Audio of the sermon is here:

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

            Last week, we heard how we are prepared to enter God’s House: by being baptized into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It is under that Name that we confess our sins, because in that Name He delivers all the forgiveness of Jesus, crucified and resurrected. He does it freely, completely, unconditionally, simply because He loves every person whom He has made. He gives the authority to forgive to His apostles for the sake of His Church. Those apostles hand it down to those who follow them in the Office that God has created to deliver His forgiveness, so that you might know that your sins are forgiven on earth as certainly as they are in heaven. This is how we are prepared to enter the Divine Service, which is, let’s not forget, Divine Service. That is, first and most importantly, God serves us. As Jesus says, Who is greater? The one who reclines at table to eat, or the one who serves? Isn’t it the one who reclines at table? But, He says, I am among you as one who serves (Luke 22:27). I have come, not to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28). He acts for us first. He spoke His Name over you first in baptism, but even before that, He spoke you into existence in your mother’s womb. He always speaks first, and then we speak. Everything we say is in response to His words. He forgives us, so we forgive others. He serves us, so we serve others.

            At His word and invitation, we enter the place of His presence. It is not the place of His presence because it is a church building. It is the place of His presence because Jesus is present with His words of forgiveness and His words through the prophets and apostles. He is present with His own body and blood, from which He cannot be separated. He is the temple, which was torn down and rebuilt in three days. He is not only the temple, of course, but He is also the great High Priest who offers Himself as the once-for-all sacrifice—once for all time, and once for all people. We enter where Jesus is, where He has promised to be according to His own Word and Sacrament. These two halves make a full Divine Service. Jesus always rejoices to give all His gifts to His people in His house on the day of His resurrection. His Word and His Body and Blood were never meant to be separated from each other. “Non-Communion Sunday” was never meant to be a thing. There are reasons why it happened, but it should not be the typical practice.

            Today we focus on the first half of the Divine Service, the Word. We could see the whole Service as a mountain with two peaks, two high points, two summits. In the first half, everything leads up to and from the Words of Jesus in the Scriptures and the preaching of His Word, which He commanded to happen everywhere until the end of this age. What is happening here is nothing different from what Jesus does in Luke 24. Those disciples have almost all the pieces: they know that Jesus is a prophet—that is, someone who speaks from God—who was mighty in deed and word before all the people. Indeed, Jesus progressed in wisdom and stature and favor with God and with people (2:52). He was rejected at Nazareth because no prophet is acceptable in his own hometown (4:24). The chief priests and leaders handed Him over to a judgment of death and crucified Him. It is the third day since all that happened. Do they say this ironically, because they don’t remember what Jesus said about the third day? Or do they say this because they knew He said He would rise, and they haven’t seen Him yet? Either way, it’s the third day, and some women went to the tomb and saw a vision of angels who said He was alive. And then some other disciples found it the same way, but they did not see Jesus. All the pieces are there, but they can’t see Jesus. Their eyes have been kept from seeing Him, but then the Man walking with them rebukes them for being foolish and slow of heart to believe everything the prophets have spoken. So it is, as Jesus had said earlier: they have Moses and the prophets; let them believe them. But if they do not believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe even if someone rises from the dead (Luke 16:29-31).

            So, beginning with those same books of Moses and those same prophets, the Man interprets to them the things concerning Himself, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, in all the Scriptures. It was divinely necessary that the Christ suffer all these things and enter into His glory. And then, after they get to Emmaus, Jesus shows up again in Jerusalem and He does the same thing: These are My words that I spoke to you while I was with you, that it is necessary for all the things written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning Me to be fulfilled. Then He opened their mind to understand the Scripture. Thus it has been written: for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day. What comes from that death and resurrection is for repentance and forgiveness of sins to be preached in His Name to all the Gentiles, beginning from Jerusalem.

            Jesus takes the Scriptures—what we call the Old Testament, but they didn’t have a New Testament except for Jesus’ fulfillment of all of this in His body—Jesus takes all the Scriptures, and interprets it all to them as being about Him; this is how the mind of the Church is opened and understands the Scripture. People may search the Scriptures because they think that in the Scriptures they have life, but the Scriptures are not primary. Jesus, to whom the Scriptures testify and bear witness, is primary. The words of the prophets and the apostles do not give life on their own. They give life because Jesus is the Life who speaks, and He has the words of eternal life (John 5:39-40; 6:68). All the words written down speak always of the Word made flesh, and then of those who belong to Him. The Service of the Word was given to us by Jesus, and we follow His pattern: we hear from the Old Testament, and the apostolic preaching in the Epistles give to us the true and lasting interpretation of Himself that Jesus gave to His apostles; and then we hear the recorded accounts in the Gospels of the Jesus who fulfills the books of Moses, the Prophets whom God sent and through whom the Spirit spoke, and the Psalms.

The preaching that pastors do must conform to that apostolic interpretation of the Scriptures, which is nothing other than the teaching, the doctrine, of Jesus. If it goes beyond the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures, it is not Jesus’ word, and therefore the Spirit who gives and sustains faith is not present. Because the Spirit guides us into the truth not by speaking independently of the Father and the Son—as if that were even possible—but by declaring what He hears. Jesus says, The Spirit will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He will take what is Mine and declare it to you (John 16:13-15).

But when the preaching of the Word conforms to and delivers Jesus, to whom both prophets and apostles bear witness, then,and only then, Jesus says, “The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects the one who sent Me” (Luke 10:16). That is one of the reasons for the liturgy, to keep the focus on Jesus and what He is saying. The pieces of the liturgy are directly from the Scriptures, and you can find the passages either next to them in the bulletin or in the hymnal. The parts that don’t come directly from the Bible draw together different Scriptures to praise and proclaim Jesus, but they are all anonymous. For some parts we have guesses, but mostly we have no idea who put them together or put them in the places where they are. Those who produced the liturgy in the Church are anonymous because it was never about them, but about the Jesus who speaks His Word.

The Gloria in Excelsis is a hymn of praise starting with the angel’s words at the birth of Jesus. Both the Kyrie and the Gloria are centered on the mercy of God, which is not just forgiveness of sin, since we just heard the absolution, but mercy for our lives, mercy on us in our suffering, in our sicknesses—like those lepers who cried out to Jesus for mercy; mercy in all our struggles and difficulties and burdens. Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us. It is all too much for us. Have mercy on us Christ, the Lord, with the Holy Ghost in the glory of the Father. Have mercy and hear our prayer.

Just as all of that is put under the mercy of God, so we “collect” all our individual prayers and join them together in the Collect, which turns us toward the particular mercy given us in the Word today. People sometimes think the Divine Service is just the same thing every single week. And there are certainly things that stay the same. They’re called “ordinaries,” because they are “ordinarily” done. But there are also things that change each week or season, called “propers,” because they are “proper” to the day or season. This is how our life goes: we do some things regularly or habitually, while other things change. The Divine Service, by keeping some things the same and changing other things, brings our lives of change and routine into the story of Jesus. The Introit, the Collect, and the Readings all change week by week as we move through the narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, which then shapes and forms our lives as we live toward death and resurrection. The Apostles’ Creed, which we hear at our baptism, is meant to guide and keep us in the faith of Jesus daily. The Nicene Creed, which originally started, “We confess…” marks our congregation as the congregation of this God and this faith. Again, weekly, God speaks His word to us and we respond by saying the same thing back to Him and to each other in the Church’s confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This God has made not only the whole world, but us. This Jesus has taken on flesh in a mystery before which we can do nothing but worship. He has done this for us and for our salvation. Jesus was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. And the Holy Spirit gives us life and salvation in this Name. We bow and worship before the Spirit, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one God. Named by God in baptism, forgiven of our sins, He keeps us by the Word in the true faith until we are done waiting and we have been raised from the dead, just as Jesus was, and enter the life of the world to come. Resurrection will be the completion of our baptism, and we remind ourselves of that by making the sign of the baptismal cross with and over our bodies, which will be raised.

God has spoken His Word, creating clean hearts in us and renewing and righting our spirits in His Spirit. He has not cast us out, though we, like David, have done enough to earn that. He does not take His Holy Spirit from us, but continually recreates and renews us by His Spirit. We obscure the joy of His salvation, take it for granted, dull its edges by our thanklessness, but He never tires of speaking His word and restoring that joy to us by His unbounded Spirit. Since everything is gift from this God, we give—not because He needs it, any more than He needed the loaves and fish from that young boy—but because it is His already. When we give, we trust His word that He will give us everything we need for this body and life. We exercise our faith in God by using what He has given to us to care for others. We care for one another within the Body of Christ, and we care for those whom the Lord brings to us. Originally, the offering was not necessarily money, but various gifts which the apostles would then distribute to those in need. It was recognition that God ordinarily serves people in need through other people. And He continues to take what He has given to us, multiplies it, and provides for all His people. Some of the bread and some of the wine that was brought was then set apart for use by God as He gives us not only bread for this body and life, but the bread from heaven, Jesus, who gives life to the world.

So we find that in the Service of the Word we have been walking along as if we were on the road to Emmaus. Jesus speaks His words, opens our eyes and our minds to understand by His Spirit, and after the Word we pray that He would continue to abide and remain with us. He has said, if you abide in Me, I will abide in you. So He remains according to His promise. He takes the bread of those two disciples, and He blesses, and He breaks, and He gives to them. Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. Except it turns out that He was the host all along. The Word has led us here to the meal, and He opens our eyes and we see Him in the breaking of the bread.

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

– Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 4/16/26