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S. Pentecost 16.25 Luke 16:19-31

“But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead…’

There’s good news and bad news in our Gospel, today. The good news: Jesus will save us from sin, death, and the power of the devil!—already has done, always will do, actually. The bad news is he won’t save us from ourselves…

What do I mean by that? Well it’s what we talk about a lot: faith isn’t our doing, it’s simply the non-rejection of Jesus.There’s no celestial SAT or Presidential Fitness test we need to pass to enter heaven.The gate to heaven’s always already propped open by Jesus’ body and blood.

By his word and sacraments, the Good Shepherd has taken each one of us by the scruff of the neck—from the dark ledge onto which we’ve gotten ourselves stuck with the devil’s wolf-pack howling at our heels—laid us on his shoulders, and carried us home through the gates of Paradise. And this is all done gratis, free—all God’s doing—a gift that is always already ours without doing a thing or lifting a finger.

But, like any gift, it can be rejected—like any tackle can be broken, if your stiff-arm is strong enough and you’re determined enough to not be carried anywhere by anyone—even the Good Shepherd!

This is why Luther is always so powerfully emphasizing what the Gospels all tell us, in myriad ways. Faith is literally a NOTHING!—pure passiva—it’s the non-rejection of Christ’s gracious rescue of his lost sheep, non-resistance of his carrying us through the gates of Paradise.

Sin makes us contrary. If the Shepherd says “Black”, we say “white”. If he says “OK, white”, we say “BLACK!”. But Jesus forgave all our sins by his death on the cross in our place. Death is the wage our contrariness and insistence on leaving his pasture pays out. And the devil is the one who is master of that dark place outside the Shepherd’s fold. He will only harass and hurt us.

But Jesus has conquered sin, death, and the devil! by his perfect life, death, and resurrection. Our debts are paid, our rescue is complete, and no one can snatch us from the Good Shepherd’s strong hand. That’s what I mean when I say Jesus will save us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Already has done, always will do, no doing of ours needed.

But Jesus won’t save us from ourselves! That is; he won’t drag anyone by their hair, kicking and screaming into Paradise because… well, then! It wouldn’t be Paradise, would it? It would be like high school detention, no fun at all. Because, see: if you hate God, hate his Kinging, Heaven would be hell for you; and so Jesus has made a place (that is hell for the believer) where the haters are screened from the Light of Glory blazing from Jesus’ Face, making them as minimally miserable as possible… 😉

Because the light of God’s face is the One Thing that keeps us going, the screening cannot be complete. The fire of hell is simply that minimal Light necessary to keep them existing. This is the sense in which we all have “free will” as Luther beautifully explicates in his greatest work “Bondage of the Will”.

We do not have free will to do anything positive to save ourselves. Being dead in our trespasses, we are powerless to do anything to shake off sin, death, or the devil’s power. And because saying: “we have free will!” always suggests to us some power we have to break the power of sin, death, and the devil, Luther thinks it best not to talk that way.

Our language is really quite inadequate to express these divine mysteries. Luther wishes we had better vocabulary! But, he grants: that while we don’t have ‘free will ‘to break the power of sin, death, or the devil’—do not have the power to chart our own course and walk it it, neither are we coerced by God. We are not puppets on a string, not automatons…

We are ‘free’ in the sense that we can say “NO! Leave me the hell alone!” to God. We are free in the sense that we can stiff-arm the Good Shepherd’s tackle as we’re racing headlong to dive over the cliff into the Abyss (not that we’re strong enough, but: if we hate Heaven that much, the Shepherd mercifully let’s us break his tackle and go cliff-diving into the Abyss). But Luther won’t call that “freedom”. He calls it BONDAGE to sin, death, and the devil which makes us break loose from the Shepherd’s tackle and his loving embrace.

It’s like crack babies who are born desiring the destructive drug.

It bothers us that this is the Reality! We think God must fix us, must make us right! But that would turn God into a Tyrant; and he who is love incarnate—gentleness, kindness—will not, cannot, be that. If you insist on dropping out of high school, living in a crack house, and destroying yourself, it will break your parents’ heart. But out of love, they will not make a slave of you, even for your own good.

There, I’ve saved you the trouble of reading “Bondage of the Will”! But, the whole book is better than my short summary.

We see the rich man in hell is screened from seeing God’s face full-on. Abraham talks with him. And the man hates where he’s at, but notice what he never says? He never says: “GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!” Because if he did say that, could say that—if he’d non-resist Jesus’ breaking the power of sin, death, and hell for him—he’d never BE in hell, in the first place!

We see also that a harsh and difficult life as a poor beggar with only dogs to lick his sores and be his friends seems… unkind; but it did help Lazarus see this vale of tears as the devil’s Super-Max, make him ecstatic when Jesus breaks him out, and whisks him to Heaven!—while the wealth and luxuries the rich man enjoyed were not eternally beneficial, still: it was as much joy as he was capable of. So, even there, God is kind and good…

The Last Thing we see about hell is how its denizens are always blaming someone else for their own stubborn stiff-arming of Jesus! And they always want the Remnant to be their slaves. “Lazarus!, bring me a drink! Lazarus!, go warn my brothers!”

And we see Fr. Abraham’s scornful rejection of this modern idea of ‘missions’. Even if God raised Lazarus from the dead, and sent him to some delinquent Lutheran’s door, it wouldn’t bring them back into the fold. It would only make them… madder!

Moses and the prophets were preached every Saturday in the synagogue, just as the Gospel is preached every Sunday, here. Today’s the day of salvation, for you, for me, for all lost sheep as our power to resist God’s love is broken here, and we begin to find it rather… agreeable—being carried by our Shepherd to Heaven. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.