Discourses at the Communion on Fridays

[ 3 ] John 10:27

[ 3 ] John 10:27 • Prayer Father in Heaven! Your grace and mercy change not with the changing of the times,1 age not with the course of the years, as if you, like a human being, were more gracious on one day than on another, more gracious on the first day than on the last. Your grace remains unchanged, just as you are unchanged, the same, eternally young, new with every new day—for indeed every day you say “this very day.”2 Oh, but if a person pays attention to this phrase, is moved by it, and with pious resolve says earnestly to himself “this very day”—then for him this means that he precisely desires to be changed on this day, precisely desires that this day might be truly significant for him above other days, significant by renewed strengthening in the good he once chose or perhaps even significant by choosing the good. It is your grace and mercy unchangeably to say every day “this very day,”3 but your mercy and time of grace would be forfeited if a human being so unchangeably were to say from day to day “this very day.” You are surely the one who gives the time of grace “this very day,” but the human being is the one who must seize the time of grace “this very day.” This is the way we talk with you, O God; there is a linguistic difference between us, and yet we strive to understand you and to make ourselves intelligible to you, and you are not ashamed to be called our God.4 What is the eternal expression of your unchanged grace and mercy when you say it, O God, that same phrase is the strongest expression of the deepest 1. See James 1:17. 2. See Luke 23:43; Hebrews 3:7, 13, 15, 4:7. 3. See Lamentations 3:22–23. 4. See Hebrews 11:16. Part 1 56 change and decision when a human being repeats it rightly understood —yes, as if everything would be lost if the change and decision did not happen this very day. So grant then to those who are assembled here today, those who, without any external summons, therefore all the more inwardly, have resolved even today to seek reconciliation with you in the confession of sin, grant them that this day may be a true blessing for them, that they may have heard the voice of him whom you sent to the world,5 the voice of the Good Shepherd,6 that he may know them and that they may follow him. John 10:27: My Sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. When the congregation gathers in the Lord’s house on holy days, God himself has indeed so commanded and prescribed it. Today, however, is no holy day; and yet a small group has gathered here in the sanctuary , thus not because it is prescribed for all (since it is prescribed for no one), but because each single individual of those present must especially have felt a need, although in different ways, to come here precisely today. For today is no holy day, today everyone normally goes to his field, to his business, to his work; only these single individuals come to the Lord’s house today. So the single individual, then, left his home to come here. When on a holy day the one who is himself going to church meets a passer-by, he naturally assumes then that this passer-by is probably going to church too, for on a holy day, even if it is far from always being the case, the passer-by is someone who is going to church. But the one who, impelled by an inner need, comes here today, I wonder, would it occur to anyone who met him in passing that he was going to God’s house? Should then this visit to God’s house for that reason be less solemn? It seems to me that this secretiveness must, if possible, make it even more inward. Openly before everyone’s eyes and yet secretly, the single individual came to church today secretly or by the secret path, for no one knew his path except God; it occurred to no passer-by that you were going to God’s house, which not even you yourself say, for you say that you are going to Holy Communion, as if this were...