Wilhelm's space

They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. (Joh 16:3 NIV)

Our gospel started off so nicely with the witness of the Holy Spirit and that of the apostles and now it continues so badly. After the most glorious testimony comes hatred and strive, persecution and banning, murder and death. Our Lord talks so calmly about this in our gospel as if it goes without saying and as if it is a matter of course and just how things are. The Church must fight, suffer and die as long as it is on earth.

You could off course object and protest with the truth: Is the Church not a  kingdom of peace and her king one of peace? Well, yes, the Church does lead all lost sheep to the peace of the good shepherd and does not desire anything less than the true bliss and happiness of all people. Yet it is precisely this desire to bring all creatures to the peace of the Lord that brings about controversy, wakes opposition and fans the flames of warring factions. There are just too many, who don’t want to hear about the peace of Jesus Christ. Too many, who consider it a brazen insolence and even wicked audacity of the Church and its members that it would lead them and others to divine peace and the only Lord of all. They believe to have the best right and even serious obligation to oppose the Churches witness most determinedly.

This should not surprise us too much. If you offer the peace of Christ, you are rejecting the peace of this world. Yes, you don’t let it count for much of an alternative. It’s rotten. It’s worthless. It’s not even a passing fancy. If you invite others to enter the peace of God’s kingdom as it is proclaimed and professed in the Church, then you are simultaneously inviting them to leave the worldly realms and futile ways of their cultures, customs and traditions. You consider the life without Christ and outside of the Church as imperfect and sinful. No wonder the natural tendency of worldly oriented people will be to reject your offer, to oppose you and even to fight your message and cause. They will not suffer it that you and other witnesses of Christ want to know better than they, what the true and only way to heaven is – namely Jesus Christ and him crucified.

The ancient Romans permitted all pagan religions in their pluralistic world, because they all bore with each other and gave each other the benefit of the doubt. Yet they persecuted the Christian Church and its witness to the absolute exclusivity of the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the only saviour of mankind, because it blamed all other faiths and beliefs to be misleading into eternal damnation and called their confessors liars, blind and lost. That is why they on their part damned the Church and persecuted the Christians as enemies of the people. They tried to suppress the Christian gospel and eradicate the Church. That’s the fate of the Church. She is not just a party amongst others. She is the meeting place for  those from all parties, who are saved and healed. She is radically opposed against the worldly, sinful, ungodly orientation and therefore everyone bound with a worldly, sinful and ungodly orientation  is in opposition to her too. That’s how it was, that is how it is and that’s how it will be until the Lord returns in glory to end all misery and conflict once and for all.

As truly as God is God and his word remains the truth all the world, devil, hell and their ilk will finally be put to shame. God is with us and we are with God – victory is ours for sure too. (Michael Altenburg, 1584-1640)

This is a rather free translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for Thursday after the 6^th Sunday after Easter: Exaudi. It is found on Pg. 205 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and published in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.