John 3, 1-15

When the Children of Israel spoke against God and His servant Moses, complaining bitterly about the manna He graciously provided each morning during their journey to the Promised Land, God allowed the venomous snakes that had been kept from their camp to slither in among them. These snakes bit the people, injecting venom that produced a wound so painful it felt as if they were on fire, and many died. While it may not have seemed like it at the time, this was actually an act of mercy—not only because it brought the people to repentance, but also because it served as a vivid reminder of a greater suffering caused by just one serpent. Satan, having possessed the body of a snake, injected our first parents with a venom far more powerful: sin. This venom causes not just physical pain but fiery spiritual death in hell, and it has been passed down to all people through the sinful seed of their father.

No wonder, then, that Adam and Eve, after being infected with sin, ran and hid among the trees when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden. No wonder Isaiah, who inherited this same sin, cried out in terror before God's throne, “Woe is me, for I am undone! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!” And no wonder sinful mankind has long tried to deal with its fear of God either by creating false gods or by denying God's existence altogether. But despite all human efforts, the decree of the holy God stands firm: whoever has been infected with the venom of sin, unless cured, will suffer eternal death in the fires of hell.

Yet, “Oh, the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.” These words remind us that it is not only God's Triune nature that confounds human reason, but also His gracious ways of working for our salvation. We see a foreshadowing of this in His dealings with the ungrateful Israelites. After using the venomous snakes to remind them of their need for His saving grace, He also provided a vivid picture of that salvation. God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and raise it on a pole. He attached to it a promise: anyone who was bitten and looked upon it in faith would live.

Jesus Himself explained the significance of this event to Nicodemus, saying, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Just as the venomous snakes represented Satan, so the bronze snake on the pole prefigured Christ on the cross. But why a snake—the image of Satan—as a symbol of Christ? Because the sinless Son of God became sin for us. He bore in His own body the deadly venom injected into Adam so that, by His bloody death on the cross, He might deliver us from the fiery death that sin brings.

This, then, is the incomprehensible way of our incomprehensible God. To reclaim His wayward children, the Father sent His Son into the world to suffer the hell we deserved. The Son offered up His life as a sin-offering to obtain the antidote for sin: God's forgiveness. The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, gives us faith to look to the crucified Christ and receive this antidote so that we may not die, but live.

But where are we to look for Him in faith? Christ is no longer on the cross, nor is He in the grave, but He has risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father. And since none of us can ascend into heaven, where then are we to find Him to receive the forgiveness that brings salvation and life? Just as God attached His promise of healing to the bronze serpent, and just as He purified Isaiah’s lips with a live coal from the altar, so too has He attached His promise of salvation to certain created things.

To Nicodemus, Jesus said, “...unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” This is a clear reference to Holy Baptism, through which God washes away all our sins. In Baptism, we who were born of sinful flesh are reborn from above as children of God and heirs of eternal life. But water is not the only created thing to which God has attached His saving promise. There is also the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, in which Christ unites His body and blood. By eating and drinking this Holy Feast, we are nourished with the forgiveness that renders sin’s deadly venom powerless.

To neglect Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is to reject Christ in unbelief. And he who rejects Christ will succumb to Satan’s venom and suffer the fiery death of hell. But the one born of the Spirit has faith to receive Christ in these means of grace and, therefore, will not perish but live in eternal communion with God—whose ways and essence are as glorious as they are incomprehensible.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

John 14, 23-31

            Just moments ago you heard Jesus say to his disciples, “If anyone loves me, he will keep (literally: hold tightly to) my word.”  To hold tightly to God’s Word is to believe all that it teaches.

            But what the law, which is part of God’s Word, teaches is that you were brought forth in iniquity and in sin your mother conceived you.  Because of this, what you do is not the good you want to do, but rather the evil you do not want to do.  And for this, you deserve to spend eternity with the devil and his angels in the blazing inferno that is hell. 

            Rather than hold tightly to that in faith, the nature of fallen flesh when it hears that is to reject it in anger.  And when it hears the Gospel, which is the other great teaching of God’s Word, promise salvation through the merits of Christ, it is offended, because that takes all glory away from man and makes him totally reliant on the mercy of God.

            Yet here you are, taking the Law to heart when it condemns you, and deriving comfort from the Gospel’s promise of salvation through Christ.  Why is that?  Why are you holding tightly to the Word, which your own sinful flesh rejects? 

            Many, listening to human reason rather than inspired Word, are convinced it’s because they chose to believe in Christ.  I agree that a choice was made.  But I strongly disagree that this was a choice you made, could make, or even wanted to make.  So does St. Paul, who wrote under inspiration, “The man without the Spirit does not  accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.”

            Still, a choice was made, just not by you. “In Christ God chose us before the foundation of the world,” St. Paul declares, “that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will… And you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is a guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession (which of course is you), to the praise of his glory.”

            What St. Paul wrote had been miraculously fulfilled on Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after our Lord’s Resurrection. According to Mosaic Law, on the first day of this eight day OT festival the first fruits of every grain harvest, which by law was one-tenth of that harvest, was to be brought to the Temple and presented to God as a thank offering.

            And this pointed ahead to an even greater harvest, the harvest of souls into his Church.  This harvest would take place, not by the actions of sinful men, but by the work of the Holy Spirit through his preached Word: Thus, this promise our Lord made to his disciples on Maundy Thursday, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” 

            And so it happened on this Pentecost Sunday.  As the disciples were all with one accord gathered together in one place, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, as evidence by the sound of a rushing wind (for the Holy Spirit is the Wind or Breath of God that breathes life into those who are dead in sin), and also by the tongues of fire (for as fire does created light, so the Holy Spirit shines the Light that is Christ upon those who walk in the darkness of unbelief).  And with the power of the Holy Spirit now in and working through them, these men began to speak to the people who had gathered before them when they too heard the sound of the wind the wonderful works of God.  For what could be more wonderful than for God to come down from heaven, take on our flesh, and be found as a man, than for him who is holy to bear our sin and who is immortal to die for those sins that we might be forgiven, than for him who is the Life to rise from the dead and in so doing, to conquer, not only death and the grave, but also sin and the devil, so that when we rise, it will not be to hell, but to everlasting life in heaven?

            In giving his Apostles the ability to preach these wonderful works of God and in giving the Jews, who had come from around the world for the Feast of Pentecost, the ability to hear those words in their own language no less, the Holy Spirit was able to blessed them with faith in Christ.  And 3,000 of them were baptized that day.  Thus, began the harvesting of souls into his Church during the NT Age. 

            And you, dear Christian, are part of that harvest.  Though it angered your sinful flesh, the Holy Spirit by the preaching of the Law convicted you of the sin you are, so that renouncing yourself, you asked what many in that Pentecost crowd did, “What shall I do?”  Then, by the preaching of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit told you what to do, even as he through St. Peter did the crowd that had gathered before him, “Repent and be baptized, everyone of you in the name of Jesus, for the remission of your sins.”

            Blessed with faith through the hearing of his preached Word, you were led by the Holy Spirit to the Font, whose Blessed Waters cleansed you of your sins and so, figuratively speaking, extinguished for you the fire to which you were condemned because of those sins.  But the Holy Spirit’s work in you did not end there.  Again, blessed with faith through the hearing of his preached Word, you are now led by the Holy Spirit up to this Altar, where you feast on the only Food of which a man may eat and live forever: the Food of Christ’s Body and Blood under Blessed Bread and Wine. 

            And though many other churches solely for the sake of popularity have exchanged preaching Law and Gospel for teaching lessons on morality, and have turned the life-giving Sacraments into nothing more than an outward show, the Holy Spirit has brought you into a church, where the Word is preached in its truth and the Sacraments are administered according to their institution, so that you can do what those Christians of old did after they were baptized: “Continue steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and in fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.”

            That is why you are here today.  It’s wasn’t because you at some point in your life made a good choice, but because the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, blessed you with faith to keep - that is, to hold tightly to - his Word says, that life and salvation come solely through the merits of your Savior Jesus Christ, to the praise of his glory.

            In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

John 15, 26-16:5

On Maundy Thursday, after the Lord instituted the Holy Supper and washed his disciples’ feet in an act of humility and service, he spoke to them of things to come. He told them how the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, would testify of him—not only to them, but also through them as his Apostles. Then the Lord issued this warning to them: “These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble”—that is, to fall from the faith. “They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.”

Yet stumble they did, that very night in fact, as they fled out of the garden in fear and hid themselves in a locked room. St. Peter, who earlier had boasted he would never do so, stumbled even further as he denied his Lord three times. Of course, they are by no means the only Christians to have done so. Because this is the nature of fallen flesh, you, led by the sin in which you were conceived, also stumble—every day of your earthly life. You stumble when you forsake God, as did the disciples, for that which is unholy. In doing so, you also deny God, as did St. Peter, foolishly believing that this is what you must do to protect your life, when in fact the very opposite is true. He who forsakes and denies God is in danger of losing his life, for he has separated himself from him who is our Life.

But take heart, dear Christian. Even though the disciples stumbled, even though they all forsook him and one denied him three times, in mercy and in grace they were restored. They were, because after our Lord taught them in that upper room, he allowed himself to be arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, after which he was put on trial and subjected to false accusations, mocking, and even beatings. Though he had broken no law, he was sentenced—not just to death, but to the worst, most painful, most humiliating death ever devised by men. On Golgotha our Lord was crucified, and after six hours—not only of physical torture but also of facing the wrath of his Father over the sins of the world—he gave up his life as the Sacrifice, the one-and-for-all Sacrifice, that atoned for the sins of the world.

It was by the shedding of his holy, precious blood on that cursed tree that our Lord paid for his disciples’ stumbling, for Peter’s denial, and yes, for your transgressions—your stumbling and denials as well. By his death he destroyed him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, as he won your forgiveness. In his emptying of the tomb is the promise that your grave too will be emptied someday. And in his Ascension is the promise that when you are raised, you will ascend, as did he, into heaven to live in blessed communion with your God eternally.

That you believe, and do not deny or even just doubt this, Christ sends the Holy Spirit from the Father to testify of what he has done to save you. He works faith in you by your hearing of his testimony, so that you live no longer for this life, but for the even better one that is to come. This faith-producing Word the Holy Spirit proclaims to you through his Church.

Thus, what Jesus told his disciples in that upper room, he now says to you as ones who were incorporated into his Church by Holy Baptism: “You also are to bear witness.” You bear witness of Christ not through canned evangelism programs or by intruding into people’s privacy when you confront them at their front door, but in what you say to others when the opportunity to speak of Christ arises—and even more emphatically in the way you conduct yourself around the people of this world.

But do you know that from the Greek word for witness, which is “martyrion,” comes the English word “martyr”? For how could you give a greater witness of Christ than to suffer for Christ? And the more clearly you bear witness of Christ to others in both word and deed, the more deeply you will be hated by this world, which flat-out rejects Christ. We’ve seen evidence of this right here in our own congregation. Because Christ is boldly proclaimed and confessed in our services, visitors have walked out, and a significant number of our own members refuse to attend.

But this should not surprise us. Our Lord told us this would happen: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil falsely against you for my name’s sake.” Again, “All men will hate you because of me.” And let’s not forget the words you heard from his mouth today: “The time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.”

And don’t think these warnings applied only to Christians in Biblical times. Persecution comes to Christians of every age so long as they are living in this sinful world—and not as punishment for their sins. It’s not a punishment to suffer for Christ, but an honor. In fact, “To this you were called,” St. Peter explains, “because Christ also suffered for us, leaving an example, that you should follow in his steps.”

So, persecution has come, is coming, and will continue to come against Christians—and not only from evil men outside, but also from hypocrites within the Church. Remember, it was the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jews, who handed Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified.

And though, due to the nature of our fallen flesh, we may at times hide our faith or even deny it, as did St. Peter, this is our hope: that when we stumble, our Lord is there to pick us up; when we fall away, our Lord comes after us, and when he finds us, he carries us back into the safety of his Church. There, the Holy Spirit strengthens our faith through his Word, so that we face rather than flee persecution. There he also feeds us the Food that sustains us as his disciples: his Body that was given and his Blood that was shed.

And because he does, you, dear Christian, can live in the sure and certain hope that what was true of Christ will also be true of you. As glory came to him through the cross he bore for you in his life, so through the crosses you bear for him in your life will also come glory—a glory without measure, that lasts forever, in the life to come.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

John 16, 23-30

Prayer is without a doubt one of the most common forms—maybe even the most common form—of worship. Every person who considers himself religious prays. Even those who are not religious may do so when everything else they’ve tried has failed.

But is every prayer heard and answered? No. I direct you to the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel during the days of Elijah as proof of this. In an attempt to have their god rain fire down from heaven and consume their sacrifice, they prayed as persistently as anyone can: from morning till evening, we are told, and as intensely as anyone can, even mutilating their bodies with knives and lances until their blood flowed. And what was the result? “No one answered, no one paid attention.”

Of course not, for these prophets prayed to an idol that could neither hear nor help them. And sadly, many Christians today pray to dead people who cannot hear or help them either. But the misconceptions concerning prayer do not stop there, I’m afraid. Many Christians today—again in the fashion of those false prophets of old—see prayer as a way to manipulate God and compel Him to do what they want. They may not mutilate themselves as those men did, but they falsely and foolishly believe that the more they pray, and the more people they can get to pray on their behalf, the better their chances are of getting a favorable answer.

Thankfully, we don’t have a God whom we can manipulate to carry out our will. We have a God who, in His grace and mercy, is determined to carry out His will for us, which is our eternal salvation. And good thing, too. Listen again to these Spirit-inspired words of St. James: “…he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”

The Law of God is a mirror, in which you see an honest reflection of yourself. If, after examining yourself in this mirror, you see the reflection of a person who does all that the law demands—who is pure in thought, word, and deed—you will be blessed by what you do, not only in this life, but also in the life to come. But that’s not what you see, is it? In fact, it’s the very opposite. When you examine yourself in the mirror of God’s holy Law, comparing your works to those that God demands of you, you see the reflection of a sinner who has earned for himself a one-way ticket to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

That you do not despair over this, let me say it again: God’s will is not that you perish, but that you have everlasting life in blessed communion with Him. For this reason He sent His only begotten Son into the world to do for you what you, weakened by sin, could never do for yourself. The Word, who was with God in the beginning—because He is God—became flesh. The Sinless made His dwelling among the sinful. But even more remarkable, the Holy One became sin for you that He might suffer the punishment that your sin brought down upon you.

This He did by His cursed death on the cursed tree. And after He obtained God’s full and free forgiveness of all your sins through this, He was taken down from the cross and laid to rest in a tomb—but not for long. On the third day, He took up His life again, and forty days after that, ascended to the Father—not to abandon you, but so that He could wash and cleanse you of all your sins in the flood of your Baptism. And after that, place His Body united to bread into your mouth to eat and pour His Blood united to wine over your lips to drink, for the forgiveness of your sins. For he whose sins are forgiven by Him has life and salvation through Him.

But only he who believes this receives these gifts. Thus, your Lord—who gives Himself to you in the Sacraments—speaks to you through His Word. For it is through your hearing of His Word that the Holy Spirit blesses you with faith to receive your Savior where He is present for you and for your salvation today.

Now, it is in the light of all this, and only in that light, that Jesus made this promise directly to His disciples on the night He was betrayed, and indirectly to you through the pen of St. John: “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you.”

The first and most obvious thing He teaches by these words is to whom you are to pray. It is not to false gods, as pagans do, nor is it to dead people, as do far too many misinformed Christians, but it is only to the one true God. For He who is ever-present will hear you, He who is almighty can help you, and He who is love will in love do whatever must be done to save you.

But is this God not also holy? And is it not a fact that any sinner who dares to approach Him on his own will be struck down and die? Indeed, it is—which is why Jesus didn’t say, “Whatever you ask the Father He will give you,” but, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name He will give you.”

To pray “in Jesus’ name” is to pray in the faith that you can approach this holy God through Him who is your righteousness, and He will receive you, hear you, and answer your prayers—every one of them—regardless of where or when you pray them.

You can find proof of this also on Mount Carmel. God didn’t answer the prayer of those prophets who prayed to a false god. But when His prophet Elijah prayed, “O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again,” the fire of the Lord fell down from heaven and consumed his sacrifice—even the altar on which it lay. And as the people of Israel, who were wavering at the time as to whether the Lord was God or Baal, saw it, they fell down on their faces and confessed, “The Lord, He is God!”

Therefore, dear Christian, when you pray, pray as did Elijah: confidently and without any doubt or uncertainty that your Father in heaven, for Jesus’ sake, will answer your prayer and give you—not necessarily what you want—but always what you need for your salvation.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

John 16, 5-15

It is arguably the most well-known passage in all of Scripture: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” The words are clear. Everlasting life, which is life in blessed communion with God, is not earned by what one does for Jesus but is freely given to those who trust in what Jesus has done for them.

This Gospel is proclaimed throughout the Old Testament. Adam named his wife Eve, which means “living,” because he believed God’s promise that the Woman’s Seed would restore life to fallen man, crushing the serpent’s head by allowing the serpent to strike his heel in the process. Of Abraham it was said, “He believed in the Lord, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Abraham was not righteous; he still sinned. But God counted him as righteous because he was blessed with faith to believe that the Messiah, who would come into the world through his seed, would win his salvation. Earlier, the prophet Isaiah confessed the same when he said, “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust in him and not be afraid.”

The New Testament proclaims that the Messiah God promised of old is his Son, Jesus Christ, who declared to Martha, as she grieved over the death of her brother Lazarus, “Whoever lives and believes in me, though he may die a physical death, shall never die an eternal death.” St. Peter, not long after Pentecost, stood before the Jewish Sanhedrin—the very same body that condemned Jesus—and confessed, “Salvation is found only in Jesus Christ. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” And a few years later, when a jailer in the Greek town of Philippi asked Paul and Silas what he had to do to be saved, they didn’t reply, “Be a good person and keep the commandments as best you can,” but rather, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”

So why do so many who profess to be Christians look not only to their Savior’s redemptive work but also to the works of men—whether their own or those of another—for their salvation? Why do more and more people today want the funeral of their loved one to be a celebration of his earthly life, which was a life of sin (or else he wouldn’t have died), rather than a celebration of what Christ has done to give him eternal life? And why is it that an alarming number of Lutherans, who were taught that salvation is the gift the Son of God won for them by his sufferings, death, and resurrection, find so many excuses not to come to Christ in his service, where he is present to give this gift to them?

In a word: unbelief. The sinful flesh—passed down to every one of us through the sinful seed of our fathers—refuses to believe that we are so corrupted and so lost in sin that we can do nothing to merit or contribute, even in the tiniest bit, to our salvation. All we have earned for ourselves by our deeds—and all we can earn—is God’s temporal and eternal punishment.

But do not despair. Our sinful flesh may be hostile to God, but God is not hostile to us. On the contrary, he is a God of grace, a God who desires our salvation—and not only ours, but the salvation of the world.

That should be evident to you in this promise, which Jesus made to his disciples on the night he was betrayed. They were filled with sorrow because he said he was going away. He told them, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper (whom he later identified as the Spirit of truth) will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send him to you.” Then he explained why this was to their advantage: “He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it to you.”

Last week, I heard a local Roman Catholic bishop, when interviewed by a newscaster, say that God speaks to us not only in his Word but also through the Pope. Nowhere does Scripture make such a claim. Listen again to these words of St. James: “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” Do you hear anything in that about the Pope’s words? No! It is through the preaching of God’s Word alone that the Holy Spirit takes what is Christ’s and declares it to you. And it is through your hearing of his Word that he blesses you with faith to believe what it says: that life and salvation come not by what you do for Christ—as the Pope and other false prophets teach—but solely by what Christ has done for you.

But because your flesh does not want to believe that, the Holy Spirit must first convict you of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment through the preaching of the Law, which is part of his Word: of sin, because you who were conceived in sin are under the power of sin; of righteousness, because everything you do is so tainted by that sin that it’s impossible for you to make yourself righteous in God’s sight; and of judgment, because whoever trusts in his own deeds for salvation will be judged and condemned with Satan to the unquenchable fires of hell.

Now, once the Holy Spirit convicts you of that through the preaching of the Law, then he, through the Gospel, declares what Christ Jesus has done, still does, and will do for you as your Savior. What he did was bear your sins even to death on the cross, and by this, he merited God’s full and free forgiveness of all those sins. What he does for you today is come to you in the Word that is preached and, even more personally, in the Holy Feast of his Body and Blood, which is served to you so that the forgiveness he merited for all by his salvific work might be given to you for life and salvation.

And because you—whom the Holy Spirit has blessed with faith to believe this—are accounted as righteous in God’s sight, you live in the sure and certain hope of what your now exalted Lord will do for you when he comes again in glory. He will welcome you to live in blessed and eternal communion with him.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

John 16, 16-23

Seven times the Holy Evangelist used the phrase “a little while.” Do you think he’s trying to tell us something?

Jesus, who spoke these words, certainly was his disciples. In a little while, the very next day in fact, they would experience the sorrow of losing him in death. But in a little while, on the third day to be exact, he would rise from the dead, and they would see him again. And their sorrow would turn into joy.

However, forty days later Jesus would ascend into heaven. And though we do see his gracious acts, which he after Pentecost carried out through his Apostles and continues to do so today through his ordained ministers, we do not see him. But, in a little while we will see him, when he returns in glory to bring us home with him into heaven.

A little while? It’s already been over 2,000 years! How can you call that “a little while”? “Beloved, do not forget this one thing,” St. Peter explained to the Christians of his day, “that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.”

There’s no doubt that our Lord’s definition of “a little while” is not our definition. After all, we are creatures of time. We judge when things happen by hours, days, weeks, months, and years. But God, who is from everlasting to everlasting, dwells in eternity, which is outside of time. With him there is no, “What was,” or, “What will be;” but only, “What is.”

He confessed this when he revealed his name to Moses at the Burning Bush, and through Moses to the Children of Israel in bondage, as I AM. And our Lord Jesus Christ applied that same name to himself, when he said, “I AM the Bread of life,” “I AM the Light of the world,” “I AM the Good Shepherd,” and so on. He does not call himself, “I was,” or, “I will be,” but rather, “I AM,” which led his OT people to call him, “Jaweh,” a Hebrew verb form, which translated means, “HE IS.”

I know. To us who live in time, that goes way beyond what we can comprehend. But in heaven we will, for there we too will be living in the realm of eternity. In heaven, as well as in hell (for the damned also live outside of time), there is no past or future; only what is, whether that is the suffering and despair of hell or the bliss and glory of heaven.

Compared to that, everything here in time lasts only for “a little while.” And for us Christians, that means that in a little while all our suffering, pain, and sorrows will pass away. Our Lord used a rather vivid—and on this Mother’s Day I would say a most appropriate—illustration to impress this truth upon his Apostles: “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 man has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.”

The disciples did believe that Jesus is I AM, the God who delivered their ancestors from bondage in Egypt and led them through the wilderness for forty years to the Promised Land of Canaan, and so also believed him to be Immanuel, that is, “God with us.” So when he explained to them that in a little while they would not see him, which implied he would not be with them, they were confused: “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me?’ We do not know what he is saying.”

What they did not know at the time, yet would in a little while, we by the grace of God know and believe today. Our Lord would go the way of the cross. He would offer his life for our life, suffer God’s wrath over our sins, become the One cursed of God to redeem us from the curse we sinful creatures brought upon ourselves, then be buried in a tomb far out of their sight. But in a little while, they would see him again, when he rose from the dead. And on that day their sorrow would turn into joy.

Then, forty days later, they would not see him again—in fact, not for the rest of their earthly life—for he would ascend into heaven. Yet this time they were not overcome with sorrow, just the opposite. They returned to Jerusalem with great joy, because of this promise he made to them before his Ascension, “And lo, I will be with you always even to the end of the age.”

Dear Christian, I AM is still Immanuel. The fact that you don’t see him doesn’t change that. He is still with you. In fact, you’ve met him and continue to meet him. You met him, for most of you years ago, in the waters of Holy Baptism, where he washed and cleansed you of all your sins. And you’re meeting him today, in the Word that is preached to you, for he is the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, as well as at this Altar, where you feast on his Body that was given and his Blood that was shed for you, for forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you won’t experience suffering, pain, and sorrows in this life. Everyone does, believer as well as unbeliever—for that’s the consequence of living in a world ruined by sin.

But this is your hope—and it’s a hope only Christians have—that in a little while, I AM will return to deliver you from every evil and bring you safely into his heavenly kingdom.

And on that day, that wonderful day when you see your Lord coming in the clouds with power and great glory, you will no longer remember the anguish you had to endure in this life. Instead, what Jesus said would happen to his disciples when he rose from the dead, will also happen to you when you are raised from the dead: Your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.