God's Comfort - Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
July 6^th, Year of Our + Lord 2025
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, South Dakota
God’s Comfort 
Isaiah 66:10-14, Galatians 6:1-18, Luke 10:1-20

Audio of Sermon available HERE.

   "Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her; that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance."

   God is not shy with the metaphors He chooses.  He equates His promised salvation with the comfort of a nursing baby, drinking his fill, satisfied and safe in his mother’s arms.  I don’t talk like this; do you?   And yet, I think we all get it.  We all understand the intensity of the comfort the LORD describes through the image of a nursing infant. 

   How is it that we all understand?  Is it merely by observation?  Is it simply that we have all seen a baby nursing and immediately could sense the intensity, comfort and beauty of the connection between mother and child?  Or is it more personal?  We don’t remember nursing, but is there somewhere in our brains a hidden memory of our infant experience, that infuses our thoughts and emotions so thoroughly that we nod knowingly at this passage from Isaiah?    

   Lisa Smith delivered her twins a couple weeks ago, Carlee June and Claude August.  Everything was going fine, and Shelee’s family was in town, so I didn’t go right over to see them.  But I was thinking about getting to meet them, and now so are most of you.  I was eager to go see the babies, and talk to Elliot about his new baby sister and brother.  And now I have received one of the many perks of the office of the ministry, as I was able to visit the Smiths last Thursday.  Elliot wasn’t around, but Carlee and Claude wrapped their tiny fingers around mine and slept beautifully, as Lisa, her mom and I discussed plans for their Baptism.  It had been a while since I’d been around newborns, and twins to boot.  They are a wonder.      

   The eager anticipation so many of us feel at the opportunity to meet a newborn goes along with our innate grasp of the LORD’s nursing infant metaphor.  There is something precious and miraculous and peaceful about a new human being, born into this world, precious, miraculous and peaceful at the same time it is stressful and messy and frightening.  Parenting newborns is both one of the hardest parts of life, and also the very best. 

   Of course, not everyone is so comfortable and enthused about interacting with infants.  As a youngest child, I didn’t get to learn all about it on a younger sibling, so 12 to 20 year old David was not so eager, not so poetic, not so comfortable around infants.  And that’s o.k., as long as we don’t stay stuck there.  For the good of our souls and the future of our nation, not to mention the growth of the Church, everyone should learn how to hold and care for a baby, because this is how we learn to love them.  And loving babies makes us more like God. 

   Inexperience is a legitimate reason to not be enthused around infants.  They are tiny and fragile and it takes a bit to learn how to hold and care for them.  But there are darker reasons people avoid babies.  Infants force us to stop focusing on ourselves and give them our attention.  Babies, with all their needs, inconvenience us from time to time.  Infants, which we have all been, may remind us that we were once helpless.  For those who think it through, infants also remind us of the return to increasing dependency that we will all experience, if we live long enough.  As we gather two days after the 249^th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, the virtues of independence, freedom and autonomy all ring in our ears.  Does a red-blooded American want to be like a helpless nursing infant?  Are we too proud to embrace the reality of our need, of our dependence on God? 

   You don’t need to answer me.  But this is precisely the problem that Jesus diagnoses in the three Galilean villages of Chorazin, Bethsaida and His second hometown of Capernaum.  All too many proud Jews, Jesus’ own people, rejected the saving message of Christ, precisely because He was describing the saved like needy newborn babies. 

   It’s not just that Jesus’ hearers were confused by His teaching on Baptism, like the Pharisee Nicodemus was, when he came to Jesus at night to learn from Him.  Upon hearing about the new birth of Baptism, Nicodemus asks, “How can one be born again, can he crawl back into his mother’s womb?”  (John 3)  Impossible!  Uncomfortable to think about.  Nicodemus was confused, but many Jews understood, consciously or unconsciously, that the Gospel Jesus preached was offensive in what it says about human capacity and goodness.  The way Jesus taught, always laying bear the sinfulness of all His hearers, pointing to His Cross as the solution, and promoting the helplessness of a newborn as the ideal of true faith in God, this teaching was and still is offensive, for what it says about mankind, about you, and me, and every descendent of Adam.  Jesus declares that we utterly lack capacity to make ourselves right  before God.  And that stings our pride.        

   Many of His countrymen, by and large quite religious people, were nevertheless offended by Jesus and His doctrine.  So, most rejected Him.  Pride-of-self, confidence in one’s own goodness, is the great danger to the religious.  Self-righteousness can lead us to reject God’s miracles, to reject His true messengers, and to finally twist His teaching, His Law and His Gospel, distorting them into a horrible lie that condemns both the proud teacher and his hearers. 

   And comparing the faithful to helpless newborns is not the end of God’s scandalous teaching.  Jesus takes it further, all the way up a rocky hill to a Roman Cross.  Jesus’ death is the ultimate condemnation of humanity, the ultimate pride-crusher.  Here is what we deserve.  Here is what it takes to save the likes of you and me, the necessary solution for every sinner. 

    In terms of achieving God’s standards and making ourselves righteous, we are helpless, like newborns.  But it’s even worse, of course.  We are not only helpless, we are culpable.  We are guilty; we are by nature enemies of God.  We have absolutely no room to boast. 

    Except.  Paul, after calling the Galatians to humility and selflessness, exhorting them to gently restore each other when anyone falls into transgression and sin, goes on to deny the right for the Christian to boast, with one exception.  But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 

    The “upside-down-ed-ness” of the Gospel flips our perspective again, as the very thing that most crushes our pride-of-self becomes the one thing that we rightly boast of: God did that, for me.  Christ Jesus went through that, to have me for His very own.  The victory of the Cross and the Resurrection, this is the gift that God delivers to me, delivered to me in my Baptism, renewed each time I confess my sins and hear His forgiving Word of Absolution, received in my mouth in the mystery of the Holy Supper.

    It is painful to hear and accept the truth about our sin, our unworthiness.  It is also hard to believe the forgiving message of the Cross, that the same God who hates our sin and promises just punishment, also took our sin upon Himself, in order to comfort us with His mercy and love.  Hard to believe, but joyful to trust, an eternal comfort we begin to rely upon, once the message remakes and restores us.  This Gospel message is recorded throughout the Bible, in words like “He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that, in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) 

    And again, “for the joy set before Him, (the joy of having you for His very own), Christ Jesus endured the Cross, despising the shame, and (resurrected from the dead and ascended on high, He) has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)  Or again, “this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son as the propitiation, (the atoning sacrifice), for our sin.” (1 John 4:10)

    This is the promise that gives us sinners comfort, comfort like that of a nursing newborn, cradled in her mother’s arms.  This is peace like a river, the promise that both changes our eternity, and our today.  Knowing and resting in the comfort of Christ, floating in the river of His peace, means both that our destination is the glory of paradise, and also that our current days are changed.  For we still live in this world, with all its problems and failures, but we are also alive, already, in the world to come.  For we are joined to the risen Christ by Baptismal Faith. 

    Now, here’s a question: This life, lived in the comfort of the Gospel, the life lived floating on an innertube down God’s River of Peace, what does this life look like?  Well, the life that flows from the Cross looks a lot like the life lived by the One who went to the Cross, on our behalf. 

    Life floating in the River of God’s Peace looks humble.  Christ Jesus, the Son of God, humbled Himself and entered this messy world, in order to save it.  So also Christians are necessarily humble, for our salvation is not our achievement.  We live humbly, and we live in this messy world, as long as our Lord desires, knowing that each day is another day of grace for us, and another day God would love others through us, always seeking to draw them toward Jesus with the Word of hope.  And that Word is best received when the speaker proclaims in humility, not from arrogance or superiority. 

    The life of Christian comfort is thankful: Our Savior gave thanks as He transformed the Passover into the Holy Supper.  At the Last Supper, Jesus spoke of and made promises based on His own suffering and death, which would begin in just a few hours.  A serious and frightful moment, anything but comfortable.  And yet Jesus, at that moment, gives thanks, before He breaks the bread.  He gives thanks before He blesses the Cup.  Jesus was thankful, even on the night when He was betrayed, because the salvation of sinners is the desire of God. 

   So also, Christians live thankfully, for we know more than anyone just how much our God has done for and given to us unworthy sinners.  Christian life is the thankful life, and is especially the life that returns regularly to the thankfulness meal, the Eucharist (that’s what that funny word for the Lord’s Supper means, give thanks, thanksgiving). 

   The life lived floating in God’s River of Peace is gentle.  For God did not treat us with the severity that we deserved; rather He has treated us with the gentleness of a mother, caring for her newborn.  So also we are gentle, especially when our calling includes restoring a brother or sister in Christ who has fallen into error, or when we are called to speak the truth in love to an unbeliever.  We speak the truth, in love, with gentleness and respect, seeking to prepare the soil, that the Holy Spirit might plant a seed of faith. 

   The Christian life is a life that flows from receiving God’s comfort, and then flows into sharing that comfort with others.  And so St. Peter exhorts us: like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. (1 Peter 2:2)  And Paul teaches us that God comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. ⁵ For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.  (1 Cor 1:4-5)  

   As Americans, just two days out from the 4^th of July, we may or may not struggle with God’s choice of the nursing infant metaphor.  But perhaps the LORD knows our need better than we do.  Which brings us to the 72.  Luke helpfully includes this bit of Gospel history, establishing the fact that the pastoral ministry which the Apostles of Jesus established was not an idea the Apostles dreamed up. 

   After Christ ascended to God’s right hand, the Apostles went out and preached the Gospel.  As the Spirit converted unbelievers, the Apostles planted churches.  Peter, Paul and the rest of men whom Christ chose as foundation stones for His Church then started appointing other Christian men to serve as pastors, deacons and missionaries.  Through this work, along with their writing of the New Testament, the Apostles ensured that the ministry Christ had established would go on after they died, and they established its form.  There is a challenge in this, however, if you only read Matthew, Mark or John’s Gospel, because they don’t tell us that Jesus instituted a ministry beyond the 12.   Now, that He desired this is implicit in much of what Christ taught.  Still, it is a blessing that Luke included the explicit event, when Jesus chose 72 others, not to be Apostles, but yes to be missionaries, evangelists and preachers, serving in the same tasks as the 12.  And indeed, Jesus gives the highest endorsement of their ministry, telling the 72, “he who hears you, hears Me.” 

   This was a needed endorsement, because the chosen spokesmen for God are never all that impressive.  After all, the LORD only has sinners to work with.  Nevertheless, God chooses to work, with authority, through His Word, spoken through the feeble and fault-filled men who occupy the pastoral office. 

    The 72, like the 12, are called into a great adventure, proclaiming God’s coming kingdom, healing, casting out demons, preparing the way of the Lord.  They go speaking peace, for the comfort of every soul they encounter, a peace that is real, and freely given, but too often rejected.  They do great things, by the Holy Spirit’s power, and upon their return, they are rightly excited.  But, as we began today talking about comfort, worked for us by God, so also, Jesus concludes this passage about the 72 with the most comforting advice, for them, and for us. 

    After they regaled Jesus with their exploits, and after Jesus celebrates the fall of Satan, caused by their preaching, He then points the 72 back to the proper reason for joy, the real comfort of every Christian.  “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”   This is the true comfort and joy of every Christian. 

    And how did names of the 72 get written in heaven?  How did your name get written in heaven?  Not by your hand, to be sure, but by the nail-scarred hands of Jesus, writing in blood to reserve your place with Him, forever.  This is our true comfort, in good days and bad, and also the Good News that sets us free to speak of Christ and share His love. 

 Let us pray:  Merciful God, grant us faith and wisdom to rest like nursing babes in the comfort of the promises you have given to us in Christ Jesus, today, and forever and ever, Amen.