In a time like this, when someone young and with so much promise unexpectedly dies, we just can’t believe it, can’t understand it. Why would a young man like Adam, so full of joy and generosity and love – so clearly hearing the Word of God and holding it fast in a honest and good heart and bearing fruit with patience – why would God call Adam, so full of love, to Himself now?

Adam loved

• his parents
• his brother
• his sister
• his grandparents
• his aunts, uncles, cousins
• his friends
• his church
• being Lutheran
• music
• Star Wars
• Legos
• videogames
• telling jokes
• all sorts of interesting theories
• telling me and anyone who would listen all about the interesting theories he’d been pondering
• inventing things
• telling me and anyone who would listen all about the things that he invented
• taking care of people
• Jesus, his Lord and Savior.

But more importantly – no most importantly – Jesus loves Adam. And this is where we’re going to find comfort and answers. Not in Adam’s love for anything, but in Jesus Christ’s love for Adam.

So let me tell you about Jesus, Adam’s Lord.

Yesterday we heard those wonderful words from John, chapter 3 – the same words on the inside of the casket lid: ”For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. The love of God for the world – and that includes Adam – is what’s going to sustain us today, and in the weeks and months and years to come. Because of Jesus, God’s Son, giving Himself into death for our sins, death has no sting, no power. There is nothing to fear from death, in Jesus. Because of Jesus, God’s Son, conquering death by His own death, we receive all good things from God the Father. Because of Jesus, God’s Son, being raised from death on the Third Day (on that first Easter), we live now in the promise and hope of everlasting life with God, with Jesus, and with Adam.

Adam fell asleep in Christ; he fell asleep in the promise that Christ’s death and resurrection have been given to him; that Christ death and resurrection are Adam’s own death and resurrection. We have confidence in this because God has attached this promise to Holy Baptism and Adam, on December 14, 2003, was baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Gary and Terry, you faithfully, expectantly believed God’s promise and command and brought Adam to the Font in order to be born again in this new birth of water and the Spirit.

Paul writes about this in Romans and we spoke aloud those promises just a little while ago when the pall was put on Adam’s casket. Christ’s death and resurrection – death to sin, alive to God – became Adam’s death to death and promise of everlasting life when he was baptized. ”Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

In Baptism, Jesus loves Adam. The Lord sprinkled clean water on Adam. He took Adam’s heart of stone – now it’s hard to imagine that he had a heart of stone, ever! But we trust in what God tells us about ourselves: we are sinful and unrighteous from the very beginning. ”Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

Yet the Lord, by grace and in love, took that heart of stone and gave Adam a heart of flesh. He put His Spirit within Adam so that Adam would live, love, and do the good works prepared beforehand for him to do. A clean heart was created in Adam, and the right Spirit was put within him. All of this is the work of God, the gift of God.

Just over a year ago Adam stood up here at this altar, after being instructed in the teachings of the Christian Faith – although to be honest he knew most of what we covered in catechism class already – he stood up here and confessed his faith in Christ. He said “I believe in God the Father Almighty…I believe in Jesus Christ my Lord…I believe in the Holy Spirit!” ”If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Adam’s confession that Jesus is Lord is a gift of God, flowing from Adam’s Baptism into Christ.

And then faithfully, just about every week – probably every week – Adam came to this Altar and received the Lord’s Supper. He ate the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ given for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus loves Adam: He says, “For you!” Adam said back, “for me!” The Lord blessed Adam with forgiveness, life, and salvation in that meal. Just this past Sunday, about 24 hours before Adam fell asleep in Christ, he gladly ate and drank the eternal-life-giving food that Jesus fed to him.

Thanks be to God, we therefore have confidence and assurance that Adam now rests from his labors in the paradise of heaven, with Jesus, waiting for the last day when in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, Adam will be raised from the dead imperishable and will live in the glorious eternal presence and bliss of life with Christ. All of us who are in Christ have this promise, this hope; and we have this joyful expectation of this being a happy reunion with all of those who have gone before us in Christ, Adam included.

Last Advent, Adam came up to Mrs. Schuermann and me and told us his favorite Christmas hymn: Paul Gerhardt’s “O Jesus Christ, Thy Manger Is.” I’ll close with the last stanza of this hymn:

”The world may hold Her wealth and gold; But thou, my heart, keep Christ as thy true treasure. To Him hold fast Until at last A crown be thine and honor in full measure.”

As Adam sang this hymn, he prayed this prayer. Jesus loves Adam and said, “yes.” The Lord enlivened Adam’s heart in baptism, He fed Adam’s hungry heart with His Supper, and He sustained Adam’s believing heart with His Word. And now the Lord Jesus has given Adam the crown of life in full measure, according to His promise. On the Last Day He will raise Adam from the dead.

Jesus loves Adam. All of these promises, all of what Jesus has done: these are what we must cling to for assurance and comfort. ”The Lord is my portion; therefore I will hope in him.” In the darkest night, Christ’s mercy is our light.

”Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” ”His mercy endures forever.”

+INJ+

John writes in his Gospel that Jesus, “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” On the night he was betrayed, Jesus loved us – His Church, His Christians. He loved us enough to institute His Supper, the New Testament in His Blood.

The Supper is a feast of love; it is a meal of the most intimate bond imaginable. Christ instituted it in love for His people. In His Supper Jesus unites Himself with you; pouring into you His living and risen Body and Blood.

But the Supper is also the source of the most intimate brotherly love among us, His Christians. We heard this in the address at the beginning of the service: “For we are all one bread and one body, even as we are all partakers of this one bread and drink from the one cup. For just as the one cup is filled with wine of many grapes and one bread made from countless grains, so also we, being many, are one body in Christ.” Or as the great Lutheran teacher Norman Nagel puts it, in Christ’s Supper we are all “Bodied and Bloodied together.”

Or as St. Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 10: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”

What Paul means is that in coming together to receive the Lord’s Supper, we are united. We together have a share — a communion — in Christ’s forgiveness. We are one in body and spirit and faith and confession. We, Christ’s Bride, are intimately united with our Heavenly Bridegroom. We receive the fruits of His love for us: forgiveness. We share in the fruits of His love together by loving one another.

So when Paul gets to 1 Corinthians 11 and again addresses the Supper, He states the words which he received from Christ Himself: the Words that Jesus spoke on that Thursday night of Holy Week. And then Paul reveals how the division in the Corinthian congregation is harmful. Christ is uniting them into one body, and they are ripping the Body of Christ right back apart by their failure to love one another.

This has to do with the clear proclamation of the Gospel. As Paul puts it: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” To come and receive the Sacrament is to preach the Gospel. Christ died. Christ is risen. Christ is truly, really, present here on this altar for His Christians to eat and drink His crucified and risen Body and Blood for their forgiveness. Christ loves us. We love each other. We are united in His Gospel.

So if you deny this, even in part, you are denying part of His Gospel. You are not proclaiming with us the fullness of His Gospel. In the same way that someone is in error who denies Christ’s Baptismal promises, whomever denies that in the Supper Christ’s Body and Blood are truly present under the bread and wine for forgiveness is in error. This person hasn’t necessarily fully denied the Gospel; he may well still proclaim that Christ’s death for sin is received by grace, through faith, without works. But he’s divided himself from the fullness of what Christ teaches. Or, to put it in Paul’s terms, he’s failed to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” in all its fullness. Thus we are not united; we are divided, at least in part.

Do these divisions in His Church grieve our Lord? Certainly. They grieve us too. I find it devastating. Yet Christ Himself provides the fix. When it comes to His Supper, Jesus assuredly states what it is. When it comes to the Supper, we could easily mend the division if we’d merely listen to Jesus and believe His words. There’s no reason to doubt. Christ’s words of institution, given by St. Paul as well as by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are crystal clear: “This is my body.” “This cup is the new testament in my blood.” “Is” means is. Christ our Lord doesn’t lie, and He gives zero indication that we should take His words in any other way. He explains nothing after the fact as if it’s a parable or an allegory.

If His words are ambiguous, then we can argue this way or that what they might mean. But here Jesus is completely unambiguous. This is not a hard saying of Jesus. Here Jesus wants to be sure that we have no room to doubt His gift and promise. Jesus institutes this meal in order to convey to you the sure and certain forgiveness of your sins. So He speaks in the clearest way possible. “This is my body.” “This cup is the new testament in my blood.”

And we must never let up in asserting that Jesus’ word “is” means is. If we allow doubt to creep in about such a simple and clear word, then what happens when we get to the benefit of the Supper? If we can’t trust that Jesus means is when He says “is,” then how can we be sure and certain that He actually means “for you” when He says “for you”?

Because that is the chief purpose of the Sacrament of the Altar. Jesus, “on the night when he was betrayed” instituted the Supper. Jesus soon found Himself in front of the Sanhedrin, in front of Pilate, in front of the mobs; soon found Himself on Golgotha, His hands and feet pierced, His voice crying out in forsakenness, His Spirit given up, His body entombed. “For. You.”

Jesus certainly unites us one to another. But as I said at the beginning, He also unites us to Himself. Or perhaps it’s even better said that He unites Himself to us. For Jesus comes in His glorified and risen Body and Blood and feeds you Himself, by my unworthy hand. Jesus comes and gives you the complete forgiveness of your sin. Take, eat. Take, drink. The true Body and Blood of Jesus is here for forgiveness, for you.

Amen.

– Pastor Michael Schuermann
S.D.G.