieving but believing; for he who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who disbelieves will be condemned.

But what does this mean? For all that Jesus has done, does it still come down to you? Must you figure out how to repent, and how to believe, and how to live by faith, lest it all be for naught?

Consider the example of those eleven disciples. They had already heard the testimony of Mary Magdalene and the other women. They had already heard the testimony of the two disciples who were on the Road to Emmaus and saw the risen Lord Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread. But they refused to believe the testimony of those witnesses, and Jesus rebuked them for their hardness of heart, just as He calls you to repent above all for your unbelief and hardness of heart.

But your Baptism does not rest upon your faith. The Lord Jesus does not stand upon your love. And the Kingdom of God does not depend on your repentance. Your faith rather stands on Christ, as it springs from the waters of His Baptism and relies upon His Gospel. And it is because the Kingdom of God first comes to you, that you are called to repent: Not only to sorrow for your sins and turn away from them, but to find shelter in this One who has come in the Name of the Lord.

He has come in the flesh as true Man. He has borne your sins and suffered your death. And He has done it all — He has lived and died for you — by faith in His God and Father. This Lord Jesus Christ has believed. This Lord Jesus Christ has been baptized, even unto death. And this Lord Jesus Christ has been saved from out of death and the grave through the Glory of God the Father.

Do not ever look for your salvation in yourself, not even in your own faith. You cannot choose to believe. You cannot will it. You cannot decide to do any such thing, for sin and death reign in your flesh until the Holy Spirit lays Christ upon your heart through the forgiveness of your sins.

It is the work of Christ that is credited to you as righteousness. It is the work of Christ that is given to you in the preaching and ministry of His Gospel. It is Christ who speaks to you through those whom He has called and sent in His Name. He forgives all your sins and grants you His Peace.

This, then, is the work of Christ, which He has done, and which He works in you. When Christ is preached to you as the One who believed and was baptized, who was crucified and raised, this work of Christ is worked in you. Thus are you called to faith through the narrow passage of the Cross. And so are you born again into newness of life. You are called out of darkness into His glorious Light. Where once there was nothing but doubt and fear and sadness, now there is joyful confidence in the One who was raised from the dead; for He has come to take up residence in you — through your ears and through your mouth, into your heart and mind, into your body and life.

He opens the Scriptures to you. Not that you should know the rules better and try harder to keep them, but that you should know them as fulfilled in Christ Jesus for you. As He has died, you also die with Him. As He is raised, you also are raised up with Him, to live with Him, now and forever.

Be encouraged in this life by the sort of men whom Jesus calls and sends. Men like Simon Peter, who denied his Lord in fear, and yet he was restored and sent as the prince of the Apostles. Men like Thomas, who doubted to begin with, but who was sent — not in doubt, but in confidence — to preach boldly until he also was put to death. And men like Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the Church, the hater of Jesus, who was called to become His great champion to the Gentiles. He preached the Gospel to the ends of the earth in his day, until he too was martyred for the Gospel.

And then there’s Mark. Whether or not he was that rich young man who went away sorrowful, because of his many possessions, when he was first called to take up the Cross and follow after Jesus, we know that he disappointed the Apostle Paul by bailing out on their missionary journey.

Such are the men, fallible and flawed, weary, weak, and wounded, whom your crucified Savior raises up in His strength and sends in the way of His Cross to the glory of His Name. They have their doubts, they have their fears. They suffer hurt and pain and ridicule and persecution. They are even put to death, despised and rejected by men, though they are precious to God in Christ.

It is through such weakness, by and with the Cross, that the Gospel is preached to you. It is the power of God unto salvation. It is the preaching of repentance, which puts you to death, and destroys your self-confidence, and robs you of any claim to righteousness or merit or good works. It is a word that wounds you in order to heal you, and kills you in order to make you alive, because it is the Word of Christ the Crucified, who is also risen from the dead and lives and reigns forever.

This is the Word that is preached to you. And with this Word of Christ there are signs, which you cannot recognize by your eyes, but by the faith that God works in your heart you know what is going on here. By the waters of your Baptism, and by the forgiveness of your sins, all of your demons are cast out. All of your darkness is enlightened. All of your dirt is washed away.

When Jesus lays His hand on your head, and His servant speaks with that new tongue of the Gospel, “I forgive you all your sins in the Name and stead of Christ,” you know and believe that you are thereby healed. Your body is made ready for the resurrection on the last day. You shall not perish but have everlasting Life. You shall not die but live, in body and soul, forever and ever.

The deadly serpent’s sting has been undone. That old dragon, Satan, cannot harm you. He can still try and bite you. But it doesn’t stick. The sting of death is removed. The sting of sin is gone.

Nor is there any deadly poison in that overflowing Chalice which the Lord Jesus sets before you on His Table. It is rather His Blood of the New Testament, the Blood of Christ Jesus Himself, which He pours out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of all your sins.

When you have doubts, do not be afraid, and do not run away from God, but listen to His preaching of the Gospel. By this Word He keeps on loving you. He keeps on forgiving you. He keeps on coming to you. So does faith come by hearing, and hearing by this Word of Christ. And as you believe, so it is done. In fact, before you have called, God answers. And while you are yet speaking, already He is acting to save you — through men like Mark, pastors He has never failed to provide for His Church on earth. So are you and all the sheep of the Good Shepherd nurtured on the green pastures of His Gospel, refreshed by the living waters of His Baptism, and fed at His Table in His House, unto the resurrection of your body and the Life everlasting of body and soul.

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

The Word of Christ Brings You Home to His Body

Disciples of Emmaus, you know the things that have happened in these days, the things concerning Jesus Christ of Nazareth, His Cross and Passion and His Resurrection from the dead. By His Cross He has redeemed you, forgiven all your sins, and conquered the power that death held over you. And in His Resurrection He has opened up heaven and eternal Life to you and to all who believe in Him, for which He has poured out His Spirit generously upon your body and your soul.

How is it, then, that you are still so often sad? Why should you be so angry or afraid of anything, discouraged or depressed, when Christ your Lord, the Son of God, has suffered these things for you and entered into His Glory? Knowing and confessing all that the Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles have told you, why are you so foolish and slow of heart to believe the Gospel?

Here and now, in this body and life, you are making your way and muddling forward without a clear sense of where you really are or where you’re going. The days and hours fly by, seemingly relentless, but you are living in a time between, restless and uncertain on a journey to your true Home, which you can’t yet see or perceive. Your heart, mind, and spirit are tossed about by the turmoil of this perishing world, and you are torn between death and life, between sin and faith, and between what you can and cannot see with your eyes. You are caught between earth and heaven.

Here your senses too easily trick you and fool you, so that earthly things seem powerful, glorious, and heavenly, whereas heavenly things seem ghostly, ghastly, and hard to comprehend or bear.

You live by faith and not by sight along the way, and as such, your only real recourse is the Word of God: The Holy Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles; the Holy Gospel of your Lord Jesus Christ, as written by His Holy Evangelists; and the Word of Christ Himself, the Word made Flesh.

Avail yourself of that Word. Speak it to your neighbor, and ask that it be spoken to you. Confess it and pray it as you go about your days, as you rise up in the morning, and as you go to bed again each night. In particular, give attention to the preaching of the Gospel, the forgiveness of your sins.

I realize that it can seem pointless and useless to “talk about Jesus” in the face of all the hurts and disappointments that wear you out and weigh you down. If that sounds impious to say, or even blasphemous, still, you know that it can feel that way, and that you often live as though it were so.

Consider how easily you are caught up in the maelstrom of this world with all of its anxieties and countless distractions. Think about your daily routines, and how the duties and demands of your job, your classes, your house and home, your family, and all your neighbors roundabout, consume your attention and your energies, so that you end up living and acting as though the Resurrection never happened or did not matter — even now, when Holy Week has ushered you into Easter!

There are those days when you can barely keep yourself going, one foot in front of the other, and you may not feel like talking anymore, and you really don’t want to hear it, not even about Jesus. That’s one of the main reasons that you dare not go it alone, lest you spiral into a silence of the Word of God and give yourself over to the constant buzz, nauseating static, and deadly white noise of your own inner dialogue, which does not believe but doubts and denies the Word of the Lord.

In spite of your nagging and persistent sadness, and no matter what you may be thinking or feeling at any given point, it is in the speaking of His Word — in the conversation about Jesus — that the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Himself draws near and travels right along with you. In and with His Word, by and with His Holy Spirit, He is actively present and opens the Scriptures to you.

He opens up your ears to hear, and He opens up your heart and mind to comprehend and believe the Holy Gospel — to hear and receive the forgiveness of all your sins, which is the solution to all your doubts and fears, the remedy to every infirmity of your heart and mind, body, soul, and spirit.

What is more, it is by and with His Word of the Gospel that He brings you Home, that is, to your true Home, which is the household and family of God, the Body of Christ. On the surface it may appear that He is coming to be your guest, but then it quickly turns about that He is actually the Host who takes you in, and cares for you, and serves you at His Table with His own hand.

With His Word and Holy Spirit, in His own Body of flesh and blood, He comes to make His home with you here — in order to make a Home for you with Him — already now in His Church on earth, and so also in the resurrection of your body to the Life everlasting in the Kingdom of God.

Here then, at His Altar in His House, is the lavish Table at which He tenderly invites you to recline and take your rest, to receive and feast upon the Meal that He has prepared for you and for the many. He takes the bread, He gives thanks, and He gives to you what everyone is looking for and needs: Not the empty tomb, and not only the news and information of the Resurrection, but His own crucified and risen Body in the Breaking of the Bread, the Holy Communion of His Supper.

That is where the whole Christian Church on earth recognizes, receives, and worships her dear Lord Jesus Christ. And that is where you also are at home and at rest: In the Body of Christ Jesus.

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