Pentecost XVI (Proper 21 C) [Luke 16:19-31] (29-Sep-2019)

This sermon was preached at Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Semaphore, 8.45am, and Good News Lutheran Church, Albert Park, 10.30am. 

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

This passage from the Gospel of Luke that we have as our Gospel reading today is just such an incredible reading, and it is such an amazing story that Jesus tells us. It has so many amazing things and incredible lessons for us to learn – it puts eternity before us in a very stark way which, actually, for our sinful hearts, for our sinful flesh, is very unpleasant. But it also puts before us an incredibly powerful comfort about what it means to be a Christian and to be saved.

So in our sermon today, I’m going to pick out of this text a few different topics. Firstly, let’s talk about poverty and wealth, and what it means as a Christian to be rich or to be poor.

In our Gospel reading, we read: There was a rich man who was clothed with purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. Later, we read that this particular rich man went to hell, but this particular poor man, Lazarus, went to heaven. And Abraham says to the rich man: Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.

Now, we can sometimes make the wrong conclusion from the passage, as if Jesus is teaching us that rich people are bad, poor people are good, rich people are all going to hell, poor people are all going to heaven. But that’s not quite true. When Lazarus went to heaven, we are told that he went to be with Abraham. Now, in this earthly life, was Abraham rich or poor? Let me read you from the beginning of Genesis 13: Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. Interesting—it turns out that not all rich people automatically go to hell. If all rich people were in hell, why is Abraham in heaven?

So let’s read about the good things that this rich man had. We read first of all, that he was a rich man—he had lots of money and possessions. We would assume—as well—that he had a very nice house. But what he also had was earthly comforts—he had nice clothes, and he was able to eat nice food every day. We often think about wealth simply in terms of a person’s money—but Jesus wants to draw our attention especially to his clothes and food: He was clothed in purple and fine linen and he feasted sumptuously every day.

Now, let’s read about the bad things that Lazarus had. We don’t read at all about Lazarus’s clothes. We read that he was poor—he didn’t have any money, or a home, because he was laid at the rich man’s gate. We read that, instead of being clothed with fine linen and purple cloth, he was covered in sores. He was sick, and infected with some kind of terrible skin disease, that must have caused him no end of itching and annoyance. The only comfort he received was the dogs who came and licked his sores. And what did he eat? Well, not much—but we read that he desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table.

Now, what is Jesus trying to teach us here? Well, first of all, we should realise that in this life, money, a home, good health, clothes and food are all good things, good gifts from God. Actually, Jesus even teaches us to pray for these things, when he says: Give us today our daily bread. When we have these things, we should thank God for it—because they are good things.

And when we see someone—and especially one of our fellow believers, our fellow Christians—who is particularly in need, and doesn’t have the things that they need, and is going hungry, or is sick, or homeless, or doesn’t have enough clothes to wear, our hearts should go out them in compassion, and we should do what we can to help them. Think here about the parable of the Good Samaritan, where he comes and sees the half-dead man on the street, and helps him. And Jesus says: Go and do likewise.

Now, I often think that sometimes (maybe, particularly in our country) in the church, we don’t see enough of this Christian charity at work. Now why is this? Sometimes, I think there are many of us who think we’re a lot poorer than we really are, and so we don’t thank God for what we have, and we don’t think to share it, because we think someone else should be sharing with us. Or, maybe we think because of Centrelink and government welfare, that there really isn’t anyone who really needs our help. If someone needs something, people think, they’ve probably brought it on themselves. Sometimes, we know, it isn’t easy to help people—for example, you can’t just give a drug addict money, if you know they’re just going to go and buy more drugs. They need a different kind of help, and sometimes the kind of help they don’t want. But the fact is with Lazarus: he was in need, and the rich man who was able to help him, didn’t help him. And so, Jesus teaches us here, very simply, if we see someone in need, we should help them.

In fact, this is how Jesus views us—he saw us from heaven in our need, and in all our sin, and in all our helplessness, and he came down from heaven, to share his riches with us. Now, these are heavenly riches—the forgiveness of sins, the promise of everlasting life—but he shares them with us, like a rich man, and let’s us not just eat the scraps off his table, but to feast with him. And so, Jesus wants to create in us a compassionate heart, a heart which reaches out to other people, to share what we have with them. When someone is burdened by guilt and has sinned, we can share the forgiveness of sins with them, and the message of everlasting life with them. And also, when we see someone in some kind of physical need of the body—if they are poor, sick, homeless, hungry—we can also reach out to them and share with them what we have.

Now, let’s leave this topic about being poor or rich, and what it means to be charitable, and let’s come to another topic that this reading talks about, which is the Scripture. When the rich man is in hell, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers. Instead, Abraham says: They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them. And he said, “No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

So we learn that on the one hand, we have a rich man and a poor man—from our earthly point of view, from the point of view of physical eyes, it looks like the rich man is blessed, and the poor man Lazarus is cursed. The rich man has money, health, house, expensive clothes and expensive food. The poor man has nothing. But there is something much more important that the poor man has, that the rich man doesn’t have. The poor man heard the Scripture—he listened to the words of Moses and the Prophets—and when he heard this message, and he trusted that there was going a Saviour who would die for his sins, the Holy Spirit went into his ears and created a living faith in him. And as he sat at the rich man’s gate, he knew that even though he had nothing in the eyes of the world, he had a God and a Saviour who loved him.

The rich man, on the other hand, also had the Scripture—he had Moses and the Prophets—but he didn’t listen to them. Why would he need to listen to them, when he already has everything that he needs? Instead, the rich man pushed the voice of God away from his heart, and hardened his heart to God, so much so that he couldn’t even have compassion on the man covered with sores at his gate.

And so, it’s just like what God said to the prophet Samuel when he went to choose the young King David to anoint him as the king. He said: The Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

So, in the end, Lazarus has nothing except the word of God. The rich man has everything except the word of God. In eternity, what this means, is that is Lazarus who has everything, and the rich man who has nothing.

Now, why did the Word of God—why did Moses and the Prophets—give so much to Lazarus? Because, this is the same Word of God that brought the entire universe out of nothing—and so it is more powerful than any money, houses, clothes and food in the entire world. This is simply the most important thing that we could learn in this life—it is so simple, and yet so many people—like this rich man—miss it, and harden their hearts to it, because it doesn’t look like much. It doesn’t look like the wealth, the spectacle, the glamour, that the rich man has. And so just as the rich man treated it all like nothing, so many people treat it like nothing.

Even in the church, this can also be the case. The Lutheran Church is here not simply because of Martin Luther, but because we claim to be a church of the word. Now, many churches can claim to have all kinds of things, but if they don’t have the word of God, they have nothing, and they are leading people on the wrong path. And it’s not like we Lutherans are immune—in fact, the devil is constantly at work trying to take the word of God away from us. And replace it with what? Well, sometimes the word of God can be replaced by traditions, by wealth, by spectacle. Sometimes, the word of God can be replaced by our own reason, our own intellect, our own thinking. Sometimes, the word of God can be replaced by experiences, visions, miracles, ghosts, spirits, and feelings.

Even this happens in our reading. Abraham tells the rich man in hell that if his five brothers have Moses and the Prophets, they have everything they need. What does the rich man say? He says: No—father Abraham—but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. The rich man knows full well that his brothers are all a bit bored with the word of God. It would really shake them up if the ghost of Lazarus gave them a talking to. No—it doesn’t work like that. And so, we have an incredible warning in this reading. When we have the word of God, we have everything. When we don’t have it, we have nothing. So—don’t be bored with it. Savour every opportunity to hear it, and to read it, and to think about it. We have Moses and the Prophets, and we have the apostles, and we actually do have Jesus physically risen from the dead. What excuse do we have? The day of salvation is now, and Jesus is calling you. Don’t reject him when he walks by.

Now, I’d like come to another topic in our reading—and that is the whole question of salvation, about heaven and hell. Now, a lot of us pastors don’t like to preach too much about hell, and there’s probably a good reason for it. Sometimes, people talk about the old days, like the only thing any pastor every talked about was “hellfire and brimstone”! You can go and read books of sermons from all kinds of times and you can see that that isn’t true.

However, when topics comes up in our readings, we should talk about them. And this passage today is one of the most vivid descriptions that Jesus gives about hell. The rich man lifts up his eyes and sees Lazarus far away and out of his reach. He says: I am in anguish in this flame. He wants his tongue to be cooled by a drop of water. He calls it a place of torment. Abraham says: Now, you are in anguish.

If there’s one thing that seems to be destroying the Christian faith everywhere today, is this whole idea that at the end of the day, “everyone’s going to be alright, Jack.” Many Christians today think that there really isn’t a hell, and that there’s nothing really wrong with anyone, and so, we’re all going to be saved anyway. We might think this for good reasons—we might see other people we know and love who care nothing for Jesus and his word, and we don’t want to have to think about them in eternal torment. It’s a thing that should make us incredibly sad and worried for them. So people sometimes fall into a trap, called “universalism”. “Universalism” means that in the end, everyone is going to be saved anyway, no matter what.

Now, this is not what the bible teaches, it’s not what Jesus taught, and it’s not what he says in our reading today. And it’s a teaching which dries up our love for people, and which makes our zeal for mission dry up—it even makes our thirst and our love for Jesus himself dry up.

At the time of Martin Luther, this was a very important issue, because many Christians believed in purgatory. Purgatory was basically half-way between heaven and hell, and if you paid off your sins in purgatory, or if your loved ones on earth helped pay them off for you, you could eventually go to heaven. But this reading today, teaches us that purgatory doesn’t exist. Abraham says to the rich man: Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner, bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.

Do you see this? Once our life is ended—we either go to heaven or to hell. There’s no half-way. Either we are saved by the blood of Jesus, or we’re not. Now, when Jesus teaches us this, it might grate at us a bit, it makes us very uncomfortable. But you see, Jesus wants us totally for himself. He doesn’t want us to be half-hearted, or half-baked in our trust and love for him. And when we die, he wants to welcome us into his kingdom, with Abraham and Lazarus, and all those who have died believing in him. And so, when we think about eternity, we shouldn’t be lazy in our thinking, we shouldn’t be apathetic or blasé about it. We should be black and white about it—and set very clearly before our eyes only two options: heaven and hell. And Jesus promises that all who believe in him have eternal life. And we set our eyes and our hearts and our minds very clearly in the direction of heaven.

Now, the last thing to talk about today is the Gospel. In the Scripture, we have two teachings—the law and the Gospel. The Law shows us our sin, and shows us the threat of God’s judgment. There are many things in our reading today that put God’s law and his judgment very seriously before our eyes—and some of what Jesus teaches here is quite frightening.

However, at the same time, we also have the Scripture a completely different teaching, which doesn’t show us our sin, but which shows to troubled sinners their wonderful Saviour. This teaching is what we call the Gospel. Now, we know that Jesus entered into this world to take upon himself all of our sin, and he died for it on the cross, made a perfect sacrifice and atonement for you, and he rose again from the dead on Easter day. And now, he gives to you the forgiveness of sins here in the church, through your baptism, through the absolution spoken by the pastor, through the preaching, and through the body and blood of Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. And these things are then given to you as a kind of down-payment of the wonderful promise of everlasting life, eternal salvation, and at the end of this world, a resurrection from the dead, where your body and soul will be so completely transformed and transfigured, that you will be glorified to be like the angels and even Jesus himself.

Now, what’s this got to do with our reading? Who was saved? It was Lazarus who was saved. It didn’t look like he had anything, but in the end, the angels themselves carried him to Abraham’s bosom, placed him on Abraham’s lap, and he was received into eternal life. Why Abraham? Because Abraham believed the Lord, and it was counted to him as righteous. Abraham is the father of faith—Jesus says, that even God can raise up stones to be children of Abraham. And if we believe in Jesus, and trust in his blood and his death, we also are children of Abraham, and will be carried from this life by the angels.

But then the devil wants to tempt us. He wants to say: But look: that rich guy doesn’t believe in Jesus—look at the house he’s living in compared to you, look at the food he’s eating compared to you, look at the happiness he has compared to you. You’re not a real Christian.

Well, it’s at times like this, you can tell the devil to “tick off”, because you have the word of God, you have Jesus risen from the dead, therefore you have everything. You might not have the perfect house, you might not have lots of money, you might be sick all the time, you might have lots of troubles and worries, you might have lots of sadness, you might be lonely, you might be cold, you might be hungry. When we’re struggling like this, we start to think God has abandoned us, and there’s something wrong with our faith. Rubbish! What do you have? You have a Jesus who died for you, a heavenly Father who loves you, and a Holy Spirit who encourages you. You have the word of God—you have Moses and the Prophets, the apostles, you have Jesus. And if you have these things, then you have everything, and you have more than all the gold and the treasures in the whole world. So be like Lazarus—sit at God’s gate, and trust in him. Jesus will never let you down, and finally he will raise you up from the dead to be like him. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Lent II B [Mark 8:31-38] (25-Feb-2018)

This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 8.15am, and Grace Lutheran Church, Childers, 10.30am.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Our Gospel reading today is a particularly wonderful passage where Jesus teaches us what it means to be one of his disciples. The conversation in our reading today between Jesus and the disciples comes between two very important events, both of which we have read in church recently. Just before this reading, we have the passage where Jesus asks his disciples: Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And also he says: Who do you say that I am? And Peter says: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. We learn from this passage that Jesus, the Son of Man, is the Son of God. Jesus praises and commends Peter, and says to him that the church will be built on this rock, this confession of faith that he has made. He also says to Peter: Flesh and blood have not revealed this you but my Father who is in heaven. What Peter had said to Jesus was not something that was the product of his own thinking and his own heart, but was shaped and formed and inspired by God the Father himself.

Now immediately after our reading today comes the Transfiguration, where Jesus stood on the top of the mountain with Moses and Elijah, and his face and clothes shone with wonderful, brilliant light. So our reading today is sandwiched between these two amazing conversations: a conversation between Jesus and Peter about who Jesus is, and a conversation between Jesus and Moses and Elijah on the mountain.

Today’s reading begins where it says: [Jesus] began to teach [his disciples] that the Son of God must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. In an amazing way, Jesus shows us here that he is both true man and true God. Jesus demonstrates that he is a real human being, by telling his disciples how he will truly suffer, and truly be killed. Jesus will actually feel these things and endure them and go through it all. However, Jesus is also true God, and he knows exactly what is going to happen to him in advance, and that he will miraculously rise from the dead with all of his divine power.

So what is it that Jesus prophesies here and predicts and foretells is going to happen to him? He says: he will suffer, be rejected, be killed, and rise again. This almost sounds like the Apostles’ Creed where we say that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. On the third day, he rose again from the dead. We recite these things and learn them and speak about them regularly in the creed because they are of the utmost importance. So Jesus predicts and prophesies his sacrifice, his atonement and payment for your sins, his death and resurrection for your salvation, and puts these things right at the front of his and his disciples’ minds. It is of the utmost importance, and this is why he came.

Jesus also prophesies which people will reject him:  the elders and the chief priests and the scribes. These three groups of people are significant: the elders are Jewish leaders, known and chosen for their wisdom. The priests were appointed to make sacrifices in the temple. The scribes were the scholars, the bible-experts. And yet, Jesus prophesies that despite all of their learning, righteousness and wisdom, they will not tolerate Jesus, but will reject him and kill him. You see, Jesus is our Wisdom, he is our sacrifice and our high priest, and he is the Word of God who speaks living words from God, and he brings all the wisdom of the elders, all the sacrifices of the priests and all the learning and scholarship of the scribes to nothing.

But then Peter jumps in and we read: Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. He says: Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you. Even Peter doesn’t understand. He thinks: If Jesus is the Son of God, he can’t be rejected! He can’t suffer, and be killed, and die, and be buried! It seems like a contradiction to him, and so he goes and tells Jesus off about it.

Now sometimes we carry on in much the same way. In our church, we believe that the Scripture doesn’t have any mistakes in it. In our congregation and our parish constitution, and at a pastor’s ordination, we confess that the bible is “inerrant”, meaning “without errors”.  If the church makes a faithful confession and follows the Scripture and confesses the truth, then the church also will teach no errors. Paul wrote to Titus that God never lies. It should be our primary goal and our greatest desire to learn the truth, because when we go against the truth of God’s Word, we go against God himself. Jesus said to his Father: Sanctify them in the truth, Lord; your word is truth. St Paul tells us to: speak the truth in love. And he also says: Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Now when we find something in the Scripture that we don’t like or understand or agree with, we often go to Jesus and tell him off. We say: Don’t be so silly, Jesus. Don’t talk such rubbish!

So when Peter tells Jesus off, what does Jesus say? Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Amazing! Peter thinks that if Jesus is the Son of God, he can’t suffer and die. But this is just empty human logic. Jesus had just commended Peter when he had spoke the truth and said: You are the Son of the living God. Now Jesus tells his disciples why he has come: to suffer and die for your sins, and to rise and destroy death. And Peter rejects this. Jesus says: Get behind me, Satan! Jesus says: Before when you spoke the truth, God spoke through you. Now you speak lies, and it is Satan who is speaking.

Sometimes Satan leads people into wrong. Satan knows that when Jesus suffers, dies and rises, Jesus will destroy all of Satan’s power. Not long before he was arrested, Jesus had said: Now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And so Satan leads Peter into speaking error, and he doesn’t want Peter to understand the great power of what Jesus says. And yet, as soon as Peter says this, Jesus does him a great favour, and tells him exactly where his sinful, human thinking came from. It was from Satan. Satan has a friend and an ally in our sinful hearts, and can easily mislead us into error. Martin Luther said it very sharply: Every one of us by himself is a devil, but in Christ we are holy. Jesus speaks truth, Satan speaks lies.

Now sometimes people say that the devil made them do something. And it’s true that the devil does lead us into temptation. But sometimes people mean it in such a way that their sin wasn’t really their fault. Sometimes we laugh at Adam and Eve, and say that they didn’t take responsibility for their actions. “The woman made me do it!” “The snake made me do it!” But this is not what Adam and Eve said. Eve said: The serpent deceived me, and I ate. Satan did something, but also I did wrong, it was completely my fault. So, in Genesis chapter 3, when God deals with Adam and Eve, he kicks the devil first, and promises that his head will be crushed. Then he deals with Eve and with Adam.

And so, let’s remember here Jesus’ wonderful prayer for his disciples and also for us: Sanctify them in the truth, Lord; your word is truth. The truth actually makes us holy. Today many people will say that there’s no such thing as truth, and that it’s arrogant to say that what we speak is truth. People say: “What’s true for you isn’t true for me!” Remember what Pontius Pilate said to Jesus when he put him on trial. He scoffed and said, “What is truth?” It’s not arrogant, but it’s a precious and humble thing when you find the truth that you believe it! What if the merchant who found the pearl of great price would have looked at the pearls and said: “These pearls don’t exist!” Or if the someone found hidden treasure and said, “There’s no such thing as gold!” Truth exists, Jesus speaks it, it is a precious thing.

Jesus says: Sanctify them in the truth, Lord; your word is truth. Jesus says: I am the way, the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me. Jesus is the truth, the words he speaks are truth, and he will make us holy and sanctify us with the truth. St Paul wrote to Timothy that the church is a pillar and buttress of the truth. A church with no truth is no church. A church that cares nothing for God’s word and for the truth, stands on sinking sand. And we need to be willing to fight for the truth, so that people who are looking for the truth can find it.

Now, we come to the next part of our reading: And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, [Jesus] said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  Jesus teaches us many wonderful things, especially the gospel, which is the good news that Jesus has won salvation for us. But before we can hear the Gospel, Jesus teaches God’s law, his commandments, his expectations, his standard, his word of judgment against sin. The bible teaches that people don’t just do bad things every now and then, but, we read in Genesis 6, that every intention of the thoughts of [our] heart [is] only evil continually. This means that sin taints everything completely. Only God can see the difference between you and your sin, and when you die, he will remove your sin from you. But before that, sin taints everything and we need the word of God for us even to recognise it.

And so, Jesus teaches us: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself. Jesus teaches us to deny ourselves not because this denial earns our salvation. Jesus already won our salvation for us by denying himself. He prayed to his Father: If it be possible, take this cup away from me. Yet not my will, but your will be done.

However, the Christian life is marked by self-denial. The way to heaven is not through the wide gate, the easy way. Jesus says: For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Jesus doesn’t teach us this to scare us off, but to warn us. Many times, we will read in the word and hear in the bible something that we then only learn later in our day to day life. And Jesus teaches us here, that “this obstacle along the way does not mean that you should run away from me, but it is an invitation for you to trust me”. And Jesus knows the way, and he will not let you go. As we learn Jesus’ word more and more, we learn to say like John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must decrease.

Jesus says: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Our Christian life is a life of self-sacrifice. Just as Jesus prophesied that he would suffer, be rejected, be killed, and rise again, so also Christians in this life many times will be called to suffer, and be rejected by people, even be killed. But then like Jesus, we will rise with him. We will not be abandoned. But Jesus doesn’t call us to carry his cross, but our own cross. The cross Jesus calls us to bear is just a little one in comparison. We are not dying for the sin of the world. We are just walking with Jesus, and learning from him the depth of the world’s sin and the even greater depth of his victory over it.

Many Christians today don’t like this kind of talk. Often we just want glitz and glamour. There are plenty of preachers and tele-evangelists who will tell you that your best life is now, and that God’s desire for you is to be healthy, wealthy, rich and influential. Some Christians tell sick people that if they’re not healthy, or if they’re about to die, it’s because their faith isn’t strong enough. Or sometimes people think that because Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus’ death doesn’t matter, and that it’s just nothing. They make Christianity into a little cabaret show, or a bit of light entertainment. All of this is just people doing everything they can to avoid denying themselves and taking up their cross. They think they’re following Jesus, but they delude themselves.

Instead, Jesus says: Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. The gospel, and everything that is true and good, must be protected and secured at all costs. Even if it costs us everything, the glory of the world is nothing by comparison. Better to have nothing and have Jesus, because when we have Jesus we have everything in heaven and earth. And we also learn here that whatever we give will not be in vain. Jesus will repay everything. If only we trusted him not to let us be lacking in anything. If we want to keep our life and compromise our faith, we will lose everything. Jesus will never let us down!

Jesus says in our reading: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? Jesus puts our soul on one side of the balance, and the world on the other. Jesus has bought you with the price of his blood. Your soul was purchased with such great a price, and it was purchased by such a faithful Saviour. St Paul writes: Jesus died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. He also teaches: Love does not insist on its own way. Why would we want our own way, if Jesus has given us his way?

In the last part of our reading, Jesus says: For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. On one hand, we have Jesus and his words. On the other hand, we have this adulterous and sinful generation. Where would you rather be? On which side of the fence do you want to stand? Would you tell Jesus off, to stop talking such things, just so that you can appear more palatable to people around you? Are you afraid of being rejected by people, even though you know that Jesus’ words are holy, and they are an adulterous and sinful generation?

And yet, on the other hand, we learn a wonderful, amazing thing from this passage. In the end, Jesus will return. Just as Peter and James and John saw Jesus on the top of the mountain with his face glowing with bright, white light, and his clothes shining through the night, Jesus will return one day, and bring this troubled world to an end. Jesus says: They shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and majesty and great glory. When Stephen the martyr was being stoned to death, we read that he looked into heaven and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He will come again, and rescue you, and save you, who in all your weakness and all your sin have clung to him and his word, the word that speaks to you a promise from heaven itself: Your sins are forgiven. Today you will be with me in Paradise. And he will repay you for every loss that you have suffered, every hardship you have endured, and every cross that you have had to carry. This is the wonderful thing that we have to look forward to.

We know that in this life, we are nothing, we have nothing, and we can do nothing, but we have a Saviour, who is everything, who has everything, and can do everything. And no matter what valley of the shadow of death we walk through, no matter what cross we have to carry, Jesus will never let us down. He is our faithful Saviour: and just as he prophesied, he has suffered, he has been rejected by the elders, the priests and the scribes, he has been killed, and on the third day he rose again.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, sanctify us in the truth; your word is truth. Lead us by your Holy Spirit wherever you will, since we know that your Son Jesus is with us. In his name we pray. Amen.