Lent 4—Laetare
Dear friends in Christ. At first glance our text, today’s epistle, is a bit difficult to understand. That’s because it goes back to an OT event that is not one of the usual OT Sunday School accounts. God had promised Abraham that he would be the ancestor of the Messiah. The only problem was that both Abraham and Sarah his wife [Gn. 18.11], were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. But Abraham and Sarah knew that God had promised an offspring to Abraham and that there would be many descendants—one of whom would be the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Sarah had hoped for a long time to become the mother of that offspring of Abraham but was barren, childless. So Sarah, the true wife and lady of the house, gave Abraham her servant, Hagar, as wife to see if Hagar would be the one to whom a line of descendants would be born. Hagar did indeed bear Abraham a son named Ishmael. But this was not God’s intent. God’s promise was for descendants to come through Abraham and Sarah. Years later—when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90—did they have a son, Isaac. The line of descent would go through Isaac so that there would be many descendants, the Israelites, one of whom would be Jesus, the Savior of the world.
But now both Ishmael and Isaac are sons of Abraham—but there is only one true heir, only one to whom that the promise of the Savior applies: Isaac. Isaac was the one born as the result of the promise of God. His mother was not a servant/ a slave but the one true wife of Abraham, the true lady of the house.
Here is where St. Paul makes the comparison in our text: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. St. Paul compares the Jews, who want to be saved by the works of the law, with Ishmael whose mother is Hagar, the slave woman. Those who want to be saved by their works of the law are slaves. With slavery go fear, works and a servile spirit.
But those who want to be saved and rely, not on themselves and their own works but on the promise of God to forgive us our sin and to open heaven to us for Jesus’ sake, these are the Christians. They are free and love and serve God with a joyful, willing heart. The difference between the two is the mother—Hagar, the Law; those who are her children are trying to be saved by the Law/ by their works. The child of a slave is a slave. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.
Sarah, is free, the lady of the house. Her child is free and the heir. Sarah is a picture of the Church. Her children are all children of the promise; they believe and hold fast to the promise of God in Jesus to forgive them their sin and cleanse them from all unrighteousness. To her children, to us, belongs the promise of being children of God and heirs of heaven. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
1. Dear Christian, the Church is our mother. She is our mother because of the word of God. When he talks about the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed, which deals with the Holy Spirit and His work, Luther says: I believe that the Holy Spirit makes me holy as His name implies. But how does He accomplish this…? … In the first place, the Spirit has his own congregation in the world, which is the mother that conceives and bears every Christian through God’s Word. Through the Word He reveals and preaches, He illumines and enkindles hearts, so that they understand, accept, cling to, and persevere in the Word. Through the word of God, the promises of God to us, the Holy Spirit brings us to spiritual life.
When God gives us physical life, He doesn’t just zap us into existence. God is a God of means. He works through the instruments of father and mother to bring a life into the world. The same thing is true when He gives us spiritual life, that is, when we are born from above/ again. God doesn’t just “zap” us into spiritual life and faith so that we know Him rightly. It is true, as Jesus says [John 3. 3, 5], “Unless one is born again/ from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God…Unless one is born of the water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Where does Jesus have His Holy Spirit at work? In His holy word and Sacraments. And where has Jesus entrusted His holy word and Sacraments? To His Church. It is the great privilege and a great responsibility of the Church to proclaim the word and administer the sacraments Jesus has entrusted to her. Why? Because through the word that we share and the sacraments that we administer the Holy Spirit is at work bringing people to spiritual life. Just like we think of our physical life coming from our mother, in whom we dwelt the first 9 months of life, so also we think of our spiritual life coming from our spiritual mother, the Church, because alone in the word and sacrament Jesus gave and entrusted her, His Holy Spirit is at work bringing spiritual life.
In fact, the Church is a very fertile mother, continuing to bear children/ Christians all throughout the ages. Notice the beautiful title she is given: But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. She is called the Jerusalem above. Jerusalem—in OT times—was the place of the temple, the physical spot of the Lord’s presence. From the physical Jerusalem the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles that began on first Pentecost has now spread into the entire world. Now the Church is not confined to one earthly place but spread throughout the world and has led and is leading her children above to heaven, our true home.
The mother’s job is not done with the birth of the child. A mother continues daily to nourish the child that she has conceived and born. The same thing with our mother, the Church! The Holy Spirit is mightily at work in the holy word and sacraments that Jesus has entrusted to His Church. Through these—each time we hear the absolution, each time we remember and reclaim the blessings God gave us in baptism, each time we hear, read, study the holy Scriptures, each time we receive Holy Communion, there the Holy Spirit is mightily at work strengthening us and nourishing in us faith, so that we continue to grow and remain steadfast in the to eternal life. As St. Peter writes [1 Pt. 2.2]: As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.
What a glorious work of God’s grace it is that we are born from above and that the Church is our mother. Here we see in us the supernatural power and working of God. What a miracle of God each baby is that is born into the world. What a greater miracle is each Christian, born of water and the word, to mother Church! A baby never asked to be born; a baby never chose to be conceived. It is a miracle of God. The same thing for us here, spiritually, as we are conceived and born through God’s word by our mother, the Church: we don’t ask to be conceived and born; we don’t “decide” to be her child. Instead, out of pure grace, the Lord chose us and by His Holy Spirit’s work in the word and Sacrament He brought us the spiritual life, to faith in Him; or, in the words of our text, our mother, the Church, conceives and gives us birth.
Look again at our text: But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Here we see God’s supernatural power and working: Ishmael, the son of the servant was conceived and born without the word and promise of God. It happened according to the flesh, seemingly the common course of nature. But Isaac’s birth, the one from which a great nation of people would come, the people from whom Jesus, the Messiah, would come was the result of the divine promise according to which God restored Sarah’s ability to bear a son.
The point is this: we are Christians because of God’s mighty working in us and on us. In His holy word He gave us the promise of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Jesus and every other heavenly and spiritual blessing Jesus won for us. By His Holy Spirit He created faith in our hearts to receive it. This is our new spiritual life. On top of that, He sealed His promises with the waters of holy baptism in which our sins were washed away and we were brought into God’s holy family; He seals that promise to us as He gives us that very body and blood that brought about for us our new spiritual life. Because of the word and sacraments through which the Holy Spirit works and which Jesus entrusted to the Church, the Church is truly our mother.
2. What a glorious thing it is that the Church is our mother who has conceived and born us through God’s word. Our text says of the Church: the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. The child of Hagar, the slave woman, is not the heir of the house. But the child of Sarah, the free woman, the woman of the house is the heir. We, dear Christian, the children of Mother Church, are like our mother: free. Now, as Christians, born from above and heirs of heaven, we are free from the curse of the law, sin and death. We are not slaves of the law trying to do it in order to weasel our way into heaven; we are not slaves to sin, having to do its bidding; we are not slaves to death, meekly marching to our eternal damnation. Rather, we have been born again/ from above as children of the free woman, the Church. As children of the free woman, the Church, we enjoy the graces and blessings Jesus won for us and now fully and freely gives us in His Church: we are free from the Law because Jesus kept it perfectly for us in our place and suffered for us the penalty of our sin; we are free from the slavery to sin because Jesus has given us His Holy Spirit who leads us to fight sin and in love and joy to live a life of good works; now as free from death, though we may die an earthly death, death now serves to bring our souls to the Lord in heaven where they will await the resurrection of the body on the Last Day and then we will be in heaven eternally soul and glorified/ resurrected body.
Dear Christian, Isaac, Sarah’s son, was born because of God’s promise; so now we, through faith in the promise of the Gospel are born anew by the Spirit, born of our mother, the Church. Just like Isaac was free because his mother was free, so too are we Christians free; we stand in a state of grace. Things are now right between us and God, our dear heavenly Father. This is because of the work of Jesus. As Christians, because of the work of Jesus, we are declared righteous; we are God’s dear children and heirs of heaven. We stand in a state of grace. That means that our faith, which the Holy Spirit has created in us by the word and sacrament, is right now constantly receiving all of God’s gifts and graces to us in Jesus: the forgiveness of sins, peace with God, eternal life, etc.
Even though our state/ condition as God’s dear Christians and heirs of heaven, children conceived and born through the Word by the Church, it may not always be going well for us. We may be enduring times of temptation, trial, hardship. But remember our text: Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.”
Dear Christian, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. We are God’s dear children; through God’s Word we have been conceived and born by the Church. Again, as we joyfully confess with Luther in the catechism: The Christian Church is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the word of God. INJ Amen