"The struggle between old and new in this world" Jubilate 2025

11. May 2025

Jubilate

John 16:16-22

Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy (Jn 16:20).

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

The world's powers, divided among themselves by culture and personal taste, nevertheless unite to oppose Jesus Christ's message: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” That's why we typically see only the weak and cast-offs, the terrorized and unclean, the powerless, prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners have any ear for Jesus. These are the people who have almost nothing left to lose and a tremendous amount to gain if Jesus really can forgive sin and conquer death.

“You now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (Jn 16:22). So, in these last days, God's interrupting words are held in faith by God's sinners. Faith means the words are hidden from sight. However, they will be seen on the final day of Christ's ultimate victory over this evil world. That victory is for the sake of the Holy Spirit's new creation. In this new creation, the powerful are brought down, and the lowly are lifted up. You hear these words in Hannah's song:

God brings death and God brings life,

    brings down to the grave and raises up.

God brings poverty and God brings wealth;

    he lowers, he also lifts up.

He puts poor people on their feet again;

    he rekindles burned-out lives with fresh hope...

He protectively cares for his faithful friends, step by step,

    but leaves the wicked to stumble in the dark.

    No one makes it in this life by sheer muscle!

God’s enemies will be blasted out of the sky,

    crashed in a heap and burned.

God will set things right all over the earth,

    he’ll give strength to his king,

    he’ll set his anointed on top of the world!

Mary also sings a similar song:

He bared his arm and showed his strength,

    scattered the bluffing braggarts.

He knocked tyrants off their high horses,

    pulled victims out of the mud.

The starving poor sat down to a banquet;

    the callous rich were left out in the cold.

He embraced his chosen child, Israel;

    he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.

It’s exactly what he promised,

    beginning with Abraham and right up to now.

Do you hear that? God’s words are always of two kinds: first, judgment of what is old, not right, and without a future. Then God gives a promise that establishes Christ's new world of forgiven sinners as right, new, and eternally alive. Faith and life must now be understood entirely according to this distinction of old and new. When it comes to us, sinners, that means the Lord kills and brings to life.

Of course, this description sounds odd to most anyone on first hearing - or second, or third, for that matter! It's a peculiar way of speaking about God's final judgment of you and everyone else. But your real problem isn't wrapping your ears around strange words. When God speaks, He changes how you understand yourself, the world, indeed, everything. God interrupts your life, opposing your fundamental beliefs, and declaring them tiresomely outdated. Which beliefs?

• That the world is evolving and progressing towards some higher goal.

• That people are what they do.

• That human beings are reaching higher, climbing the ladder, pursuing their dreams, and every day in every way getting better and better.

• That freedom means creating your own destiny, or it's just fate, just dumb luck.

• That death can be overcome with good behavior, following the golden rule, or by falling like a tiny drop of water into the great ocean of infinity.

More often than not, adhering to these small life rules is what people call living a good, moral, or spiritual life. But do you notice who is missing? Christ Jesus. And does Jesus need to die for any of those fundamental beliefs to be true? No.

In stark contrast, Jesus teaches that the world is deceived by dreams of progress while aggressively opposing God's own words. Human beings do not become better, right, and holy by gradually performing greater, more admirable works. Instead, God's words expose the world's evil and darkness because the world's faith is misplaced. Apart from Christ, life and its pursuits are empty, meaningless, void.

“You now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (Jn 16:22). So all those who come after the death and resurrection of God's only Son are in the last days. Faith alone holds Christ as right and certain while awaiting the last day. On that day, all that is now held in faith will be revealed. But for now, everything must be marked by the struggle between old and new in this world.

That's why faith is constantly under attack by the powers of this old world: Satan, the world, and your own sinful, selfish... self. But, on top of all that, God himself, outside of his words and outside of Christ, attacks you, refining and roasting you, so that faith in Christ's promise of forgiveness given to you by a preacher remains your only deliverance from death to new life.

So if you've ever wondered what it feels like to live in the last days, that's what it feels like. That's what it feels like to be in these last days, in which you either wait perilously for the other shoe of judgment to drop or with eager anticipation await seeing what now is held only in faith—that God is right in declaring his opponents forgiven on account of Jesus.

On this Mother's Day, we coincidentally heard Jesus use childbirth as an example. He said, “A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (Jn 16:21). He would have us understand ourselves as mother Church in labor. God the Spirit has conceived faith in Christ in us. This faith will finally give birth to resurrection and eternal life on the last day, the day of delivery. Is it pleasant, easy, or comfortable now? No, we’re full term, waddling around with the weight of glory. But that glory will be revealed and it will be joy and the sorrow of these birth pains will be forgotten.

“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. 23 Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (Ro 8:22–23).

So how are we to understand ourselves, the world, and everything by Christ’s death and resurrection? In contrast to the world's dreams, God declares that:

• The world isn't evolving and progressing. It's ending and being created new.

• People are not what they do. They are what God calls them.

• Human beings are not actively reaching higher, climbing the ladder, pursuing their dreams, and every day in every way getting better and better. They are killed and raised, and so never advance beyond baptism.

• Freedom isn't creating your destiny. True freedom is trust given by the Holy Spirit in Christ that makes you lords of everything and servants of all.

• Jesus is a loser among winners, and he was put to death for it. But the cross became a new kind of victory over self-righteous sinners.

• Death isn't overcome by what you do… but by Christ crucified, raised, and given to you, His own betrayers, as forgiveness of sin, most decisively in the Lord's Supper.

That’s the fantastic, new creation in Jesus that gives the Christian joy! But when presented with Christ alone as the one whose body and blood are the only means to be made right with God, neither the churches nor the world wishes to relinquish its own righteousness. You cherish only those things you can claim as belonging to you. Everything else that lies beyond your control, resting on faith, is proudly neglected and trampled upon as if it were an unknown treasure.

The entire world's “good,” especially its religiosity that comes in acts of sacrifice, is finally worthless when it comes to God. Thankfully, God has come down deep in the flesh to crawl through death to life so that accomplished, sinful, self-lovers like you might be put to death under God's wrath, then raised by his un-thwartable mercy apart from all that you do and don't do, apart from all law and commands, in Christ. To have this fate is what it means for you to be free in Christ today and always.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin