Lent 5 + Judica

John 8:42-59

Who are you?

This is a complicated question today. It’s unlikely any of our ancestors are from here. Many of our families came to the United States from Europe. We move more now than ever, and few people can say they were born here, live here, or die here. It’s just not how we live anymore—even in rural Wisconsin. Take the military, for instance. How many people moved here for Fort McCoy or the VA and didn’t leave?

But this doesn’t mean we don’t want to know who we are, and this can become tricky, especially with the rise of genetic testing.

Genetic testing has been in the news recently because the popular DNA testing company 23andMe is going bankrupt. Individuals who used the company to learn about their heritage, medical history, or gene makeup are being told to contact the company to have the spit they submitted for genetic testing and their results destroyed before they can be sold to other companies. Who knew your salvia would be worth money one day…

Honestly, I contemplated taking one of these tests years ago. As a child, I learned my mother was adopted, and there’s always been a part of me that wondered, “Who am I?”

Am I German, Scandinavian, Irish, or maybe Russian?

My mother didn’t speak of her adoption. But as the years went on, I learned that she had searched for her biological parents; she wanted to answer the question, “Who am I?”

She did locate her biological mother – but for reasons unknown, the woman preferred not to meet with my mother. I have no ill will for that; I can’t imagine what either woman went through over the years.

But all of this brings me to this question: as one searches for who they are, their ancestry, and so on, will you like what you learn?

The Gospel today is very much about who Jesus is, and He draws a line in the sand between being a child of His heavenly Father and a child of the Devil.

In many ways, this is what the season of Lent does; it reveals who you truly are. Whose genes and life are pumping through your veins?

Are you a child of your heavenly Father, or are you a child of your father, the Devil?

What reveals which side of this line in the sand you stand are the desires of your heart. This is why Jesus says to the Jews,

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. (John 8:44)

As St. Augustine writes,

You are [the Devil’s] children because of your desires, not because you are born of him.

What are his desires? “He was a murderer from the beginning.” The devil, too, harbored ill will toward the human race and killed it. For the devil, in his envy of the human race, assumed the guise of a serpent and spoke to the woman, and from the woman he instilled his poison into the man. They died by listening to the devil, who they would not have listened to had they but listened to the Lord.

For man, having his place between [God], who created, and [the devil], who was fallen, should have obeyed the Creator, not the deceiver.

Therefore “he was a murderer from the beginning.” The devil is called a murderer not as armed with a sword or steel. He came to humanity, sowed his evil suggestions and killed him.

Who you are comes down to the voice you listen to.

It’s no different than you become what you eat. Or as parent warns their child to be careful whom they associate with because, as the Apostle Paul writes, “Bad company ruins good morals.” (1 Corinthians 15:33)

So, who are you?

Do your words, desires, and actions reveal a child of the Devil?

Or do they reveal a child of God?

Jesus says, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.” (John 8:51)

So, do you awake each morning with God’s Word in your ears, a prayer upon your lips, or does the heritage and genetics of your first parents, Adam and Eve, cling mightily to your heart, telling you another time? After my morning coffee or after the kids get off to school. Or worse, is there a whisper in your ears that says, “I don’t need God’s Word; I’m not that bad of a person; I’ll be okay.”

When this occurs, when you fail to hear God’s Word and make it the priority for life, or have been led to believe that you do not need God, you should listen to these words of Jesus in your ears,

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”

Is this who you really are?

If so, then confess your sin of unbelief, renounce the devil and all his ways, and return to your baptism because there in that water, along with God’s Word, you received adoption and were made God’s child.   

As we enter these final two weeks of Lent, the time is at hand for you to return to your Lord, Jesus Christ. If you have been lax in reading His Word and praying, the time is now.

Are you a son or daughter of the Devil?

Or do you join your Savior, Jesus, in calling out to your heavenly Father?

And if you don’t know where to begin, start by simply praying the prayer we’ve all been taught and instructed to pray. Do it every day,

“Our Father who art in heaven….”

Because with these words, God tenderly invites you to believe that He is your true Father and that you are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence you may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.

Then, conclude by praying, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us not only from evil but the evil one.”

Pray that you would not be deceived or misled into false belief, despair, or other great shame and vice. But instead, be rescued from every evil of body and soul so that when your last hour comes, you might receive a blessed end and be taken from this valley of sorrow to your Father in heaven.

This is why your heavenly Father sent His only Son to the cross, to traverse this valley of sorrow or broken and divided families for you, to redeem you.

It’s a redemption now shielded from your eyes as the cross has been veiled; this signifies the consequence of the unbelief we heard in this morning’s Gospel and the violent death Jesus would suffer. (LSB, Companion to the Services, p. 233)

But while the cross remains veiled, you are invited all the more to draw near and, with your ears, hear the story of your Savior’s Passion and take it to heart, because as Jesus said, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.” (John 8:51)

No, you won’t taste death but instead receive the great inheritance of your Father in heaven, eternal life, because you are His child. +INJ+

Rev. Noah J. Rogness

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Tomah, WI