Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/1314061
15 TO BECOME CHRIST'S PEOPLE John 16:31-33 On Christmas Eve, 1963 Karl Bar th preached in the Basel, Switzerland prison, a place, he said, where he felt more at home than in imposing churches. He took as his text John 16:33—"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take hear t! I have overcome the world." At the end of his sermon, which was broadcast throughout his country and into Germany, he offered this moving petition from, I am sure, the depths of his hear t. Lord Jesus Christ, if all is not to be in vain, thou must thyself come to us now and speak to us about the glor y of what for us thou wert and didst, what thou art and dost, what thou wilt be and wilt do—and also about the sober truth that in the world we shall have anxiety and affliction, but above all about the glad hope in which we may cling to thee now and forever. We are so deaf and dumb. Open our ears that we may hear and our lips that we may be witnesses for thee to each other. Speak thy word to us all so that we may be gathered together and become thy people, thy community. Speak it to each of us that we may not merely be called Christians but continually become Christians. Speak it to all our relatives at home, to all prisoners in all earth's prisons, to the sick, the suffering, and the dying in hospitals, to the many who are agitated, provoked, or exhausted this Christmas season, to the sad, the defiant, the over-superficial, the over-thoughtful, the over-credulous, and the over-cynical, to parents and children, teachers, authors, and journalists, members of our councils and courts, to pastors and their congregations, to the great and strong and also to the little and weak in ever y nation. We all have need that thou speak it to us as thou alone canst speak it. And so grant us all a good Christmas tomorrow and at the goal and end of our days and of all days. Christ, thou Lamb of God who didst bear the sins of the world, have mercy upon us, grant us thy peace. Amen. -VCG, 1989 DECEMBER 10