"You Can’t Stand If You Are Weighed Down" Second Sunday in Advent Populus Zion December 8, 2013 Luke 21:25–36
You can’t stand if you are weighed down. You can’t move, you can’t serve. You can’t do much of anything. Jesus is showing you how you will be able to stand before Him on the Last Day. But that’s not all. If you’re just standing around, so to speak, waiting for that day to come, you will not in fact be able to stand before Him on that day. No, Jesus is showing you also how to live. There are different ways we talk about our lives as Christians: stewardship, discipleship, following Christ, serving, doing good works. There are other ways of expressing the same thing, the thing Jesus is teaching us in the Gospel reading: life in Him. You will stand before Him on the Last Day not because you have done good works or you were a faithful and godly steward of the blessings God has given you or you were a stalwart disciple of Christ in following Him. You will stand before Him on the Last Day because you have life in Him. Jesus wants you to serve and follow Him and do good works and be a faithful steward of everything you have, but that isn’t the goal. It’s not the essence of being a Christian. Jesus wants you to have life in Him. He wants you to live and move and have your being in Him. His words in the Gospel reading point you to the future, but they are planted firmly in the present. He wants your life in Him to be eternal, and that includes now and each day in this life He has given you. Your attempts at stewardship and doing good works often fail because you are attempting these things rather than living in what Christ has given you, life in Him. Exhortations to you to be a good steward, to give your money, to spend your time in prayer and devotions, to use your abilities to help and serve others often fall flat because they are exhortations to you to do something. Do those things you are supposed to be doing. Give more and do more of those things you ought to be giving and doing. These things sound right. They sound like what you need. But what you need is life in Christ. You can only stand if you are not weighed down by these things. You can only live if you have life in Christ. You can only have life in Christ if you are not weighed down by the things you naturally do. Any attempt on your part to do what Jesus calls you to do, any exhortation to you that calls you to get off your duff and live like you’re supposed to, that is, as God’s wants you to, is an attempt that weighs you down more than you already were. In the Gospel reading today Jesus shows you beforehand what you need to know so that you will be ready when He comes on the Last Day. In so doing He shows you what you need to know for now. He gives you what you need to know for living now, in this life, as a steward, as a disciple, as a follower of Christ. It’s hard to say it in a way better than the way we prayed it in the Collect for today: “Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be enabled to serve You with pure minds.” We pray our Lord to stir up our hearts to make ready the way of His only-begotten Son. If you are to make ready the way of Christ, the Father’s only-begotten Son, it is because God stirs up your heart to do so. Your life in Christ is life in the way of the only-begotten Son of God. Your being a godly steward, a disciple, a follower of Christ, is life that is stirred up only by God. Your heart is weighed down. Your heart is full of sin and is self-centered. Your heart simply is not in it to live in the way Jesus calls you to live. Your heart must be stirred up by God. God does that. He stirs up your heart, so that by Jesus’ coming you may be enabled to serve God with a pure mind. It is by the coming of Christ that you are able to serve God. It is by His coming that you are enabled to serve God. It is by His coming that your serving God is with a pure mind. This is stewardship. This is service and discipleship and doing good works. It is life in Christ. It is what you do because of what Christ has done for you, His coming to you, not what you rouse yourself up to do. This is the kind of prayer we need to pray. It is prayer grounded in the Scriptures. Hear the words of Christ for what they are. He’s not saying to you that you must become something that you are not. In other words, you are a sinful selfish person, so be a selfless godly person instead. He is telling you that you have new life in Him. Paul captures this well in the Epistle reading: “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” Paul shows you who Christ is. He became a servant. He came in fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament in order to show His truthfulness. He came so that all may see His mercy and glorify Him for that mercy. This is life in Christ. It is not what you need to be but who you are in Christ. Paul finishes off the Epistle not with admonishment of being a better steward or disciple or follower of Christ, but with a blessing: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” How often do exhortations to more godly living or greater discipleship or more faithful stewardship devolve into admonishment or guilt trips or simple exhortation? How often are you then left under that burden to flail around, attempting to improve and to try to live as God wants you to but never knowing if you’ve done enough or are on the right track? You need to give more, do more, and do a better job of it. There’s no shortage of exhortation in the Word of God, or admonishment for that matter. But this attempt at living as Christ has called you to live is an attempt devoid of Christ. It is an attempt to be a disciple of Christ without Christ. It is a fantasy that your stewardship rests in you getting with the stewardship program. Your life in Christ is life in Christ. It is life because of Him, not because of you and your good works and all the offerings you give and all the time you put in on committees and helping others. These things are marvelous blessings. The reason they are is that they flow out of Christ, your life is in Him. That is how you are able to stand before Him. It is how you are able to live in Him. Jesus says, “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.” Your attempts at gaining this eternal life in Christ are as effective and beneficial as outright rejection of Christ and rebellion against Him. They will do you no good. They will weigh you down. Jesus says to watch yourself. Otherwise you will be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life. The enticements of the world can easily lead you into excess. You dabble here, you dabble there, suddenly you can’t get enough of the pleasures of the world. The dissipation and drunkenness Jesus speaks of speaks to a larger life of excess, in which what the world offers consumes far more of your time, your thoughts, and your desires than do the things God offers, which may not appear nearly as appealing. Excess in this life will weigh you down. And if you are weighed down you can’t stand before Him on the Last Day. If you are weighed down you can’t live and move and have your being in Him in this life. You can’t be in Him and have your life in Him. You can’t serve Him and do those good works He has called you to. You can’t be a godly steward of all the many blessings He has given you. While the enticements of this world are too alluring for some, for others the problem is much more mundane. Life gets in the way. Your calendar is packed. Your family is overloaded with activities. Your workload is piling up even as your bills are piling up. Your health is diminishing. You are worried and anxious about many things. There is much to do and little time in which to do it. There are demands on your time, there are roadblocks to your accomplishing the things you need to accomplish, and you are more and more wondering how everything is going to work out. And where is Christ in all of this anyway? The answer is nowhere. That’s what He’s trying to tell you. You are weighed down by the cares and anxieties of this world. You are wrapped up in the wrong things. You cannot stand if you are weighed down and you cannot live in Him if you are weighed down by the cares of the things of this life. Life in Him is what He wants for you. Life in Him is what He gives you. What you do—living, serving, faithfully being a steward and godly disciple—are all things that flow out of life in Christ. This is what you have, life in Christ. Your life is not your life, but your life in Him. When you are burdened and weighed down by the many things of this life, flee to your life in Him, the life He has given you in your Baptism. He releases you from those things that weigh you down, lifting your sins from you, forgiving you of those times when you indulge in the enticements of the world, forgiving you of not giving and loving and serving others. This weight, this burden, this sin, He carries it. It was laid on Him when He was stretched out on the tree of Calvary. He was weighed down with all that weighs you down and He took it with Him to the grave. It is no longer yours. You have life in Him. In this way you are able to stand. In this way you are able to serve. In this way you are able to be the steward as God desires you to be and has called you to be. Do not be weighed down by the things of this world but rather see them as the blessings they are: to rejoice in, to make use of, to benefit from, and to use to love and help and serve others with. Do not indulge in them and do not be anxious over them. They are given to you by your Lord who is coming again to give you all things. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
