Third Sunday of Easter (Series B: Luke 24:36-49)

“See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this third Sunday of Easter is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ, Peter was in his element. In our First lesson for today, this one-time fisherman was given the opportunity to proclaim the word of God, and He did so with a boldness that makes even us uncomfortable: “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” Jesus, the great teacher from Nazareth, was not dead, but alive! And not only this, but this Jesus was not simply a great teacher, or only a man, but instead He was God in the flesh, the God of the Old Testament patriarchs come to save you and me. And He saved us by giving up His life and rising from the dead. Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

What a difference between the boldness of Peter and what we see in our Gospel lesson for today! “As they were talking about these things, Jesus Himself stood among them, and said to them, ‘Peace to you!’ But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.” The disciples were cowering in their locked room, listening to the confession of the Emmaus road disciples, that Jesus had made Himself known to them in the breaking of the bread. They were confused, perplexed by this turn of events, but this was only the beginning of the emotional roller coaster they were preparing to ride. When Jesus suddenly appeared among them, this confusion was replaced with terror and fear. They thought He was a ghost! They hadn’t thought that He would truly rise, and they did not expect a flesh-and-bones Jesus to appear in their midst. Jesus tries to allay their fear, but this rollercoaster was heading downhill in a hurry. “He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling…” Even after they see the wounds of their Lord, they still disbelieve! This was too good to be true, and their emotions and feelings cannot handle it, they are left with scales on their eyes, unable to see the reality standing right in front of them. Jesus has risen!

But Jesus knows that it is not just a rollercoaster of emotion that has their minds closed. “And He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your hearts?” The word translated here as ‘doubts’ simply refers to the operation of human reason. Their minds are trying to figure this out, trying to get a grip on what their eyes are telling them. Humanity has always thought more highly of its reason that it ought. The first question from the garden was “did God really say?” and you know, when Adam and Eve thought about it, He probably didn’t. We live in an age when there seems to be no bounds to what humans can do when they put their minds to it. Science and technology are doing things that we never thought were possible, and many believe that we can probe the very origins of life and the universe. Science thinks that it can discount God, or at least make Him irrelevant, and when we live in a world with such man-made wonders, it is easy to see God in that way. On the other end of the spectrum are those who think that we experience God individually, with our own minds. We should just go out to the woods and there we can encounter Him. Once again, this focuses on the use of our own natural reason. Now, there is no doubt that some solitude is good for our souls, but can we learn all that we need to know about God from nature? Can science and our own human reason reveal God to us?

The answer that Scripture gives to us is a resounding ‘NO!’ Our emotions, swinging back and forth, cannot reveal God to us. They simply leave us as confused as the disciples. “But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.” Looking at creation can lead us to see a Creator at work, but do we have any idea whether He loves us or not? Our own human reason, and its creations, science and technology, can try to give an explanation for everything, but it cannot probe the mind of God. No, by ourselves, with our own human reason, we are blind and deaf- we cannot see or hear Him. Why is that? Because our reason is perverted by sin, just as the rest of us is. We are born into sin, spiritually blind, deaf, and dead before God.

“And when they were talking about these things, Jesus Himself stood among them.” Into their very midst, into this collection of spiritually blind and deaf people, Jesus Christ came. He came to remove spiritual blindness, to replace doubt, the reasonings of sinful human minds, with faith. “And He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.” Those last words are a weak translation- Jesus says, ‘See my hands and my feet, that I AM myself.’ The great I AM, Yahweh Himself, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was standing in their midst. As Thomas said last week, this was “My Lord and my God!” And He stood amongst them alive- whole, bodily, physical, real! He was not a ghost as they feared: “Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when they still persisted in unbelief, He gave them another proof: “He said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave Him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.” This was their Lord, their Savior, the great I AM, the same God who delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt was standing among them, there to destroy all doubt, all of human reason’s feeble attempts to understand Him. He was there to create faith in His Resurrection, for these men would be witnesses of it to the ends of the earth.

And so these men needed some more education. Jesus opened up the Scriptures to them and then to us, He opened what to our human reason and scientific inquiry had been a closed book. “Then He said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” And what must be fulfilled? “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” The whole Bible is about Jesus, and it is all about Jesus for you and me! God was not willing to leave us in our spiritual blindness and death; in fact His love made it necessary that God do something about our situation. And so, from the third chapter of Genesis through the books of Moses, into the prophets, and finally among the beauty of the Psalms, the story of salvation was told. Jesus was proclaimed as the one who would come and deliver us from our blindness. A Savior was promised for you and me, one who would come to deliver us from the domain of death, but this would not be easy. For the Scriptures proclaimed that “the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” For us, for love of us, Jesus Christ would fulfill the Father’s will, He would take on the necessity declared by Scripture, and He would go to the cross bearing your sin and my sin. He would go there and offer Himself as the price, the great I AM in place of His sinful people. There the debt would be paid, there Christ drank the cup of God’s wrath. But that was not the end. Light broke on Easter dawn to reveal an empty tomb, for Christ had arisen, just as the Scriptures said, and just as He promised. There He triumphed in victory over our enemies, there peace was declared between God and man. That is what Jesus taught His disciples in our text, there He replaced the doubts of their sinful human reason with a new understanding, an understanding shaped by faith.

The disciples are then sent out to illuminate other hearts, to bring this message of all Scripture that Jesus died and rose again to all people, to apply that message directly to you and me. Jesus says, “You are witnesses of these things.” They saw the risen Lord with their own eyes, they touched His wounds, and now they bring this confession to you and me, the bold confession that Peter declared to the crowd in our First lesson: “You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.” It is their task, along with the Church in all ages, to fulfill the divine necessity “that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” But they could not do this on their own. “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” It is the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father, that opens hearts to believe in Christ, He works through the words of the Apostles and the Scriptures they have delivered to us. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes and ears to see and hear Christ, to believe in Him and grasp onto Him as our very own Savior and Redeemer.

With the eyes of faith, we see Jesus as clearly as the disciples ever did- we see Him as the one who delivered us from death, the one who forgave our sins by taking them to the cross, and we see Him as the One proclaimed on every page of the Scriptures. That is where we encounter Him, through the gift of His Word. But He is not simply a spirit to us, He has arisen bodily, physical, whole and complete. He says to us in His Supper: “Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Our human reason is a good gift of God, and now that Christ has given His understanding and opened the Scriptures to us we use it to explore them and defend the faith. Our reason is now in service to the Gospel, in service to the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen, and we use it to engage our world in its doubt and lies. But eyes can only be opened by the Holy Spirit, only He can reveal what our minds cannot comprehend. And so we place our trust in the words that Scripture proclaims to us- Christ became man for us, Christ died for us, and Christ lives for us. Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Second Sunday of Easter (Series B: John 20:19-31)

“Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this second Sunday of Easter is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the twentieth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ, denials of the resurrection are almost as old as the resurrection itself. Matthew tells us of the first attempt to cover up what happened on Easter morning. “[The chief priests] gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, ‘Tell the people, “His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.”’ Since then, many other theories have been advanced, including the idea that Jesus never really died, but only fainted on the cross, or that there was the clever use of a body double, or the thought that the disciples simply made the whole thing up (and were willing to die for something they knew wasn’t true). All of these theories, and countless others, are poor and feeble attempts by our world to come to grips with the fact that someone who was dead, killed in the most gruesome way, was now alive, they are attempts to give a rational explanation for an empty tomb, for the testimony of Mary Magdalene and the disciples.

But doubting the resurrection is not the exclusive property of the world. Jesus’ own followers fell into doubt and denial. Last week we heard the beautiful and touching story of the resurrection according to Saint John, we traveled with our author and Peter to the empty tomb, we stood with Mary as she wept. Then we felt her joy as Jesus came to her side- alive, never to die again! She is sent to tell the disciples what she had seen and heard, and what is their response? “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews…” What? The doors were locked? The disciples had heard the great proclamation of Mary; John and Peter had seen the empty tomb, and still they cower behind locked doors?

This doubt was even worse with Thomas. Jesus appeared to the disciples that first night, he gave them the proof they needed for their feeble faith. But what about Thomas? “Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’” This proclamation was not enough for Thomas. He wanted an experience, he wanted to see with his physical eyes rather than with the eyes of faith. “But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into His side, I will not believe.’” The Word of the apostles was not enough, he wanted an experience. That is how doubt assails us- it convinces us that what we have is not enough, that we need more. The promises of God in Holy Scripture are not enough, I need to feel Him in my heart, in my own life for me to truly believe. I need some great spiritual experience, some wonderful act of God in my life before I will consider myself truly a Christian. Satan does not want us satisfied with the Word of God, with the witness of Christ’s apostles. Satan wants us hungering and thirsting for more, for some fleeting feeling or experience that will somehow confirm our faith. He wants us searching in vain for confirmation, because when our faith is based only on our own personal experience, it is on shaky ground. Then doubt can come in and make a home in our heart. I haven’t experienced a resurrection, so why should I believe some fishermen? I don’t always feel Jesus with me, so He probably isn’t.

But Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Lord, comes in to shatter all doubt. “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” He speaks the words that cast doubt aside, the words of peace, of comfort, of love. They do not have to fear, for He is arisen! And then He shows them the proofs of His resurrection. “When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” To Thomas, whose doubt was so profound, his thirst for an experience so great, that he was willing to wallow in total unbelief, Jesus also came. “Then He said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’”

In that moment, ‘doubting Thomas’ was transformed into a bold confessor of Christ’s resurrection. “Thomas answered Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” Only the Son of God, true God Himself, could rise from the dead, victorious over all that held Him captive. But not only is Jesus true God, the victor over death, but He is Thomas’ Lord and his God. Faith has grasped onto Jesus and has made Him his very own. But as great as Thomas’ transformation is, Jesus is concerned for all others, He is concerned for you and me. “Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus is concerned that all people, both that small group that saw and touched His resurrected body and the many who did not, would all say to Him, “My Lord and my God!”

And so the disciples are sent out to confess. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” They are transformed from disciples, ‘learners,’ into apostles, ‘sent ones.’ Thomas would travel around the world preaching the message of the Resurrection, perhaps even as far as India, and he would give his life for his bold confession that Jesus is “My Lord and my God.” All of the disciples were witnesses of the Resurrection, and it was now their task to bring that message of victory over sin and death to all people. Saint John took this task seriously enough that he sat down and committed to paper the words and deeds of Jesus: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His Name.”

And so their message has echoed throughout the centuries, passed down from generation to generation until it has reached us. But this proclamation is not simply a history lesson, simply an amazing event that happened a long time ago- their proclamation does not only describe events, it also declares the benefits of the Resurrection to you and me. When Jesus entered through locked doors on the first and eighth days, what were His first words? “Peace be with you.” Jesus had not used those words before this very moment- “Peace be with you” is His Resurrection greeting. And it is this peace that the apostles proclaim to you and me. Jesus could not speak of peace until that most holy of weeks, because man and God were not at peace. We were estranged from Him, in sinful rebellion against our creator. But Jesus Christ had come to bring peace, to bridge the chasm between God and man, to restore the broken relationship severed in the garden. And He could only do this by offering Himself as the price. Peace could only come by submitting to the violence of Pilate’s soldiers, to the cruelty of the cross. And so Jesus, in the immensity of His love for you and me, did just that. He allowed Himself to be arrested, to be beaten and scourged, to be held up in a mock trial, and finally to be nailed to a cross. That was the price of peace, and it was a price He was fully willing to pay. On Good Friday we turned to the cross and heard that it was all for us, for you and me, for love of us. And that is also why He rose again. With His victory over death on Easter Sunday, peace between God and man was fully achieved because all that stood between us has been removed by the triumph of Christ. He comes forth from the grave proclaiming to you and me that we will live forever in peace with God. That is the promise of the resurrection, that is the proclamation that the apostles bring to you this day and every day.

This peace is then delivered to us through the forgiveness of sins. The apostles were not just sent out to proclaim peace to us, but to actually give us peace through the forgiveness of all our sins. “And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.’” The apostles and those who follow them are sent out to forgive the sins of all who believe their words; all who believe in the Resurrection, you and me in whom the Holy Spirit has worked faith. Those who refuse to believe in the resurrection are left clinging to their sin, they have turned away the forgiveness freely given by Jesus. They have chosen to stand naked before the judgment seat of God with their sin. But we who believe in the redemption and victory of Christ by the gift of faith, we will stand before God clothed with the blood of Jesus and His righteousness, we will stand at peace with God forgiven of all our sin. And we will stand before God in His glory, His peace forever.

That is where we place our confidence when doubts circle around us- in the Word of God and His proclamation through the apostles. There we hear that we are at peace with God, there we hear that our sins are forgiven, and when we hear those words we can have the confidence that we truly are forgiven. Our own feelings, our own experiences can leave us at the worst moments, and so we must have an anchor, something to cling to, something that truly and faithfully tells us where we stand with God. That was why the apostles were sent- to confess to you that you have been reconciled with God, that Christ’s resurrection victory is yours, that your sins are forgiven for the sake of Christ. Doubts will still come, but we set against them the sure and certain Word of God. May our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ keep us strong in the true faith through all doubts that assail us, bringing us to that ultimate peace forever in His kingdom, Amen. Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

Palm Sunday (Zechariah 9:9-12)

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this Palm Sunday is from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the ninth chapter of the prophet Zechariah. Dear friends in Christ, the people had heard that Jesus was coming. Of all the miracles that this man had performed, none had been more amazing than the raising of Lazarus. A man who had been dead for days now stood among them alive! And He was alive because of Jesus! “The crowd that had been with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet Him was that they heard He had done this sign.” Their response was to greet Jesus with as much fanfare as they could muster. “So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, crying out, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” At this moment, none noticed that Jesus came not on a chariot at the head of soldiers, but instead on a donkey followed by the twelve out of work Galileans. All they saw was the glory, the triumph, of Palm Sunday.

The entry of Jesus of Nazareth into Jerusalem was a far cry from another entry that occurred centuries earlier. Joseph the son of Israel entered Egypt as a slave, as one beaten and abandoned by his brothers to die, then sold to the highest bidder. He carried that memory of betrayal and deception into Egypt. He had come to visit his brothers, and what was their greeting? “They took him and cast him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.” But that was not the only pit that Joseph would find himself in. He served his Egyptian masters faithfully, only to be falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. And what did Potiphar do? “Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison.” The Hebrew word here for ‘prison’ is the same term used for ‘pit.’ Joseph entered Egypt as a slave, tossed from one pit of bondage to another.

The prophet Zechariah in our Old Testament lesson uses the language of Joseph’s story to describe situation of fallen humanity. We too are prisoners, prisoners in a ‘waterless pit,’ a prison from which we cannot set ourselves free. And what is that prison? It is the prison of death. If you think about it, you know that he speaks the truth. Death is inescapable, it is unavoidable, it has us in its shackles and it does not intend to let go. The penalty of being a child of Adam and Eve is death, and not just an earthly death, but eternal death. This seems unfair, this seems unjust, but so was Joseph’s imprisonment. We cannot advocate for ourselves, we cannot hatch an escape plan, we are more prisoners to death than Joseph was to the Egyptians. We cannot escape it. Why is this? What would make us prisoners to this impersonal force, this abstract concept that is too terrifyingly real, prisoners of death? In Psalm 107 we find the answer: “Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High.” Because of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, we are corrupted with sin, we are born in rebellion against God. We have no peace with God because our every thought and action is opposed to Him. But we should not simply blame our first parents- we have all done plenty to add to our bondage. Lent is a season of repentance and self-examination, and I know that when I do that the results are painfully clear. I deserve the prison of death, there is no way around it. And so what can we do? We have little recourse but to cry out to God for help, for deliverance, for salvation. Once again, Psalm 107 teaches us this: “Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart.” There is the promise throughout the Old Testament that God will act to deliver those who are in prison- you, me, and all humanity. And if Zechariah has identified our condition as prisoners in the pit of death, he also has pinpointed God’s deliverance.

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, you king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” There is a tension on Palm Sunday. Jesus enters in triumph, but as Zechariah teaches us, He also enters in humility. There was no army accompanying Him, no heavenly choir, no majestic war steed. Instead He rode a donkey and the voices of children and those beaten down by sin that greeted Him. Jesus entered Jerusalem more like Joseph entered Egypt than a king coming into his glory. But this is nothing out of the ordinary for Jesus. That same tension has been following Him throughout His life. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, true God Himself, the Second person of the Trinity, became man and was born in the lowliest of circumstances. From the moment of His birth He humbled Himself, even as the angels sang. Saint Paul teaches us in our Epistle lesson: “[Jesus] made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” Jesus made Himself nothing! Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah would come in humility, and in Christ his words are fulfilled. The seeming triumph of Palm Sunday is only a precursor to that great act of humiliation yet to come. We hear again in our Epistle lesson: “And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

For Jesus Christ had come to answer our cries for deliverance, He came to rescue us from the pit of death, to rescue us from the inescapable penalty of temporal and eternal death. And He would do this by His blood, as Zechariah teaches: “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” We who could not set ourselves free were released from our bondage by the blood of Jesus. He humbled Himself to the point of death on the cross, and He did this to deliver us! That is what we look toward on this most holy of weeks- we are looking toward the moment of the cross, for there Jesus, the one who entered Jerusalem in seeming triumph, would hear those cheers turn to jeers and the palms turn into scourges. There at the cross He would suffer for us and in our place, placing Himself in the pit of eternal death for us. He allowed Himself to be bound so that He might set us free. The Jewish authorities, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers all had a part to play, but the only reason they could even touch Jesus was that He had humbled Himself to death for you and me. His love for us is so great that He was willing to lay all that was rightfully His aside and instead take on the form of a servant. “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” And we truly are set free by the blood of His New Covenant with us, as we hear in the gradual for Holy Week: “Therefore He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised inheritance.”

Through His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death, Jesus has not only released us from our prison of death, He has established peace between God and man. God speaks through Zechariah: “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and He shall speak peace to the nations.” The rift between God and man is now bridged by Christ’s suffering and death- He can proclaim ‘peace’ to us all, because that is the result of His work. His message is peace, peace to all people, because as Zechariah tells us “His rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” Jesus Christ, the humble yet triumphant king, now proclaims His universal rule, entering into human hearts through the Word and Holy Baptism to set people free, just as He came to you when you were in bondage and rescued you. His salvation is for everyone, just as it is for you and me.

We are then set free to become prisoners of another sort. Jesus calls out to us through Zechariah, “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” We were prisoners to death, but through Christ we are set free to become prisoners of hope. We now are in bondage to the hope of eternal life that fills us. We have been taken captive by the promise, we are in chains to the forgiveness of sins. What a wonderful message! We belong to God, we are attached to His promise even more strongly than we were attached to death! We are set free to live in the ‘stronghold’- the stronghold that is Jesus Himself, as He is our rock, our redeemer, our protection in every step that we take in this dark world. We seek our refuge in Him, for He has come among us. “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He!” His Word, the Baptism in which He claimed us as His own, and His physical, tangible coming to us in the Lord’s Supper- those form the stronghold to which we cling. They set us free to look toward ultimate peace, the peace between God and man that He won for us, and the peace which we will ultimately experience in eternal life.

As I said earlier, there is a tension in this day. We see the triumphal entry of Christ, with the crowds crying ‘Hosanna’ and we are tempted to see only glory. There is glory to come, but first must come suffering, first must come humility even to the point of death. Only then, only by defeating our enemies and paying our price on the cross, can the glory come. On this day we look toward the week ahead, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but we also steal a glance toward Easter. For it is on that day that the tension breaks, and the glory shines forth, as Christ rises triumphant over death, our prison warden, the one who held us captive. We steal a glance toward Easter while saying with the words of the Introit: “Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory!” Amen.

Fifth Sunday in Lent (Series B: Mark 10:35-45)

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this fifth and final Sunday in Lent is from the Gospel lesson read just a few moments ago from the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Mark. Dear friends in Christ, the disciples had bad timing. This was not something extra-ordinary, but simply a consequence of the sinful nature that they share with us. Saying inappropriate things at the worst moments is one of the more embarrassing aspects of our fallen nature, and often it leads us into big trouble. Earlier in Mark chapter ten, the rich man goes away sad, and Jesus says “Many who are first will be last, and the last first.” He then goes on to tell His disciples exactly how this will play out in His own life. “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death… And after three days He will rise.” Could Jesus have put it any more clearly? His kingdom is not of this world, but instead will be founded on His shed blood, as He who is first makes Himself last. Like the rich man, the disciples should not cling to glory but should follow the example of their Lord- “many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

But the disciples still don’t get it. And not only do they not understand, but James and John choose this very moment to make a self-serving request. “And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to Him and said to Him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’” Wow! There is something to be said for being bold in prayer, and I would encourage each and every one of you to cry out to your Lord and Savior in the confidence that He will answer. But this request of James and John is self-serving, it is self-seeking, none of what Jesus has just taught is getting through to them. James and John do not see Jesus as the suffering servant, they see Him as an avenue to get what they want. And what they want is glory. “And they said to Him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’” Those who believe in Jesus are so often tempted to see Him simply as a distributer of what we want, whether it be money, possessions, respect, or glory. Too often our prayers have more to focus on our wants rather than our needs and the needs of those around us. The kind of request that James and John made has no place among the disciples of Christ, both then and now.

“And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John.” The other disciples make quite a show at being upset at the two brothers, but their motives are far from pure. They are simply upset because James and John beat them to the punch, their images of glory are the same. They can outwardly demonstrate their indignation, but in reality it is born of jealousy, and clothes itself in indignation to hide the fact that they would have done the same. The disciples all want to know who the greatest is, each and every one of them has missed the point of all that Jesus just taught. And so Jesus must teach them again.

“And Jesus called them to Him and said to them, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.’” How often do we play power games in the Church? How often do we have jealousy for the blessings of another? How often do our prayers focus on ‘what’s in it for me’? We are so much like the disciples, tempted to jockey for position, to use Jesus as our ‘wish machine,’ and then show some self-righteous indignation when others do the same. My friends, it should not be this way! That is the way of the world, the way that sinful humanity operates. Not so in the Church! In the Church we are called to be servants above all, servants of every person everywhere. We are to serve them with the love of Christ- our love and service is based off of Him. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” Jesus was the only one who truly deserved to be served by all humanity, and yet He did not demand such service, but instead Himself took the form of a servant. Jesus demonstrated that to us throughout His life, but the greatest object lesson of that service was yet to come: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

It was only at the moment of the cross that the disciples would truly see what Jesus was talking about. It was there that His true and ultimate servanthood would be revealed. For at the cross the firstborn of all creation, the One begotten of the Father from all eternity, would allow Himself to be bruised and beaten, mocked and humiliated. There the sinless Son of God, who had no wrong of His own to answer for, would make Himself last, there and only there would the truth of His words be made visible reality: “But many who are first will be last.” There He placed all others, indeed all of fallen humanity, you and me before Himself, counting your deliverance as more important than His very life. There Jesus reversed the request of the sons of Zebedee. James and John wanted glory, they wanted to place themselves first, but Jesus told them what the life of His followers truly entailed. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” The disciples clearly showed that they did not know what they were asking when they replied, “We are able.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, but to sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

James and John would drink the cup because their lives were conformed to the pattern of Christ. He would be the one to drink the cup, and He would drink it for James and John, you and me, for all people. For this cup was the cup of God’s wrath, a cup that had been filled to the brim with the punishment that all our sins deserved. The psalmist writes: “For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.” This was the cup that we deserved, we deserved to face the wrath of God for our sins, but Jesus came to us as a servant and willingly drained it to the dregs. The only human who did not deserve to drink the cup was the one who drank it in our place- He drank it so that we would not have to. On Calvary’s cross He drank it, as the sun hid itself and God turned His back on His Son. There Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled: “Thus says your Lord, the LORD, your God who pleads the cause of his people: ‘Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more.’”
But this drinking of the cup, Christ’s suffering and death on Calvary’s cross, was not simply an object lesson, it was the very means by which Christ would deliver us from our sin. The only way that Christ’s death could be an example of service is if His death meant something, if it actually atoned for our sin. Christ did not simply die on the cross as if to say, “Go and do likewise,” He died to deliver us from our sins, from our sinful jealousy, our jockeying for position, our prideful requests from Jesus, each and every one of those sins were paid for. And they were paid for because Christ gave His life as a ransom for our sin. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Every word at the end of this verse is significant. Christ serves us by dying for us, by dying in our place, on our behalf. We were trapped in bondage to sin, living as slaves, but Jesus came to us, He became a slave like us, He became a slave in our place. But He did not only become a slave, He also paid the ransom price to deliver us from our bondage. And what was that price? His very life. He gave up His life on Calvary’s cross in our place, drinking the bitter cup of God’s wrath for you, for me, for all people. He paid the ransom, the price we owed to God, with His very blood. He is the servant, He is the one that pays the price, and He Himself is that price. Jesus plays all the roles, for we by ourselves could do nothing toward our own salvation. And He rose again on Easter morning triumphant over death- just as He has life, so we too will follow His pattern, because of the ransom that He paid, the cup that He drank, we too will be raised to live with Him forever.

Jesus asked James and John, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” The death of Christ was a bloody baptism, it involved His own suffering and death to pay for our sins, His suffering and death in our place. But for the disciples, Christ’s bloody baptism pointed forward to another imitation of Christ. All those who follow Christ have the possibility of laying down their lives for Jesus, all of us may imitate His death by becoming martyrs. We will not drink the cup of God’s wrath, for thanks be to God that Christ drank it for us, but we will drink the cup of suffering, of persecution for the sake of our Lord. Our lives will be conformed to His, and He will be beside us in all that we face. That is part of the baptismal life, part of being baptized into Christ. Paul teaches us this in Romans chapter six, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Our baptism is into His ‘bloody’ baptism on the cross. The old sinful person in us is drowned and put to death in those waters, and a new person, one ransomed by the blood of Christ, one claimed by God, is brought forth to live before Him. Just as our Lord describes His death as a baptism, so our baptism is into Christ’s death. May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the One who stood in our place, the One who drank the cup of wrath for us, the One who baptized us into His death, preserve us in that faith until eternal glory, Amen.

Fourth Sunday in Lent (Series B: John 3:14-21)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this fourth Sunday in Lent is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the third chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ, the foundation of all Christian theology is found in the first five books of the Bible, with the mighty acts of God in the Exodus taking center stage. In our Old Testament lesson for today, we are in the midst of the desert wanderings, and once again the people complain. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” God isn’t too happy with this, so He sends forth poisonous snakes to bite the people and many die. The survivors are quite repentant, and they beg for forgiveness and deliverance. God provides this deliverance, but He does so in a strange way. He does not simply snap His fingers or say a couple words, but He has Moses construct something. “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” The punishment for their sin is embodied and placed high on a pole, for people to look to and live.

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus teaches us that this account is much more than simply interesting reading. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Jesus has come to fulfill the words of Moses and others, His marching orders come from the Old Testament. And so this incident, this act of compassion by God thousands of years earlier, will shape the course of Jesus’ life. Just as the bronze serpent embodied sin for the people of Israel, so Jesus would become the embodiment of sin for all people. He would become sin itself, sin incarnate, the Sinner. And just as the serpent was lifted high on the pole for all to see, so Christ would be lifted high upon a cross. That is what Lent is all about. We are driving toward Good Friday, to that night when Jesus was betrayed and handed over to the authorities to be killed. They could’ve stoned Jesus, they could’ve beheaded Him, Judas could’ve poisoned his wine. But no, Jesus had to die upon the cross, He had to die lifted high before all people, as the Scripture foretold.

Why did He do this? Sure, He did it in accordance with the Scriptures, but that is more of a ‘how’ than a ‘why.’ What would motivate Jesus to become the embodiment of sin for us? Why would He allow Himself to be lifted up in the first place? In our text, we can imagine Nicodemus thinking the same thing, and so Jesus gives us an answer: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus did this in fulfillment of His Father’s love- His Father’s love for you, me, and all creation, every person that He ever created, every person ensnared in the bondage of sin. We fell into sin, but God had such a love for us that He gave His very best to save us- His one and only Son, Jesus Christ. Only by living the perfect life in our place, only by taking all of our sins upon His back and facing the Father’s wrath could Jesus save us. And He did so on Calvary’s cross, when He was lifted high so that people could mock Him and spit at Him. He endured hell itself for you, for me, for all people. God loved the world by redeeming it through the blood of His Son. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

That should be the end of the story, but unfortunately it is not. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but yet so many in the world stand condemned. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” The tragedy is that Christ has died for all, but most people reject Him and the salvation He brings. Jesus does not condemn them, but they condemn themselves by rejecting His redemption.

Why would anyone do this? Jesus, once again anticipating our question, gives Nicodemus the answer: “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” The life of sin is so enticing, the darkness so inviting, that so many reject the Light, they shield their eyes and run away from its life-giving beams. They would rather dwell in darkness and do their sins in secret, away from the light of Christ, and for that they stand condemned. And we were little different before Christ shone His light in our lives. Paul describes our former lives in this way in our Epistle lesson: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Unfortunately, we still fall into this former life. Examine yourself this Lenten season. What sin do you have in the darkness, in secret? What are you hiding from your friends or family, and think you can hide from God? What particular sins draw you away from the light of Christ and into the darkness? Each and every day the darkness tempts us, each and every day we are drawn back into what we were before. Our sins, especially our secret sins, hate the light, they struggle mightily to stay hidden. “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”

But the darkness is not our home, despite how much our sinful nature wants to dwell there. For Jesus Christ has made us alive, He has delivered us through His cross and the victorious empty tomb. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Jesus was lifted up on Calvary’s cross, bearing the weight of all our sins, and there He paid the price for them. But Jesus did not only accomplish salvation, He delivered it to us, as Saint Paul teaches: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved.” Just as Christ was made alive on the third day and rose in triumph over the grave, so God makes us alive together with Christ. This happens in the blessed washing of the water with the word- we are buried with Christ in baptism and then raised with Him, made alive to live in the light. We follow His pattern- we die and are then made alive in Him, and we are brought into that great promise that Jesus speaks of in our text: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” We then conform to the pattern of Christ in another way. Jesus was lifted up high on the cross to fulfill the bronze serpent, but His lifting up also looked forward to His exaltation to the right hand of the Father, as we said in the Gradual today: “O come, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Because Jesus was exalted by the Father through His death and resurrection, so we too will be exalted with Him, as Paul teaches: “[God has] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

We are then heirs of the promise, those redeemed by Christ to dwell with Him forever. But we still fall into sin, we still are enticed into the darkness. In our Old Testament lesson for today, the people of Israel, the heirs of God’s promises, fell into sin once again, but God provided deliverance: “So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” By looking to the bronze serpent hanging high upon the pole, the Israelites received life in repentance and faith. We too have a place to turn when we fall into darkness, when we are enticed into secret sin. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Look to the cross and live! There your Savior hangs, having faced the wrath of God for your sins, having paid the penalty you owed. Look to the cross for healing, look to the cross for forgiveness, look to the cross for salvation! Look to the cross whenever your sins crowd around you, whenever Satan is enticing you back into the darkness- look to the cross, for there the Light of the world redeemed you! Bring your secret sins out of the darkness and confess them to your Savior. Bring them out of the darkness and into His light, for He is a fountain of forgiveness and healing! Our life in the Light of Christ is a life lived in daily repentance and forgiveness, with our eyes focused on His cross.

Jesus concludes our text by teaching us “whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” Our works do not grant us salvation, as Saint Paul teaches: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast”- but our lives do point others to the Light, they allow the light of Christ to shine out from us to those around us. As those in Christ, we dwell in the light, we live in His truth, and we do what is set before us, as Paul tells us in the next verse: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We do what is set before us as those dwelling in the light and testifying to it, repenting and asking for forgiveness when we fail and live in darkness, fixing our eyes upon the cross. May the Lord always keep His cross before our eyes this Lenten season and every day, and may He exalt us with Himself into heavenly glory forever, Amen.

Third Sunday in Lent (Series B: John 2:13-22)

“Jesus answered, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this third Sunday in Lent is from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. Dear friends in Christ, the Third Commandment goes much farther than not working on Sunday. In our Old Testament lesson for today, Yahweh delivers this commandment to Moses: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work... For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” God established the Sabbath rest for His people, it is meant to be a time set aside to receive His gifts, as Luther teaches us in the explanation to this commandment in the Small Catechism: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” There is both a positive and negative side here. We are not to despise His Word, but instead we are to hear and learn it gladly. That is what the Sabbath is all about. That is what church on Sunday morning is all about. That is what this church building is all about. Here we set aside time to receive His great gifts, gifts He is yearning to give us.

But what happens when other things get in the way of God giving His gifts? What happens when the things of this world intrude into the church service and church building? Jesus saw the results with His own eyes, He saw what God’s house, the house of worship, the location of God’s presence in grace upon this earth, had become. “The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there.” The temple mount was simply a structure, a great mass of stone pillars and courts surrounding the temple building itself, but Jesus knew that it was much more than that. It was the place where God had promised to receive the sacrifices of His people for their sins. It was the very location where His grace would go forth, where the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed. It had been set aside for the giving of God’s gifts, and now God’s Son saw what it had become- and He was not pleased. “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.’”

But why should Jesus get so angry? The people were hardly committing a vicious sin- they were simply watching their bottom line, trying to connect with the convenience that travelers sought. They were simply trying to ‘market’ the temple a bit, make it more attractive to Jerusalem’s visitors. Why should Jesus have a problem with that? But Jesus saw right through them: for them, money had become more important than the primary purpose for the temple- the giving of God’s gifts. The financial bottom line was their focus, and it obscured everything else. We also so often worry about the bottom line, whether our own or that of the church. In increasingly desperate economic times, we are searching for anything to keep us and our congregation afloat. Worry for our own checkbook can cause us to hold back from the Church, and worry for the Church’s checkbook can drive us to desperation. We so quickly forget that our first turn is always to prayer, bringing our requests and petitions before our Lord. To be sure, the church needs money to pay the bills, but when we are sucked into a focus on our money, when we see new visitors as only an additional source of funds, when we spend our time worried about our checkbook or that of the church, our eyes are turned away from the one thing needful, the focus of our lives and the focus of the Church- Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Jesus takes all of the tables we construct in our churches, all of the tables that cause us worries in our lives, and turns them over. He cleans them out just as surely as He did the tables in the temple courts. “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Jesus had a passionate, intense love of His Father’s house, a love that compelled Him to take on the marketplace of the temple and clean it out. The zeal of Jesus has an intensity that contrasts sharply with the image of a meek and mild Jesus that we often see in our mind’s eye. “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.” It is the same zeal that God had for His people throughout the Old Testament, the zeal that preserved the messianic line from Eve onward. But why would Jesus have this same zeal for the temple? What was so special about this edifice of stone and mortar that made it worth cleansing?

Many then and even today think that Jesus came to destroy the religion of Israel, with its Levitical laws and barbaric sacrifices. But Jesus shows us here that He has come for a much different reason. “So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body.” How can the one who has in one breath shown respect for God’s temple with the next speak of destroying it? The answer comes from Matthew chapter five: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” He has such zeal for the temple because it points to Him, He has such zeal because He has come as the fulfillment of the temple. “But He was speaking about the temple of His body.” The human frame of Jesus is God Himself in the flesh, God come to this earth to deliver His people. Jesus will fulfill the Temple as the location of God amongst His people, His body is the new temple, the temple that is established for all eternity. But because His body is a temple, it will also be a place of sacrifice. The flesh of Jesus will fulfill each and every sacrifice offered by the people of Israel in the temple, the blood that runs down from the sheep, cattle, and pigeons will be fulfilled by His blood.

For the zeal of Jesus is not only for His Father’s house, it is for His Father’s will. And the Father’s will is centered squarely on the salvation of all people from the bondage of sin. “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Jesus’ love for His Father, His love for the Father’s will, His love for His Father’s house, will end up consuming Him. The reason that sheep, cattle, and pigeons gave their lives in the temple was that sin requires blood. Therefore Jesus, as the fulfillment of the temple, as the temple incarnate, needed to shed His blood for our sin. But His shed blood would be unlike that of sacrificial animals, which could never completely wipe away the sins of the people. His sacrifice, His shed blood, would be for each and every person who has ever lived, or will ever live, for each and every sin ever committed, or that ever will be committed. His zeal for His Father would lead Jesus to offer up His life on the cross for the sins of all, there His zeal for you and me, that intense and passionate love, would cause Him to suffer abandonment by the Father for our sake. His zeal consumed Him, and it consumed Him for us.

“So the Jews said to Him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’” Jesus, as the true fulfillment of the temple, invited the religious leaders to destroy Him, with the promise that He would raise Himself back up. His authority would be tested by whether or not He kept that promise. The Jews took Him up on that offer, they destroyed Him on the cross, there His zeal consumed Him. This Lenten season we look to that moment where Jesus hung dead on the cross, having faced God’s wrath for you and me, and we try to place ourselves there on that day. Would Jesus keep His promise? Had the victory truly been won? I don’t know about you, but I love Lent so much because it is a crescendo building until Good Friday, then a three day pause before the trumpets finally sound. Jesus kept His promise. He rose from the dead on Easter morning, confirming not only His authority over the temple, but over death and hell itself. Both are defeated, cast down, they have no more power over you. All becomes clear at the resurrection- there Christ’s victory is sealed. Without Good Friday, Easter is meaningless, and without Easter, Good Friday is a day of defeat. But thanks be to God that Christ did arise, saving us from sin and death, confirming the victory won when the zeal of our Lord for us consumed Him on the cross! The resurrection is the foundation of our faith, it forms the basis of all that we believe: “When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the Word that Jesus had spoken.”

The Church is built on the same foundation as our faith- Christ’s death and resurrection. Therefore, it is not in the business of selling, it is in the business of giving away- it is a location for the free distribution of the salvation that Jesus won through the cross and empty tomb. In Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Word, Christ’s gifts are offered freely to all people. Our focus is not on the bottom line- ours or that of the church- but instead upon Christ and His gifts. Sure, the Church needs money to operate, but this should never obscure the true reason for its existence- to give away Christ and His gifts. This whole enterprise is the height of foolishness to our world, as Saint Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” How can all people be delivered by the death of one? How can the Church simply give away salvation? The answer is that Christ is not an accountant- He is a Savior, the Savior of you, me, and all people. May the death and resurrection of Christ bring us to our Father’s house in the new heavens and the new earth, where we will dwell forever in His glory, Amen.

Second Sunday in Lent (Series B: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16)

“I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon this second Sunday in Lent comes from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the seventeenth chapter of Genesis. Dear friends in Christ, Abram and Sarai were sinful. Now, I’m sure this is not necessarily a surprise to you, though it is somewhat unusual. We would expect that the ‘heroes of the faith’ would be perfect examples of who we should be, shining stars for us to look to. But so often, we learn from them what not to do, how not to act. The Bible does not gloss over the sins of God’s followers, but in many places emphasizes them. In chapter fifteen, Abraham is given an amazing promise- his descendents will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, as plentiful as the sand on the seashore. And this will begin with the promise of a child to barren Sarai. What an amazing promise! Only a little patience is needed, as God fulfills His promises in His own time. But patience is in short supply in Abram’s tent. God is taking too long to fulfill His promise, and so Sarai offers her servant Hagar to conceive an heir. Hagar quickly becomes pregnant, and the drama begins. She looks in contempt upon Sarai, and so Sarai drives her out into the wilderness. All the while Abram allows this to happen, he allows his impatience to create strife and conflict in his tent.
It is into this domestic mess that God enters in. “When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.’” In the context of Abram’s impatience and sin, God is telling him to shape up! Act like one who has the very promises of God! Enoch and Noah walked with God, they provided the example for Abram and us to follow. Walking with God involves living constantly in His presence, it includes an intimacy and communion with God that encompasses one’s entire life. Abram is encouraged to live in the promises of God! His living before God, his walking in the presence of God does not earn these promises, but it is the life he is called to as one who has these promises.
Is it any different for us? We have been given the very promises of God, promises that were only a mist and a shadow for Abram, promises founded on the very blood of Jesus Christ, and so we are called to live a life in fellowship with God. We are to be immersed in the presence of Christ, living in fellowship and communion with Him. How often do we miss the opportunities to walk in the presence of Jesus? Our Lord has given us so many opportunities to live in His presence, to walk before Him, and so often we pass them by. He has given us the great gifts of prayer and His Word, and how often do we go through a day without immersing ourselves in either? He has given us the Divine Service, where His Word is proclaimed, His forgiveness declared, and His very Body and Blood is given for the forgiveness of our sins. But how often do we deprive ourselves of these gifts, and find something else to do on a Sunday morning? Just like Abram, we are called on here to walk before God, to walk before our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and just like Abram we so often live like we do not have the promises of God.
“I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” Even if Abram could claim that he was walking before God, even if we hear what was just said and are glad that Vicar is talking about someone else, this second command from our Lord sounds forth. In the face of the command to “be blameless,” even Enoch and Noah are reduced to tears of repentance. God is here commanding Abram, He is commanding you and me, He is commanding all people, to be perfect. The Jews who heard this command, in both the Old and New Testaments, would immediately think of the sacrificial animals, which God wanted to be blameless, without defect. These animals that bore the sins of the people were to be blameless, because the people themselves were not. And the situation has hardly changed. If Abram, you, or me had to rely on our ability to be blameless in order to receive the promises of God, we would be doomed to die in our sin.
But God has a strange, almost illogical habit of making unilateral covenants. His promises do not depend on man’s behavior, they depend on His grace. Our Lord said to Abram in our text for today, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.” Despite all that had transpired since God first gave that promise, He declares His promise to Abram again! He received the great promise of many offspring, which would form nations and bear kings. “I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.” His offspring would also bear the promise. “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” And this would begin with the gift of a son: “I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.” To be sure, God expected Abram to live like one who had the promise, but Abram’s life did not establish this covenant, it was God’s doing, it was His act, it was His promise. The grace of God does not wait for our perfection, but instead His grace is acting to destroy the source of our imperfection and deliver us from all that held us captive.
For the covenant with Abram was not to reward good behavior, it was intended for the salvation of all people, for the forgiveness of Abram’s sin and the sin of all. God did not give His covenant in the hope that we might improve our lives, but instead He gave it to do something about our sin, to wipe it away and break its shackles forever. That is why Abram received the promise, because His descendents would be the offspring of salvation, the messianic line. The promised offspring that would come from Abram’s line would be the One to deliver us from our sin, the covenant given to Abram had one purpose- our salvation through Jesus Christ. For Jesus was the promised seed, who came into the world when the covenant given to Abram was ready for fulfillment- and He did what Abram and we could not. He was the one who truly walked with God because He was God Himself, in intimate communion with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Moreover, He was the blameless one, the one who had no sin of His own. He fulfilled what God commanded Abram in our text, and He did this for us.
The covenant with Abram brought Jesus into the world, and He came to establish yet another covenant. Israel had served its purpose, Abram’s descendant had come to our fallen world to redeem it, and now a new covenant, an everlasting covenant was needed. And once again, God is in the business of making unilateral covenants. He does not wait for us to shape up before He establishes a new covenant, but instead as Saint Paul tells us in our Epistle lesson: “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…. God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ was blameless, just like the sacrificial animals in the temple, just as God demanded of us in our Old Testament lesson. And exactly like those sacrificial animals, He shed His blood and gave up His life for our sins. His blood established a new covenant with us, one that is everlasting. Jesus teaches this in the words of institution in Matthew’s Gospel: “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Forgiveness and eternal life are the gifts of this covenant, they are the promises offered by our Lord through His death and resurrection. For Christ died to fulfill one covenant and establish another- He came to deal with our sin once and for all by dying in our place, the blameless and perfect in place of the imperfect and sinful. He died, and through His death you have life!
The new covenant established in the shed blood and victorious resurrection of Jesus follows in many ways the pattern of the covenant with Abram. In between the two parts of our Old Testament lesson, God instituted a visible sign to accompany the covenant, the act of circumcision. “You shall be circumcised… and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.” This was a daily reminder of the great promise God made to them. We too have signs of the covenant, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the great gifts of Christ to us. But, oh, they are so much more than simply signs! They convey the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection to us, they enact the promises of Christ’s new covenant in us- through them we become God’s children, members of His family, we become part of the multitude of children promised to Abram. In them our sins are forgiven, and we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ. And in them we also receive a new name. “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations… As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.” We bear the name of Christ because of our Baptism into His death and resurrection. We are blameless for His sake, and we will stand blameless around the throne in the new heavens and the new earth forever. Each and every day that we live out our Baptism by dying to sin and rising to Christ, and each and every time we receive the Lord’s Supper, we receive the benefits of what Christ has done for us.
And just like Abraham, we walk with God each and every day. We immerse ourselves in His word and prayer, we come to this place to receive His bountiful gifts. We are blameless in His eyes for the sake of Christ- what else can we do but walk in intimate fellowship and communion with Him? But this path, this walk with our Lord, is not an easy one. Jesus teaches us this in the Gospel lesson. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Bearing crosses is not a simple or easy task, but we do so with the knowledge that He bore it first for us and the promise that He bears it with us in our lives. May our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the blameless one, continue to cover you with His shed blood so that you are blameless before the Father for all eternity, Amen.