Learning from Löhe. John 16,5-15

The following is the opening paragraph to Löhe's sermon on Cantate Sunday (The 4. Sunday after Easter):

1. This Gospel also moves us beyond the night when the Lord was betrayed, and we hear in it that the Lord as He announced His departure to the disciples, and interprets its blessed fruits. These words sounded in the ears of the disciples as an announcement of His sufferings and His death. What they did not understand and took from it only the conscience awareness of an impending separation, it could also be in that nothing but the un-loving message to recognize the separation that they had avoided at all happy. Therefore, they are the words of Jesus, sad and remain so, He may now just talking about the beginning of His departure, by His suffering, He may or blessed by the target and tell the end of it. They're like mourning people who were sitting not the eternal happiness of their dead, but only the separation and the loss of their own eye. Just as the disciples did not even ask: "Where are you going?" But their heart was full of sorrow, since they could not get over the one thought. "You go away from us, You forsake Your people" Of course, one can sympathize with their sadness, for it represents what they feel, the light before God: we cannot behave in such a selfishness manner and should rid ourselves of such sadness that Jesus' announcement evokes.

Learning from Löhe

Here is a brief paragraph (and Löhe's paragraphs are rarely this short!) from Wilhelm Löhe's sermon on Cantate Sunday for John 16,5-15:

,,3. Our congregations' mood might be different from the mood of Jesus' disciples of Jesus and so few also echo the comforting speech which the Lord has directed at His disciples, so that most Christians in our day might find: so I want to my do my duty, but you don't draw from the text the comfort that it administers nor do you include the outstanding thought of the near to present. The Lord, the Holy Spirit, knows your hearts, and He can lead you to a spiritual meal whereupon you dine on the sweet words of Jesus who is your Savior. He has recommended it with devout supplication!"