The Third Sunday of Pentecost
THUD Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. God’s Apostle Paul says in today’s Epistle, I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Dear Christian friends: Our congregation is a member of the Sedalia Circuit of the Missouri District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Sixteen other congregations share this circuit with us. Each congregation has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own joys and sorrows, its own reasons to sing praise God and its own temptations toward worry. Yet there is one particular temptation toward worry that all the congregations of the circuit seem to share. I hear it everywhere I go: “The young people of the church are leaving and not coming back. What can we do to get them back?” By all means, the loss of our younger Christians is a topic we all need to address, both in our thoughts and in our actions. (We should also bear in mind that there are plenty of people in the AARP crowd who have abandoned our fellowship for childish reasons.) We must think about our losses with great care. As I have already mentioned, this topic poses a grave temptation toward worry. Worry is sin. “*Do not worry*,” says the Lord (Luke 12:2) – and clearer words cannot be spoken. “*Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?*” asks the Lord (Matthew 6:27) – and the obvious answer is NO. None of us can add even a minute to our lives by worrying. Why should we think that we can add more backsides to our pews by means of worry? The topic of younger generations leaving the church poses a greater temptation for us than mere worry, which is doubt that God will provide. Here we are tempted by the far greater sin of idolatry. · The first temptation is found in the statement I hear expressed in every corner of our circuit. People often say, “The children are the future of our church.” NO THEY ARE NOT! Our Lord Jesus Christ—delivered into death for our sins and raised for our justification (Romans 4:25)—He is the future of our church. He is the Alpha and the Omega, that is, the beginning and the end of all things (Revelation 21:6). He is the author and the finisher of your faith and my faith and even the faith of Christians yet unborn (Hebrews 12:2, Psalm 22:31). Christ Jesus alone remains the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) and therefore He is the only Man upon whom we can rely. Jesus is the one who is and the one who is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1:8). In Christ and in Christ alone shall the fortunes of our present congregation rise and fall. And we shall have no other god—not even the cute little babies in our midst. · The second temptation toward idolatry is often found in the worried question that so often gets concerning about the younger generation, “What should we do to get them back?” If we are not careful, this question can become the same question asked by the teenage girl who wants to re-invent herself so that the captain of the football team will finally notice her. What should we do? o Should we change our music so that we can compete, both with the world and with the Pentecostals? That is roughly the equivalent of plastic surgery and a brand new tattoo. Suddenly, you are no longer you. o Should we talk less about their sin? In that event, we would only be able to tell people how wonderful they are. They already know that. Their schools and their parents and the society all around them about their wonderfulness every day of their lives. Stroke their ego and they will keep listening—but only to a small part of what you say. o Should we make our worship services shorter and simpler and more convenient? You should do that only if you wish to turn into a fast food restaurant, where people feel like they should receive your immediate and flawless production for as little money as possible. · We are plagued by yet a third temptation toward idolatry. Like the other temptations, this one also gets expressed by concerns I hear expressed in our circuit: “We need more people to come because they will help us keep our doors open.” This temptation offers us nothing more than the idolatry of self-preservation. Christ Jesus died to set us free from the idolatry of self-preservation. Where might all this temptation toward idolatry lead us? We could end up bowing before the younger generation, rather than bowing before the Lord our God. We could end up offering our sacrifices upon the altar of the People Who Leave. We could end up making their will and desire our priority, rather than praying to the Lord of Hosts, “*Thy will be done*” (Matthew 6:10). God’s apostle Paul might be able to help us with a game plan for how we might respond to this absolutely serious situation, “The young people of the church are leaving and not coming back. What can we do to get them back?” Rather than bending over backwards in idolatrous accommodation, Paul might suggest that we pray to God, asking Him to knock our absent loved ones onto the ground with a good, clear THUD. After all, it worked for Paul! What I mean is this: · Like the generation that is now absent from us, Paul had adopted a form of religion that was very popular in his day. As you heard him explain in today’s Epistle, “*I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers*.” Everybody in Paul’s culture thought Paul’s religious choices were great. In the same way, what is the most popular form of religion in our society? It is the religion where everyone gets to choose his or her own personal beliefs. Our absent generation is extremely zealous for this religion. · Like the generation that is now absent from us, Paul had absolutely no use, neither for Christ Jesus our Lord nor for the benefits of His death and resurrection. As you heard Paul explain, “*I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it*.” Paul’s persecution was a war of aggression, where he actively hunted Christians to imprison or to murder (Acts 9:1-2). In a comparable way, the persecution waged by our absent generation is a war of attrition, by which they hope to ignore the Living Gospel of Christ into obsolescence. (By the way, their persecutions shall fail just as completely as Paul’s failed.) · How did our merciful heavenly Father finally get Paul’s attention? He knocked Paul off his horse and allowed the stony ground to break Paul’s fall. THUD. As Paul explained in today’ Epistle, “*God was pleased to reveal His Son to me*.” That was just a nice way of speaking. The book of Acts gives better details. As you might remember from Sunday School: As Paul went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:3-5). In a similar way, we should ask our heavenly Father to show our absent generation such love as to make them eat the street, so to speak. When our God answers our prayers and starts emptying the saddles of high horses, we should probably make every effort to stand aside and break no one’s fall and listen for the THUD. We should stand aside and listen for the THUD · NOT for the purpose of taking delight in someone else’s trouble. It is never easy for Christians to watch others suffer misfortune, especially when we have loved them and have raised them and have spent our lives trying to make their lives better than they deserve. · because we ourselves already lay flat upon the ground, waiting for our absent generation to rejoin us here in the mud and the gravel. Here we wait, too, upon the mercies of our God in Christ. Flat on the ground is where our God loves to come and visit His people. Flat on the ground is where our Christ has chosen to lay, so that He may lift us up from the mire and set our feet upon the rock of His forgiveness and life. THUD must be how we pray for our absent generation because THUD is our God’s first act of love. THUD is how God prepares each of us for His greater gifts of salvation and life. THUD must be how we pray for our absent loved ones because they are not our god. We have a God and His name is Jesus the Crucified One. We have a Gospel, too, which spells forgiveness of sins for you and for me and for our absent generation. As you heard in today’s Epistle, our Gospel “*is not man’s Gospel*.” It has been given to us “through a revelation of Jesus Christ,” who draws near to us in the preaching of the Word and the administration of Baptism and the celebration of the Holy Communion. Because our Gospel is “*not man’s Gospel*,” we do not need to concern ourselves with how we might change it or improve upon it. Our Gospel is a living Gospel, shining forth from the victorious face of Christ. Rather than worrying about what to do for our absent generation, the one true Gospel allows us to relax and let our one true God to do all the work.
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