09-easter 7th Sunday

FROM LUTHER’S PRAYERS: Dear God, give me your grace that I may rightly understand your word, and more than that, do it. O most blessed Lord Jesus Christ, see to it that my search after knowledge leads me to glorify you alone. If not, let me not know a single letter. Give only what I, a poor sinner, need to glorify you. Amen.

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

FROM LUTHER’S SMALL CATECHISM: The Lord’s Prayer: The Second Petition Your kingdom come. What is this? In fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us.

How does this come about? Whenever our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that through the Holy Spirit’s grace we believe God’s Holy Word and live godly lives here in time and hereafter in eternity.

Almighty and eternal God, your Son our Savior is with you in eternal glory. Give us faith to see that, true to his promise, he is among us still, and will be with us to the end of time; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

GOSPEL: John 17:6-19 (Jesus prayed:) “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf, I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ? Thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. John xvii. 6

There is no argument about whether there is on earth a Church which man should obey. The battle begins when men must decide which is the true Church. As long as we judge according to human words and understanding we cannot settle this quarrel, nor can we find the true Church, but we can reach certainty in the matter if we hear how Christ our Lord Himself describes and portrays the Church. Here He christens and depicts her as the little company which loves Christ and keeps His Word (for thus is such love known and felt), ‘My Word’, He says, ‘must remain and be kept, or there can be no Church’. The Word of Christ is here the rule and test whereby one can find and know the true Church, and by which she must set her course, for there must be a rule and order according to which the Church shall preach and act. It is not right that any man speak and act as he likes, and claim that the Church has spoken, and acted, by the Holy Spirit. And that is why Christ binds His Church to His Word and gives it to her as a sign whereby men may enquire and test whether she possesses the Word, and teaches and preaches in accordance with it and does everything for the love of Christ. Sermon on Whitsunday, 1544.

W.A. 21. 461.

Taken from the book:

Day by Day We Magnify Thee Page 362

by Martin Luther