Judica Sermon 2022
Judica, the Fifth Sunday in Lent
St. John 8:42-59
April 3, 2022
“You are of your father the devil.” If we want the comforting words of Jesus to apply to us, we must first wrestle with the confrontational ones. “You are of your father the devil.” The words address the entire human race.
The first three Sundays of Lent show Jesus in combat with the devil, first in the wilderness temptations, then in two exorcisms. The fourth Sunday is a kind of interlude, with rose vestments and food in the wilderness. Now the fifth Sunday of Lent holds up a mirror and says, “If you want to know where the devil is busy, take a look at your own life.” Jesus says, “You are of your father the devil.” This is true of the entire human race.
This is why, despite its shocking horror, the baptismal liturgy begins with these words: “Depart, unclean spirit, and make way for the Holy Spirit.” And again a little later, “I adjure you, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that you come out of and depart from this servant of Jesus Christ.” From Adam, we have inherited disordered desires. We are, figuratively speaking, children of the devil. Figuratively, I say, because we are not literally offspring of the devil, but offspring in the sense that the work of the devil has produced in our race the desires of the devil. The desires of the devil are these: rebellion against God; a hatred of His will and law; and a twisted self-love. All of that we lump under the name “original sin” or better “inherited sin.” The Reformation confessions use the term “concupiscence,” disordered desire.
Baptism forgives the guilt of original sin, but we still must struggle with its effects. You feel that within you, don’t you? The desires that are contrary to the Ten Commandments?
The particular people Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel reading think they are following God’s Law pretty well. There’s no repentance, no contrition, no sorrow over sin. So Jesus addresses that problem head on: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” Is it any wonder that the Jews tried to stone him after this little dialog? “You are of your father the devil.” If you were in that crowd, might not you have been ready to pick up a stone along with the rest?
“You are of your father the devil” – that’s crazy talk. It’s the kind of thing a lunatic puts on a sign; it’s the sort of thing that can get you punched in the mouth, or laughed off the stage. But we must own the statement—as crazy, as offensive, as hurtful as it might seem to our pride. Yes, we are of our father the devil, and it is his desires that dominate us so much. Those are the desires that have disrupted your relationships, filled you with anxiety, caused you to do shameful things in secret.
The devil’s power, and the power of the sinful desires, rests in one thing: the lie. “When he speaks a lie,” Jesus says of the devil, “he speaks from his own resources,” i.e., within himself. “When he speaks a lie,” the translations have it, but a literal rendering of our Lord’s words is this: “When he speaks the lie.” What does it mean? It means that the devil doesn’t simply tell various falsehoods. There is a core lie, a fundamental untruth that undergirds all the devil’s work. And that lie is this: God is not good, He does not care about you, He does not love you, and so everything troublesome in your life is a result of either His absence, His non-existence, or His desire to manipulate you, to punish you, to hold back on you. So the doctrines, the commandments, are rubbish to be discarded.
The lie is what drove our first mother to grasp for what the serpent offered her; it’s what led our first father to follow her lead and ignore the Lord’s Word; the lie is what led Cain to murder his brother; the lie is what led Abraham to pretend Sarah was his sister; the lie led David to invite another man’s wife to his chambers in the palace; the lie led Peter to deny Jesus; the lie led Judas to hang himself. The lie is what leads you to all of your sins as well.
The devil is a liar and a murderer – and so are you. Yet you say, “I have not murdered anyone!” But the apostle who recorded these words for us, St. John, tells us in his first epistle, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).
The opposite of the lie is the truth, the one great truth spoken from the beginning, by the Lord and giver of life. The entire creation narrative preaches the love of God for mankind, that He made the world out of love as a gift to the man, on whom He desired to bestow His benefits. And even after man’s great rebellion, man’s embracing of the lie, God continued to love and care for His creatures. And the horrible, brutal, unthinkable sacrifice that God asked of Abraham but did not allow to take place is the sacrifice that God Himself finally makes, as the Father offers up His own Son in our stead, His death for our life, His good works for our lies, so that our conscience can be purified and our death put to death. This great love of God the Father in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the astounding offer of pardon for us liars and murderers – that Word of Forgiveness is the word Jesus speaks of when He says today, “Amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone keeps My Word, he will not see death into the ages.”
As we make this last leg of the journey with Jesus to the cross, let that word ring out in your ears and sink down deep into your heart. The desires of your father the devil, which still haunt you, are a lie. Those desires are empty promises. Let all your joy be in the promises of God, who did not withhold His only Son but gave Him up for us men and for our salvation. Keep, hang onto, cling to the word of forgiveness, the word of Jesus which pardons all your evil deeds and unholy desires. Clinging to that word, you will not see death into the ages, but live in the day of resurrection which is soon coming. +INJ+