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Propers: The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 14), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Is God for us? That’s what we really want to know, right?

We grapple daily with loss and disease, with stresses and exhaustion. It is no picnic growing up and growing old. We hear of wars and rumors of wars: of extremists and terrorists, of a rising China and revanchist Russia. And then there’s this crazy little man on an Asian peninsula who claims he can now nuke Alaska. All the while we grapple with a crumbling infrastructure, student debt crisis, partisan gridlock, and our healthcare fiasco. And this is life in the wealthiest country in the world! O from where is our hope to come?

Amidst all of life’s anxieties, all we really want to know is whether God is for us—for if God is for us, everything else can be handled. Everything else will pass away. But if God is not for us, then regardless of how heroic our struggle, we will be subsumed by the burdens of this life and collapse along with the rest of this fallen world.

Hear then, my brothers and sisters, the Word of the Lord set before us today.

“The Lord is gracious and merciful,” sings the Psalmist, “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and His compassion is over all that He has made. All Your works shall give thanks to You, O Lord, and all Your faithful shall bless You … The Lord is faithful in all His words, and gracious in all His deeds. The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.” Amen.

Good Lord. Did you hear all that? Gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. His compassion is over all that He has made. All Your works shall give thanks to You, O Lord. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. There’s no equivocation here, no reservation, no qualifiers. All who are falling, God raises up! All His works shall give thanks to the Lord! These are blanket promises, grace overflowing, a superabundance of mercy drowning our every misgiving and fear! All shall be raised! All shall praise God!

And it’s not just the Psalmist. Hear the words of the prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice! Shout aloud! Your King comes to you, triumphant and victorious, riding the foal of a donkey! He will cut off the chariot and the warhorse and the battle-bow; He shall command peace to the nations from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. And as for you also, because of the Blood of My Covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.”

Behold, then, the Messiah, the Christ, the King of Kings! See how unexpectedly He comes, riding upon the foal of a donkey, the ancient sign that He comes in peace. And He does not make war upon us or our enemies—rather, He makes war upon war. He breaks the bow and shatters the chariot and sets the warhorse free. And He proclaims peace, peace upon the nations, peace upon His people and upon all peoples, peace from the river to the sea and unto the very ends of the earth. Triumphant and victorious is He, so powerful, so good and true and beautiful, that all of Creation is reconciled at last in Him.

And this is a prophecy, mind you, from a warrior people, a people who have known conflict and subjugation and exile and defeat, who have seen their Temple burned and their cities laid waste and their tribes scattered to the winds. Zechariah is not naïve, promising pie in the sky by and by. He knows the worst mankind has to offer, fire and steel and blood. Yet this is the vision given unto him to proclaim to us and to all peoples for the last 2500 years and more. This is the vision of Christ Victorious, bringing peace at last to the shattered human race.

And now we come to the words of the Gospel, of God Himself in the flesh: “Come to Me,” He proclaims—and He proclaims this, mind you, to the very people who have just denounced Him as a drunkard and His herald as a demoniac. “Come to Me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

That’s a promise, you understand. All who are weary, all who are burdened—and who upon this turning earth is not?—come to Me, and I will give you rest. Period. I will teach you, I will guide you, I will claim you as My own. Thus is fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah: “As for you also, because of the Blood of My Covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the pit,” that is, from the dead. My Blood, My Life, proclaims the Christ, will save you from death, for not even the grave can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Brothers and sisters: all of us struggle in this life. All of us suffer to one degree or another. Sometimes we suffer justly as the result of our own poor choices. Often we suffer unjustly for reasons we can neither fathom nor explain. And in the midst of our suffering, our losses, our sins, all we want to know is whether God is for us—whether He knows, He sees, He suffers alongside us. Does He still love us, fallen as we are?

And the unanimous witness of Scripture for three and a half millennia is an unequivocal “yes!” Yes, God is for us. Yes, God is with us. Yes, God stands by us in all of our troubles, even unto death and the grave, and He will faithfully see us through to light and life and joy the likes of which we cannot possibly imagine now.

And so we are freed—freed from sin and pain and fate and time and age and disease and all the things that threaten to devour us body and soul! Freed because Christ is for us, Christ is with us, and Christ has claimed us as His own! And yes, we will struggle. And yes, we will suffer. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory in Christ Jesus, that our sufferings will not have the final say. They shall pass away with all the other brokenness of this world, while we shall rise and rise and ever rise unto that day when Christ’s victory is complete and God at last will be all in all!

Death cannot claim you; disease cannot claim you; cancer cannot claim you! For the Lord is faithful in all His words. He upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. Triumphant and victorious is He, who by the Blood of His Covenant frees us from the waterless pit. For the Lord is gentle and humble in heart, and in Him we find rest for our souls.

Yes, my dear children, God is for us, for all of us. And nothing in heaven or hell or all of Creation can stop Him from fulfilling the promise He’s given to you.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.