Sermons

A man sitting next to Jesus says it will be blessed to eat bread in the kingdom of God — someday. Jesus answers with a supper that is ready now. Three guests excuse themselves with fields, oxen, and a wife; where the fear of God dies, the Giver is ranked below His gifts, and the feast goes untasted. The master throws the doors wider and fills the hall with the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind — those with empty hands and no reason to refuse. Come, for all things are now ready.

Jesus warns that offenses are inevitable, and the worth of a single soul makes leading one of His little ones to fall worse than drowning. Yet He commands forgiveness seven times a day — a demand that drives the disciples to cry, “Lord, increase our faith.” The answer is not a bigger faith but a faith fixed on the right object: a mustard seed will do, because the power belongs to the Lord of heaven and earth, not to the one believing. Even when every duty is done we remain unprofitable servants, standing not on our works but on our Master — who girds Himself and serves His own at the Supper.

You have what Lazarus had. You have a name, given in the water. You have the promise — eternal life on account of the promise, not on account of your merits. You have Moses and the Prophets and the One they promised, who is here, on this altar, in your mouth and in your body.

You went into that water still carrying the old premise — still asking what resurrection could possibly mean, still uncertain whether the age to come is anything more than this age with the dying removed. And you came out having been given something you did not generate, extra nos, outside yourself, from the One whose Name was spoken over you.

You look, and you live. You do not first understand, and then live. The teacher came carrying everything he knew and was handed two things he could do nothing with: a birth he could not perform and a cross he could only behold. And even the looking is not the last small work left to his credit — the eyes that turn to the lifted Son are opened by the same Spirit who blows where He wills, the birth of water and the Spirit, not of the will of the flesh, not of any man’s deciding. It is given the whole way down.

He is coming upon you, by His Spirit. He is drawing you with the net of His Word. And He is doing more than draw you — He is making His home in you.

He who scattered at Babel gathers here at Pentecost. He who divided the tongues there of evil, now unites them here for good. The same Spirit. The same fire. At Babel, God came down and scattered. At Pentecost, God came down to gather, and He gathered by preaching. Not by making the nations speak one language. By making the one Gospel spoken in every language. Every tongue heard the same thing: the Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.

Take heart. He did not say try harder. He did not say believe more. He did not say feel something. He said take heart. Be of good cheer. Because — and this is the only because that holds — “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He has done it. It stands done. It will be done tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and the morning your believing finally collapses entirely. The I that holds you is not yours.

The angels asked: Why do you stand gazing? He is not up there, away, unreachable. He fills all things. He is here — in His word, in His sacrament — as surely as He was on the mountain before the cloud came. The cloud did not remove Him. It revealed Him. As the One who sits at the right hand of the Father. As the One who, in that human nature, fills all things. As your Brother, enthroned.

Prayer in the name of Jesus is not a formula appended to a petition. It is a location. To pray in His name is to come to the Father as one who is in the Son — wrapped in the Son, carrying the Son’s own standing before the Father. You are not the poor man at the gate any longer. You are not approaching from outside, hoping to have moved Him. You are praying from inside the love the Father has for the Son. That is where the font placed you. That is where you stand.