Employing technology is not morally or spiritually neutral. Scientific advancements bring new problems, as the tools we use end up using us, changing us. The invention of the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, and now mobile technologies have changed how and where people live, how we see the world and interact with each other. You’ve seen others – and perhaps even yourself – become a slave to televisions, computers, and handheld devices.

The account of the Tower of Babel (which we heard in today’s first reading) indicates certain technological advancements among those people. Lacking good stone for building, they learned to mold clay into bricks, bake them, and bind them together with asphalt. This was, no doubt, a wonderful thing. But they employed their technology in a manner serving their own pride. They sought to build a tower that would be to their own name, to their own glory. Thus St. Jerome referred to the Tower of Babel as the “Tower of Pride” (Letter 46, in NPNF2 VI).

“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language.” “Us,” it says, already foreshadowing in Genesis the revelation that would only later come fully, that there is One God in Three Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the counsel of the Holy Trinity it was determined to bring judgement on these builders who used their technology for evil.

Now beloved, you well know that we live in a far more technologically advanced age than the one recorded in Genesis 11. But what is our society doing with our great knowledge? We are fertilizing human eggs in laboratories, then killing many of these human beings for the supposed greater good of scientific research. Thus we, like the Nazis, have decreed that some lives are unworthy of life; they may be discarded or used for research. We are frantically searching for a cure for AIDS, without addressing the root cause, sexual promiscuity. We build weapons capable of catastrophic global annihilation. The internet is a cesspool of porn, gossip, inanity and voyeurism. Can the day be far off when the Lord will again, when His long patience comes to an end, come down to scatter and destroy?

St. Augustine saw the tower as an attempt to thwart God’s judgment. God had earlier destroyed most of the world’s people through a flood, because of their iniquity. Living in repentance they would not, so they sought instead to build a tower so that if God again attempted to punish them by means of a flood, they could climb high and withstand it.

Similarly, we Christians would often like to be found in the company of the saints yet at the same time make friendship with the world’s priorities, succumb to our lusts, relish our pride, clutch tightly to our anger and resentments. But God’s judgment cannot be thwarted. Repentance – a full-on change of mind and heart and behavior and attitude – must be embraced, day by day.

For the day is coming when God will come down again. “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower,” Holy Scripture says. When it says, “The LORD came down,” it doesn’t mean that God was absent and did not know what was going on until then. God is everywhere. But Scripture speaks about God in this way, in a human way, to tell us that the time came when the LORD ceased taking no notice. Up until then, He had been long-suffering, slow to anger. But the time comes when the LORD says, “Enough!”, and He begins to punish.

Dr. Luther says, “All this is intended to frighten us, that we may learn to beware of sin. For God will not ignore it forever; but just as by His arrival He finally frightened and killed Adam, Cain, and the entire world in the Flood, so at some time He will destroy us also if we do not forestall Him through repentance.”

But in the glorious events of Pentecost, the day we are celebrating today, the LORD came down in a new and different way. When the Holy Spirit gave the disciples the gift of speaking in other languages that they had not studied, the judgement at the Tower of Babel was reversed. Pride caused the languages of the world to be divided; Christ’s humility caused the good news of God’s forgiveness to be preached in a united way to every language. What the Tower of Pride put asunder, God has put back together in the holy Christian Church. Pride caused one language to become many. In the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, those many languages and peoples are made one. (Paraphrased from Augustine)

The Church is not Roman or German or Greek or Ethiopian or any other ethnicity. The Church is Christ’s, and the day of Pentecost reveals that the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, and the hope of our own resurrection and life in God’s kingdom – that good news is for everyone of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. It is a beautiful thing when a person is welcomed into the Church not because of the color of their skin or common cultural background, but because they are fellow sons and daughters of Adam, who in Holy Baptism are made fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

We, who come from different places and have different talents and gifts, have in Jesus a common inheritance. Today’s Gospel declares to you Jesus’ farewell gift, the inheritance He leaves with His disciples: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” “Not as the world gives.” The world does have a kind of peace. When it does the will of the devil, he lets it rest in peace.

St. John tells us where the world finds its peace: “The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.” These things give a kind of peace, but it is a fading, fleeting thing. Devotion to these three worldly forces ends in judgment, lacking peace with God.

Dear brothers and sisters, if you want to know what the Holy Spirit does, look at what Jesus does. Note how the Son and the Spirit are both sent by the Father. “The Father sent Me,” Jesus declares, and then says, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will … bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” The Father who sent the Son sends the Spirit. Why does He send the Spirit? To continue the work of the Son. The Son won the justification of the sinner. The Spirit delivers that justification. The Son wins forgiveness, the Spirit delivers forgiveness, so that we are reconciled to the forgiving Father. The Spirit is poured out as we are united with the Son in Baptism, and made children of the Father. On and on it goes, so that the Spirit is not some strange and bizarre thing, but entirely connected with the Gospel of Jesus.

So the Holy Spirit comes to make us holy. We are not, and can never be, holy by ourselves. The Holy Spirit makes us holy. Now if you know yourself, and think about who you are and what you have been even this past week, you can very well doubt that this is true. Does God really regard me as holy? But my sins are too great, and I have knowingly gone against God’s Word one too many times. How can it be true? I read something beautiful and deeply comforting to me this past week, in Dr. Luther’s sermons on John’s Gospel: “To be sure, the Holy Spirit sometimes lets His Christians fall, err, stumble, and sin. This is to forestall any complacency, as though we were holy of ourselves, and to teach us to know ourselves and the source of our holiness. Otherwise we would become arrogant and overweening.”

When we sin, we are not sure if God really accepts us. Luther continues:

“Yes,” you say, “I am a poor sinner and have provoked God to anger.” How true! But do you not hear what Christ says? “I give you My peace, God’s grace, and the forgiveness of sin. You must not look at yourself; you must fix your eyes on what I give you. As you know, you have My Baptism, Sacrament, and Gospel, which are nothing but tokens of grace and peace.” Let those tremble before wrath and displeasure who live smugly and brazenly, are impenitent and wicked, and do not know Christ. For you are a person who desires God’s grace and the forgiveness of sins, who wants to be comforted by Him, who is frightened, and who is conscious of his misery. Therefore these words are addressed to you.

In summary, today is about consolation. You are a great sinner, and we are a people of deep rebellion, pride, and selfishness. God would be thoroughly just in coming down as He came down of old and visiting us with wrath and destruction. Yet once again God has given you an opportunity to repent, and the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us generously. By His holy inspiration, we have heard the words of Jesus repeated to us, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you.” Take not this gift lightly, nor wonder if it truly is for you. This consolation is for you. Therefore, on this great feast of Pentecost, say to yourself, “I am baptized. I, an unholy sinner, have been declared holy, and received the Holy Spirit. The Father has made peace with me through His Son, and with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shall I forever dwell.”

We’re observing the Vigil of Pentecost a few days early at Immanuel, since we have a regular Wednesday evening service (usually Vespers or Evening Prayer). The following is the Litany that we will pray tonight. I don’t know its original source, but I found it in Daniel Reuning’s Historic Lectionary Resources.

P Lord, have mercy upon us.
C Christ, have mercy upon us.
P Lord, have mercy upon us.

P O Christ, hear us.
C O Christ, graciously hear us.
P O God the Father in heaven;
O God the Son, Redeemer of the world;
O God the Holy Ghost, the Promise of the Father and Gift of the Most High:
C Have mercy upon us.

P O Spirit of wisdom and understanding;
O Spirit of counsel and strength;
O Spirit of knowledge and godliness;
O Spirit of the fear of the Lord;
O Spirit of love, joy, and peace;
O Spirit of long-suffering, gentleness, and goodness;
O Spirit of truth, meekness, and patience;
O Spirit of modesty, temperance, and chastity;
O Spirit of grace and supplication;
O Spirit of discipline and continence;
O Spirit of adoption of the sons of God;
O Holy Ghost, the Comforter;
O Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier:
C Have mercy upon us.

P Be merciful.
C Spare us, O Holy Ghost.
P Be merciful.
C Graciously hear us, O Holy Ghost.
P From all sin and from all evil;
From the crafts and assaults of the devil;
From uncleanness of mind or body;
From every evil spirit:
C O Holy Ghost, deliver us.

P By Thine eternal procession from the Father and the Son;
By Thy working at creation;
By Thine inspiration of the prophets;
By Thy descent upon the mother of God at the Lord’s incarnation;
By Thy descent upon the Lord at His baptism;
By Thy descent upon the apostles at Pentecost;
By Thy continual abiding with the church;
By Thy grace and pity;
In the Day of Judgment:
C O Holy Ghost, deliver us.

P We sinners do beseech Thee to hear us.
That it may please Thee to shed abroad Thy light and love in our hearts;
That it may please Thee to open upon us the treasures of Thy grace;
That it may please Thee to teach us to ask for them according to Thy will;
That it may please Thee to teach us to pray, and Thyself to pray with us;
That we may not grieve Thee nor spite Thee;
That remembering that our bodies are Thy temple, we may take heed not
to defile them;
That it may please Thee to lead us into all truth;
That it may please Thee to pour Thy peace upon the whole church:
C O Holy Ghost, we beseech Thee to hear us.

P O Lamb of God,
C Pour out upon us the Holy Ghost.
P O Lamb of God,
C Send forth upon us the promised Spirit of the Father.
P O Lamb of God,
C Grant to us the Spirit of peace.
P O Christ, hear us.
C O Christ, graciously hear us.

We will follow this with the Our Father, the Collect for Pentecost Eve, and the Collect for Peace.

Luther on John 14:

A Christian, however, can glory truthfully and with good reason, and he can say: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, who makes me and all believers holy. Therefore I am a member of a holy order, not that of St. Francis but that of Christ, who makes me holy through His Word and sacraments.” “May God preserve me,” say those monkish saints, “from such presumption! I am a poor sinner.” All right, then go to Rome, to Jerusalem, and through all the orders and cloisters, and see whether you become holy! The truth, however, is this: If you yourself were holy, then you would not need the Holy Spirit at all; but since we are sinful and unclean in ourselves, the Holy Spirit must perform His work in us. He gives us the Word of Christ the Lord, Baptism, and His power, not only that you may be in a holy order, but also that you yourself may be holy. But He does so in such a way that you say: “I am not holy through myself but through Christ’s blood, with which I have been sprinkled, yes, washed in Baptism, and also through His Gospel, which is spoken over me daily.” Thus there is nothing laudable about that stupid, false, and harmful humility which makes you want to say that your sins prevent you from being holy. That would be a denial of Christ’s blood and Baptism; that would deny that you have the Holy Spirit and are a member of the Christian Church, in which we are to assemble for the Gospel, for Baptism, and for the Sacrament.

-AE 24

Text: St. Luke 17:11-19

When St. Paul describes why God is full of wrath toward mankind, he gives this reason: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1.21). The failure of mankind to give thanks to the Creator is no mere breach of etiquette, no mere failure to send a cosmic thank-you note. At the heart of man’s ingratitude is hubris, the attempt to seize the things of God’s creation as though they belonged to us by right.

When our first father grasped what was not given to him, God evicted him from his home in Eden. Man became a wanderer, a sojourner. He became homeless, and the whole human race has been homeless ever since – a band of pilgrims.

A different kind of pilgrim is associated with Thanksgiving in the minds of many Americans. The 1621 harvest feast in Plymouth Colony was held by a group of English Christians known as Separatists; they had broken away from the Church of England, coming to America in search of a new home free from the authority of the Anglican church government.

But we Christians, we pilgrims, ought to identify more with the Ten Lepers in our Gospel reading than with the settlers in Massachusetts. Those lepers weren’t on their way to a new home; they had no home. Their disease excluded them from every community except among their own loathsome kind. There was no harvest festival for them. There seemed to be nothing at all to be thankful for.

A church near my home has this chastisement on their sign: COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, NOT YOUR PROBLEMS. About a mile and a half later, I pass another church with this sign: WE’RE TOO BLESSED TO BE DEPRESSED. Can you imagine if the Ten Lepers were wandering by and saw either of these signs? “Count your blessings, not your problems”? Sometimes the problems are so numerous that there seem to be no blessings to be found. Depression abounds. Could you fault the lepers if they said they were depressed? They’re dying. They’re alone. They’re afraid. They’re in pain.

To them, “Grin and bear it” is not good advice. “Whistle while you work” won’t cut it. They don’t need a change of attitude. They need salvation. They need the healing of their bodies. And they need the healing of their souls.

So, there’s only one thing to do: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” And Jesus, being God in the flesh, does what God does. He is merciful. “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” At last, they can go with the pilgrims to the Temple in Jerusalem, where God had made His residence on earth.

Pilgrimage to God’s home, the Temple, formed the structure of the Jewish year. The three great feasts of the Jews – Firstfruits, Pentecost, and Booths – were called “pilgrim feasts.” That’s why the Psalms say, “Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, Whose heart is set on pilgrimage” (Ps. 84.5). To have your heart set on pilgrimage is to have your heart set on the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of man; the city of God, not the city of man.

The Psalms teach us to think of our homes as temporary shelters, a lodging place on our journey to the kingdom of God. Ps. 119 puts it this way: “Your statutes [O Lord] have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage” (v54). Our homes are pilgrim homes.

The most significant image of a pilgrim in the Bible is Abraham. Abraham and his wife Sarah were called to leave their native land, a place of idolatry, and journey to a new home – a place that they could only see by faith. Their pilgrimage is a picture of how we are to view our own lives, as the writer to the Hebrews describes:

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. (Heb. 11.13-16)

That heavenly country, that city, has God for her Maker and Architect. What’s the point? We should give thanks for clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land and animals, and everything we possess. They are all gifts from God, good gifts of His creation.

But we must rejoice in and give thanks for these things as pilgrims, not as permanent citizens. Take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife, we have something far greater to give thanks for – the mercy of JESUS, the forgiveness of sins, the hope of the resurrection of the body.

That’s why one of the lepers turns around on his way to the Temple, God’s home. The one leper returns to Jesus because that is where home is. Where Jesus is, there is the true Temple, the place where God dwells in an earthly habitation. A pilgrim has not reached his home until he has come to Jesus.

In Jesus is the Thank Offering, which the Greek-speaking Jews called Eucharist. That same word – “Eucharist,” thank-offering – has been handed down to us as a term for our Lord’s Supper. Here, eating God’s sacrifice, we give our thanks for the one Gift that surpasses all others: the gift of God Himself.

Perhaps this year your blessings have surpassed all your hopes and expectations. Give glory to God! But perhaps your problems have outnumbered your blessings. Perhaps you’ve been so depressed that you cannot see how you’ve been blessed. That’s okay. Really, it is. Only cling to this, and never let it go: God loves you more than you can comprehend, and has demonstrated His love for you in that, while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you. That is what we pilgrims are thankful for tonight, as we press on to the heavenly city whose Maker and Builder is God. +INJ+

God made man from the earth. Our very first father, Adam, was made from the clay, but he came alive when God breathed into Adam the breath of life. And not only was Adam made from the earth, he depended on the earth for his life. The food that he had to eat came from the trees that God had planted in the earth.

Even after Adam fell into sin and death, he still got food from the earth. Only, now it was tough work. Dirty. Sweaty. Before man sinned, it was easy. But after Adam turned away from God, the earth grew thorns that pricked man’s hands, making them bleed, and weeds that choked plants. So every little bit of food that came from the earth was cause for great rejoicing.

And even though the earth had thorns and weeds, men still knew that their food came from God, who made it grow. So the great festivals or holidays of God’s ancient people the Jews revolved around the food that was growing out of the earth. There was the festival of Firstfruits, when the grain first began to ripen. Then came Pentecost, when the grain was all gathered in. Finally came the Feast of Ingathering, which is the closest thing to our Thanksgiving festival. Great trumpets were blown at the temple, and people came with wine, and oil, and barley. There was music and dancing and lights; it was said that you didn’t know what joy was if you hadn’t seen this great festival.

The first Thanksgiving in America was also about food. William Bradford, the Governor of Massachusetts, gave this as the first reason for having a Thanksgiving holiday: “The great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams.” Then he said that people should go to church for three hours to give thanks!

I think it’s hard for us to relate to this. The story is so strange, it’s almost like a fairy tale. We don’t have harvests. We have Safeway. Or Giant. Or Shoppers. Or Whole Foods. Or Harris Teeter. What we don’t have is farms. We live in a great city, and very few people actually farm the earth today. We have giant machines that do the work, so fewer and fewer people are involved in farming, in growing things from the earth.

That’s why we are fortunate to have a garden club here at school, because it’s easy to think that our food comes from the store. It doesn’t. It comes from the ground. Even our meat – bacon and hamburger and chicken – depends on the ground, for the pigs and cows and chickens all depend on food from the ground, such as grass and corn, for their life.

Shortly before He was nailed to the cross, Jesus talked about a harvest festival, a great Thanksgiving festival that is coming in the future. Jesus compared His body to a seed. We put seeds into the ground, and they spring up out of the earth to be many times larger than the original seed, and it becomes tall and beautiful. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies,” Jesus said, “it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” You have to plant it in the ground, and then it will come up out of the ground as something new and beautiful. “That,” Jesus was saying, “is what’s going to happen to my body, and yours. I will die and be put into the ground, but I will come up out of the ground again, and be alive.”

So we read this Bible passage at a funeral, when a person dies, just before we put the body into the ground. Because we know that something better, greater is going to happen. There is a great day of Thanksgiving coming, when God will bring up out of the ground all the dead, and give to believers in Christ eternal life. And that day will be far better than just a day off of school or work. That Thanksgiving Day which is coming will be the beginning of the kingdom of God, and we will say on that day, “O give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever!” +INJ+

Note: Linden Katherine Hemingway was baptized during the Divine Service at which this sermon was preached.

Spirit – it seems impossible to grab hold of what that really is. Spirit is something shapeless and ephemeral, usually synonymous with enthusiasm or excitement: like team spirit or school spirit. Precisely because you can’t nail “spirit” down, it’s become popular to reject “religion” in favor of “spirituality.” What does it mean to be “spiritual”?  It is an embracing of mysticism and experience, while rejecting the certainty of doctrine and revealed truth. Ultimately being “spiritual but not religious” means rejecting the Word of God.

But it was not so from the beginning. In the beginning, God breathed into man the breath of life—the Spirit—and He gave man His Word. The Holy Spirit and the Word always go together, and so the life that God gives likewise is present wherever God’s Spirit and Word are. Our first parents rejected the Word of God, and so lost life – not their own life, but the life of God. For man has no life in himself – he lives by the life that God gives. Rejecting the Word of God, man lost the Spirit of God. So what God began in giving His Spirit, His Word, His life to man, man turned into the worst disaster. He fell. He died.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Word, and the Word was made Man. The Word became flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit. There, in the God-Man Jesus, the Spirit again dwelled in Man. In Him was life, and He came not only to give His life for mankind but also to mankind. On the cross, when our Lord JESUS breathed His last, He handed over His Spirit to His mother and to the beloved disciple, anticipating the gift of the Spirit to all the Church. And then: Death could not hold Him, for He was and is life. So when He rose, He came into the midst of the disciples, breathed again the breath of life that had once graced our first father Adam, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And He charged them to forgive sins.

And so today, Pentecost, is not just another day on the calendar. It gathers together Christmas, the Baptism of Jesus, Good Friday, and Easter, and says, “All that is now for you! The life that is in Jesus; the Holy Spirit; communion with God; forgiveness; the love of God—everything that Christ Jesus was and is and gave to His disciples—all that is now given to you.” And that is what Jesus means by that great comforting word “peace”: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” 

But then we hear those horrible words that bring such shame: Jesus says, “If you loved Me.” Those words told the disciples that they were not loving Jesus as they should. And when you examine your life according to the Ten Commandments, you must realize the same thing. You have not loved Christ, you have not kept His words; you have not loved your neighbor as yourself, but you have measured everything by what pleases you. You have promoted and exulted yourself, and lived as if God’s Word did not apply in every circumstance.

That is precisely the sin we find among the builders of the Tower of Babel. They were disregarding God, seeking to decide their own destiny apart from Him. They wanted to make a name for themselves, and live autonomously. Mankind was united, but it was a united rebellion against their Creator. And so, in order to prevent the horror of a humanity united in will and purpose against Him, God confused their languages.

We suffer for that to this day. It is difficult to learn another language, but it is also difficult simply to communicate clearly in our own tongue. How many arguments arise just from misunderstanding what someone else said or wrote? In politics, in our homes, and certainly in the church, we wage wars over words.

The miraculous event of Pentecost, where the Gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection was preached in many languages– that was the Holy Spirit’s call to a divided and confused humanity to gather together and unite under the banner of the Crucified One, our Lord Jesus Christ. “In Him,” said that voice ringing out to every nation, “the ancient sin is pardoned; in Him the ancient curse is lifted; you violent world, receive peace from your God!” Every language of man is used so that every race of man, however far off, might know that Christ’s incarnation was for them, Christ’s words and promises were for them, Christ’s death was for them, Christ’s resurrection was for them – and if for them, then for you, every one of you. No one, from the youngest child (such as Mark and Mollie’s daughter Linden) to the person whose life has become a disaster—no one is excluded from that invitation to receive God’s forgiveness.

So now, for Linden and for all the Baptized, we are charged by our Lord JESUS today to keep His Word. What does that mean? It means we guard, treasure, hold onto, meditate upon, pray, believe, seek to live by the words of JESUS. He gave the Apostles a promise that the Holy Spirit would help them remember His words. That special gift means that their writings in the New Testament are true and without error. Those inspired words are the final authority in the Church. 

But the Holy Spirit also works in us to remember the words of Jesus. What kind of remembering do we need? What we need is not just being able to recite Bible passages for a test, but something more: it is in the time of trial when we need the Holy Spirit’s help of remembering, holding onto, keeping and treasuring the Word. When you are tempted to sin—especially those habitual, besetting sins that you struggle against and have trouble stopping—that’s when we need to remember the Word and apply it to our trial. In those moments, we are faced with choices: should I say words that will be hurtful? Should I indulge the desire for sexual immorality? Should I take what does not belong to me? Should I tell a lie or conceal the truth? Should I give in to anger, resentment, the temptation for self-destructive behavior?

And then there is the hour of despair, an hour when we face depression or thoughts of suicide; an hour when we are tempted to throw away our faith; an hour when death visits us – what then will be our trust and hope? In that hour, remember: the Holy Spirit is for good reason called the Helper, which also means Advocate and Comforter. He is your Advocate before the Father: He prays for you, and also inspires you to pray, to call on the name of JESUS for your help. And the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter because He consoles you with the knowledge of pardon for your sins.

Rejoice then, O children of Adam! God has breathed out His Spirit once more! God has brought you, His fallen creatures, back into communion with Himself. In Him is life, and He first breathed that life into you by washing you as He did Linden; and He keeps on giving you that life by forgiving you, by nourishing you at His Table. The Spirit you have breathed in, you breathe out in your prayers and when you live in peace and love and forgiveness with your neighbors. And so that life of being Spirit-filled Christians goes on and on as we grow up in all things into Him who is our Head, Jesus Christ. In Him is your peace. In Him will you live, in Him will you die, and His shall you be forever.

I’ve been struggling to fully understand the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, Pentecost (John 14:23-31), particularly these words of Jesus: “My Father is greater than I.” Francis Pieper, in his Christian Dogmatics (II:62), says the following:

The statement of John 14:28: “My Father is greater than I,” describes Christ according to His human nature in the state of humiliation, for according to the context Christ is speaking of a condition which ends with His going to the Father. See Luther, St. L. XI:1079 f.

(I don’t have access to the referenced Luther text; if anyone does, I’d be glad if they shared what it says there.)

I have no tendency or interest in limiting the full and completely deity of our Lord JESUS Christ; this seems Pieper’s primary concern in his section, “The True Deity of Christ” (II:59ff). What I have never fully grasped is how this explanation squares with 1 Cor. 15:28, where it is written that “the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.” Gerhard (referenced in Pieper) says this refers to Christ’s mystical body, the union of Christ with His Church. Chemnitz (quoted in Lockwood’s commentary on 1 Corinthians) says this passage also refers to the human nature of Christ:

In 1 Cor. 15:28 Paul also shows that the human nature in Christ is below or less than or inferior to God, not only when in the state of humiliation He says, “My Father is greater than I” [John 14:28], or when after the resurrection He says, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God” [John 20:17], but even after the Last Day when He will have handed over the kingdom to God and His Father.

This is a great mystery to me. I guess I will have to be content to say with the Athanasian Creed that the Son is equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity.