Jan 19, 2020  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our heavenly Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, AMEN

The text for our meditation today is the epistle lesson for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, 1 Corinthians 1:1-9. There we read:

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

We begin in the Name of Jesus, AMEN

Dear Christian friends: You just confessed in the Nicene Creed, "I believe in one holy, Christian and apostolic Church." The question is why? Why do you say, "I believe"?

It is because the creeds do not allow you to point with your finger and say, "Here is the Church" or "There is the Church" or "This group is the Church" or "These people look like the Church." No such luxury is available to those who live by these creeds. No, these creeds force you to ignore what you see or do not see with your eyes and to confess in faith, "I believe!"

"I believe in. the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints." When you say, "I believe," you confess the faith and hope and conviction that these things do indeed exist even though they remain unseen.

After all, where are you going to look in order to find and behold a Church such as the one you describe in your creed-one that is a holy Christian Church? Are you going to look in a building filled with people?

It does not matter what congregation you select anywhere on the earth: its pews are filled with as many idolaters and adulterers and murders and abusers and thieves and drunkards as the rest of the world. As you heard from the Epistle, St. Paul writes this letter "to the Church of God in Corinth" (1 Corinthians 1:2), but you would never know simply by looking at them that the Corinthians were Christian.

The congregation was split into all sorts of factions, with each group so hell-bent on having its own way and meeting its own needs that the needs of others were trampled underfoot.

Among other things, people were gobbling up food at the congregation's love-feasts, rather than making sure each Christian had a portion; they were tolerating public, open acts of immorality and unchristian behavior in their midst, with no one calling their brother to repentance; many were exalting themselves and their great spiritual gifts, rather than using their gifts as God intended: in praise of His name, in service to their neighbor, and "for the common good."

Sadly, the things that happened in Corinth happen in every Christian congregation today. You know that as well as I do. This only shows proof that you cannot look into a building such as this one and see holy people, because not a single one of us here today looks the least bit holy. If it were not for God's Word and other gifts among us, we would not even look like a church.

So where shall you look to find this "holy Christian Church," and "communion of saints"? Will you look to a corporate church body, such as our church body, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod? I hope not!

Like the Corinthians, we have people in the Missouri Synod today who file lawsuits against each other. Like the Corinthians, we have people in the Missouri Synod today who have turned worship into chaos and disarray, focusing more on what people do than on what your God does here.

Like the Corinthians, we even have people in the Missouri Synod today who are "influenced and led astray to mute idols." Sadly, the things that happened in Corinth happen in our own Church body-and this is not someone else's sin either. This is our collective sin and we-collectively-must repent and return to the Scriptures.

Well, you cannot find and look upon holiness in a congregation or in a church body, so where will you look? Shall you look at yourself? What holiness can you identify in that dark place you call your own heart and mind? The only holiness you could possibly identify there is an imported holiness, a holiness that has come to you from afar, a holiness that is like "a light shining in the dark" (2 Peter 1:19).

For this is what St. Paul elsewhere says to his Corinthians: "God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."

This is the holiness that takes root in you through the power of your Baptism, that you would be called "the Church of God" and "those sanctified-those having been made holy-in Christ Jesus," as St. Paul says in this Epistle.

"I believe in. the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints." I believe that the Church is holy, not because She looks or acts or sounds holy, but because God has declared her holy solely for the sake of Jesus' suffering and death.

I believe that my brothers and sisters in the Missouri Synod are holy-despite all of the willy-nilly that goes on. They are holy because God has declared them holy on account of this same Jesus.

This is my faith, dear Christians: I wholeheartedly believe that I am the "chief of sinners" and "less than the least of all God's people." Yet even so, I am holy and I am counted among God's holy people because the crucified and risen Christ has made it so. He is faithful-as St. Paul says here-and His faithfulness covers and drowns all of my unfaithfulness.

This is your faith, too: You may go on believing that you yourselves are "chief of sinners" and "less than the least of all God's people." But do not stop there!

Listen instead to this Epistle, written to you who also are "those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ-their Lord and ours."

Even though your daily lives will certainly begin to reflect this holiness that is now yours in Christ, it really does not matter how holy you look. What matters is what God says about you!

Even though you may still struggle in various ways with your brothers and sisters in this congregation, that does not matter, either. What matters is that God has incorporated you all into one body; that "you are the body of Christ and each of you is a part of it."

What matters is the promise that is spoken to you in today's Epistle: that your Lord Jesus "will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ."

"I believe in. the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints."

I believe-and you should believe it too -that God has created this blessed, holy, yet unseen reality by the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I believe-and you should believe it too -that God continues to preserve and sustain this unseen, holy Christian Church with His ongoing presence among her, gathered as we are around His powerful Word and gifts.

I believe-and you should believe it too -that His faithfulness, repeatedly and unfailing shown to us through these things, has already "enriched [us] in every way" -in speech, in knowledge, in faith, in hope, in love, in endurance, and very soon, in resurrection.

I believe - and you should believe it too - that Christ is Risen.

AMEN