Sunday, June 16, 2024, 4th Sunday after Pentecost
“A Building from God”
Psalm 1; Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:1-10; Mark 4:26-34
Divine Service IV with Holy Communion
Hymns: #728 “How Firm a Foundation”; #645 “Built On the Rock”; #923 “Almighty Father, Bless the Word”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
At our Orphan Grain Train meeting in Westfield last Tuesday, we were blessed with a visit from a man named Vitali Smolin and his wife. The Smolin’s are American citizens of Ukrainian descent, but they’ve lived for the last 18 years as Christian missionaries in Ukraine. Their work is to help orphans who’ve lost their parents, and also to help those who’ve had to flee the Russian invasion and leave everything they own behind. The stories Vitali told us were heartbreaking and sad, but also compelling and amazing and a testimony to the grace of God in really terrible circumstances.
One of the stories the Smolin’s told us was about tents that Orphan Grain Train had recently provided for them. They’d been asked what they were most in need of, in addition to food, clothing, medical supplies and such; and they asked for large tents, to be used by their ministry as distribution centers. This was, they realized, a “really big ask,” because the cost of the type of tent they needed, along with the cost of shipping them overseas, was around $50,000 each. The good people at Orphan Grain Train went to work, making phone calls and seeing what might be available; and God’s generous people stepped up and came through, and three of those tents have now made their way to Ukraine. God is good!
Now, as Vitali told it, when the aid distribution centers were set up in those tents, it soon became difficult and almost impossible, because the need was so great, to keep them open seven days a week. So, at the Holy Spirit’s urging, he says, they announced that food and clothing could only be provided Monday through Friday, but that the tents would still be open Saturdays and Sundays for anyone who wanted to come and pray and worship. They expected only a few people to show up, since they were providing no supplies on those days, but the people came by the hundreds. Those “weekend tents” have now become God’s Church, for people who are hungry for hope in the middle of an unimaginable disaster.
And then, lo and behold, when I sat down on Tuesday afternoon to look at the Scripture readings for today, there was that reading from 2 Corinthians, all about tents.
St. Paul writes: “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” A tent in the Greek language is a skanous – a tabernacle, a nomad’s moveable shelter, a temporary dwelling. The eternal house Paul talks about, our real home, isn’t to be found here on earth. God bless the hands that built this place, and God bless the hands that still care for it today. This house of God we love so much is beautiful. But still, it’s only a skanous, a tent, a temporary thing, a poor imitation of God’s holy Temple in heaven. Our real home, our future home in heaven, wasn’t built by human hands, but built to last forever by the hands of God Himself. It wouldn’t be wrong to say it was built for us by the nail-scarred hands of Jesus Christ Himself; it’s the “house of many rooms” that Jesus promised to prepare for us.
“Meanwhile,” says Paul, “we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.” The word for “groan” here means to sigh or to murmur, or to “pray without words.” Remember how Paul says in Romans, “We don’t even know what we ought to pray for, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express?” There should be a longing for our heavenly home deep inside all of us. “I’m but a stranger here,” the old hymn says – a sojourner, a traveler, a passer-through. We’re all homeless, in that sense, until we get home again. “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee.”
“Because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked,” says Paul. To be naked, in the Scriptural sense, is to be helpless. There’s a show on TV called “Naked and Afraid,” and that phrase about sums it up. (No, I don’t watch it! The ads are bad enough!) To be spiritually naked is to be destitute, to lose everything, to come to the end of yourself. It means to be reduced to the state of being totally dependent on the grace of God and on the compassion of others, like those poor folks in Ukraine who had to flee for their lives and leave everything behind. “And there but for the grace of God go you and I.” “I was naked, and you clothed Me,” Jesus says. Lord, make us able to see Jesus in the faces of the people around us.
“For while we are in this tent,” says Paul, “we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” The tent Paul is talking about here is these bodies of ours – these earthly tabernacles, these temporary dwellings, which are destined one day to rot and decay, no matter how many vitamins we eat or how much we exercise or how well we take care of ourselves. We’re all naked and helpless in the face of time and the passing of the years. We’re mortal, we’re subject to death, death is coming for us all, and we know it.
So we cling, most desperately, to our hope in Christ, because that hope is all we have. Paul says this in the Book of Galatians: “I have been crucified with Jesus Christ, so I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” That is our hope. While we’re here on earth, all we can do is wrap ourselves in Jesus and the promises He’s made to us. There’s a reason the Holy Spirit is called our Comforter; He’s quite literally a warm “faith blanket” to wrap around our souls. On day soon, says prophet Isaiah, “God will swallow up death forever.” “Death has been swallowed up in victory,” says St. Paul. A day is coming soon when “There will be no more death,” the Book of Revelation says, “no more mourning or sorrow or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Better days are coming!
One of the members of my Church where I was on vicarage in North Dakota, a man in his late nineties, told me that he and his parents and two older brothers came to North Dakota in a wagon in 1907 when he was four years old. They arrived in late September, too late in the season to build a proper shelter on their new homestead; so the family spent their first winter on the northern prairie living in a tent. I can’t imagine how cold and difficult that winter must have been, or how overjoyed they must have been when Spring finally came. (Those people were tough!)
Our hope while we’re living here in this “winter tent” is what Paul tells us here in 2nd Corinthians: “Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” The one lovely Greek word for ‘deposit’ and ‘guarantee’ here is arrabona. It means literally a solemn pledge, or a promise made with an oath, or “an everlasting, unbreakable guarantee.” And having a guarantee like that means we do have real hope. And why is our hope real? Because “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” This Holy Spirit that’s in us today – in us by the Word, by our Baptism, and by the Lord’s Supper - is the down payment, the security deposit, the “faith collateral,” for the blessing that’s coming for all of us who believe. There are no ifs, buts, or maybes in this thing – it’s an iron-clad guarantee, by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, and by His glorious Resurrection, and by the promise our Lord Jesus attaches to it: “Because I live, you shall live also.”
“Therefore,” says St. Paul (and don’t you love it when there’s a ‘therefore’? There’s always something good that comes after a ‘therefore’) “we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.” Therefore we’re confident, we’re of good courage, and we’re always of good cheer, no matter what this sin-broken, stupid world might decide to do to us on any given day. If I wake up in the morning, and I open my eyes and find myself still living in this body, in this old tabernacle, in this shaky old tent, all that means is that I’m still here on earth and not yet at my destination; and that means it’s time to get up, put my feet on the floor, and do the best I can with this new day I’ve been given. Yesterday is dust; tomorrow may come, or it may not – but this good day is here, so let’s go!
“We walk by faith and not by sight,” Paul says. This world we live in isn’t the reality, only a temporary thing, and we’d all be happier if we kept that in mind. This world and everything in it is passing away. If anyone tries to tell you heaven isn’t real, the answer you can give them is, “No, it’s this world that isn’t real.” If this place was all there is, that would be just very sad. Walking by the world, living for the things of the world, building your house here on the sand, is a recipe for hopelessness. No wonder so many people who are living without faith in God are depressed and suicidal. Walking by faith means you’re living for the hope that there’s so much more! It’s living for the promise, hanging on, living for the guarantee. Hanging on by the skin of your teeth some days, but still, you’re hanging on. And only faith in Christ will give you the hope to hang on, and to see beyond the hopeless mess that life on earth can be. Without Him, you’ll just drown in it all.
“We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord,” says Paul. Heaven is going to be better than this place, for sure; but life here on earth is pretty good too, especially since I have all of you to share it with. “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord,” Paul says, “so whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” So we can’t really lose either way, can we? And listen to what St. Paul says in the Book of Philippians: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I’m to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I don’t know! I’m torn between the two: My desire is to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it’s more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I’ll continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.”
So as long as we’re here, and so long as the Lord sees fit to keep us here, why not make the best of things? Why not do our best to make the joy in us overflow? Paul says, “So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.” Until the Lord chooses to take me, or until Jesus comes again, I have a life to live and work to do; and the greatest work of my life, while I’m in this body, will be to try to do the things that are pleasing to God. That means to love Him, serve Him, and worship Him, and to be constant in prayer for those I love and for the world around me; and even to suffer for Him if it comes down to that, if that’s what He should ask of me. It means doing whatever I can with the life I’ve been given to make Him known, by “scattering the seed” that Jesus talks about in our Gospel reading, and by praying, hoping, and continuing to believe that the seed I manage to sow for Jesus while I’m here will grow and amount to something when everything is said and done, even if I’m not here to see it.
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” Paul says, “that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” The thing to keep in mind with this passage is that all the good things, all the things that will be worth anything in the end, come from saving faith – and, according to St. Paul in Romans 14, “Everything that does not come from faith is sin.” Anything you manage to accomplish in this world – anything you build, any “forever thing” you try to establish, any legacy you try to leave behind - will turn to sand if it doesn’t come from faith in Christ, and if Christ isn’t in it. If you put your heart into the things of the world, then turn around to show the Lord, when you come to stand before Him, what you’ve built that you’re so proud of, you’ll be pointing to a pile of ruins and junk and dust. “You can have it all, my empire of dirt,” an old song says. Perishable world, perishable things. But “These three remain,” says Paul: “Faith, hope, and love.” That’s the faith you showed, the hope you shared, and the love you gave.
We’re so blessed to have this Church to worship in. It’s beautiful, it’s familiar, and it feels like home. This place is a precious gift from the hand of God, and may we always treasure it and care for it and never take it for granted. And our hearts - and all the earthly help we can give - also go out today to our brothers and sisters in Christ who’ve lost their houses of worship here on earth, and who are doing their praying today in tents and temporary shelters. May God have mercy on His people, and have mercy on us all, as we work and hope and pray for good to prevail in this world, and for Jesus to come back soon. Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! We pray in His name; Amen.