Lent 3

Luke 11:14-28 - Oculi Sunday - March 8, 2015
Keeping the Word of God

And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!” But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” 

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If God is our Father, the Church is our Mother.  St. Paul in Galatians 4 calls the Jerusalem above the mother of us all.  The Jerusalem above is the Church in heaven.  But it exists here on earth.  There is one Church – just as there is one Lord and one Faith and one Baptism.  We have communion with Christ.  We therefore have communion with everyone who has communion with Christ.  This means that those who have died and gone to heaven continue to have communion with us below because they continue to have communion with Christ who serves us here. 

But we don’t identify the Church by looking to see who has gone to heaven — no more than we identify the Church by looking to see who will go to heaven.  Rather we identify the Church by looking to him who came down from heaven and who continues to bear with his Church on earth even as he sits at the right hand of God – as he promised, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of ages.” 

We identify the Church above by identifying the means of grace below.  We look for the gospel and sacraments that teach us the one true Faith.  Through these, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit creates saving faith in our hearts.  This saving faith does not consist of good works that earn God’s favor, though it certainly produces fruits that please God and serve the neighbor.  Rather this saving faith consists of trust and confidence toward God that clings to Christ and boasts of his righteousness, which he gives to us as a free gift.  This means that we know where the Church is, not because we are in a congregation or church body that our grandparents belonged to, as though this were how we remained in fellowship with those who have gone to heaven before us.  No.  A congregation’s confession might change.  A church body or synod can easily become corrupt, since they are manmade.   And boy, they do.  But no.  We know where the Church is, because we know where Jesus is with his word and sacraments, serving the Church.  He promises to give what we are supposed to look for.  It is our duty to identify the pure word of God and determine if it is a faithful church or not. 

By keeping God’s word, we have fellowship with God and with all the saints whom God has brought to himself – as well as with all the saints whom he knows on earth.   St. Paul says that the Jerusalem above is free.  This means that the whole Church is free.  What joins us with the saints in heaven is the fact that we are all free from the law that condemns.  They are free by sight, or else at least by every and whatever sense that God may grant them as they await their glorified bodies in the resurrection.  We, on the other hand, are free by faith alone in the forgiveness that Christ gives.  This faith does not come by reason or strength any other sense.  This faith comes by hearing.  In fact, our sinful bodies and corrupt senses often indicate the opposite.  Death has not yet released us from the temptations of the flesh.  The devil has also caused external divisions in the Church through his schismatic sowing of false doctrine and various error. 

The Church is free.  But we are not yet free from the devil’s attacks. 

The devil constantly seeks to bring us into bondage to the law.  He does so in two ways: both by tempting us to sin against the law, and then again by claiming that, because of our sin, we are under the wrath of God’s law.  He tempts and accuses.  He wants us to deny our heavenly birth both by living like we are not children of God, and then also by believing that we must earn God’s approval through our own obedience or by our own concerted decision to follow him and free ourselves.  This is how he attacks the Church.  He attacks the Christian life and he attacks the Christian faith. 

The Church above is free.  No longer can Satan harass them.  The Church below is also free.  But the devil does harass us.  Our only hope and only defense is to wield the word of God.  We identify our Mother not by identifying who our brothers and sisters are, but by identifying the wholesome milk of God’s word – there our brothers and sisters are born, and there they gather.  We identify the Church by her marks, the means of grace, and then remain under her constant care.  In so doing, we live as children of God the Father with our brothers and sister in Christ.  

There is one Church.  She is our Mother.  In his Church, Christ makes us children of God and fellow heirs with him.  We do not choose him; he chooses us.  He also nourishes us and feeds us through her constant care.  In Holy Baptism, we receive a heavenly birth.  There is one Baptism.  We are baptized here on earth, but we are born from above.  We are fed the word here on earth, but the word we hear is a heavenly word.  We eat bread and wine, but it is the body and blood of God that we receive for the forgiveness of our sins.  The same Church into which you were born in Baptism is the Church that nourishes you throughout life. 

If you want to know your Father, you must know your Mother.  We must know where Jesus adorns his holy Bride.  St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5,

Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

Does Christ also love you?  How do you know?  Did he also give himself for you?  How do you know?  You know because he tells you that he did.  He loves and died for all sinners.  He tells you so.  Does he sanctify you, that is, does he make you holy so that you can stand before God unashamed?   Yes.  He who knows how unholy your thoughts are, because he himself willingly bore God’s wrath against your lusts and pride and covetousness – yes, this One makes you holy.  He cleanses you.  How do you know that you are clean?  You are baptized.  You are treated as his holy bride.  He covers you with his own obedience that he rendered to God in your place.  And as such he presents you to himself.  He does so every time he speaks the absolution through the man he commanded to absolve you.  But he covers your sin not like putting a bag over an ugly face.  No, he covers you with the very righteousness that becomes your own – a righteousness that will adorn you forever.  He presents you to himself as a radiant bride. 

He is your Savior.  He is your Judge.  You can be sure that your adornment is pleasing to him, because he who clothes you is very picky and fastidious.  None but the best will do.  He is righteous.  His own obedience that springs from his perfect love for God – the obedience that he fulfilled as true Man in your place – this is what he gives you.  He gives it to you because he loves you and wants you to be happy that this is true.  This is why he tells you that it is true.  He doesn’t say so once.  He says so over and over.  He remains with you as a faithful father remains with the mother of his children. 

How do you know that this is how Christ regards you?  Because this is how he treats you.  You know that he presents you to himself because this is how he presents his Church to himself.  Faith is personal.  No man can believe for another.  Yet faith is also public and corporate.  There is no faith but the faith that is universally, or catholically, held by the whole Church.  There is no faith but the faith that the Church confesses.  Christ knows who are his.   And you know that you are his too because he does not stop serving and loving and forgiving his holy Bride.   He gives you his word to hear, and his truth to confess. 

So the point with all of this is that to know Christ is to be a member of his Church.  To be a member of his Church is to know Christ.  Christ creates his Church through water and his word.  He sustains his Church through the preached gospel and through the Sacrament of the Altar.  We are members of the Church by being served by Christ.  There is no fellowship with Christ apart from the fellowship of his Church.   And yet, this does not mean that we find the true Church on earth in order to find the true Christ.  No.  We find the fellowship of the true Church on earth by finding the true Christ.  Where is Christ forgiving sins?  Where is Christ bearing with your weaknesses?  Where is Christ casting out the devils who would keep your ears shut and our mouths closed?  Where is the word of God being preached?  There is where Christ creates his Church.  So there is where his Church cares for you.  She is Christ’s bride and the mother of us all. 

Children learn to talk from their mother.  I noticed this growing up and now again with my own children.  My dad used to get amusingly annoyed that his kids would pronounce things wrong the way my mother would.  She would say cran, for instance, instead of crayon.  I still have a hard time with this.  My mom was raised by deaf parents, so this might have had something to do with it.  Both my parents, however, raised me to say aunt.  But now all my children say ont like Monica.  For better or for worse, it is from their mother that they learn to speak.  But it is also through their mother that they learn from me.  Both my mother and my wife have taught their children to listen to their father.  This is by God’s design and command. 

The Church submits to Christ.  The church that does not submit to Christ teaches its children to speak contrary to Christ.  The mother that contradicts the father of her children raises a divided household.  This is where division comes from.  Division does not arise in the Church when God’s children insist on speaking as God taught them to speak.  It arises when God’s children, or would-be children, speak contrary to God’s word – when they speak according to the influence of an unfaithful mother instead of according to the instruction of a mother who honors her head. 

There is no neutrality.  Children are going to learn how to speak.  If a mother bows out of her duty to teach her husband’s children how to talk, those children will learn somewhere – from school, from Nickelodeon, somewhere.  So also, the church that does not teach the word of God does not raise spiritually neutral children.  She raises children who learn how to speak from the world around them that is under the spell of the father of lies.  We learn to speak by what we hear. 

The man whom Jesus healed from being deaf and mute had been in a prison of silence.  But he was in no neutral world of his own.  He was trapped with his own thoughts and desires and ideas.  The demon who possessed him had kept him from hearing so that he could not speak.  By the finger of God, by his word and Spirit, Jesus cast out the demon and taught him to speak.  He freed him from the devil.  So he does for us. 

He is the stronger man who plunders the devil’s kingdom.  He is our hero who rescues us from thinking wrong and speaking wrong.  He destroys our accuser’s power by taking away his weapons.  He takes the lust and pride and envy and laziness that the devil incites in our flesh, and he bears it in his own holy body.  He takes the law that condemns our thoughts and daydreams and filthy words and outbursts of unrighteous anger – he takes the law and fulfills it.  He does what it says.  He suffers what it threatens.  He takes the devil’s weapons and turns them on the devil.  He teaches us that we are free.  He teaches us how to defend ourselves by confessing his holy word.  He places us in the care of his holy Bride, our mother through whom we have a heavenly birth and at whose breast we nurse.  We listen to what Jesus says and speak as our mother teaches us to speak. 

The Virgin Mary is the mother of our Lord.  She bore him.  She nursed him.  She is a picture of the Church who bears us and nourishes us.  But what saved her and made her blessed was not that she symbolizes the Church.  What saved her was that she was a daughter of God.  She heard the word and kept it.  She believed it.  So also, what saves us is not what we do as the Church.  It is what we receive as the Church.  We hear the word of God and keep it.  Here is our blessing.  We identify the true Church by the word of God that she is faithful to.  So does everyone else.  The devil attacks the Church because this is how he attacks Christ – just as a wicked man targets his enemy by going after his wife and kids.  So does the devil.  He teaches them to close their ears to God’s word.  He teaches us to close our mouths and be ashamed to confess.  He fills our ears with the opinions of the world – the ramblings of an unfaithful wife. 

And this is why we do not identify the Church by seeing who’s there or by seeing who’s associated with some particular place and preacher.  We identify the Church by listening for the voice of our Lord.  Where our Lord is with his mercy, there our Mother is with her continual care.  And there we are taught to be imitators of God as his dear children.  

Jesus, all Thy children cherish
And keep them that they never perish
Whom Thou hast purchased with Thy blood.
Let new life to us be given
That we may look to Thee in heaven
Whenever fearful is our mood.
Thy Spirit on us pour
That we may love Thee more –
Hearts o’erflowing;
And then will we
Be true to Thee
In death and life eternally. Amen.