Signs and Idols

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

“Of ourselves we have no strength.” We make this confession in the appointed Collect for today. And indeed, we have no strength. Neither you nor I have any strength in us to do anything useful. Our wills are corrupted and our bodies are weak and feeble. We live in a dying world, among the walking dead. Of ourselves we have no strength, because of ourselves we are dead.

One of the things for which you have no strength is resisting temptation. Even the regenerate man, the person baptized into Christ and marked with the Name of the Lord, still faces temptation, and more often than not gives in to it. Today's Gospel lesson alludes to a great temptation – the temptation of images and signs.

On one hand, there is the temptation toward idolatry. Depicting God in any form, even the face of Jesus Christ, runs the risk of creating an idol, an object of worship, or at least dependence. This is why the Reformed traditions reject all forms of church art or visual depictions of God. They assert that to depict God in any way, shape, or form is to diminish His glory, because the glory of God is beyond the capacity for human beings to represent. Furthermore, they assert that to depict Jesus in visual form is to rob Him of His divinity, because the divine cannot be expressed in visual terms. Finally, the Reformed claim that God commands His people to worship Him and to deal with Him only in Word and Spirit, and that to depict Him visually is a direct disobeying of this edict.

The Spirit Blows Where He Wills

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

The Spirit blows where He wills. This is a great truth of the Christian faith. It is also a great mystery to Christians. The Spirit blows where He wills: is this Law or Gospel? Is it good news or bad?

In a very real, forthright sense, it is Law. The Spirit blows where He wills. You cannot control Him. He starts where you cannot see Him, and He comes and goes as He pleases. He is here when He presents Himself. He promises to be where the Gospel is preached, but He does not guarantee to remain where He is not received. He blows upon whomever He chooses, and He calls to faith those whom He wants.

You are not the standard of the Spirit's work. He does not visit those you wish He would, simply because you think He should. He does not flow here or there, doing what you would like. As little as you can direct the wind, even less can you direct the Spirit's coming and going. He may convert those filthy heathens that make you recoil in horror, because He loves them too. He may not convert your loved ones who shut their ears and their hearts.

"The Light Has Come Into the World"

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

Today's lesson from St. John's gospel serves to illustrate the principle that no matter how many times you read a passage of Scripture, more will always come out to teach and admonish you, and to comfort and guide you along life's way. In particular, this passage requires a great deal of attention on account of the richness of the Word he proclaims to you.

Our lesson begins by recalling to your memory the event of Israel in the wilderness on their way toward the Promised Land. The people grumbled against Moses because they thought they were suffering because they lacked the pots of meat around which they used to sit while slaves in Egypt. On account of their murmuring and their slander against Moses, the Lord's servant, the Lord sent fiery serpents among them, who bit the people and caused many of them to die. In their misery, the people repented and implored Moses to ask the Lord for mercy. He then commanded Moses to raise up a bronze serpent on a pole, that whoever looked at the raised serpent might live.

Follow the Sign

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

The world is full of signs, some more helpful than others. I once saw a sign on a fence that said “No Smoking Propane”. Or there is the sign I saw in a book that read “To Go Left Make 3 Right Turns”. I'm sure you have seen signs in various places that caused you to laugh, scratch your head, or just plain wonder what the signmaker was thinking.

In general, most of the signs we see regularly are good. Signs give useful information. Street signs tell us where we are, and help us find where we want to be. In every land, in every language, the first thing a foreigner learns to recognize is the restroom sign. Then, once you can find the restroom wherever you are, you learn to recognize food signs. We need an abundance of signs to help us answer those three basic questions: where am I, where is the restroom, and where is the food?