Preparing for Worship - June 7, 2026

This Sunday is the First Sunday after Trinity in the One Year Series of readings. (Note that in the Three Year Series of readings, the readings are counted as the Sundays after Pentecost, not the Sundays after Trinity, as is done in the One Year series. Those using the Three Year Series will call this the Second Sunday after Pentecost, which is also correct. I will stay this year with the terminology traditionally used for the One Year series, though.) This Sunday begins the non-festival part of the church year. We have completed the story of the life of Christ while here on earth, and His return to His Father at His ascension, and the promised coming of the Holy Spirit.

Now we enter a more general season, thinking about what the saving work of our Triune God means for us and our lives and future, as we wait for the return of Christ on the last day or for our being called to eternal life in heaven if our death happens sooner. This season is not highly structured, but covers many topics about Christ and His work and teaching and what all that means for our lives. This week, we hear of God’s great love for us and how that calls us to seek to love one another in return.

The Old Testament lesson is Genesis 15:1-6. The Lord comes to Abram, assuring him that He will be his “Shield” and bless him. Abram is not so sure, though, for he had been promised to be the father of a great nation and nations. He has no children and no heirs of his own. The Lord renews His promises to Abram and says that, just as he cannot count the stars in the sky, so he will have an uncountable number of descendants. (This includes the people of Israel, the Jewish nation, but especially all who will follow in faith the descendant of Jesus, the Lord and Savior of the world. We, as believers in Christ, are spiritual descendants of Abram, too.) The Lord also renewed the faith of Abram, later calling him Abraham, and Abraham was counted as a righteous man, acceptable to God, by that gift of faith. This is a central teaching in the New Testament as well. We cannot make ourselves righteous in the eyes of our Lord by our good deeds and righteous living. We are saved only by the grace of God, by being brought to trust in Christ Jesus and what he has done for us, in His perfect life and death on the cross and mighty resurrection from the dead, and His forgiveness earned for us. If you have time and energy, look at how Paul takes this Genesis 15:1-6 passage and shows how God’s saving grace is also for us, in Romans 4:1-25 and Galatians 3:1-14, 24-29. The whole first half of the church year showed us how our Lord “justified the ungodly” through the saving work of Jesus. So, Paul says, for “the one who believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

The psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 33:12-22. The Lord is pictured as looking down at the earth. The Lord is not impressed by “great armies,” “strong warriors,” and “war horses.” They cannot ultimately save. Most important is that people “fear” the Lord, honor and respect Him, and “hope in His steadfast love.” He is the One who can deliver from trouble and famine and ultimately from death itself. “Blessed, then, is the nation whose God is the Lord,” and whose “souls wait for the Lord.” As the Lord was the “Shield” and blessing for Abram in the Old Testament lesson, Genesis 15, so He is “our Help and our Shield,” the psalmist says, as “we trust in His Holy Name” and “hope in His steadfast love.”

The Gospel lesson for today is a parable of Jesus from Luke 16:19-31. There was a “rich man,” who “feasted sumptuously every day” and had “the finest of clothes.” He seems to be richly blessed with material possessions, and the Greek indicates that he lived in an “impressively gated” home. In contrast, there was “a poor man” who was laid at his gate by others. This “poor man” seems to be sick and disabled and covered with sores, something like ulcers. (The same word is used in Revelation 16:2.) The hope was that the rich man would at least share with him some scraps, some leftovers, from his food. The rich man seems so selfish and self-centered, though, that he ignores the poor man and does not want to be bothered by him, and helps him in no way. This is the only parable where Jesus gives someone a name, and the poor man was named “Lazarus” - a form of a name which means “God has furnished help.” Though Lazarus was so poor and sick and troubled, the Lord had brought him to faith and trust in Him, no matter what his circumstances. And when Lazarus soon died, he was taken to heaven by angels to be with the Lord, and with Abraham and other believers, also there by God’s grace through the gift of faith. In contrast, the rich man, without trust in the Lord or love and care for anyone but himself, ends up in Hades, in hell, a place of great torment and suffering. The rich man would not help Lazarus, but he now wants Lazarus to come and help him, even with just a drop of water. There is a chasm between heaven and hell, though, so that no one can pass from one place to the other. The rich man finally thinks of some others, his brothers, and wants Lazarus sent from the dead to call them to repentance. Abraham reminds him that the brothers have the Scriptures, Moses, and the Prophets. If they won’t listen to the true Word of God, through which the Lord Himself speaks and works, even someone coming back from the dead would not convince them. How true the Words of Jesus were. Jesus raised others from the dead, including another man named Lazarus (John 11), and Jesus Himself would rise from the dead, yet most of His fellow Jews still rejected Him and His love and His Word, and would miss out on the love and forgiveness and new life the Lord wanted to bring them in Christ.

In the Epistle lesson, 1 John 4:16-21, John reminds us who we are now as Christians. We have come to know, but also to believe and trust in the love God has for us, in Christ our Savior. (See the Words just before this passage in I John 4:9-11. John says, “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”) This is not a way for us to earn God’s favor. We already have His love in Christ. “We love because He first loved us,” and made the greatest of all sacrifices for us. An old Lutheran pastor, Fred Lindemann, wrote, “We are loved undeservedly” by God. We did not deserve His love, but He gave it to us anyway, in Christ, because His love for us is so great, and he wants us now to grow in that love, in gratefulness to Him and in care for others and in certainty about our future, now and eternally with Him, in His love. And so, Lindemann wrote, we can also seek to love those around us, even those who seem to be “undeserving,” as we remember His love, first, for us, who were undeserving. Only Christ has the “perfect love that casts out all fear,” in what He has done for us, and as we “abide in Him” and His love and His Word, our strength to look beyond ourselves and love others can grow, too. After all, Christ died for them, too, and “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” John is not afraid of preaching the Law. He says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.” John, above all, wants to share God’s love and forgiveness in Christ for our own failures, and to strengthen us to share that same love and forgiveness with others, for all people need Him and His Word and love.