"The Eternal Liturgy" All Saints Day Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity November 1, 2015 Matthew 5:1–12
Though some will disagree with the statement, everyone has a religion. If you take religion at its simple form as what a person holds to and puts his trust in, then this fits the bill for everyone. People have always asked the big questions of why we’re here, what’s the meaning of life, what is it that makes us who we are. These questions show that we humans are religious people. We are inclined to look beyond ourselves. The vast array of religions shows that people look beyond themselves in wildly different ways. There is something, though, that runs through every religion. It is the desire to attain something higher and greater. Every religion has at its heart the expectation that you must attain the higher that you seek. No matter who that god or whatever the something beyond you is, it is to some degree demanded of you to attain the goal. People come to religion expecting that there is something expected of them. This basic tenet of religion grips even Christians. Even going to church is seen as an expectation. How many people think they’re going to heaven because they went to church every Sunday? The reason for this is that every Christian, like every other person, is a sinner. God created religion when He created Adam and Eve. Like all creation, religion was damaged in the Fall. But the true religion, the one God created, is still intact. This religion is distinct from every other religion. You can see this from its liturgy. The liturgy of the religion God created is eternal. It is the liturgy of the Church of every time and place, as is stated in the Collect of the Day for All Saints Day. The liturgy God has given us can be found in Genesis 1 where God created Adam and Eve. This liturgy is of God giving and His people receiving. It is of Him blessing and His people living in that blessing. This liturgy can be seen in the First Reading we heard today from Revelation. It is the picture of the saints who have gone before us and are in the eternal glory of God the Father and His precious Son, the Lamb of God. To be in God’s presence in His Son is to be receiving; it is being blessed, it is living in, as the Collect today describes it, “the unspeakable joys [God has] prepared for those who love Him.” The eternal liturgy is found at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 1 and at the end of the Bible, in Revelation. And this liturgy is found everywhere in between, as we see a back-and-forth, from God to His people, of Him giving, them receiving; of Him blessing and them living in that blessing. We were created to trust in God. Trusting in someone or something else brings about sin. It alters our understanding of religion, turning it into something where we must do something for God in order for Him to give to us and bless us and love us. It sets us on a path where we depend on expectations placed on us rather than a whole and utter reliance on the grace and mercy of God. When religion is turned upside down you are expecting to do something that you can never attain. What God expects of you is utter reliance on Him. Sin being in the world has broken this world. Illness ravages the body. Hatred and bigotry strain and damage relationships. Jealously, anger, and bitterness hurt people deep down. Our attempts to overcome these sins are band-aids treating the cancer that dwells deep within our soul and spreads to our mind, and heart, and being. What could you ever bring to God when you come here into His House? What could Adam and Eve offer to God after they sinned against Him? What saint who has gone before us has ever risen above what every person experiences, which is being born in sinful flesh and living in sin in thought, word, and deed? If you come here expecting that God requires something of you then you must repent of your false religion. The demand of His Law is too stringent for you to even try. Every religion is made by human beings except the one God created. In every religion the liturgy is from you to God or you along with God or from God to you with you picking up the slack. The eternal liturgy is something that is offered to you where nothing is expected of you. It is completely and wholly God coming to you. Granted, it’s a humbling, perhaps even humiliating, experience. God does not pull punches. He comes at you straight between the eyes with the force of His holy Law. He shows you that are no saint but rather a complete and utter sinner. You deserve nothing but the hell that He prepared for the devil and his angels. But His eternal liturgy is not meant to bring you to despair. It rather is the very soul of God reaching into the depth of your soul to offer you something else. Something you will not find in any other religion. It is full and free forgiveness. The eternal liturgy makes no qualifications. It places no conditions on you. It points you, right off the bat, in the Invocation, to your Baptism, where you were born anew in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the eternal liturgy you are forgiven because you were Baptized into Christ, and where Christ is, there is life. In the eternal liturgy you are not asked to be a certain way or to get your act together or to try to be who God would really want you to be. You are simply asked to come and drink of the waters of life. You are simply asked to hear and to take in the grace, mercy, and peace the Holy Spirit showers you with in the Gospel of your Lord Jesus Christ. The eternal liturgy offers the rest Jesus is speaking of when He said, “Come to Me all you are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” It is His way of bringing about the Beatitudes He spoke in the Gospel reading. Blessed are those who are not striving to be what they know they should be, but rather despairing of any efforts on their own part, because their salvation is in Christ alone. Blessed are those who look at the cross and see there the Tree of Life that has supplanted the one in the Garden of Eden. Blessed are those who come to the Table of the Lord weary and heavy-laden, beaten down and burdened by the unfairness of the world, by the tragedies and trials of life, by the unrelenting burdens of family struggles and harsh words and distrust. Blessed are those who come to the Lord’s Table poor in spirit. They will receive not a list of things they can do to become spiritually strong, but rather the Kingdom of Heaven. For they will receive Christ Himself, His very body, His very blood. It is, after all, the very Lamb who was slain who is on the throne in the heavenly liturgy shown in the book of Revelation. The eternal liturgy the saints in heaven partake of is the liturgy of the Lamb who still bears the scars of His crucifixion, whose blood was poured out as the river of life from the very Tree of Life of the cross. With angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, we join in with these saints who have gone before us, who have washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb, and we rejoice with them, lauding and magnifying the glorious name above all names. And how could we not? When God invites you to come and doesn’t demand anything of you, but simply invites you, to come, in your weakness, in your vulnerability, in your doubts, in your sins and your guilt, and says to you, “I will give you rest. Blessed are you, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. Take and eat, this is My body, given for you. Take and drink, this is My blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of all of your sins. Welcome into the eternal Kingdom of My Father who is in heaven. The saints who have gone before you are ready to welcome you when My Father knows it is time to call you Home. “For now, welcome to My Table, where you feast in that eternal liturgy with all of them, beholding Me, the Lamb who was slain, and actually partaking of Me, My body that I gave on the cross into death, and My blood that I shed on the cross for your life and salvation.” The eternal liturgy is not simply an order of service. The eternal liturgy is the very gate of heaven for us and it is heaven itself for the saints who have gone before us. We, the saints of God who await the day we will join them, engage in this eternal liturgy as they do, and with them. Blessed are they, who in the Kingdom of Heaven in all its glory have received their eternal rest. Blessed are we, who even now in this vale of tears, are given the very Kingdom of Heaven, as our Lord continues to come from heaven to us in His Gospel and His Sacraments to give us rest, forgiveness, life, and salvation, the very Kingdom of Heaven. 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 Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
