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THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER April 28, 2024 Pastor Tom Steers Christ the Saviour Lutheran Church, Toronto OPENING HYMNN: 544 “O Love, How Deep” Lutheran Service Book https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHASptbZB-A The Invocation Page 184 Pastor: Halleluiah, Christ is risen! Congregation: He is risen indeed. Halleluiah! Confession and Absolution Page 184-185 Introit (read by the Pastor) Psalm 145, Verses 1-2,8,10,21, antiphon John 16: 16 145 I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. 2 Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. 8 The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 10 All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD, and all your saints shall bless you! 21 My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. 16 “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” Pastor: Halleluiah, Christ is risen! Congregation: He is risen indeed. Halleluiah! The Kyrie (Lord Have Mercy) Congregation: Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us. The Salutation – Pastor: The Lord be with you. Congregation: And also with you. Our Collect Payer: O God, You make the minds of Your faithful to be of one will. Grant that we may love what You have commanded and desire what You promise, that among the many changes of this world our hearts may be fixed where true joys are found; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Our Bible Readings: First Reading Acts 8: 26-40 Psalm 150 In front of Hymnal – read responsively Epistle Reading 1st John 4: 1-11 Our Gospel Reading John 15: 1-9 Hymn & Confession of Faith 954 “We All Believe in One True God” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VolOFsnPI HYMN OF THE DAY: 633 “At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAB87R_z8ao SERMON We are coming closer to the end of the Church season of Easter. Our Bible readings now start to look forward to Pentecost. It’s like walking between two great lights. Today we see the deacon Philip witnessing to the Ethiopian Eunuch. We also hear the Apostle John urge us to test the spirits and live in love. Then, Jesus compares our connection to Him as branches to a vine. Our texts this Sunday speak about the whole human being engaged in the Christian life. In our Epistle reading, John is making some important connections for us. Test the spirits, he writes. This means not all spirits are good ones. And that there is no true spirituality outside of Christ. The test John speaks of is simple. Jesus has come in the flesh. Confessing Christ in the flesh is about love, John says. Two things the devil cannot fake, are love and faith. Love is the very nature of God. God dwells in us, and He‘s stronger than the one who dwells in the world, satan. When we love, God Himself is acting through our kindness and compassion shown to one another. God is also the one acting, through the Holy Spirit, in His Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are God’s means of grace, instituted by Jesus Himself. Many in North American Christianity have located the distinction between the saved and the unsaved in the human will. This is what’s going on when the Baptist and Pentecostal TV preachers call for people to ‘make a decision for Christ.’ They falsely say the difference between you and a person who is lost is what you decide, your ‘willful’ action. But that simply locates our salvation back inside us, and this is Biblically wrong. The difference between Christians and people who will be eternally separated from God is not what we’ve done. We all deserve the down escalator at the end of time. It is what Christ has done for us on the cross that saves. And as far as the ‘decision’ issue, Jesus clarified that once and for all when He told the Apostles: ‘You didn’t choose me, I chose you.’ (John 15:16) The perfection of which John writes about in the Epistle today speaks not about a perfection of the will, but a perfection of love God works in us. Its root is not found not in us, but in Christ and His cross. It is Jesus, Himself, who abides and acts through us. Our focus is always on what Christ has done, and continues to do, through His true Church. And so, we come to the Gospel reading from John, and the Words of Jesus. Christ says, in His humble agricultural example, that we receive the very sustenance of life from Him. What does it mean to ‘abide in Jesus?’ It means that our whole life is lived under the cross and in the light of the empty tomb. We abide in Jesus when we remember Christ paid for our sins, a payment we could never make. When we consider our virtue, we notice that Jesus is the one who puts it there. There are two ways to fail here. We could take our sin to another place for forgiveness, to self-salvation or false religions. But we receive this example, this gift, that Jesus is offering when we realize our only hope is in Him. The branch, grafted into the vine, soon grows together. They become one thing. The branch draws its life from the vine. God the Father is the vinedresser, we are not. God connects us to Christ; we don’t connect ourselves to Jesus. God works faith in Christ within us. The fruit production is the work of the Lord, even though the labour is ours. Yet even this labour is impossible for us on our own. We depend on the gift of the Holy Spirit. He connects us to Christ in the waters of our Baptism, in the flesh and blood of the Lord’s Supper, in the hearing of the Word, and the forgiving voice of absolution after our confession. Through those things the very nutrients of God flow into our life and through us into the lives of others. This enables the good fruit to be born, the gift of life to those who are hungry for God’s Word and salvation. The Apostle John, who wrote both our Gospel and Epistle readings today, was dealing with a problem in the First Century of some folks who based their faith on false notions of spirituality. These people said God would not have truly entered the flesh; Jesus must have been a spirit, according to them. They said Jesus only “seemed” to be human. Some people John was dealing with were early Gnostics. These heretics believed it was through secret ‘knowledge’ that we obtain salvation, and that Jesus only really came to save our souls. But through the work of the Holy Spirit John saw the lie in all this. The Apostle knew that if Jesus did not take up our humanity, in all its humanness, He did not save it. If Jesus did mot truly die on the cross, He didn’t pay for our sins. But He did die, and rose again. What John also saw with crystal clarity is that when Jesus took up our humanity, He enabled us to love our fellow human being in a different way. If Jesus only died to save our spirit or soul, then the suffering of our neighbours is just something to be escaped. But Jesus did come in the flesh, and that means that my neighbour’s humanity has also been redeemed by Christ and is connected to Him. When we love others, we are loving Jesus. We do need to remember, though, that our works and the way we treat our neighbour can become matters of sin. Thankfully our salvation is not dependent on our works. As John says, our love, when it truly exists, is actually the very presence of God. Without God dwelling in us, we’re lost, utterly and completely. We cannot ‘own’ that love as if it’s ours, without God. Christ is not ashamed to dwell with us. He is not tainted by our sin. His holiness alone renders us forgiven. Our love is not us earning God’s favour, it is the beautiful evidence of God’s favour proclaimed in our Baptism. Our love is never perfect. But Jesus does not call saints, he calls sinners, and makes us saints. May the love of God abide in You, and may You abide in Him, and express His love to others. Amen. PRAYERS OF THE CHURCH SERVICE OF THE SACRAMENT Page 194 (Our Communion Hymn is “The Infant Priest Was Holy Born”) Communion Collect (Right-hand column) Page 201 CLOSING HYMN: 919 “Abide, O Dearest Jesus” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmp6Uxe2yB0