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Pentecost 4 2025, Proper 9
July 6, 2025
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Hamilton, Ohio
Pastor Kevin Jud
Isaiah 66:10-14, Galatians 6:1-10, 14-18, Luke 10:1-20
A major skill for doing youth work is figuring out what you can ignore and what you cannot. As kids transition from being boys and girls to being men and women they can be kind of crazy as they try to figure out who they are. What can you ignore and what needs to be called out?
I try to love and respect each of our youth and teach them to love and respect one another because love covers a multitude of sins. But loving others can be hard.
Lots of stuff can be ignored but sometimes there are things going on that are overly disruptive or hurtful or dangerous and it needs to stop. When I ask someone to stop doing something often their first reaction is to deny, or make excuses, or try to blame someone else. “He hit me first. I wasn’t the only one yelling. I didn’t do it.”
I tell them that if I ask you to stop doing something all you need to say is, “Ok. Sorry.” And that’s the end of it. I’m not going to punish you. I’m not going to call your parents; I just need you to stop. I pray that I can model Christian love to them and I pray also that they love me and can overlook the times when I fail.
This is good advice for all of us. Living together as brothers and sisters in Christ can be difficult. Well, not just can be difficult, it is difficult. Dealing with other people is hard. Because you are a burden to me and I am a burden to you. Look at the people sitting around you. They are a burden to you and you are a burden to them.
Life together as the family of Christ is a life lived together. We are a collection of 450 or so people committed to one another. 450 sinners struggling together against the devil. 450 sinners from infants to 96 year olds huddled together against the influence of the world. 450 sinners battling the natural inclination to sin. And sin we do.
Most of the time we just need to ignore each other’s sins just like we ignore our own. Martin Luther writes in his commentary on Galatians, “But if we are able to bear and overlook our own faults and sins, which we commit in such great numbers every day, let us bear those of others as well…[1]
Galatians 6:2 tells us, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” This is an interesting phrase, “The law of Christ.” You don’t normally hear this phrase. You are more used to the “Gospel of Christ”; the “Good News of Christ”. The law of Christ sounds foreign to your ears. The law of Christ is the law of love. Christ Jesus has taken your sins to the cross at Calvary and paid the price for them. Baptized in Him you die to sin and rise to eternal life. And so, in Christ, you are to love one another. We don’t often talk about it this way, but as a baptized child of God… as a member of the family of God… you are burdened by love for each other. When you are baptized into Christ and put on Christ, you also put on the burden of your brothers and sisters in Christ. This is one reason you cannot just stop coming to church because the people can be annoying. It is your burden to deal with the other people. It is your burden of love.
The people sitting around you are annoying sinners… and so are you… and so am I… and we put up with each other out of love. There is an awful lot about each other that you just need to ignore. When you get tempted to get exasperated with someone else’s sins think about how many of your own sins the Lord Jesus forgives you each day and then go do likewise for one another.
We like to play a game of comparison. We like to say, “Well, I might be a sinner, but I’m not as bad as that person.” Perhaps that is why folks love Jerry Springer style TV shows where folks air their dirty laundry by telling sordid tales of their lives. People watch and think, “well my life may not be perfect; I may have my faults, but I am not as bad as these people.” This is not the Christian way. Do not compare yourself with others. Do not judge your behavior against another person but rather evaluate yourself against God’s holiness and perfection. Be honest about yourself. You are a natural born sinner with no high ground to stand upon except on the rock of Calvary and the cross of Christ. Galatians 6:3 (ESV) 3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”
There are times when the sins of a church member must be addressed. When someone’s sin is damaging the fellowship through fighting and dissension, or when a serious sin threatens to separate someone from Christ’s salvation through stubborn unrepentance.
When this happens, you must stay on guard against falling into their ongoing sin. Everyone is susceptible to sin. No one is immune from the threat. When a well-known Christian leader is caught in a public sin the media goes crazy over it, but we really shouldn’t be surprised. The threat is there for everyone. What we all can say about it is, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” We are all only a few steps from grievous public sin. Pastors certainly are not immune. When it comes to pastors committing grievous, public sins, I had a seminary professor who would warn us that the day we say to ourselves, “That will never happen to me.” That is the day you are in the most danger.
So, when someone in our fellowship commits a grievous sin, what do we do? How should we handle it? Galatians 6:1 (ESV) 1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”
When one of your brothers or sisters in Christ is caught in a transgression that breaks them from the fellowship, or threatens to break them from the fellowship, you need to go to them to urge repentance in order to restore them to the fellowship. You go to them humbly. You do not lord it over them or go to them with any sense of superiority. You go to them as a fellow sinner, struggling with temptation, who needs Jesus’ forgiveness. You go as a fellow sinner, but that does not make it okay to sin. You speak the truth in love and gently call them to repent and return to Christ.
What if when you go in gentleness to try to restore someone you find that they are secure in their sin? They do not acknowledge their sin. They excuse their sin. They defend their sin. They have put themselves in great danger because they are putting themselves outside the fellowship of the Church because, by their remaining in sin, they are rejecting Christ. To allow them to remain is a danger to the fellowship because there is a temptation to ignore or excuse the sin, but that can lead others into the same or similar sin.
When necessary, you go to those caught in ongoing sin to speak the truth in love, but mostly you are called to bear one another’s burdens. This is done not just in youth work, not just in the family of faith, but also at home with your family and out in the world as you encounter others. Life together as a family is an awful lot about learning what you can ignore and what you can’t ignore. You bear one another’s sins.
This is part of the slow slog of Christian life. It is not glamorous or fun or exciting. It does not make for a catchy church sign, “Come join our church where you can bear one another’s burdens.” Bearing burdens feels a lot like work. Here, at Immanuel, you all do a pretty good job with this; loving one another, carrying one another’s burdens, helping one another, ignoring other’s faults, ignoring my faults.
Life together is a life of living in the law of Christ; living in the law of love. Live in the love of Christ in love for one another. Live united… boasting only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Live united in the love of Christ. Live united in Christ -- bearing with one another in love. Amen.
[1]Luther, Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg.) ; Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.) ; Lehmann, Helmut T. (Hrsg.): Luther's Works, Vol. 27 : Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 5-6; 1519, Chapters 1-6. Saint Louis : Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1964 (Luther's Works 27), S. 27:113