Easter 5

1  The Word of the Father brings us to life

There are wonders today in medical care.

Think as though you lived at the time of George Washington,

You’re a minuteman from Lexington,

and your best friend has been shot

with a British musket-ball.

But for our purposes, let’s say that

instead of dying from that battle wound, your friend receives 21st Century medical care.

The medics rush over only minutes later,

as your friend’s blood flows out onto the ground. They use strange bandages,

and put a sparkling tube into his arm.

They detect that his heart has stopped beating,

but instead of giving up,

they attach colored wires to him,

and press a button.

His heart starts beating again.

The wounded patriot is brought to a battlefield hospital,

where surgeons open his chest and extract the lead ball.

Meanwhile, his lung collapses and his heart stops again,

only to be restored and revived by efficient care,

with specialized tools.

Finally, your wounded friend is sewn up,

given medications to fight infection and pain, and provided a soft bed to rest as he recovers.

Amazing, isn’t it?

That patriot surely died in 1775,

but with our not-so-imaginary modern care,

he would live.

It’s almost miraculous.

Do you know what would be even better than medicine like that?

Something that could actually impart life to the dead.

That would most definitely be a miracle.

But that also really exists. There is such a thing.

To understand it, you have to understand death.

It’s not just the end of bodily functions. Death always begins in the soul,

when it becomes independent of God, and rejects both His will and His care.

The internal death of the soul

is the reason we have wars and bloodshed, crime and sorrow.

It’s the reason we have physical death.

More importantly, it’s the reason many independent souls

will spend eternity outside the presence of their Creator:

outside of His comfort, His favor, His blessing.

Something that would impart life to the dead

must begin with the dead soul, before it can heal the body.

Our text today comes from James, the brother of the Lord.

He wrote this first for the believing Jews,

scattered and persecuted in Palestine.

James describes this miracle of healing. He says:

The Word of the Father brings us to life.

(So that) we live today, through His will. (So that) we shall not die, through His gift.

2  James 1:16–21

Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

2.1  We live today, through His will.

Writing of God the Father, James said,

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

James is not writing about the Creation of in the Beginning,

but the Creation that is yet to come.

He writes not of all the people who live on earth now,

but those who are called out to live in heaven.

He writes to Christians, to the Church.

Jesus said that in order to see heaven,

we must be born again.

James is telling us about the same second birth:

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth.

From where, or what, did He bring us forth?

From spiritual death, into life.

Maybe you think that sounds pretty good,

but wonder if you’re actually included.

You can attend church for years, and still not know.

Does God mean these good things for you?

Are you included too?

James says yes, you are.

The Word by which the Father brought us forth,

James also calls “the implanted word.”

You might suppose that’s a subjective sort of thing:

that having the implanted word is

some special status for Christians, some certainty from how you feel.

That’s not the case.

The implanted word of God is your baptism,

remaining upon you with its promise in full force.

James says that it’s able to save your souls.

So if you’ve been baptized,

rest assured that it wasn’t your doing, but God’s.

Yes, you are included. Yes, by His own will, God has brought you forth

by the word of truth.

Quite a few Christians are mistaken about baptism.

They have the worldly opinion that it’s not really God’s work,

but their own work.

Many also include their faith: not a gift from God,

but a decision of their own, to be sustained diligently.

But don’t you see that James won’t allow it?

This brother of our Lord, James, realized

that we can’t believe unless God overcomes our unbelief.

See, James was an unbeliever.

He did not believe Jesus was God’s Son. It seems he didn’t believe

until Jesus rose from the dead and spoke to him.

So it is in every case:

we can’t believe, nor decide, nor baptize ourselves,

but God must do it all.

Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

God has called us from spiritual death to life.

We entered this world with body and soul corrupted. We’d inherited the wicked inclinations our our parents.

That was what brought about the tragedy of Cain and Abel:

the spiritual death into which we are born.

And it’s the reason every human being living on earth

faces the certainty of life’s end.

Spiritual death makes physical death necessary..

But Jesus was conceived unnaturally, miraculously.

The Son of God came here not to be worshiped,

but to die.

Jesus, the half-brother of James,

died alone, when none of us believed in Him.

But He still gave His perfect life: body and soul,

to satisfy God’s righteous judgment against us,

in our place.

Now because of Him, God’s Word has given us life.

It might seem odd to say we have life from God,

when we know we still sin.

But that’s another amazing miracle:

that our new identity and nature exists alongside our old, wicked nature.

One is truly living before God in righteousness, while the other remains spiritually dead.

One has a future with God,

the other does not.

One loves the implanted Word,

the other loves rebellion and sin.

One grows only through the Gospel,

while the other grows only in its absence.

Even now, today, the Word of the Father brings us to life,

so that we live today because of His will.

2.2  We shall not die, through His gift.

James wrote that God brought us forth

to be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

We are creatures of His New Creation yet to come.

That’s why we are a kind of “firstfruits,”

the first products of a harvest that will last forever.

Not the old, sinful nature that clings to us now,

but the new Man already brought forth by God’s Word.

The Word of the Father has brought us to life in this world,

but this new life we have is eternal, not temporary.

Our bodies grow old now and will die,

but instead of a punishment, death will be a deliverance.

This gift from God, given in His powerful Word,

is the miraculous medical care of Jesus Himself.

Doctors today can supposedly resurrect the dead.

One recent movie is about a man who died for a few minutes

on the operating table, to be brought to life again.

But there are still limits, aren’t there?

Modern medicine can jump-start a heart, repair lethal damage to vital tissues, and even grow new vital organs to replace dead ones,

using pluripotent adult stem cells.

Medicine can do so much,

but it needs something it can work with.

A dead body days in the grave is not enough.

That’s more like Dr. Frankenstein.

But the Word of the Father calls the dead to life,

whether it’s His powerful word giving faith to dead souls, or the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ, calling to dead Lazarus.

Lazarus had been buried four days, his body decaying.

No medicine then could save him before he died, and no medicine today could restore his life.

But Jesus did, by the power of His word.

When Jesus gave His life in payment for our sins,

it says that many other dead people in Jerusalem arose,

and were seen walking around, alive.

He is, as St. Paul wrote in Romans 4, the One who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.

If the Word of the Father is so powerful,

and if we really believed this,

wouldn’t we pay attention to it? Wouldn’t we listen?

Sure, we’re here right now,

but will we turn to that Word tomorrow? Tuesday?

If we realized that we need this Word for eternal life,

wouldn’t we meet Him without fail every Sunday,

to have our sins forgiven, and to receive His gift of immortality?

We would, if we believed this as we should.

But we don’t.

We have our doubts, our distractions, and our sinful flesh.

The flesh wants no part of life in God’s Word. It wants no part in the Baptism Jesus gave us.

It prefers independence from God: death.

And that’s why it’s so important that we give it death.

St. James shows us the way in our text:

Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

Or, as St. Paul put it in Colossians 3:

Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

And then, to the Romans:

For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

But James turns us toward the implanted word,

and the good and perfect Gift of God:

Jesus Christ.

Those who belong to Him (Gal 5:24)

have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Not by our own will or strength,

but by the will of the Father, and by the strength of His Word.

So we have to receive the implanted word daily,

repenting of our sins, being cleansed by Jesus’ blood.

And so the Gift of the Father will remain ours,

and we will remain His, for true life now on earth, and for its continuation in the perfect world to come.

The word of the Father brings us to life,

so that we shall not die, through His gift. That is, through Jesus Christ.