Full Text for Lutheran Worship 2- Volume 3 - Gifts We Receive from Christ's Presence (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN WORSHIP 2 03.LW2 Captioning provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 ******** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ******** >> DAVID: Thank you. This is most helpful. You mentioned gifts. What are these gifts that we receive from Christ's bodily presence? >> DR. ARTHUR JUST: To begin, we have to reiterate that Christ is the gift. But when we talk about it that way, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we receive. What is it that comes to us when we have this communion with Christ? Before we talk about the specific gifts, I want to just step back a minute and recognize that when we worship-- this is something we're going to talk more and more about now as we dive into the biblical foundations of worship�but when we worship, what we're doing is we're having a foretaste of our heavenly worship. It's interesting when you read the Scriptures you look for a description of heaven or what is heaven going to be like. And certainly, the Book of Revelations gives us a lot of the information about the character of our heavenly life with Christ. But in other ways, the Scriptures are really in many ways quite vague. I think we all have ideas of what heaven is going to be like. And I know some people picture it as kind of maybe an eternal golf game or fishing forever and never casting and not coming up without fish, or whatever it is as you see as one of the great pleasures that you have in life. And I hope this doesn't disappoint you, but heaven is going to be full, complete communion with the Holy Trinity, communion with Christ, the second person of the Trinity, our savior and redeemer. And pictures in scripture I think describe heaven best is a marriage feast. A feast where we sit down at table and rejoice and praise God and feast in his presence. This idea of heaven as being our opportunity to praise and glorify God without end is one of the great gifts that we receive already now to be able to do that now, to have that gift of Christ's presence and the privilege, the right, to stand in his presence and worship him. That's why we're going to talk about how heaven is already in Christ present on earth. And that idea of having a foretaste and participation, even now, of the heavenly worship is one of the great foundations of what it means to understand the gift that Christ gives us in himself. Let's talk about the tangible gifts, the tangible gifts that come to us by Christ's bodily presence. I think the best way to go at that is to simply quote Luther himself where, in the Small Catechism in the sacrament of the altar, this is what Luther says. He says these words, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins show us that in the sacrament, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us through these words for where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation. Let's talk about forgiveness, life, and salvation as the three great gifts that God gives us. Now, you're familiar with those words. Those are words you hear bantered around in the church all the time. One of my favorite exercises as a professor at the seminary when we have our exit interview with our fourth- year students, is to ask them simple questions because they are questions I want them to be able to give a simple description of. Oftentimes, they're expecting much more complex questions. And I love to ask them please describe to me what is the forgiveness of sins? What is life? What is salvation? Oftentimes, when they answer those questions, they get into kind of a theological speak. The use technical words and sometimes, we just simply need to reduce those words down so we understand exactly what they mean. I will give you a full five or ten minutes on Jesus' understanding of the forgiveness of sins when I talk about his preaching in Nazareth. But let me here, just simply define forgiveness for you. The word forgiveness comes from the Greek word for release, freedom, liberation. And that's why forgiveness of sins is so important for us as Lutherans. Luther is the one who accents the forgiveness of sins. And this is certainly part and parcel of Jesus' ministry, especially in the Gospel of Luke. And Paul talks a lot about the forgiveness of sins. We need to be released from our sins because we are in bondage to them. When we are in bondage to something, we are captive to it. We are enslaved to it. We're like in prison. And those sins create in us guilt, and they create in us shame. Those are two things that can really destroy a life when we are burdened by these extraordinary emotions of guilt and shame. When we hear the absolution from the pastor, when we hear the gospel read in our midst and the very words of Jesus spoken to us, when we receive the body and blood of Christ, we are released from those sins. We are set free. We are liberated. We no longer have that guilt. Those sins are behind us. God remembers them no more. And so forgiveness is one of the great gifts because we can leave the church no longer burdened by the sins that we brought in because God has remembered them no more. They are, as Jesus says, as far as the East is from the West. I want to next go to salvation. When we talk about salvation, again a word we banter around in our sermons and our teaching and in our church, what we're really talking about is rescue, that we are drowning like somebody who has fallen off a ship. And we need to be rescued. And when somebody has fallen off a ship, what do they do? They throw them a life preserver. And that is what Jesus is for us. He is our rescue, our life preserver. And we hold onto him for dear life because he is the only one who can save us from drowning. Now, what is it that he rescues us from? Here again, Luther is so beautiful because he talks about sin, death, and the devil. These are the enemies that we have. These are the ones who are trying to destroy our life, and even sin itself is a superhuman power like the devil. In the world, this world in which we live that is infected with this virus of sin, that has evil in it and tragedy and suffering and death, these are incredible enemies that Jesus rescues us from because when we come in to Christ's presence and are joined to his flesh--here is the last gift--we are joined to his life, a life that knows no end. Later on, I'm going to talk about how in baptism we get death over with. We die once and for all. We are joined to Christ's life, a life that never ends. Yes, we will all die again physically, but that is just an entrance into eternity with Christ, into his life that is eternal. That's one of the reasons why baptismal fonts are eight-sided because the number eight was the number for eternity in the ancient world and in the Old Testament. And when we enter those waters of holy baptism, we enter eternity with Christ. His life is now our life, and that is one of the most extraordinary things that happens to us when we receive his gifts. Now, when we have that life, we share God's holiness. We are made pure in baptism, and when we are forgiven our sins, when we come into the presence of Christ and receive the gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation, we now share that holiness. We are set apart from this world which is what holy means. And it is that holiness that we now bear as we bear Christ into the world. And so when we talk about the gifts, we talk about Christ himself. We talk about how he forgives us, sets us free, how he rescues us from our enemies, and how he gives us his life, a life that is marked by his holy presence.