Slogans are great for advertising. Everyone of us knows that America runs on Dunkin or Eat More Chikin or We have the meats or I’m loving it or better ingredients, better pizza. But a slogan cannot make up for what is missing – good food. Slogans can pique your curiosity and bring you in the door once but they cannot keep you coming back. The same is true for church slogans. A slogan cannot replace the truth.
We Lutherans are good at slogans. We have the solas – sola Scriptura, sola gratia, sola fidei. We have Law and Gospel. We have Word and Sacrament. We have means of grace. We were once known as the Church of the Lutheran Hour. But slogans cannot make up for unfaithful doctrine or unfocused preaching or music that feels good but says nothing of Christ and His work. In order to have a reason for coming back, we need something more than a catchy slogan. We need the truth that endures forever.
In the Gospel today is a phrase that has become a slogan. The truth will set you free. We all know how that slogan has been used and misused by every group or cause looking for a snappy phrase. Jesus does not give us a slogan. We should not be content with a slogan. Jesus gives us Himself and we should not be content with anything less. His words are truth you can take to the bank.
St. John says that Jesus spoke these words to the Jews who had believed in Him. These were not Christians who had believed but had stopped believing. Nor were they Christians who believed so profoundly that they had no doubts or fears or worries any longer. These were a people who believed but whose faith was constantly challenged, whose hearts were troubled by things that did not seem right, whose minds were anxious over things that did not make sense. Their faith was young and therefore their faith was in danger. Jesus does not speak to condemn them or even to tell them not to worry. Jesus loves them and He addresses them so that their faith might be strong, they might be strengthened in Him, and brought by His grace to everlasting life.
Jesus is not talking to an arrogant crowd of people who denied the obvious. He is not talking to people who reject the truth for the lie of their history as they remembered it. It is not about if they had ever been slaves or not or who were the legitimate sons of Abraham. It was about people just like you and me who live for the high moments when faith seems easy and life in Christ a snap. People like you and me who dread the valleys of the shadow and the struggles that make Christian life hard. Jesus is warning them and warning us. You will fall away unless you remain rooted and planted in Him. Only those who abide in Him and in His Word will remain His disciples. The rest will wither and die and fall away at the first sign of trouble.
Faith is hard enough in Christ. Apart from Christ it is impossible. This is as true today as when Christ addressed a crowd that had become disillusioned by all His talk of the cross and His description of their lives of faith bearing their cross and following Him. It is the same as when Luther woke up to find the Church had remembered everything except the truth of sins forgiven, life restored, and salvation freely bestowed in Christ. It is the same as when you turn on the news or get the bad news from the doctor or struggle to make the financial ends meet or keep your marriage and family together. Bette Davis once said that old age is not for sissies. Faith is not for sissies either. It is hard and we endure not because we are strong or mighty or right – no we endure only because we abide in Christ.
We have two temptations. Either we think we are mighty oaks who will always survive the storms of life or we fear we are little saplings vulnerable to the slightest breeze. We are neither. We are the planting of the Lord and He has promised that we will endure. But we will only endure as long as we are rooted and planted in Christ and His Word. We are not as weak as we think for in Christ we are the strongest of the strong – not even death can steal from us the life our Lord has planed in us by baptism. Nor are we strong apart from Christ. Faith without anchor in Christ and the nourishment of His Word and Sacraments will die. Faith in Christ is anchored in the eternal love that once in time suffered and die for our salvation and His refreshment turns the weak into the mighty.
Everything depends upon Christ and His Word. Slogans will not save us, nor will bravado. Our enemies cannot steal us from His grasp nor keep from us the gifts of God appointed for us in Christ -- so as long as we abide in Him and in His Word. Our kinship with Abraham is not a matter of DNA but of faith – faith that trusted in aged bodies to give birth to the son of promise. Faith is what saves us -- faith in Christ alone. In order for faith to live in us, the Word and Spirit must give it birth. In order for faith to endure, we need to be connected to Christ through His Word and Sacraments, living close to Him where He is.
These are good words for youth ready to confess their faith and make an adult sized promise to remain in this faith and church as long as they live. These are good words for Lutherans tempted to make a deity out of their heritage instead of heeding the example of the faithful in trusting Christ alone. These are good words for a people who believe but who find believing hard and the Christian life an obstacle course. Abide in Christ. That is no slogan. That is the font that washes clean the sinner, the absolution that lifts sin's burden of guilt and shame, the Gospel Word that speaks the Good Shepherd's voice, and the altar that feeds the sinner upon Christ’s flesh and blood.
God is warning us. It is possible to fall away, to lose your way, and to substitute the legacy of a past for the living hope of the present. If we live by slogans we shall surely die by them. But if we are anchored in Christ through His Word, we shall abide in Him to everlasting life.
The Reformation insisted that the cross where Christ paid the price of our redemption could not be just one of the many things we believe and confess, it is THE thing on which the Church and every Christian stands or falls. The reformers were calling us and every Christian to dig deep into the soil of God’s Word or risk being plucked from the faithful by the cares and distractions of this mortal life. When we insist to those being confirmed today that they must worship and read God’s Word and commune we are not putting a rule upon their shoulders but teaching them how they will abide in Christ and where Christ has made Himself accessible and available to them and for them. When we come with our faith in tatters because it is hard to be faithful in a faithless world, the Lord points us to the victory won upon the cross, sets us free from the prison of our worries and fears, and walks us to everlasting life.
Faith is not decision made once but daily and weekly living near the Word of God and nourished by the body and blood of Jesus from this altar. It is nothing to know Jesus for a moment unless that knowledge endures and leads to everlasting life. For this to happen, we need to abide in Christ. Our call to God to save us is also a call to be daily and weekly kept by the power of His Word preached and the power of His body and blood to impart eternal life to us. The Church, baptism, and faith are not accidents but God at work deliberately clothing us with Christ so that we may be in Christ and be kept in Christ to life eversting. Intentions and slogans will always fail us but Christ will not. Abide in Christ and you will endure as His children forevermore. That is the message once spoken to Jews who believed in Jesus and that is the Gospel we hear today. Those who abide in Christ shall live forever. Amen
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