Sunday, December 31, 2023… First Sunday after Christmas
“Heirs of Heaven”
Psalm 111; Isaiah 61:10- 62:3; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40
Service of Prayer and Preaching
Hymns: #366 “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”; #360 “All My Heart Again Rejoices”
#367 “Angels from the Realms of Glory”; #380 “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”; #937 “Lord, Bid Your Servant Go In Peace”; #387 “Joy to the World, the Lord is Come”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
A read a story this week about a woman who died homeless on the streets of Astoria, Oregon, while an $884,000 inheritance, left to her by her mother, sat unclaimed in a state bank account. Cathy Boone died in January 2020 in a warming shelter after years living on the streets, suffering from drug and mental health issues, as so many of our homeless do. When Boone’s mother died in 2016, estate lawyers and family members tried to locate the poor, dear lady through newspaper ads, and even hired a private investigator, but no one could find her — so the inheritance that could have changed or even saved her life went unclaimed. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me,” her father said in a TV interview. “That money just sitting there – and she needed help in the worst way.”
Are any of you in line for a big inheritance? I don’t seem to have any wealthy relatives or rich uncles, at least that I know of, so I guess I’m out of luck. But God’s Word calls we who have faith in Christ “heirs of heaven.” And Jesus Himself said, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” So what are we heirs of? What is this inheritance we have to look forward to? How do we lay claim to it? What a sad, sad thing it would be to have all the treasures of heaven waiting for us, and die having left them unclaimed. How many people are doing just that? Living sad and hopeless lives, thinking there’s no help for them and nothing they can do, when all that love and goodness and grace is waiting for them, there for the asking?
Astonishingly enough, the treasures of heaven are easy to lay hold of, simply by believing and by having faith in Christ. No works or deeds to perform, no forms to fill out, nothing to qualify for, no high standards to meet. Sinners, homeless wretches, lost souls, doesn’t matter. Jesus came to “preach good news to the poor.” Heaven’s treasure is for everyone who’ll hear the Good News and take it to heart. Confess your sins to God, repent, be baptized, and believe, and it’s yours. Every good thing heaven has, it’s all yours. If only people knew it was that easy…
St. Paul, in our reading from the Book of Galatians, lays it out for us, and explains how salvation is all about faith in Jesus, and nothing else. Before this faith came to us, says Paul, we were held prisoners by the Law of God. How so? Because although God’s commandments are righteous and holy and good -- and good for us -- our Lord requires us to keep them perfectly. And we can’t do it. We were all sinners and lost souls (“wretches,” the old hymn says), condemned by a holy standard no sinner could ever hope to meet. That is, until faith was revealed; until we heard the Good News that Jesus has come to lay Himself down for us and offer up His own life for our sakes. Faith unlocks the bars and opens the prison gates – thanks be to God!
So the Law was put in charge, Paul says, to lead us to Christ, so that we might be justified by faith. The Law of God was given – the perfect, holy, impossible, frightening Law – to show us what condition our condition is in. Here’s what God demands of us, and here’s what we’ve done, or left undone. So brothers, what shall we do? Martin Luther said we wouldn’t seek out a physician if we didn’t know we were sick. (Pain is sometimes a useful thing!) So if we can be brought to understand how desperately sin-sick we are, that we’re terminal, that we have no hope without someone to help us (which is humbling, but necessary), then maybe, just maybe, we’ll reach out to God in our desperation and find Him.
To be “justified” means “to be made right with God.” And we can’t do that on our own, by our own works or efforts, or by our own means. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, or how poor. What you need is faith in Christ, over and above all other things. And faith isn’t a work of ours either, or something we can find for ourselves, but a gift of God’s grace.
Now that faith has come, says Paul – now that we’ve come to believe – we’re no longer under the supervision of the Law. That doesn’t mean God’s Law is no longer in effect, or that we don’t have to obey the Commandments anymore; don’t make that mistake. What it means is that the Gospel comes first, that we’re “saved by grace, through faith, and this not by works, so that no man can boast.” God still expects the good works He calls for to follow along after faith, and for good works to flow from our faith; but now we have the thing in the right order. We do what we do out of joyful obedience, to give thanks to God and to serve our neighbors. Jesus said, “Love keeps the Commandments” -- so the love we have for God and others should find us willing, at least, to do the best we can to obey them. “Not because you must, but because you are willing,” Peter says.
Paul tells us, “You’re all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” Here’s where our inheritance comes in. We’re all sons and daughters and children of God, because we’ve been blessed with faith in Christ. We’re children of heaven’s High King, adopted into heaven’s royal family, with all the rights and privileges contained therein. Our heavenly adoption happened at our Baptism, where we were given a new name and a new identity in Christ, and “the right to be called children of God.” “You will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow,” Isaiah says.
Being “clothed with Christ” means that when we were baptized, we were given holy vestments, wedding clothes to wear, “white robes of righteousness” to wrap around ourselves. Isaiah says, “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” We’re like the prodigal son, who came dragging himself home, stinking of pigs and begging for mercy, who was given his father’s own robe and ring and sandals to put on, because “this son of mine was dead, but now he’s alive again; he was lost, but now he’s found.”
And again, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’ve been. God’s kingdom isn’t given by bloodlines, or by who your parents were, or by who you can trace your family back to on Ancestry.com. Jew or Greek, German or Norwegian, slave or free, man or woman, rich or poor – all of us are one in Christ Jesus, part of one holy Christian Church. If you belong to Christ – if the King of Heaven has adopted you and dressed you in that fine white robe (a robe made white from being washed in His blood, the Book of Revelation says) – then you are Abraham’s seed, Abraham’s descendant, Abraham’s heir, and God’s own precious child. We who have faith are the true children of Abraham, “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
Still though, what we have on this day is only a partial inheritance, a promise, the good Holy Spirit as a downpayment now on a future yet to come. We’re still children, spiritually speaking, still sinners, still learning, still only half-grown. None of us are as good at keeping those good Commandments as we should be, or as we’d like to be. All of us, if we’re honest, will have something to apologize for, to God and to the people around us, at the end of this day.
We’re still, Paul says, as long as we’re still living in this world, “in slavery under the basic principles of the world.” A basic principle, in the Greek, is a stoichea, which is “a common and ordinary arrangement.” In other words, we’re prisoners of the way things are in this place. We’re still sinners, living in a sinful world, and sin still has its consequences. Just look around you, watch the news for five minutes, count your own sins at the end of every day, and you’ll have to admit it’s true. “Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?” Paul says. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
But when the time at last was right, says Paul; when the God who made us and loved us saw that the time was right to act to save us, He sent His Son -- down to earth, to the womb of Mary, to Bethlehem in Judea, with angels and wise men and shepherds and all -- to be born for our sakes. Jesus was born “under the Law,” Paul says, born into a world where those old basic principles still apply. He was born where the devil has established His throne, where sin is everywhere and where people are often horrible to one another. Jesus was born into a world where everywhere He walked, people were hurting and suffering and sick and sad, and lost, “harassed and helpless like shepherd-less sheep.” He touched as many as He could as He walked along, to show His love and His power. But His real destination was always a cross outside Jerusalem, where all His children would be bought back from slavery, and redeemed by His holy, precious blood. God sent His Son “to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive the full rights of sons.”
Because you by faith are sons and daughters of the King, you have the blessing of hope today, and the blessed assurance of an inheritance to look forward to, one that outshines everything you’ll ever have in this world. God loved us so much that He gave us His only Son, our Lord Jesus, who died for us, and rose again, and ascended back into heaven. And from there, as He promised, He’s sent us His good Holy Spirit, to be in us and beside us and with us always, to give us joy in our souls and hope in our hearts; and also the blessing of being able to cry out to our Father in Heaven in good times and bad, and to know that He’s our Abba, our Daddy, the one who loves us always and will never hold back a single good thing from His children. And no one knows, says Paul, “the good things God still has in store for those who love Him.” And it’s yours. It’s all yours.
Simeon and Anna, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and wise men, saw with their own eyes the God who created and holds up the Universe, the One who owns heaven itself, come down to earth to give Himself and all things to us. They held Him in their arms, looked into His brown eyes, and heard Him coo and cry. “And although we have not seen Him, we also love Him,” Paul says. He’s here with us today in His Word, and in His Sacraments. He’s here with us in the Spirit of hope and faith and love that lives in us; and we know with all our hearts that He’s coming soon. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay,” Paul says, “to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servants in peace. Our eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people.” Lord, may all the people see Your Light and Your glory, and share together in the blessed inheritance of all Your saints. In Jesus’ name; Amen.