There is a liturgical verse used
at the graveside during funerals that in just a few words
describes the human condition.
Here’s what it says: In the midst of life, we are in death; from whom
may we seek comfort but You, O Lord, who for our sins are justly
displeased.
That
verse says it all. It
captures the reality of death (death comes to all).
It captures the reason death is an ever-present reality
(death comes to all because all have sinned and death is God’s
judgment upon sin). And
finally, it sets forth the only hope we sinners have in the face
of death – the comfort the Lord God graciously extends through
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
That comfort is described in today’s Gospel
reading. There our
Lord Jesus Christ declares that He is the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this
bread, he shall live forever.
The comfort of eternal life and victory over
death is found nowhere else but in Jesus Christ, through faith
in His Name. For the
Incarnate Son of God took upon Himself our human nature so He
could taste death for us. By
His death He sets us free from death and all of its terrors.
He died on the Cross and was raised again and thus
assures us that we too shall rise from the grave when He returns
on the last day.
But before we talk about the comfort of the Gospel,
let’s talk first about the reality of our need of the Gospel.
For the fact that we all will die is incontrovertible
proof of three
things: That we all have sinned; that we all have fallen short
of the glory of God; and that we all greatly need the help that
God alone provides.
On
the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
you shall surely die, the
Lord God told our father Adam.
And when Adam and his wife Eve disobeyed God and ate,
they died. They died
spiritually. That
means they were separated from God by their sinful rebellion, by
their desire to live independently from God.
They wanted to be self-created; they wanted to steer
their own course through life without any restrictions imposed
upon them by God. And
so in their disobedience they were estranged from their Creator.
They hid themselves from His presence in shame and fear.
That’s a picture of what spiritual death is –
separation from God; life lived, not under God’s blessing, but
under His judgment. Under
His curse forever in hell.
But Adam and Eve didn’t just
die spiritually. They
also died bodily. True,
it didn’t happen all at once.
But the man and woman created by God to live forever
embarked upon a forced march to the grave the moment they
disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree.
The reality of God’s displeasure and judgment upon
their sin was driven home by the gradual decay their bodies
experienced and by the death that would ultimately swallow them
up.
But not just Adam and Eve.
Their descendents too would all fall prey to death.
The Word of God explains the universality of death as a
result of the universality of sin.
Romans
5:12
tells
us:
Sin
came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and
so death spread to all men because all sinned.
All
the sons and daughters of Adam have inherited his sin and guilt
before God, passed down as the family legacy.
And inheriting His sin and guilt, we likewise inherit his
death.
And so we read in the book of
Adam’s family tree in Genesis 5:
And all the days that Adam lived
were 930 years, and he died. . .
All the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. . .
All the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died. . .
All the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died. . .
And so on, and so on, and so on, down through all
the long generations to your grandparents, and to your parents,
and to you, and to your children, and to your children’s
children. In Adam all die, the
Scripture says. The wages of sin is death.
Because of sin each of us is born tottering on
the very edge of the grave, not knowing when at last we will
topple in.
For our sins the Lord is justly
displeased. But in
His grace and good pleasure, He has acted to deliver us from our
sin, and from the death and hell that follow upon sin.
That is why we find comfort in God – specifically, in
His mercy and lovingkindness graciously extended to us poor
sinners in the Gospel of His dear Son Jesus Christ.
Here is God’s answer to sin,
death and hell – that the Son of God took upon Himself the sin
of the world as He hung bleeding and dying on the Cross.
All the foul corruption that spills like sewage from the
human heart -- the lusts, the hatreds, the bitter, hurtful
words, the pride and self-seeking, the infidelities and
betrayals – all this the holy, innocent Son of God gladly took
upon Himself, becoming sin for us, the Scripture says, so that with sin atoned
for we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
On the Cross Jesus Christ took
your sin, so that in Baptism He could bestow upon you the gift
of His perfect righteousness.
He took your condemnation on the Cross, so that you could
enjoy God’s grace and blessing forever.
He took your hell, there on the Cross, so that you could
live eternally in the glorious presence of the Triune God, with
angels, archangels and all the company of heaven.
Jesus took all the bad, and in its place gives you all
the everlasting good. He,
the Holy One, exchanged places with you under God’s wrath, so
that you, the sinner, might take His place and receive God’s
blessing.
You receive these things through faith in Jesus
alone. Faith is
described in today’s Gospel as feeding upon Jesus, the
living bread which came down from heaven.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God, ate of the forbidden fruit
and died. We eat in
faith of the living bread from heaven and live eternally.
Our Lord calls Himself the “living bread” because He
is the One who gives life. In
Him was life,
St. John
writes
at the beginning of His Gospel, and the life was the light of men.
But to make this life available
to you and me and sinners of every place and time, Jesus first
had to give His flesh for the life of the world.
He offered Himself up on the Cross to atone for sin, and
to propitiate the wrath of God.
It was no small thing the way our Lord suffered
physically there on the Cross.
But even more immense than His physical sufferings was
the hellish separation from His heavenly Father He experienced
when the world’s sins were laid upon Him.
My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me? He
was forsaken in order to bear our sins away, so that united to
Him in our Baptism we would never be forsaken by God, but
forever united to His love.
Nothing shall ever separate us from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans
8:39
says.
Even the grave cannot separate Christians from the love
of God, for those who eat of the living bread from heaven shall
themselves live forever, Jesus says.
Death itself is temporal.
Death too shall one day die.
And on that day death shall give up its prisoners.
As Jesus says, This is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and
believes in Him shall have everlasting life, and I will raise
him up at the last day.
Today we gather around this
Altar to feed in faith upon our Savior Jesus.
We take His Body into our mouth as we eat of the bread.
We take His Blood into our mouth as we drink from the
cup. And we do this,
not as some empty, formulaic religious ritual, but in repentance
and faith, recognizing our need, clinging humbly to the Word of
our Lord who so graciously feeds us, and gives us to drink:
This is My Body, given for you.
This is My Blood shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
Christ is as good as His Word,
doing for us exactly what He says He does.
And with sin forgiven and removed from us as
far as the east is from the west, fellowship with God is
restored. The curse
is taken away for the sake of Him who was made a curse for us as
He hung upon the tree. Victory
over death is ours, for the sake of Jesus who conquered death.
Eternal life is ours, for Jesus’ sake.
The sure and certain hope of the resurrection is ours –
again, for Jesus’ sake. As
our Lord tells us in today’s Gospel – and His words are most
certainly true – the
one who feeds on Me shall live because of Me.
The
death we all must die has been overcome, vanquished, trailing
its flags in the dust – because of Jesus.
And we are the victors, because of Jesus.
In the midst of earthly life, we
are in death. The
daily obituaries in the newspaper remind us of this inescapable
fact of human existence in a fallen, sinful world.
But the reality of death is not the whole picture – not
by a long shot. Today’s
Gospel, our Baptism into Christ, and the Holy Supper of our
Savior’s Body and Blood remind us of an even greater truth: In
the midst of death, we are in life.
By God’s grace, for Jesus’ sake, we have been taken
up into the life of the Triune God.
Our sins are forgiven.
We feed in faith upon our Savior in Word and Sacrament.
And we will indeed live forever.
In Nomine Patris. . .
