Ponce de Leon, the Spanish explorer, sailed up
and down the Caribbean looking for the Fountain of Youth. He
believed that if he could find it and drink from it, he would
stay eternally youthful. His body would never weaken, get sick
and feeble and die. The Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon
believed, was the remedy to mankind’s ancient problem of
disease, decrepitude and death.
Unless Ponce de Leon is in our congregation this
morning to contradict me, he never found the Fountain of Youth.
History records that he died a disappointed man in 1521, at the
age of 61. No one has ever discovered the Fountain of Youth.
It’s true that life spans are much longer today than they were one
hundred years ago. It’s also true that medical advances have
helped many people lead active lives well beyond what their
parents and grandparents did. But it can’t go on forever. The
hair will eventually turn gray and fall out. The skin inevitably
starts to sag. Our muscles lose their tone. Lungs lose their
efficiency. The heart wears out. Cancer or some other ugly
disease eventually takes its toll, if an accident doesn’t take us
down first.
And yet we hope for more, don’t we? More time,
more pleasure, more experience, more life. Some men hit middle
age and ditch their wives and buy a toupee and a sports car. Some
women see the years piling up and decide they want to “find
themselves” and abandon their families and their settled way of
life in search of something more. A stockbroker might quit his
job because he really wants to be a lumberjack. An attorney might
leave a lucrative practice and become a trail guide at Yosemite.
Time passes, the years mount up, and the end of our life gets
closer and closer. And all of us, in one way or another, wish we
could find the Fountain of Youth, or its modern-day equivalent.
How do we face up to the impending end of our
earthly life? How do we confront the fear of death that assails
us in the dark hours of early morning as we lie awake in our
beds? What happens after death? Does anything happen, or is
death just a black, unceasing, featureless void? Or, even worse,
what if something worse than extinction awaits us after we die?
What if those old stories about hell, and God’s judgment, and
eternal punishment are true?
Martin Luther knew that uncertainty about these
questions was intimately related to uncertainty about our
relationship with God. How does God feel about me? could
be described as the most fundamental of all human questions. Does
God love me? Does He hate me? Is He indifferent to me? Does He
take as little notice of me as I do of a bug crawling up a blade
of grass in the middle of the lawn?
How does God feel about you? Is He pleased with
the way you have lived? Do you believe you’ve led the kind of
life that makes God happy? God has given us an extremely pointed
diagnostic tool that we can measure our lives by. This diagnostic
tool is called the Ten Commandments, and in the Ten Commandments
God tells us how we are to show our love for Him and our love for
other people.
The Commandments tell us that if we really love God
and trust in Him above all things, we’ll never panic in the face
of adversity. The Commandments tell us that if we really love and
trust in God we’ll never use His Name in a bad way, but will make
sure to call upon Him in every trouble, pray to Him frequently,
praise and thank Him constantly for His many blessings. The
Commandments tell us that if we love and trust in God we will
gladly hear and learn His Word, because it’s through His Word
alone that we learn what God is like and how He feels about us and
what He graciously does for us.
How do you measure up? Do you love God 99 % of the
time? 95 %? 80 %? 50 %? 20 %? Doesn’t matter, because even if
you and I manage to fear, love and trust in God 99.999 % of the
time, that’s not enough. God demands we do it perfectly.
One of the ways we show our love for God is by
loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. That’s the second and
greatest commandment, the Bible says. To love your neighbor is to
live a life of concern for your neighbor’s well-being, and to come
to his or her service in any time of need that arises. A man who
loves his neighbor will not try to seduce his neighbor’s wife. A
woman who loves her neighbor will not fantasize about what a
wonderful husband her neighbor has and wish that he was hers
instead of that louse she’s married to. A young man who loves a
young woman will not do anything that would compromise her
chastity. If you and I love our neighbor, we won’t gossip about
them, we won’t spread tales, we won’t envy their good fortune, we
won’t hurt them or hate them in any way, and we’ll speak up for
them when others put them down.
How do you measure up? Do you love love your
neighbor as you love yourself 99 % of the time? 95 %? 80 %? 50
%? 20 %? Doesn’t matter, because even if you and I manage to love
our neighbor as we love ourself 99.999 % of the time, that’s not
enough. God demands we do it perfectly.
And we can’t do it perfectly, because we are
sinners. Sinning doesn’t make us sinners. Being sinners is what
makes us sin. Being sinners is what makes us attach our
affections to things and people, and love and trust in them more
than we do God. Being sinners is what makes us love ourselves
more than we love our neighbor.
Okay, let’s say you doubt you’re really a sinner.
The Bible has one ace up its sleeve to show you that you are.
What is that ace? It’s death. Death, the great leveler. Death,
the King of Terrors. The Bible says that death came into the
world through Adam’s sin, and spread to all people because all
sinned. The curse of sin is death. Babies die. Infants die in
the womb. Toddlers die. Adolescents die. Young mothers die.
Geriatrics die. Death spread to all people because all sinned.
All die; henceforth, all are sinners. End of argument. Point,
game, match. The victory goes to death.
Or so it seems. Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ
says there’s more to the story. A whole lot more. The Gospel of
Jesus Christ says that death has actually been defeated for us by
Jesus Himself. Death has been defeated because Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, entered into death when He was crucified, and overcame
death when His Body was raised from the grave that first Easter
Sunday.
You and I will die because we are sinners. But as
God in the flesh – one who had no sin – Jesus died on the Cross in
the place of sinners. He didn’t die for sinners who deserve Him
to die in their place; there would have been pretty slim pickings
if that’s how it was. No, the Son of God died for those who were
completely unworthy of God’s love and kindness and forgiveness.
He died for those who were jouncing along on the road to hell and
everlasting death and who were perfectly content about it. God
shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners – while
we were God’s enemies – He gave His only begotten Son to die in
our place.
On the Cross Jesus took your sin – all of it, down
to the last smelly fragment – and was punished for that sin in
your place. On the Cross He faced the terror of death, the horror
of God’s righteous condemnation, in order to tame death and make
God’s frowning, wrathful face beam with smiles of blessing. The
barrier between you and God has been removed by Jesus and His
Cross. The curse of hell fell on Jesus instead of you. The
result is – get this – you’re forgiven. You’re forgiven for
Christ’s sake. Your sins are taken away. God now sees you as
righteous. Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe. But the Bible
says that’s the way it is. And through the Gospel, as it’s
applied to us in Word and Sacrament, the Holy Spirit is at work to
convince us that, by gum, it is true. Christ died for me. I’m
forgiven in Him. I have life everlasting in Him.
The Gate that leads to everlasting life looks a lot
like an empty tomb – the empty tomb of Jesus to be specific. He
is not here! He has risen! Christ went down into death and the
grave to drag you out. His resurrection means that God has
declared you righteous, and through faith in Christ you are now
victorious over sin, death and hell. You may not feel like it at
times – maybe even most of the time. You still mess up. You
still do things you shouldn’t. You still fail in loving God and
loving your neighbor. But for Jesus’ sake, through faith in His
Name, God say’s you’re forgiven. God calls you righteous. God
says you have eternal life. And who are you to argue with God,
anyway?
Baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His
death and resurrection, baptized into His forgiveness, baptized
into His salvation. The old is gone, flushed away in the water of
Baptism, and the new has come. Coming up from the Font we are
raised to newness of life in Christ. The Font is the Gate of
Everlasting Life for us, because at the Font our old life died and
was buried, and the new man in Christ emerged, dripping and
shining wet, to live before God in Christ's righteousness and
purity forever. Through Baptism we enter into a new life of faith
toward God and love for our neighbor – a life fueled by Christ’s
forgiveness and grace through His Word and Sacraments.
So though it’s true that the Fountain of Youth
doesn’t exist, there is a Fountain of Grace, a Fountain of
Forgiveness, a Fountain of Life Eternal, and that Fountain is our
crucified and risen Savior Jesus Christ Himself! On the day of
our Lord’s Resurrection the women fled the tomb trembling and
bewildered, because they didn’t understand what had happened. On
the Last Day, when Christ returns, we, on the other hand, will
skip like lambs from our tombs, renewed in body and soul, thanking
and praising the Triune God for His goodness to us in the gift of
His Son.
Never doubt how God feels about you. He loves you
in Jesus. Never doubt what lies on the other side of death. In
God’s heavenly presence there is fullness of joy; at His right
hand are pleasures forevermore. Jesus is the Gate of abundant
life. He is the Gate leading to God’s eternal presence. The
Fountain of Youth – who needs it? God has given us His crucified
and resurrected Son. And through faith in Jesus we have life
everlasting.
Because Christ Has risen!
He is risen indeed!
In Nomine Patris. . .
