A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the tenth chapter:
[Jesus said:] “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It seems that we live in unpeaceful times, where riots are happening around us and people are being killed in the streets by unjust people who should be acting justly. We live in a time where a virus is among us. This is a horrible, horrible time to be alive, and yet still is not a different time than any other. So when Jesus says in our Gospel lesson, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth, I've not come to bring peace but a sword,” that actually isn't what He's talking about at all, these unpeaceful times. Rather what Jesus is talking about is that for his message, the message of Jesus Christ, the message that he has come to redeem the world, because of that there will be no peace. In fact father will turn against son and son against father, daughter against mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. The reality is when you are a Christian and you are spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and living in a way that Christ would expect of you, obeying his commands, there will be no peace for you.
Relatively, we have lived in a pretty good amount of peace. The last few hundred years in the western world have been pretty decent and even, I would say, beyond that, generally Christians have lived in peace, but we are now in a time when there is more persecution in the church or of the church than ever has been. The church in China, the church in Africa, they are being persecuted like the Church has never seen before – entire Villages wiped out in a single night, churches destroyed razed to the ground, their pastors disappeared in the middle of the night never to be heard from again. And why is that? It is because the Gospel of Jesus Christ separates you out from the world, for what can the world do to you if you have a higher hope than what you can find in the world?
The world would rather have you under its thumb, but instead we look at Jesus and we say we are a slave to you, O God; make us righteous in our servitude. See the world wants our righteousness. They want us to be righteous for them. They want us to do the right thing according to them all the time. Perhaps you're not on social media. My guess is many of you are not and I would suggest you stay that way, but there has been a new thing that has appeared in the last few years called virtue signaling, where it is necessary for you to say something in just the right way about a specific topic, in order that the Twitter mobs or the Facebook mobs would not come after you. If you don't say the right thing at the right time in the right way, you're accused of things like being a white supremacist or a racist or a bigot or a homophobe or any of the other things that are out there in the world that the world says you should not be.
It’s a sad time and if you don't virtue signal then you're essentially cut off. We've seen it all over the twittersphere, if you will, how people are cut off for saying the wrong thing or not even saying the right thing. And I notice that it tends to be, I would say ,conservative voices that are silenced more than any others. What's fascinating about that is that these conservative voices aren't even Christian and they’re cut off.
Imagine now the Christian who speaks out to the gospel of the Lord to people, imagine how they will be cut off from the world. Imagine how the world desires to destroy them. If it can happen to secular conservative thinkers, and I would say there are probably even some liberal thinkers out there who have had this happen to them, too, if it can happen to them, how much more so you?
The peace that Jesus wants to bring, he will not bring to this world at this time because the message of Jesus Christ is too great for this world to bear. That's why when in Revelation we see Jesus coming back the rulers of this world hide themselves in caves and beg for the mountains to fall down on them because they know that the power that has been granted to them by God has been misused in such a way that they will have to answer for their crimes and especially for their sin. And they don't want to, They know, even now, that the way they abused their power granted them from on high is wrong.
And then, when Jesus comes back, he will bring that peace and when we are all raised from the dead, when we are all there together with Jesus, we shall truly find peace. And as our hymn said there we shall even find our mirth, though we find it not in this world. It's not to say that, you know, we as Christians can't find joy in this world. It's not to say even that we cannot enjoy some modicum of peace even now. For instance, I would venture a guess to say that none of us feel as if we are being specifically persecuted right now, but that day is coming. And that day is coming, and I know that you will be faithful because you have been faithful. You have a greater hope than what you can find in this world.
But the world's day is coming when it will chase you down to destroy you, to take away your hope in Jesus Christ, and to do things to you that are so unmentionable that we dare not even give them a thought, for to dwell on such things may tempt us to be led into despair.
The reality that we live in is a dangerous time. The reality that we live in is hard. The reality that we live in is against Jesus; it is anti-Christ.
And Jesus here says” I don't come to protect my followers. I come instead to divide them, not follower from follower, but believer from unbeliever.” There will be a greater divide that comes for us, the church, between we who believe in Jesus Christ and those who would do us harm. So what are we to do?
What are we to do do we fight back against the mobs? Do we raise arms against those who would destroy us? Even last week we find that people want to destroy themselves, over in Madison having ripped down the Forward statute, a statute which is dedicated to women's voting rights, and the statue of an abolitionist was beheaded and thrown into the lake. Not only that but they even beat up one of their own, one who identifies with those who are sinning, with those who are rioting. They took out one of their own, and what shall we do when these things happen, when they come after us, when they come and deface our church, when they come and rip brick from brick, when they tear down the roof, when they burn the place to the ground and put you in front of it and demand that you kowtow to the world's agenda? What shall you do?
Jesus says, “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water, he is my disciple.” We don't fight back against the world because the world has already been defeated. We don't live in peace because the world is in its death throes. We don't fight against it because it is shaking in fear over the fact that Christ has defeated sin, death, and the devil and is coming to destroy this world, and remake it according to his purpose and His image for it. We don't fight, because the war has already been won. It does not mean that you don't use your responsibility and your privilege as a citizen of this nation to try to vote people in to enforce good laws.
But as a Christian, when they come up against you to persecute you, to lead you into their righteousness, as opposed to the righteousness of Christ, you don't need to fight nor do you need to fear.
Jeremiah today gave us some hope that a prophet would one day come and speak peace. And when that peace happens, you truly know that he is a prophet. No prophet has ever come to speak peace. None. Not even Jesus. Jesus does want to bring peace and he will bring peace but he does not speak peace to this world. He did not command it to be still before his power and majesty but instead he says, “I come not to bring peace.” No prophet has spoken peace. This prophecy is yet unfilled.
And yet we see when Jesus comes back to this world, there will be peace, and truly then as he speaks to this world, and remakes the world according to his purpose, according to his will, then truly we shall see that he is the last prophet, the last prophet, for he is the one who shall speak peace to your heart and speak peace to the world. And the world may no longer assault you, but now everything has been to his will for sin has been cast out of it.
All this, my friends, is done, of course, we know, through his cross, where the prince of Glory died, where he shed his blood for you, where that blood not only is delivered to you in your baptism and in the Lord's Supper, but it even was poured out into the earth that it may await the day of his coming. His blood atones for all sin and will redeem all things for him. His blood shall bring us peace.
We do have a glimpse of that, of course, and I've already mentioned it, in our service today, not only in the words of absolution, where there is peace between you and God, in the words of the invocation, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, where you are reminded that you are a baptized child of God bearing his name in the world.
And it will come to you in the Supper, where you will have your sins forgiven yet again and be strengthened unto everlasting life. These things are peace, but they are peace between you and your lord and with one another. They are a promise to you that God is not displeased with you, but has declared you to be holy. It is a peace that passes all human understanding. It is a peace that lasts forever.
And yet the world shall fight against us. The world should seek to kill us, the world would make us been the need to itself, and we will not. Instead, we will go out and we will serve this world humbly, and justly, and with great mercy, for we are Christians. That is our duty, to go to those who are hurting, to go to those who need Jesus. Our duty is to go to them and preach the gospel in the hopes that they may hear his word and turn from their sins and be found together with us in everlasting life. Our duty is to go to them, giving them what they need, according to God's will, whether that be food or drink, whether that be justice, whether it be mercy, whether it be patience or kindness or joy. Our duty is to go to the world and serve those out there that they may be counted faithful along with us. And if they should raise their hand to strike us or their sword to strike us down, we humbly accept that punishment for being Christians in an unbelieving world, because our Lord is greater than a sword. Our Lord is greater than a striking hand. Our Lord is one who has made peace with us with God. Our Lord delivers that to you here every time we gather together.
May you be reminded of that peace which exists between you and God now and forever that you may have the strength of faith to endure even the worst of all persecutions. May we follow those saints who have come before us, dying for the name of Jesus. May we also be found faithful, in Jesus name. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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