Monday of Trinity I - Devotion in Exile

Lection for Monday after Trinity I 
Proverbs 15:1-29      John 15:12-27

(This was scheduled to be posted, but for some reason it did not publish. Forgive me for not checking as I am on my 35th Anniversary getaway with Pauline.)

Yesterday was confirmation at St. Peter Lutheran Church, a glorious day in the church, a day of joy. People know the confirmands have accomplished - memory work, sermon reviews, and tests they had to pass. These young people are glad that all the hard work is done. Personally, I am hoping that some of what was taught to them they will remember – forever.

Confirmation really is not about what Catechumens have accomplished, it is about confessing the faith into which they were baptized. Did you pay attention to that reading from John? Jesus said, “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain.” 

A Lutheran pastor wrote a devotional study that ties in well. I adapted a portion of it here.

Making the right choices is so important in life.  Ask any good parents how concerned they are about their children’s decisions.  In fact, they sometimes help their children in many of their choices - friends, education, first car, and others.  Controlling parents will often try to make all the choices for their children.  Some parents have even gone so far as to try to chose their own children - the advances in genetic engineering may so promise that parents can chose the traits they’d like their children to have.  Yes, some choices go too far.

Other choices are beyond reach.  For example, it is said that you cannot chose your parents.  Of course, some reality TV show producer will probably try to challenge that idea some day. It is clear that unborn children don’t make any choices for themselves. Let’s face it, how many aborted children would have chosen life if they’d been given that option?  Yes, unborn children are passive.  Conception and birth is something that happens to a person, not a process that a baby starts on its own.

The same is true spiritually.  You did not choose Jesus as your Savior.  Jesus chose you, as our text tells us.  Yes, you are encouraged to make good choices in your Christian living, but Christian life itself is something that God chose for you and for me.

Do you realize how comforting this truth is?  God chose you to be His child - from eternity.  He gave you new birth and new life to you through baptism.  You believe in Christ because of the Spirit which indwells you, that Spirit given to you your rebirth through water and the word.  Believing in God is His gift to you, not your gift to Him.  What comfort it brings to know that your choices, those that find their beginning in your sinful flesh, are all forgiven.  And that you have made God-pleasing choices - and that all your God-pleasing choices, are His choices that He has wrought in you. (Meditations, vol. 49, #2, pg. 82)

That is what was confirmed yesterday. It is not our works, but Christ’s work. The fact that He chose you and made you His own.

God’s love was revealed in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.  He loved you some much that He gave up His life there upon the cross.  It was His joy to love you and purchase your forgiveness - forgiveness for your failures to rejoice and live always in His love. Christ chose to love you, to forgive you for those times that you chose to put Him second, or to forget about Him all together.

It was His choice to deliver that forgiveness to you first in Baptism, thereby uniting you to His death and His resurrection. He delivers that forgiveness to you in the very Word that you hear and in His precious body and blood. He gives you His forgiveness in these marvelous gifts each Sunday that you might be His child and abide in His love forever.

Today, I continue to rejoice that my young friends have been chosen by God in Christ Jesus to be His children. We all rejoice together, because we are all in the same boat - chosen by God to be blessed by Him.  He has chosen us, called us and gathered us to Himself.  He enlightens us with His gifts of Word and Sacrament that we might live now and forevermore in His glory.  He chose to make us His holy, forgiven and redeemed children and gives us these precious gifts that we may remain in this blessed state.

I pray that, by God’s help, His grace would continue to keep you all – now and forevermore - as His chosen ones.

Let us pray:     Bless Lord, all the baptized, that having been united to Christ’s death and resurrection through water and the Word, the people of God may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit and equipped with His gifts to live the new life given to them by God’s gracious act.  Amen.