The Fourteenth Sunday of Pentecost
Tired Yet? Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Epistle, God declares, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives. What is the value of these Words for us? These Words speak divine power to us, so that we may indeed “*lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees*.” Dear Christian friends, I thought about asking everyone to stand up who feels tired or worn out. It seemed like a bad idea for two reasons: first, probably very few people would remain seated and second, tired people usually prefer to sit. · Some of you feel physically tired. Your hours are long, or worse, there are no hours because you job doesn’t allow you to punch a timecard and walk away. You put your back into your job and some of you do it for more than one job. Some of you have more on your plate than you would like. · Some of you feel emotionally drained. You have something in your life that keeps on sucking the life out of you. Respite is rare. Grief, loneliness, fear, stress: it is a physical toll on you. · A few of the younger Christians among us might feel tired of being treated like a child; tired of parents who refuse to understand; tired of the absurdity and the stupidity they see played out every day by schoolmates and friends; tired of waiting for something that is real; tired of waiting for life. · Some of the not-so-young Christians are tired of life itself. They are weary of the world and ready to be done, if only the Lord their God would allow it. The other day, I listened to a radio program that discussed exhaustion. Some lady has worn herself out by writing a book, which she titled, *Exhaustion: A History*. The book begins by stating the obvious: we all feel tired. Our entire society feels tired. When we get tired to the point of exhaustion, we begin to think about the good old days, when life was not so… tiresome. But then the author pointed out something noteworthy: Every generation in recorded history has described itself as exhausted. Every generation has longed for the good old days of lighter labor and easier times. Even the ancient Greeks believed that earlier times were less tiresome times! The reason for our tiredness is NOT the unfortunate result of evolution, as this history book insolently suggested. It is not really your boss’s fault or your family’s fault, either. Exhaustion is a burden of sin. Hard labor was imposed upon our father Adam, and we all share in Adam’s sin. To Adam God said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:17-19). Stated another way: Life is hard, you sinner, and then you die. Should we think that God uses our exhaustion, therefore, to punish us? You can think that way, if you wish, but it will require you to stop being a Christian. The Christian faith holds—and faithfully so—that Christ Jesus our Lord died for the punishment of all sin everywhere. The punishment of Christ upon the cross includes not only the punishment for Adam’s sin, but also the punishment for all the offspring of Adam—including you, including me. Thus says the prophet Isaiah, concerning are Christ, “*The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him*” (Isaiah 53:5). There is no more any punishment for sin. There only remaining punishment is the punishment for unbelief and the rejection of Christ. That punishment is called the “*punishment of eternal fire*” (Jude 1:7). You are God’s Christians. You have not only been given the forgiveness of sins, but you have also been given the gift of faith in Christ Jesus. Hell and its punishment now hold no power over you. Because the Christ has borne all punishment for sin on our behalf, we must turn our ears toward the Scriptures, so that we may find a different reason for our exhaustion. Today's Epistle is a very good place to begin: It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Why are you so tired? Why do I have nothing left in the tank? Because discipline is infinitely better than punishment; because we have a Father in heaven who has made us His true children in the adoption of Baptism—“*and what son is there whom his father does not discipline*?” We feel exhausted because the Lord our God loves us with a love that stretches far beyond our best expectations: · Our God allows our bodies to get worn out by hard labor and difficult years so that we might actually desire “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” · Our God drains our emotions to the dregs so that we will never confuse momentary sensations of happiness with the inexpressible joys of eternal life; that we may understand the Word of the Lord that says, “*blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted*” (Matthew 5:4); that we may set our hearts and minds where true joys are found, gathered before the throne of God. · Our God continually pushes us forward, even when we are feeling exhausted by our fears, and He does so for the one purpose of teaching us to hide behind Him in whom there is no fear; whose perfect love casts out all fear; whose death and resurrection set us free from the fear of our enemies and from our fear of death, so that we may serve our God without fear all our days. · Our God gladly empties us beyond empty, and He does so week after week, in order that we might gather week after week to be filled again. Why are we exhausted? We are exhausted so the Divine Service might we worth something to us. Today’s Epistle wants us to know that we have no merely come to church! Today’s Epistle wants us to know that, when we have come here to the Word of the Lord and His baptismal font and His holy altar, we have actually come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Today’s Epistle even explains to us why we might come to such a place as this. We come so that we may receive miraculous power for our drooping hands and strength for our buckled knees; so that we may, at least for a few blessed moments here in the liturgy, enjoy “*straight paths for our feet*”; so that “*what is lame may not be put out of joint, but healed*.” It was an exceedingly bad idea, that I should think to ask everyone to stand up who feels tired or worn out. It is far better for us to be found on our knees, or even flat on our faces before our God. When He finds us there, He shall not fail lift us up and set our feet upon the Rock. “*And the Rock was Christ*” (1 Corinthians 10:4).
_______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] https://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
