The Second Sunday after Trinity, 2020
Pastor Gregory L. Jackson
The melodies are linked in the hymn name.
The lyrics are linked in the hymn number.
The Confession of Sins
The Absolution
The Introit p. 16
The Gloria Patri
The Kyrie p. 17
The Gloria in Excelsis
The Salutation and Collect p. 19
The Epistle and Gradual
The Gospel
Glory be to Thee, O Lord!
Praise be to Thee, O Christ!
The Nicene Creed p. 22
Cain and Abel, Faith and Hate
The Preface p. 24
The Sanctus p. 26
The Lord's Prayer p. 27
The Words of Institution
The Agnus Dei p. 28
The Nunc Dimittis p. 29
In Our Prayers
- In treatment - Mary Howell, Rush Limbaugh, Christina Jackson
- Testing - Pastor Jim Shrader
- Pastor and Mrs. Jordan Palangyos - Mission and Rice Delivery
KJV 1 John 3:13 Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. 14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
KJV Luke 14:16 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: 17 And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. 18 And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. 19 And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. 20 And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. 21 So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. 22 And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. 23 And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.
Second Sunday After Trinity
Lord God, heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee, that through Thy holy word Thou hast called us to Thy great supper, and we beseech Thee: Quicken our hearts by Thy Holy Spirit, that we may not hear Thy word without fruit, but that we may prepare ourselves rightly for Thy kingdom, and not suffer ourselves to be hindered by any worldly care, through Thy beloved Son. Jesus Christ, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one true God, world without end. Amen. Checking out some land, test-driving some oxen, and being married are humorous excuses. So the least are invited when the best will not attend.
Cain and Abel, Faith and Hate
KJV 1 John 3:13 Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
This is a blunt opening, but the Apostle who wrote so much about love also addressed the nature of hate. The verse before spoke of this -
12 Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.
That Genesis passage has always seemed to be mysterious, hard to understand or explain. The truth is eternal, so what was explained thousands of years later would have been true at the beginning. Abel had faith so his offering was pleasing to God. Cain did not believe, so what he did was evil. Whatever is done in faith glorifies God, but whatever is done without faith, no matter how grand - is evil in God's sight. Romans 14:23 and Matthew 7 - the good tree (faith) only bears good fruit.
Luther:
7. But whence arises the world’s hatred? John tells us in verse twelve when he mentions the incident of Cain, who, he says, “was of the evil one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” An excellent reason, indeed, for hating—the hater and murderer is evil and the benefactor good! In civil and domestic affairs it is the evil-doers and disobedient who incur displeasure and receive punishment; and such reward is just. But whenever God has dealings with the world, it shows what a rotten fruit it is by hating, persecuting, and putting to death as evil-doers and impostors its very benefactors. This trait it inherits, John tells us, from its ancestor Cain, the great fratricide saint.
He is a true picture of the world of all times, and ever its spirit and fashion is patterned after him.
Therefore, the hatred of the world is directed at those with faith. The pure atheists are rather rare, but there are many who consider themselves religious who lack faith in Christ as their Savior. What else explains the persecution of the sincere believers by those who are in the church hierarchy? The bishops and popes and professors are no different from the Pharisees, who were honored and respected by the vast majority, even though they despised Jesus and challenged Him at every opportunity.
The Apostle John often dealt with faith and love in his writing, both the Gospel and the Epistles. The Fourth Gospel is his simple and powerful description of the ministry of Jesus and powerful hatred against Him. There the Apostle John saw the relationship between faith and love, as taught by Jesus Himself.
They were just grasping that connection during the earthly ministry. The Apostles had to deal with it even more as the Christian Church began to mature and break out in heresies.
Everything should be peaceful and loving in the Christian Church, people say. Everyone believes the same in the Church - no?. A mouse may be in a cookie jar, but that does not make him a cookie. He may be there to take advantage of the cookies in the jar.
My friend told me of the strange man in the balcony (second floor) of the church. He only appeared above the railing when the pipe organ was not playing. He was the organist. Children saw his face, so he was a mysterious and somewhat frightening figure. One day, during the Communion service, he came down for the first time and took communion. He played all the hymns and preludes and postludes, but he did not truly believe until the day he came down.
14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
This is a statement, a revelation we should keep in our hearts. The Fourth Gospel implies this all the time - the life Jesus gives is eternal life, which starts at the moment of faith, even for babies baptized.
We are already in enrolled in eternal life, just living on the porch. We had a house like that in Moline. The porch was enclosed and had heating from the furnace, windows, lighting - an extra bedroom. We sometimes got to sleep there for Saturday morning adventures, waking up in the dark to hunt animals with bow and arrows.
Someone on the porch could smell supper cooking (or burning, as we liked to say). "What's burning, Mom?" We could hear the TV and could almost hear people talking.
The Apostle is urging his people to think of themselves as already in the Kingdom of God and therefore already enclosed by eternal life.
The Gospel litmus test is love for the brothers - the fellow-believers. The reason is easy to discern. First of all, it is the first of the fruits of the Spirit listed, exemplified by Jesus' agape-love for the world and His disciples.
Agape-love is giving and forgiving love, one that rejoices in both.
In a world without faith, this is distorted. The word brother applies to believers (male and female). We are not obliged to forgive the unrepentant. In fact, that causes confusion and solidifies unbelief.
But like a lot of matters, the evil may go unresolved without needing to dwell on it. Luther said that beautifully when he spoke of God not taking the affliction from our hearts, but taking our hearts away from the affliction.
I have thought about that many hours and used the graphic many times. (I combined Joplin tornado damage with a bouquet of roses.)
I cannot get through this story today, speaking it, so I will write it. Erin Joy was in the Cleveland Clinic with her life ebbing away. We were talking to one family and she began to cry, because she loved being the center of attention. I told her this, because it helped her stop crying, which led to seizures - "I won't look at that red, tomato face until you smile." I told the family how that worked and they said, "Look at Erin!" The tears were dripping from her eyes and she was grinning as hard as she could.
In the midst of very difficult times, the most peaceful and loving things happen. It is the very nature of the Gospel that makes us happy to participate in the afflictions and the losses of others. What makes people run away from trouble will draw believers in - to help in some, small way.
In the midst of it all, someone will be as nasty, mean, and greedy as anyone could imagine, and the thought it - oh well, they are just an annoyance.
Luther:
23. To abide in love should be the motive for us Christians. John contrasts it with the motive of the world in hating us—its wickedness. The world’s hatred of you, as John words imply, is not strange. The contrast between you and the world is exceedingly great. Through its own evil works, unbelief, pride, contempt for the Word and grace of God, and the persecution of the godly, the world has become by this time the victim of Satan and eternal death. It spurns all counsel and aid directed toward its rescue. Stiff-necked and hardened, under evident condemnation by its own conscience, it has chosen to persist in its doom. But we believers in Christ, God be praised! are different people. We have come forth from death; we have passed through death and entered into life through the knowledge and faith of the Son of God, who has loved us and given himself for us.
24. Such grace and goodness of God, says the apostle, should prompt you not to be offended and vanquished by the world’s ingratitude, hate and malice, and thus to cease from holy endeavor and become likewise, evil, which course will result in the loss of your treasure. It is yours, not by your own effort, but by grace alone; for at one time you as well as they languished in the kingdom and power of death, in evil works, far from faith and love.
Remember to comfort yourselves, therefore, with the thought of this great blessing, an advantage you enjoy above the others. What if the world, abiding in death, does hate and persecute you who abide in life? Whom can its hatred injure? It cannot take from you the life which it lacks while you possess it, nor deliver you to death, from which you have passed, through Christ.
15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
We were always cautioned not to think in terms of absolute truth and falsehood, but that is what the Bible teaches us -
- Faith and unbelief
- Truth and falsehood
- Life and death
- Salvation and damnation
Jesus spoke of two trees in Matthew 7 - the good tree (of faith) and the evil tree (unbelief).
It helps us be patient if we recall that evildoers live in a world of death. We end up seeing many manifestations of this. One business had the salespeople locking up everything if they left their cubicles, because their fellow agents would go through the files to discover information, hoping to steal clients. If someone worships the material world and gaining honors from business, that is natural behavior. There was always the background noise of "grab what you can, however you do it" in the midst of pious congratulations on how pure they were, not being like those evil tax-collectors, etc.
The good tree bears good fruit, which we may not see for what it is. God's divine will is carried out in His Word, and those unglamorous works add up in many ways. Misers are forever poor, yet the generous always have enough and to spare.
The disciple-Jesus-loved says - hatred is murder and hatred means eternal death, not life. Is it not obvious when people who hate our country are happy to burn, destroy, harm, and kill? And that damage is hidden and downplayed by those sworn to communicate it - "without fear or favor."
Faith in Christ supplants, displaces the evil of this world, and those good fruits grow so abundantly that they leave little room for evil.
16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Love is defined here as action, not a grin and a hug and "be on your way." What Jesus did in faith was to give up His life to atone for the sins of the world, that this Report - faithful to Isaiah 53 - would plant faith in the Savior in the hearts of those who heard it.
Faith is access to God's grace.
The more I read Luther, the more I smile at his comments about Justification by Faith, because they are on target all the time. We are always struggling for grace when faith is that access, that interview, that introduction to grace (Romans 5:2). It is too obvious, so obvious that the great and wise overlook it with astonishing ease.
Strong on "access" in Romans 5:2
4318 prosagōgḗ (from 4314 /prós, "with, towards" and 71 /ágō, "come") – properly, come towards (near); have access (approach), with intimate (face-to-face) interaction (note the prefix pros). All three occasions of 4318 /prosagōgḗ ("interactive access") refer to "having audience (direct access) with God" (J. B. Lightfoot, MM).
Yes, grace is free, so look for that grace only through faith.
In faith, we pray for help and wisdom, in all matters.
In faith, we wait for the answer.
In faith, we thank God for His answer, even when we are mystified at His will, His timing.
The ultimate faith in this eternal life, being inside the porch already, is laying down our lives for the brothers. That was the fact of persecution in the Apostolic Age, and it happened repeatedly during the Reformation, and it continues to this day.
Luther:
33. These words delineate true Christian love and hold up the sublime example, or pattern, of God’s love manifest in Christ. Christ’s blood and death is God’s own blood and death. Paul in Acts 20:28, speaks of God having purchased the Church “with his own blood.” The heart of man by faith receives and apprehends this sacrifice. Under its transforming influence he is disposed to work good to his neighbor as he has himself received good. He even jeopardizes his life to that end, being conscious of his redemption from eternal death, and knowing physical death powerless to affect his eternal life. But the heart that fails to appropriate Christ’s sacrifice is without faith and insensible to God’s love and eternal life.
34. John uses an illustration plain enough for anyone to understand, and from which we may judge that the soul found wanting in small duties will be deficient in great ones. According to the apostle, if one possesses this world’s goods and sees his neighbor want, he being able to render assistance without injury to himself, and yet closes his heart against that neighbor, not assisting him with even the slightest work of love, how can the love of God dwell in him since he appreciates it so little that he will not spare his needy brother a penny? How can he be expected, then, to render a greater service—to even lay down his life for his brother? What right has such a soul to boast—how can he know—that Christ has laid down his life for him and delivered him from death?
17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
We do not say bowels - that makes children snicker a little. But we say "guts!" You have no guts - and - I really feel that in my guts. One "hip" education supervisor asked me, "How's your gut?" He was trying to antagonize me, so I said, "Just fine." I made a point of smiling at him because he was so mean to my best education friends. One swore never to be in the same building with him.
How quickly the clergy supervisors lock up their feelings of compassion when they have a chance to help. Oh no, that might hurt their chances to be Circuit Pastors or even District Presidents! Earthly honors but heaven's condemnation without faith being present.
As one person said about another, "There was no time lapse between willing and doing.
No wonder Ephesus, where John lived and worked, was the Mother Church of Christianity.
