Welcome to the Lightly Salted Podcast.
These are the readings and sermons of St. John's Lutheran Church of Park Rapids, Minnesota.
They are offered so that the Word of God would shape and strengthen you to be what he calls you to be,
salt and light.
You can find us at stjohnspr.org.
Now, on to the Word.
Our first reading for this, the sixth Sunday of Easter,
is recorded for us in the Acts of the Apostles, the 17th chapter.
Paul has moved from Thessalonica and he is now in Greece
and he has an opportunity to proclaim the good news of who God is
and especially to point the listeners to the fact that Jesus, who God raised from the dead,
is the appointed judge.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens,
his spirit was provoked within him.
As he saw that the city was full of idols.
So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons
and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him.
And some said,
What does this babbler wish to say?
Others said, He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities
because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
And they took hold of him and brought him to the Arap-
hmmm
It either comes out or it doesn't.
Arapagos saying,
May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting.
For you bring some strange things to our ears.
We wish to know therefore what these things mean.
Now, the Athenians and foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing
except telling or hearing something new.
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Arapagos, said,
Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship,
I found also an altar with this inscription,
To the unknown God.
What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it,
being Lord of heaven and earth,
does not live in temples made by man,
nor is he served by human hands,
as though he needed anything,
since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
And he made from one man every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth,
having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
that they should seek God,
in the hope that they may feel their way toward him and find him.
Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,
for in him we live and move and have our being,
even as some of your own poets have said,
for we are indeed his offspring.
Being then God's offspring,
we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone,
an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
The times of ignorance got overlooked,
but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
because he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness
by a man whom he has appointed.
And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Our Epistle reading, we continue reading through the first letter of Peter.
We're in the third chapter.
Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?
But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake,
you will be blessed.
Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.
But in your hearts, regard Christ the Lord as holy,
always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you
for a reason for the hope that is in you.
Yet, do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience,
so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ
may be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will,
than for doing evil.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,
that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh,
but made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison,
because they formally did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah,
while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons,
were brought safely through water.
Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you,
not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven
and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers,
having been subjected to him.
This, too, is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the 14th chapter.
Glory to you, O Lord.
As we are nearing the end of the Easter season, Ascension being this Sunday,
our Gospel reading actually takes us back to a time before, or on the night of Jesus' betrayal,
before the cross, before the tomb, and before the resurrection,
when Jesus is instructing his disciples and says to them,
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper,
to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.
Yet a little while, the world will see me no more, but you will see me.
Because I live, you also will live.
In that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.
This is the Gospel of our Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
As I mentioned in the introduction, our Gospel reading today
took us back to the night of Jesus' betrayal, before the trial, before the cross, before the tomb,
and before the resurrection.
Jesus tells his disciples, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Now here's the thing, that statement is not a command from Jesus.
Telling us what we ought to do as Christians.
Rather, it is a statement of fact.
It's a description of reality.
Jesus' teaching that love shapes who we are and what we do.
Love isn't lazy, love isn't invisible, love always acts,
and if we could love perfectly, our entire life would be that of doing his commandments.
Because they are really a description of perfect love.
The first table, the first three commandments, the perfect love toward God.
It means that we would love God with all our heart, all our soul, with all our mind.
And the second table, the commandments four through ten, tell us of perfect love toward our neighbor.
Which means, simply, you will love your neighbor as yourself.
And so if we love perfectly, this is exactly what we would do.
This is what our life would look like.
We would automatically keep all of the commandments,
because they are a description of the Christian life.
Which just begs the question, are they a description of your life?
Well, on the one hand, on my really good days, I do quite a few things that are pretty good, right?
I mean, nobody has ever charged me with manslaughter or anything like that.
I've been faithful to my wife.
Well, okay, let's maybe, we'll check about that sort of lying, deceiving, gossiping thing.
Oh, but certainly loving God all the time?
If we're honest, the answer is no.
If we're honest, we meant what we just confessed at the beginning of our service.
Most merciful God, we have not loved you with our whole heart,
and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have failed both tables, the commandments.
We have failed each and every commandment, instruction, and guidance given by God.
We do not, and we have not lived the Christian life, because we have not loved perfectly.
Because the original sin, the sin that we were born with, the commandments, the Christian life,
perfect love, is actually beyond our reach.
So where does that leave us?
Well, actually, and perhaps ironically, that leaves us right where we need to be.
Acknowledging our sin and inability and our failure is actually the first step in living the Christian life.
To look at the commandments and to see in them a standard that we cannot attain
is to receive them and to know exactly how God intended them.
Because while God's law gives guidance to life, it is in itself not a life-giving thing.
Rather, the commandments show us our sin, they show us our need, they show us our failure,
they show us our lack of love and our lack of life.
They show us that on our own, we cannot live the Christian life no matter how hard we try.
And when we acknowledge that truth, we are right where God wants us to be,
because it is when we are dead in our trespasses and sins that God gives us life.
True life, Christian life, Christ life.
And that's the key.
To understand that Christian life is not something that we are able to do or to accomplish,
but that it in fact is a gift that is given to us from God.
It is a gift of His grace.
And so Jesus in the gospel continues telling His disciples where this life comes from.
Because I live, Jesus said a little bit later, you also will live.
In other words, our life is grounded in His life and apart from Him, you have no real life.
But because He lives, we also live.
Because He died and rose again, we who are born without life, without love, also rise to new life in Him.
And so given this life by and in Jesus, that's where we begin to love and to live
as He has loved and as He has lived, to live the Christ life, the Christian life.
And how this all happens, Jesus also tells His disciples.
After describing the Christian life, He then tells them how it will come about.
And it's not from what they do, but rather from what He will do.
And I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.
He dwells with you and will be in you.
Another helper, Jesus says.
Well, the first helper was Jesus Himself, the Son of God become man to take our sin,
to die for our sin on the cross, to rise in victory over our sin in life again.
This work of Jesus conquering our sin, our death, even our enemy, the devil, that's what earns forgiveness of sins.
That's what brings a gift of new and even eternal life.
And it is this new life that we celebrate the entire Easter season and in fact the entire church year
because every Sunday is a little Easter.
But though Jesus has earned this gift for us, it's not enough because the gift needs to be given, doesn't it?
I mean, imagine you purchase your Christmas gift, you wrap it up,
but then it's never taken out of the closet and put under the tree.
The gift would be incomplete.
And so it is with our salvation and the redemption earned by Jesus on the cross.
It must be given after all.
It is a gift.
And so Jesus says, I will send another helper and this one will give you what I have earned.
This one will join you to me.
This one, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, is the Lord and giver of life.
And this promise of Jesus came true for the disciples first on the day of Pentecost
as he asked his Father and as he sent to his disciples to his church his Holy Spirit.
But it's not just the disciples.
This gift of God has been given to you.
The Holy Spirit has been given to you.
For many of us it was a gift in the waters of holy baptism
when God himself is at work uniting us to Jesus' death, to his resurrection,
to giving us this new life, this Christ life.
The Holy Spirit is given to you every time the word of God is proclaimed.
Every time we hear the blessed words of absolution, the forgiveness of our sins,
the new life is given to you again as a gift.
And the Holy Spirit is given again as a gift in Holy Communion.
Whereas we receive the very body and blood of Jesus,
the Holy Spirit strengthens and keeps us in this new life, this Christ life.
The gift of the Spirit is not just given once and then, well, we're left to go it on our own
and take care of and sustain this Christ life?
No way! Because we know it's impossible.
We know how much we continue to sin.
We know how corrupt our thoughts and our emotions are.
As we considered at the beginning of the sermon, we don't keep the commandments.
We fall and we fail, even as Christians.
And so the Holy Spirit is the gift that God keeps giving.
He keeps pouring the Spirit on us and giving us the gift of forgiveness.
And as Jesus says, so that he might dwell with you and be in you.
Jesus says, I do not leave you as orphans.
He comes to us and his Spirit comes to us and through them the Father lives in us also.
And there we have new life.
There we have the Christ life.
And this is a life that we are now privileged to live.
It is not a life of perfection.
It's not even a life of ever increasing holiness in us.
As if we'd have something to be proud of because look how far I've come, baby.
Our sinful urges still get the best of us.
Our sinful thoughts harass us constantly.
Our emotions would deceive us all the time.
Our sinful flesh and the allurements of the world.
There's always a temptation to live the high life instead of the Christ life.
And so living the Christ life is not about achieving perfection or holiness,
something we can't do.
It is about receiving Christ's holiness and perfection.
The Christ life is begun, it is continued, and it is ended in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
A life of constant dying in repentance and confession and being given the new life of the forgiveness of our sins.
And as we live and move and have our being as Paul would say in Christ,
in the gift of His life and His Spirit, breathing His Word and receiving from Him,
then the life and love of Christ will be evident in your life as well.
And with His love you will begin keeping His commandments,
loving and serving and sacrificing.
Because Christ lives in you, you may even have the audacity to lay down your life,
giving up and going out of your way for others.
Not because you have to, but because Christ lives in you.
Not because you have to do this to merit a relationship with God,
but simply because you are a child of God, living the life of Christ in you.
When we pray as Jesus taught us, thy kingdom come,
we're not just praying that God's kingdom would come at the end of time,
but that it would also come to us here and now.
His kingdom of grace and love and forgiveness in His Son.
And how does the kingdom of God come to us now?
Well, the small catechism tells us the answer.
Very similar words to what Jesus spoke here.
God's kingdom comes when our Heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit,
that by His grace we believe His Holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.
God's kingdom comes in the gift of the Holy Spirit,
who grants us faith to believe God's Word.
The Holy Spirit who gives us life, the life of Christ to live.
And this Christ life, we will live not only here and now, but also in eternity.
After all, Jesus said it, because I live, you also will live.
And that's not a command.
That's a promise. For Christ is risen.
Hallelujah.
May the peace of God found in the life of Christ be yours now and forever. Amen.
Amen.