Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the name of ✠ Jesus.

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.

Throughout the Church’s history, there have been approaches to putting together the lectionary, the sequence of readings from one service to another. Often in the early church, they used a continuous lectionary: one one Sunday, the preacher would expound a part of a book of the Bible, and the following Sunday he would simply carry on from where he left off, until he got to the end of the book and start on another book.

The problem with the continuous lectionary is that it doesn’t work very well around the festivals. If the preacher is going through the book of Leviticus in his preaching, he will have to break off for Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and all the other occasions that call for specific readings. And as the number of festivals increased over time, these interruptions became more frequent, and so another approach was developed: the Church Year. In this system, there is a fixed set of readings that follow a logical sequence from one week to the next, based not on the structure of any given book, but the rather the life and teachings of Jesus.

Since it was first formed in the late fourth century, this second approach has dominated the Church’s life, and turned out to be extremely helpful. Therefore, at the time of the Reformation, the Lutheran church retained both the Church Year and the actual lectionary that had been in place for centuries.
However, since it is man-made, this historic lectionary is not without its own problems. The main problem is that since the readings are selected thematically rather than according to the internal structure of any given book, sometimes the selections appear out of context. And unless the hearers know the context, they will not fully understand what the text is saying.

Today’s Gospel reading is a good case to illustrate this point. It comes from the middle of Jesus’ farewell discourse in John’s Gospel, which runs from the beginning of chapter 13 to the end of chapter 17. Although this lengthy teaching of Jesus covers more than one topic, it flows almost seamlessly, making it almost impossible to select extracts without doing some violence to the context. However, today’s reading is particularly badly affected, since it is a fairly short extract from a much longer continuous teaching.

Indeed, there’s a clue in the opening word of the Gospel selection: “But”. What has Jesus just said to lead to this ‘but’. And don’t think this is just an academic question—when Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to be our Helper, he isn’t speaking in vague terms, about some generic Helper, but a Helper in a very specific and real need.

Let’s hear the preceding verses:

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ’A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’

But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

What we learn from the context is that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus promises here, and which we will celebrate on the day of Pentecost next week, is given to Jesus’ disciples in view of the fact that being a disciple of Jesus leads to the hatred of the world and to all the terrible things the world will hurl at the church.

In case we are tempted to think of this as merely metaphorical, we do well to consider the events immediately following the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise to the apostles on the day of Pentecost. No sooner had the Spirit been poured out on them to make them witnesses with the Spirit of Jesus’ resurrection that they began to get into trouble. Verbal chastisement soon led to beatings, and then to martyrdom. In the end, of the eleven to whom Jesus addressed these words, only one, John himself, died of natural causes, and even he had been exiled on the island of Patmos. So when recorded these words of Jesus for the church in his gospel, he had learned through first-hand experience just how literally Jesus was speaking when he warned of persecution.

From the viewpoint of our experience, it’s hard for us to take Jesus’ words fully seriously, since we have so little experience of actual persecution. In part that’s for a bad reason: too often, the church has been a toothless entity, ignored by the world as harmless. Jesus’ words call us to repentance over our own cowardice and our success at camouflaging ourselves in the world. A church not worth persecuting by her enemies is no church at all.

Our lack of experience at being persecuted is also due to historical reasons: for many centuries, the Christian church has been in a dominant position in our society, protecting Christians from the wrath of the non-Christian world.

However, we do well not to dwell too much on the non-Christian world. For the persecution that Jesus promised His disciples was not primarily from that world. Rather, He speaks of persecution from within God’s people:

They will put you out of synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.

No, these are the very guardians of the faith of Israel that Jesus has in mind. It is the Jerusalem Council that had Peter and John flogged for preaching Jesus. The Priests and Scribes who stoned Stephen. It was the learned Pharisee, Saul, who persecuted the Church in Jerusalem and, had he had his way, Damascus. Later, the officials of the pagan Empire frequently persecuted Christians on the instigation of the local Jewish population. And when the Romans themselves murdered Christians, it wasn’t for sport, but out of reverence for the Roman gods.

In later centuries, when Europe was officially Christian, John Chrystostom, one of the finest preachers to have graced the pulpit in the Church’s history, died of maltreatment on his way to exile from the Christian court of Constantinople. The bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, found himself exiled repeatedly for speaking out against the Arian heresy that denied the divinity of Jesus.

Why, the soil of Britain is stained with the blood of the Lutheran martyrs Patrick Hamilton and Robert Barnes, who died for the Gospel, not at the hands of the non-Christian world but at the instigation of the church.

And today, the persecution continues unabated, from without and from within.

Why does God allow this? Why does He not protect His children better? Is He not in control?

Jesus teaches us this morning that one reason He allows it is that, in this way, His disciples bear witness to Jesus. They bear witness to the Son of God, who conquers His enemies by bleeding and dying for them. They share in His sufferings, knowing that by sharing in them they will also sharing in His glory. They are called to become martyrs—the Greek word for “witnesses”.

To our comfortable and comfort-seeking ears, this sounds like a bum deal. Who wants to be hated? Who wants to be chucked out? Who wants to die? No one does.

Nor should we want to. God hasn’t called us for being hated, chucked out and killed. He has called us to love, into community, into new life. But the world that hates Jesus enough to have killed Him will not look kindly on those who bear His name and His image in their lives. For the life of Jesus means the death of the world. In Him, the independence of the world, the world’s rebellion against God, stands condemned and defeated.

Against this rage of the world, we are weak and powerless. The very thought of it repels us and frightens us. We are tempted to hide, to camouflage ourselves, to put from sight that which offends those who are not God’s children.

This is why Jesus has given you the Holy Spirit: to be your Paraclete, that is, your Helper and your Advocate. The one who stands by your at your time of testing, and as you stand in trial before the world—whether literally or metaphorically: He is with you, within you—in your mouth, in your heart, in your mind. He will give you words, strength, courage. He will give you peace and joy even in the midst of your suffering.

How?

By bearing witness about Jesus. He will bring to you the incarnate Son of God, who was given to the world, and to you, a worldlling by birth, that it may not perish, and you with it, but have eternal life. He will hold before your eyes the image of the crucified Lord, who would rather die on the cross, forsaken by the Father, than let you perish in your sin. He will hold up for you the risen Christ, who has defeated death and all of Satan’s raging, that you may live even as you die. He will hold before you the Ascended Lord, who is seated at the right hand of the Father so that all His enemies—Satan, the world, and all their ways and their works—may be placed under His feet, and in Him, under your feet.
Through Baptism and faith, you are united with the Jesus and the life that you now live is His life, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. The pain, the sorrows, the griefs and even the death that you experience, is passing. For Christ has prepared a kingdom—and He has prepared a place for you in that kingdom—where “He will wipe away every tear from your eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things will have passed away”. That you may not lose heart, He reaches down to you today from that kingdom to come with the food and drink of the heavenly victory feast, His own body and blood.

Jesus says to you, “Be faithful to the end, and I will give you the crown of life.”

In the name of the Father and of ✠ the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

A N G L A N D I C U S: Per Fidem Solam: Romans 3:24 in the Würzburg Glosses

Here’s what Luther had to say about the matter in his Open Letter on Translating.

HT: Anthony Sacramone

God is gone up with a triumphant shout!
The Lord with sounding Trumpets’ melodies:
Sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praises out,
Unto our King sing praise seraphicwise!
Lift up your Heads, ye lasting Doors, they sing,
And let the King of Glory enter in.

Methinks I see Heaven’s sparkling courtiers fly,
In flakes of Glory down him to attend,
And hear Heart-cramping notes of Melody
Surround his Chariot as it did ascend;
Mixing their Music, making ev’ry string
More to enravish as they this tune sing.

Text: Edward Taylor (1646–1729)
Music: Gerald Finzi (1901–56)

Hymn singing in church is actually a fairly recent innovation: traditionally, hymns were mainly sung at Matins and Vespers, but not in the Sunday main (Communion) service. The practice of hymn-singing in the Communion service was a Lutheran innovation at the time of the Reformation. It serves a simple purpose: to put the word of God in the mouths and ears of the congregation. (Col 3:16).

Hence, the hymns are part of the day’s liturgy in the same way that the readings and prayers are, and for the same reason. The different hymns of the service have their own role in the service.

1. The opening hymn is usually either a hymn of invocation, asking for God to bless the congregation that has gathered to receive His gifts, or a hymn of confession, preparing them for the confession of sins.

2. The sermon hymn, or hymn of the day, is linked specifically to the day’s readings, and its main role is to teach the word to the congregation.

3. The communion hymn should really be a distribution hymn, sung during the Communion to assist the congregation to appreciate and rightly to receive the Sacrament.

4. The closing hymn is frequently a hymn of praise, thanking God for the gifts received, or a commissioning hymn, sending the congregation back into the world with the word of God on their lips as they prepare to serve God and neighbour in their daily lives.

* * *

In the holy name of ✠ Jesus.

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

What starts as a piece of common-sense advice on good manners and a constructive attitude to conversation—essentially: speech is silver, silence is golden—very quickly turns to something a whole lot more serious. St. James, the brother of the Lord Jesus, is not writing a letter to the Christians of Asia Minor in order to improve their social skills or make them better learners. What he has in view is nothing less than the righteousness of God.

And therefore, this short passage—like much of the rest of the letter—makes rather uncomfortable reading for us. It’s uncomfortable because it catches us out, because it accuses us. James needed to say it to the Christians to whom he was writing, and he needs to say it to you—and to me. Without using the word, he is calling us to repentance over our use of our ears and our tongues, and over our temperament.

The trouble for us twenty-first-century European Christians is that we live in a society and culture built on the notion of rights. We all have lots of rights—the right to life, to free speech, to assembly, to equal treatment under the law, to a trial by jury, and so on. And if someone acts against our rights, we have recourse to redress, through the courts if necessary.
Now, don’t get me wrong, in a civil society, rights and freedoms are a good and proper thing. You just need to spend five minutes in a place where such rights are not respected to discover their value. Or contemplate the reality that for every three live births in the UK, one child is deprived of its God-given right to life and aborted, in the name of the lesser freedoms of people already born. No, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” from the Father of lights, and the peace, comfort and freedom in which we live is a very fine, and entirely unmerited, gift indeed from our heavenly Father, for which it is our duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.

Nevertheless, life in such a society presents a danger to Christians. Which is really to say that life in any society presents a danger to Christians: we are always prone to conform to the ways of this world in our thoughts, words and deeds, rather than being transformed by the renewal of our minds by the Holy Spirit.

And so we see ourselves primarily in terms of who we are on earth, alongside other people—and this means seeing and safeguarding our rights and freedoms, over against the threats posed by others.
Dear children of God, this is not the way in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God, we live by indulgence and gift. We live not according to mutual rights and responsibilities, freedoms and obligations—but according to the gift of God in Jesus Christ. In the world, we are slaves to sin, to the fleeting circumstances and happenstances of life, and above all to our own passions and desires. In the Kingdom of God, we are slaves of righteousness, living in the freedom of the children of God—freedom from sin and its punishment, freedom to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God and a loving servant to the neighbour.

Life in this a world is ultimately a dog-eat-dog life. It’s easy enough to be friendly with people who fit into our scheme of things, and to bear with circumstances that fit into our plans. In such a life, we speak those things that suit us, and we listen to those things that please us. And we also close our ears to things that displease us, and we speak against those things that do not suit us. And this is the root of anger: my demand for what I want when I want it; my frustration when the world and other people wage war against my rights, my freedoms, my desires, my passions.

In the light of this, it’s not hard to see why anger does not lead to the righteousness of God. For in the Kingdom of God, righteousness does not equate to my rights, and to justice for me, as it does in the Kingdom of Me. In the Kingdom of God, it is the righteousness of God that rules. In other words, God’s rights, His justice.

And the justice of God demands that it is not your rights that should determine your thoughts, words and deeds: for every good gift comes down from Him—not only to you but to everyone. When you open your mouth hastily against your neighbour and close your ears to him too soon, when your sense of self-justice leads to an outburst of anger, you set up your justice against your neighbour and take the place of God who is the creator of all things. By the same token, when you close your mouth too hastily and close your ears for your own comfort when the name of God is being brought to dishonour by those who blaspheme Him and trample on His children, your neighbours—you shut out God from your world, which He gave to you as His gift.

Repent.

What is the righteousness of God of which the Scriptures speak? It is nothing other than the moral universe created by God. It is a moral universe where good gifts come down from the creator of heaven and earth who opens His hand satisfies the desire of every living thing and lets the sun shine and the rain fall on the evil and the just alike. It is a moral universe where God remains without variation or shadow due to change, even as His own creation turns against Him and robs Him of His glory and honour. Above all, it is a moral universe where God speaks, and goes on speaking, implants and goes on implanting, His word of truth into a mankind possessed by the Father of lies and by their own lies. Where the Father of light, who brought light into darkness by His life-giving word, continues to shine His light into the dark recesses of a dying world. Where the Father of life continues to implant His word into a world that is dead in its trespasses, and the Prince of Peace continues to speak peace to a world at war against its creator.

Because God is righteous, He waives His right to be rid of every offence against His holiness, and instead He descends to our defiled world in order to fill it with His own holiness by bringing His life-giving word into our unhearing ears, and the healing touch of the body and blood of His Son into our unclean mouths, that He might implant life and holiness where death and defilement reigned. By this self-giving, life-implanting righteousness of God you also have been brought forth into a new life, having had your souls saved by His gracious, condescending love in Christ Jesus. Who—though He had every right to destroy the unbelieving and godless you as he destroyed the unbelieving world in the time of Noah, and the godless armies of Pharaoh in the Red Sea—drowned your sinful nature not in order to destroy but in order to bring new life. In Christ Jesus, this life is yours—the supreme unmerited gift from the Father of light, next to which all His other gifts pale into insignificance.

By this self-giving life of God you live.

And into this self-giving life you have been called. Dear children of God, once you were like the rest of mankind, fending for yourselves in a dog-eat-dog world. But now you have no need for such self-preservation, since your Heavenly Father cares for you and has promised every good gift to you.

You no longer need to assuage the gods of this world, or to justify yourselves before the true God—for our Lord Jesus Christ has conquered all the gods of this world, when He fulfilled the demands of God’s justice by His completed work on the tree of the cross. Through faith in Him, you are pure and holy, entirely righteous and just, with every demand of the Law satisfied.

And so you no longer need to struggle against your neighbour, in thought, word or deed. You are free from such struggles. You are free from all the filthiness and rampant wickedness that is staining and slaying a humanity created in God’s image and bought by the precious blood of His Son.
Flee, therefore, from the passions of the world. Flee from self-seeking, from immorality, from anger and wickedness, all of which is idolatry and leads to death. Flee to the Word of God, which is powerful to absolve you of all your sin against Him and against your neighbour—which has the power to equip you for a godly and holy life—which the power to save your souls from Satan, the world and even yourself. For in that Word, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is present, breathing life into you, healing all your diseases and strengthening you in all your weaknesses.

In Him, and by the power of His Word, you have been made into a kind of first-fruits for the harvest of the Kingdom of God. For when that Word was implanted into you, you were implanted into Him who is the Word made flesh. Remaining in Him, you will receive His life and bear fruit into eternal life. You are His—in Him, you are another good gift of the Father of lights to this dying world: its salt and its light, so that so the world see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
In the name of the Father and of ✠ the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The latest exhibit for this latter category, from BWV 166, Bach’s cantata for Cantate Sunday (5th of, or 4th after, Easter, depending on which way you like to count): Ämilie Juliane von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt’s hymn Wer weiss wie nahe mir mein Ende.

Here’s how Bach gives us verse one in that cantata:

[Performed by Bach Collegium Japan]

(Listen to the whole thing this Sunday on Lutheran Radio UK)

The original has 12 verses. TLH gave us 11 of them as Who Knows  When Death May Overtake Me (TLH 598), a translation reproduced also in the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary (ELH 483).

Question 1: If you’re willing to sing 11 verses, why not 12?

The missing verse is no. 7:

Ich weiß, in Jesu Blut und Wunden
hab ich mir recht und wohl gebett ;
da find ich Trost in Todesstunden,
und alles, was ich gerne hätt.
Mein Gott, ich bitt’ durch Christi Blut:
Mach’s nur mit meinem Ende gut!

An English prose translation by Francis Browne (on the marvellous site bach-cantatas.com) reads as follows:

I know that in Jesus’ blood and wounds
It is right and good for me to make my bed;
There may I find consolation in the hour of death
And everything I would happily have.
My God, I pray through Christ’s blood:
Make sure my end is good.

Why would you want to leave that out? Makes me want to know:

Question 2: What’s wrong with the blood of Jesus?

You see, not only do they leave out the bloody verse. Jesus’ blood is veritably written out of the hymn.

If you know TLH (or ELH) well, you will know that there is a refrain at the end of each verse, which goes like this: “My God, for Jesus’ sake I pray / Thy peace may bless my dying day.”

Except that it doesn’t. The German reads:

Mein Gott, ich bitt’ durch Christi Blut:
Mach’s nur mit meinem Ende gut!

That’s the blood of Christ. Something like, “My God, I pray through Jesus’ blood / Make Thou my life’s end only good.” (OK, so I’m no Shakespeare. Sorry.)

Verse11 (10 in TLH/ELH) declares in the original:

“I am and remain in his care,
fairly adorned with Christ’s blood.”

But the hymnal simply states:

“He grants the peace that stills all sorrow / Gives me a robe without a spot.”

The only blood the translators didn’t write out is the direct reference to the Lord’s Supper (verse 10/9). Which makes me wonder:

Question 3: Is it hard to tell the difference between cause and effect?

The translators seem to prefer translating Blut as ‘peace’. Now, as any well-catechised child will tell you, the blood of Christ does bring us  peace with God. That’s why we have the Pax Domini in the liturgy, and that’s why we have it where we have it.

But the blood and the peace aren’t the same thing. The one brings about the other. They are not synonymous. So why on earth would you treat them as synonymous?

Which leads us to:

Question 4: Why would the editors of a conservative Lutheran hymnal go to such lengths to avoid talking about the blood of Jesus (except in the Lord’s Supper, when they can’t get away from it)? Could it be that they were crypto-Ritschlians, perhaps without realising it?

As someone once sang, Ritschl shall reign where’er the sun…

Question 5: Given that, even with such a deficient translation, this is a pretty stunning hymn (do read the whole of Browne’s translation, together with the original German, here), why would it be culled even further in the finest modern English-language Lutheran hymnbook, the Lutheran Service Book? All that remains of the 12 verses are  9, 10 and 12 in what has been re-cut as a baptismal hymn (‘Once in the Blessed Baptismal Waters’, LSB 598).

What on earth for? There are plenty of fine baptismal hymns in LSB as it is. No need to go a-butchering for another one, thus depriving the church of the opportunity to reflect on what gives us confidence on the edge of the grave.

And finally: You just heard the tune used in Bach’s time for this hymn: Georg Neumark’s Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten. Why would it be replaced by the later unremarkable creation used in TLH, ELH and LSB?

But at least that’s only a matter of opinion.

O grant that nothing in my soul
May dwell, but Thy pure love alone!
Oh, may Thy love possess me whole,
My joy, my treasure, and my crown!
All coldness from my heart remove;
My ev’ry act, word, thought be love.

This love unwearied I pursue
And dauntlessly to Thee aspire.
Oh, may Thy love my hope renew,
Burn in my soul like heav’nly fire!
And day and night be all my care
To guard this sacred treasure there.

In suff’ring be Thy love my peace,
In weakness be Thy love my pow’r;
And when the storms of life shall cease,
O Jesus, in that final hour,
Be Thou my rod and staff and guide
And draw me safely to Thy side!

Paul Gerhardt; tr. John Wesley

Now what? How do you follow that up?

“He told them to give her something to eat.”

Death to life to being fed. That’s resurrection life in a nutshell.

The Augsburg Confession, first presented on 25 June1530, is the common property of the Lutheran Church throughout the world, and as an expression of the Christian faith belongs to all Christians.

From ‘The Augsburg Confession’, the edition produced and distributed (free of charge) by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England.

[A thought inspired by this rather good post.]