The Fifth Sunday after Easter - Rogate
Hymns: 207, 298, 206, 200
Jeremiah 29:11-14 — “I Will Be Found of You, Says the Lord”
Grace, mercy, and peace to you all from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Old Testament reading for this day is from Jeremiah 29:11-14:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Introduction
Yet again the Lord teaches us regarding who He is. He proclaims to us the kind of God that He is. This is the only way that we can truly know Him, for He is nothing like what we would imagine based upon how we act and how we observe the rest of the world acting. He is Love. He thinks toward us very differently than the selfish and merciless ways that we think. He loves us and continually thinks toward us with thoughts of grace, mercy, peace, salvation, and comfort. His desire for us is the desire that a loving Father has for his children. In all things He demonstrates this, and if we listen to what He tells us, we do hear it and respond to it.
I. For I Know the Thoughts That I Think Toward You
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
These words were given through the prophet Jeremiah and sent to “the residue of the elders which were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon.” The Lord’s people had forgotten Him and had turned to other gods. They had forgotten His everlasting mercies. They had turned to their own thoughts and relied upon their own wisdom and understanding. They had begun to imagine themselves interpreters of the Gospel rather than hearers of it. They had wandered far from the Lord their God in their hearts and minds. Thus the Lord withdrew His protection from them as a people. He brought the armies of Babylon against them to conquer them and to take them away as captives. By this the people would be caused to see the futility of their own reason and strength. They would be caused to endure the falseness of their own interpretations.
This message is for us today as well. Even though we imagine ourselves to be far advanced from those who have lived before us, even though we imagine ourselves to be wise and full of understanding, even though we imagine that we have developed technology upon which we can depend to help us in our many troubles and struggles, the Lord declares, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
Today we imagine that the troubles that we face in the world are things that occur naturally. As a society we have chosen to ignore history and to imagine that what was recorded for us is merely deluded thinking of those who could not comprehend the facts.
Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. Ever since the first two people turned aside from what the Lord declared to seek wisdom for themselves, ever since they listened to another voice for interpretation of the Word of the Lord, people have followed this way of self-deception. The woman listened to the creature. The man listened to the woman. Life as God had intended for His beloved children came to an end. Death entered the world through mankind’s thinking regarding God, the world, and man himself.
Adam chose to think for himself and to interpret the truth for himself rather than continuing in the Word of God that God Himself had spoken to him. Rather than thinking the Lord’s thoughts, he chose to think his own thoughts. In that moment, in a mere blink of an eye, everything became dark for mankind. The beauty of the communion that the Lord had established between Himself and mankind, the communion that was made to be demonstrated in the union of husband and wife, had now become polluted with other thoughts. Lust replaced love. The human body was now cause for shame. Selfishness replaced unity. Tolerance replaced the enjoyment of purity.
The Lord stepped in and dealt a swift blow to the evil that the devil had tempted man to bring upon himself and his posterity. The Lord came calling to man in the garden. The Lord confronted man in his sin. The Lord cursed the ground for man’s sake so that in all of his efforts man would experience the truth concerning the utter futility of his own reason and strength so that he would repent and once again trust in the Lord and His merciful love.
In this connection we hear the words of our text where the Lord God declares: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
While this translation is not entirely accurate, it does express quite beautifully the point that the Lord declares to us. It is more accurately translated as “to give to you an after part and a cord.” An after part can be a future or a destiny or posterity. It is a promise of something beyond what is currently perceived. A cord is a binding together. It served to hold together those who share the same promise and hope. Thus the King James translation of an expected end does direct us to that which the Lord promises, that which the Lord says that He knows, that which we can only know when we listen to what He tells us.
He has planned for us our salvation. He has planned for us our redemption. He has planned for us the after part that we cannot see in the things that surround us in the world. While all that we can perceive by our own reason and strength is the eventual doom of mankind and the world as the world loses its integrity and mankind becomes more and more corrupt, nevertheless, the Lord tells us that He knows the thoughts that He thinks toward us. His thoughts are thoughts that include an expected end, an end of the troubles and the struggles and the darkness and the despair and the wickedness and the hatred and the hopelessness and the futility that we experience in our daily lives. His thoughts include a restoration into the blessedness of His Holy Communion wherein all who are brought into it abide in everlasting peace and joy and comfort. This is the expected end that is shared by all who hear what the Lord declares so that they are made to share in His thoughts, thoughts of peace and not of evil.
II. Then Shall Ye Call upon Me, and Ye Shall Go and Pray unto Me
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
We continue to hear of the troubles that are in the world. Lately we have heard of terrible tornadoes that have caused horrific damage and have killed our neighbors. Not long ago we heard of the tsunami that caused horrific destruction in Japan and the threat from the damaged and leaking nuclear plants. Earthquakes continue in the world. Terrifying storms pop up and rage against us. Famines still plague many. Wars and rumors of wars fill the earth.
Yet these are all actually given for our protection. What?!! For our protection?!! Yes. These things protect us from the deception that the serpent presented to the woman and that Adam chose to hear. All of these things that show us our weakness and fallibility teach us that we need to hear what the Lord says concerning His thoughts toward us.
In times of crisis, we have no choice but to abandon our deluded thoughts concerning being our own saviors. When our technology fails to help and protect us, we again look heavenward and beg for an answer from our Creator. Often we demand an answer, like the defiant children that we are, but nevertheless, we do remember that we are but dust and that our hope is not in our own strength. For we are dust and to dust we shall return, except that the Lord plans to raise us up to live everlastingly in the blessedness of His Kingdom.
Thus the Lord withdraws the protection of His presence so that we feel the separation that we have chosen for ourselves. We feel it in the troubles of the world. We feel it in the lies that the governments tell us. We feel it in the oppression that the bankers impose upon us and that we willingly accept for the sake of temporal pleasures. We feel it in the arguing and fighting in our families. We feel it in our own self-loathing as we see the rottenness of our own sinful nature and of our own thoughts, words, and deeds. While we sometimes imagine ourselves to be strong, not much time passes before we fall and scape a knee or break an arm or a finger or simply sprain an ankle.
All of these things are for our good. We despise them. We fear them. We try to find ways to prevent them. But still they come upon us and teach us the true condition in which we exist in this sinful world. As we become more aware of these things the Lord says:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
We often challenge this declaration. We often speak against the Lord and His merciful intervention in our lives. When He withdraws His protection so that we feel the separation through troubles and aches and pains and diseases and disappointments and failures and betrayals and abandonment, we often cry out that God is unjust. We cry out as though we did not deserve to experience these things, even though our own hearts condemn us and convict us of deserving far worse than the Lord actually brings upon us.
Yet the Lord does not change in His thinking toward us. His desire for us continues to be that we should be brought into His kingdom of peace and unity and hope. He continues to think toward us with thoughts of bringing us to an expected end, an after part that causes all of the present troubles to fade into nothingness. His thoughts toward us are thoughts of binding us with the cord of His Holy Communion, where we are baptized into Christ to partake of His body and blood for the unity of the faith and the continual outpouring of forgiveness and renewal in His grace, mercy, and peace.
But we do not seek for the Lord when we imagine that things are going well for us according to our own plans and desires and efforts. As long as we think that we can rely upon our own reason and strength, as long as we look to our own communions for our sense of belonging, as long as we rely upon our own creations as means of hope and happiness and prosperity and healing and blessedness, we do not turn to the Lord and seek Him. Rather, at best, we use His name as a cover for our own plans and our own contrivances.
But when our plans begin to falter and our strength begins to wane and our wisdom begins to fail, then we sometimes remember what we were taught in our youth. Then we remember the words that were preached to us from the Holy Scriptures. Then we remember the faithfulness of the Lord our God and we are turned in our hearts to call upon Him again and to seek Him with all of our heart. When our spirit is finally broken so that we no longer imagine ourselves to have strength of our own, when the consequences of our sinful rebellion rise up over our heads so that we are about to drown in them, then our hearts finally turn to the Lord, who has been standing ready to answer us and to help us. But first we had to be broken so as to acknowledge that He truly is God and that He alone is our helper and redeemer and justifier and sanctifier.
III. I Will Be Found of You, Says the Lord
And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.
The King James version says, “And I will be found of you, saith the Lord.” The Hebrew has a deeper sense to it. It does mean that the Lord declares that He will be found, but the meaning is fuller than that we will find Him on account of seeking Him. It means, “And I will be present to you, declaration Yahweh.”
This meaning is further expounded by the following declaration, “And I will turn you captives and will gather you from all the gentiles and from all the places which I have driven you, declaration Yahweh. And I will turn you to the place which I stripped you from then.”
When the people of God begin to imagine that they are the Church by what they do, when those claiming to be the Church begin to rely upon the notion that the Church exists as their creation, when those claiming to be the communion of the saints begin to define the Church according to their own definitions, the Lord withdraws from them and leaves them with their own church. When the people begin to say “our church,” the Lord stops calling it His Church. When the people finally make their church to be dependent upon their wisdom so that they choose the way of tolerance over the way of forgiveness, then the Lord no longer has any place among them.
For the Lord works through the means of grace. His presence with those who gather has been clearly defined by Him. When those who gather forget the reason for gathering, when they make changes to the practices that the Lord has ordained for His Church, they cease to be gathered unto Him and into His name. Instead, they have begun to gather into the name that they have chosen for themselves and are simply gathering unto themselves for their own purposes.
This is not the Church and the Lord does not call this His temple. He does not abide in such a gathering. Why? He is not welcome in such a gathering. Such a gathering does not want the Lord to interfere with their self-chosen ways. Such a gathering only wants to use the Lord’s name, but not according to His thoughts, thoughts that He has plainly declared in His Holy Scriptures. They often still use the Scriptures, but again, according to their own purposes and interpretations.
However, when the people have been broken in their spirits so that their hearts have been turned again to call upon the Lord according to the ways that He has commanded and ordained, when they again seek the Lord with all of their hearts through the means through which He has promised to be present with them, they do find Him right where He has been all along.
Thus the Lord says:
And I will be present to you, declaration Yahweh. And I will turn you captives and will gather you from all the gentiles and from all the places which I have driven you, declaration Yahweh. And I will turn you to the place which I stripped you from then.
The Lord will not tolerate falsehood and hypocrisy. He will not continue where these are the chosen ways. But when the people have been changed in their hearts so that they are turned again to call upon Him in spirit and in truth, then the omnipresent Lord is found to be present even among those who seek Him. For while the Lord truly fills all things, His presence is known only through the means by which He makes Himself known. For we are incapable of perceiving Him except through the means through which He reveals Himself to us.
We need His means of grace. We are not capable of receiving God except through these means. While all of creation teaches us of His existence, we cannot know Him except through the means that He provides.
Moreover, God is not merely God. He is the Lord, Yahweh. He is not merely a cosmic force or a supernatural being. He is our Father. He is the Lord our God. He comes to us personally, even in flesh and blood. He did not merely redeem us with a payment or sacrifice, but He redeemed us with His own precious blood, having made Himself to be our brother of the same flesh and bone, to offer Himself as the sacrifice of our redemption and atonement. The anger that He should have displayed toward us, He took into Himself and suffered for us. He inflicted the just punishment of our sinfulness upon Himself in His own body. This is the way of thinking that the Lord has toward us.
Therefore, since our very lives depend upon the purity of His body, the Church, since our everlasting salvation depends upon the purity of the administration of His means of grace, He does not allow any church that tolerates compromise of His means of grace to be called His Church. Oh yes, many such churches have been created by the many pretenders, and yes, they all call themselves the Church of God, but only God has the power to call something into existence and to place His holy name upon it. His Church exists as the holy catholic Church. It is pure and holy and perfect because He makes it so through the pure means of grace.
Thus the Lord says:
And I will be present to you, declaration Yahweh. And I will turn you captives and will gather you from all the gentiles and from all the places which I have driven you, declaration Yahweh. And I will turn you to the place which I stripped you from then.
Before he can be present to us, He first must strip us of our own churches that we have created for ourselves. He must first strip us from the places that we choose to gather ourselves so that He may separate us from all the gentiles and turn us to the place of His presence. Where the means of grace are purely administered, the Lord is present to us just as He promises. When we compromise His means of grace, He must strip us of His Church and drive us to the places that the gentiles gather. Then, when we finally grow tired of the same old emptiness of the pretense of the compromisers, then we finally can be brought back by the Lord to the gathering that He has established in His Holy Communion. Then we finally can hear Him again and respond to His declarations.
Conclusion
We sinful humans are unfaithful and are easily distracted. We turn our hearts toward many directions, and then we wonder why the Lord seems to be so far from us in our lives. Then we look to our own prayers and our own devotion as our sources of comfort and strength. We surround ourselves with attempts to know God’s presence in our lives. We seek to comfort ourselves with hope that we generate from our own emotions. We psyche ourselves up with hyperbole and positive thinking. We try to convince ourselves that we are not as bad as other people by pretending not to judge them. We lie to ourselves, pretending that the way of tolerance is the way of peace and unity. But these ways eventually show themselves to be totally empty and valueless. All of our pretenses fail to accomplish what we hope to find through them. Instead of unity we find duplicity. Rather than peace we find avoidance of conflict. In place of forgiveness we find permissiveness. In the end we find ourselves alone in the midst of a sea of pretenders.
Today we have heard again the declaration of the Lord that He knows the thoughts that He has toward us. His thoughts are thoughts of peace and not of evil, or as the Hebrew says, Raah or Ra. This is the same word that is used in Genesis 2:9, where the Lord explains that knowledge of Ra brings death. The Lord has no such unpleasant thoughts of destruction concerning us. This is what we choose when we turn from His thoughts to our own thoughts. As long as we continue in the words that He speaks concerning us, life and blessedness are all that we know. God does not want us to be cut off from His good thoughts of peace toward us. He sent the angels to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem to proclaim this, even as we heard in the Gloria in Excelsis. “Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” This is what the Lord thinks toward us. This is what He declares even from the highest heaven. This is what He declared from the cross. This is what He declares in Baptism. This is what He declares in the catechesis of the divine liturgy. This is what He declares in the Holy Supper.
Do we hear Him? Do we hear the thoughts that He has toward us? He stands before us telling us His thoughts toward us. He does not lie. He sets Himself before us in the sacred meal of forgiveness and life. Here He is, just as He promises. His thoughts toward us are held out before us. Come and partake of what He has declared to be yours. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus forever. Amen.
The Fifth Sunday after Easter - Rogate
Hymns: 207, 298, 206, 200
The Introit (Is.48:20, Ps.66:1,2)
P: With the voice of singing declare ye and tell this:C: utter it even to the end of the earth. Hallelujah!
P: The Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob:
C: Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
P: Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands;
C: sing forth the honor of His name.
The Collect
O God, from whom all good things do come, grant to us, Thy humble servants, that by Thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be right and by Thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.
The First Lesson Jeremiah 29:11-14
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.
The Gradual (Lk.24:26; Jn.16:28)
P: Hallelujah! Hallelujah!P: Christ, who hath redeemed us with His blood:
C: is risen and hath appeared unto us. Hallelujah!
P: I came forth from the Father and am come into the world:
C: again, I leave the world and go to the Father. Hallelujah!
The Epistle James 1:22-27
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
The SENTENCE for the Season (1 Cor. 5:7)
P: Hallelujah! Christ, our Passover:C: is sacrificed for us. Hallelujah!
The Holy Gospel St. John 16:23-30
And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.
Jeremiah 29:11-14 — “For I Know the Thoughts That I Think Toward You”
Introduction
I. For I Know the Thoughts That I Think Toward You
II. Then Shall Ye Call upon Me, and Ye Shall Go and Pray unto Me
III. I Will Be Found of You, Says the Lord
Conclusion
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