[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]

This Week's Sermon The Resurrection of Our Lord 08 April 2007 "My Father, Your Father" John 20:1-18 LSB Series C Vicar Hans W. Fiene Soli Deo Gloria!

645 Poplar St. is just like any residential address in the rest of Terre Haute in one specific way. And it's that we also get tons of junk mail. But, of course, the junk mail that we get here at Immanuel fancies itself as being far more sanctified and holy than the regular stuff. Just a few days ago, Pastor Meyer showed me something that came in the church's mail. Addressed to Immanuel, it was basically a flyer for a seminar that promised to revolutionize your prayer life for only $19.95 per person. After taking a moment to glance over the flyer's assurance that those presenting would teach you how to pray perfectly, Pastor looked at me and said, "I guess the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray wasn't good enough."

Anytime someone thinks that they can somehow come up with a more meaningful prayer than the Our Father, you can be assured that they no longer understand the words that Christ gave us to pray. I suppose after years of reciting this prayer over and over again with our minds wandering elsewhere, we might stop thinking about what we're saying. And eventually, we might fail to see the vast importance of these words-in particular the vast importance of those first two words, "Our Father."

You'll often hear people begin their prayers by referring to God with a title like "Gracious Lord" or "God of all Creation". But referring to God as "Our Father" is not a plug-it-in kind of title. It's not just another nice sounding, poetic name, or one of many pretty ways to talk about God. Regardless of how much we're used to saying it, calling God our Father is a monumental, earth shattering thing. When Christ invites us to call God our Father in that prayer, He's actually pointing us to the new realty where God sees us in a completely different way than He did before. He's pointing us to the new life found in His salvation. And, in today's text, when Christ declares to His followers that His Father is now Our Father, Christ is declaring that this new life of salvation has now been accomplished through His resurrection.

If you ever watch any movies or any of those Masterpiece Theatre productions set in olden times, you'll eventually catch a story that has to do with a father disowning his son. The son will have committed some great sin and, in response, his father ceases to view his offspring as his son. And he does this because his son's sinful action reflects that the evil things within the son are not the good things within his father. Because the son's nature is not the same as the father's nature, then he has no right to be called his son.

God reflects the love within Him when the crucified Christ prays for those who hate Him. We reflect the hatred within us when we curse even those who love us. Within God, there is holiness and purity. Within us, there is greed and malice and dishonesty and faithlessness-a boiling stew of sin. And because of this, it's not just that we don't have the right to call God our Father. Because of this, God doesn't view the sinner as His son.

When God doesn't view us as His sons, then we have no right to claim the things that belong to Him. When God is not our father, we actually live outside of the father's grace. We live a life that is without blessing and guidance. We're completely lost and condemned in a world where not only are we unable to see God's face but we're also unable to call out to Him.

But in the moment that Christ rises from the dead, that entire world changes. We're no longer lost in a world where we can't see God or call out to Him. We're no longer blinded by the black veil of our sinful nature that blots out God's light. In the moment that Christ rises from the dead, God gives us the right to be his children, for Him to treat as a loving father treats his beloved children. He hears us when we call to Him. He fills us with the righteous food for which we hunger. He protects us from all those who would do us harm and guards us from all who would try and take us away from Him. He showers us with His loving gifts and never ceases. When Christ is dead, we have no father. But in the moment that Christ lives, all of this new life is ours. In the moment Christ lives, His Father is our Father. His God is our God.

What Christ accomplishes in that single moment of His resurrection is the complete and total upheaval of the fallen world. And to understand how all of the despair and anguish caused by living in that fallen world disappears in a single moment, look at what happens to Mary Magdalene in today's Gospel text.

Mary comes to the tomb with a broken heart. Her Lord has been killed. The one who looked with compassion on her, who loved her and cast demons out of her has been struck down. The one whose feet she sat at to learn of God's kingdom is gone. And when she comes to his tomb with nothing left other than to anoint his dead body out of respect, she can't even do that because, in her estimation, someone has taken that body away. And so she breaks down in tears. She weeps because she has nothing. She's lost and without any consolation. She doesn't have an ounce of joy within her. Every piece of hope she found in Jesus is just as dead as His body. Her entire world is crushing down upon here. Even when the angels and Jesus himself ask her why she is crying, she's so blinded by her despair that she can't even see the work of God around her. And then suddenly, in an instant, her entire world changes.

Her despair turns to hope. Her tears of sorrow transform into tears of joy. Her crumbled and crushed existence blossoms into a life of absolute peace. And what causes this complete and total change to occur? One word. Jesus says to her, "Mary." He calls her by her name. And when He does this, her eyes are opened. The veil of darkness is lifted and she sees that Her Lord has risen.

Every Christian throughout all the Church's history shares something in common with Mary Magdalene here. All of our eyes were also opened to the joys of Christ's resurrection in the exact same way-when God Himself called us each by our name. For us, though, it has happened in the moment of our baptism. When we were baptized, God called us by our name. And when he did this, he opened our eyes to see that the old, sinful world was destroyed and that we now live in the world ruled by the resurrected Christ. When God himself called Mary by her name, her sorrow was transformed into joy because she saw that Christ had risen. When God calls us by our name, our sorrow is transformed into joy because in that moment, the risen Christ claims us as His own. In the water and the word, He made us his brother. And in so doing, He made His Father our Father. He delivered us to the truest father whose love will never run out for true children. In our baptism, we receive what Christ accomplished in His resurrection-the right to call God our Father.

Despite the fact that there's only one day on the liturgical calendar called Easter Sunday, the truth is that this isn't the only day when we celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord. Obviously we celebrate this when Christ is proclaimed in the word and when His flesh and blood is given in the sacrament of the altar. This is the sacramental celebration of the Resurrected Christ. But because the resurrection is the moment when Christ gives us the right to be called God's children, we also celebrate the resurrection every single time we pray those words put onto our lips in our baptism, "Our Father."

So if you have $19.95 to spare, give it to the poor. Don't waste it on any kind of seminar that's going to teach you how to pray better. There's no prayer in this world that confesses more about God's love than what's found in just the first two words of Christ's prayer-"Our Father."