Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter
A Sight for Sore Eyes
Rubbed Raw by a Broken Heart
Theme: The Word of forgiveness, spoken by the resurrection of our Lord, sets
all things aright.
Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia! Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today's
Gospel, the resurrected Lord gives the Church His own personal power-the
miraculous power of forgiveness. "Receive the Holy Spirit" says Jesus. "If
you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold
forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld."
Dear Christian friends,
During the season of Lent, several parts of our Christian liturgy
were cut away from the Divine Service. During Lent we did not sing Alleluia
prior to the reading of the Holy Gospel. Nor did we sing the hymns of
praise: both This Is The Feast and Gloria in Excelsis ("Glory be to God on
high") fell silent for the season. There was no singing or hymnody at all
for Ash Wednesday, and only sparse, spoken liturgies for Maundy Thursday and
Good Friday.
We did not abbreviate our liturgy during Lent so that you could
get home a little sooner for a few Sundays. Alleluia and songs of praise get
torn from the liturgy as a way of casting a shroud over our worship. The
season is purposely dark. The hymnody is deliberately set in minor keys.
These things were taken away from us on account of those things that were
first taken away from our Lord. You might even say that our liturgy was
stripped of its "garment of praise" (Isaiah 61:3), in the same way that our
crucified Lord lost His clothing when "the crucified Him and divided His
garments among them" (Mark 15:24).
· Cutting Alleluia and the songs of praise from the liturgy has a
very good purpose for Lent. These cuts make us notice what is missing, and
possibly to desire. These cuts make the entire liturgy seem out of joint
(Psalm 22:14) and incomplete and yet-to-be-fulfilled.
· Cutting Alleluia and the songs of praise from the liturgy also has
a very good purpose for the season of Easter. Christ is risen! (He is risen
indeed!) Alleluia! The joy of Easter morning is more than the smell of
Easter lilies mingled with bacon. Now in our worship all things are restored
to the way they should be! Now nothing is missing; nothing disjointed;
nothing out of place! Alleluia has been given back to us. This is The Feast
swells once again from our pews. The minor keys of Lenten hymnody have now
been turned to the brighter tones of Easter praise. That which was once
taken away from us has been returned to us with great joy.
Alleluia once taken but now given back again; songs of praise that once
could not be sung now echo on high: See in these things a picture of what
your Lord Jesus promises to do also for you by the power of His resurrection
from the dead. We have each suffered our losses, some more than others. Like
the liturgy of Lent, we each have had things taken away from us, things that
we loathe losing, but cannot avoid. (Without a doubt, even more will surely
be taken away.) In our lives injustice has been suffered; violence has been
done; conscience has been violated; guilt has been incurred. Sins we commit
get piled on top of sins that get committed against us and these things
enshroud our days. You and I both have plenty of things we can count as
proof that Luther was right when he described our lives here on earth as
"this valley of sorrow" (Small Catechism, Seventh Petition).
Grief stifles Alleluia. A guilty conscience will choke your hymn of praise.
Sustained conflict and unending struggles suck the air out of those who once
felt free to sing but now can find no voice. Loneliness and depression
transpose everything into a minor key. Lent is more than the remembrance of
our Lord's suffering and death. Lent is the season of our lives: disjointed,
mournful, and missing more things than we can bear to notice.
Last Sunday was Easter Sunday. Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!)
Alleluia! This resurrection promises you that everything will be set right
again. This resurrection is God's oath to you: Just as Alleluia and the
songs of praise have now returned to our Christian liturgy, so also for you:
· Everything you have lost will be restored;
· Every injustice you have suffered will be set aright and you shall
be fully vindicated;
· Every lonely hour that you now suffer shall be replaced with a
thousand days of companionship and joy;
· Every broken heart shall somehow be made whole again;
· Every wrong shall be made right; every guilty pang of your
conscience fully soothed; every broken bone made strong; every smoldering
wick fanned into a bright and cheerful flame.
· The liturgy of Easter restores that which was taken away from you
in Lent. The liturgy of Easter puts your Alleluias and your songs of praise
back where they should be. In the same way, when your God raises you and all
the dead on the Last Day, all things shall then be restored for you back to
the way they should be! "The zeal of the LORD accomplish will accomplish
this" (Isaiah 37:32, NIV).
Here is some Good News for you: Today's Gospel does not want you to think
your Lord's resurrection gifts are only for your future, when you also shall
rise. Today's Gospel wants you to know that the gift of your Lord's
resurrection from the dead is for you today, just as surely as it is for
your future.
Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me,
even so I am sending you." And when He had said this, He breathed on them
and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of
anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is
withheld."
With these Words, your Lord Jesus wants you to know that even now,
even today, He is busy setting straight the things that so easily get messed
up in our lives. Here in this worship service, as in every service, Jesus
proclaims to you that all your sins are forgiven you. In this proclamation
Jesus restores to you those joyous Alleluias that were once stolen from you
by your own sin. In the news of your forgiveness, Jesus sets back into place
again that beautiful song of praise that was once toppled over by sins
others have committed against you. Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!)
Alleluia! By the power of His resurrection, Jesus promises you forgiveness
of every sin-right here and right now.
· Your sins are forgiven: This promise means that your life shall not
forever be lived like the Lenten liturgy-disassembled, disjointed,
disappointed, distressed.
· Your sins are forgiven: This promise means that the things you now
experience and suffer shall not afflict keep dominance over you.
· Your sins are forgiven: This promise means that your loving God has
already begun to reassemble and restore and repair everything that has
become damaged in your life-through your fault or the fault of others around
you.
· Your sins are forgiven: This promise is for you now and it is for
you forever, for "where there is forgiveness of sins, there is life and
salvation" (Small Catechism, Sacrament of the Altar II).
You are going to walk or limp out of here today, and when you get home you
are going to find everything just as difficult as you left it. Your
hardships offer you no guarantees that they will become easier for you to
handle. Your fears and your doubts will quite possibly continue to increase.
For some of you, your hearts will be broken into more pieces than you dare
to count. Others of you will learn to feel pain in places that you never
even knew existed. Some of you will spend your days longing to hear the
voice of your beloved, only to be stuck listening to silence. For some of
you, the world will never again come quite into focus for you on account of
the Artesian tears that blur your vision.
When our Lord Jesus returns on the Last Day, He shall truly be a welcomed
sight for our sore eyes-eyes reddened by
the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
that the flesh in heir to,-'tis a consummation
devoutly to be wish'd
(Shakespeare, "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark").
There is but one thing for us to do in our waiting. We must latch on to God's
Words, holding them fast and refusing to doubt the restoration they promise:
Your sins are forgiven. Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia!
___________________________________________________________________________
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