Sermon Sunday May 17 2009

Sixth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
I am here this morning to tell you nothing less than that you have been invaded. That’s right, as children of God, you have been invaded. You see, not only is God not a respecter of persons, but He is not a respecter of personal boundaries or personal space, and certainly not a respecter of personal schedules and desires.
And so maybe you’re wondering when all this happened. Maybe you’re wondering how you could have missed such a momentous event as having been invaded. Were you sleeping?? Did it happen in your sleep? Well you might have been. You see what I am referring to of course is your baptism.
Your baptism, as grandiose and pious and joyous, and as focused on you as it might have seemed to be, as you were no doubt all dudded up in your little white baptism outfit; your baptism was nothing less than you having been invaded by Christ Jesus. For in our second lesson for this morning, Christ Jesus is described as coming by water and blood and that in the midst of this, the Spirit is the One that testifies.
The Spirit is the One who testifies in the Word that comes to you in baptism in conjunction with the Water. When you were invaded upon in baptism, you were invaded upon by the Spirit in the Word being proclaimed over you, and that Spirit is truth. And that Spirit came with a Word from the One who Sent Him-the same One who is no respecter of boundaries of time, space, and personal comfort. He doesn’t even wait for you to invite Him or ask Him into your heart or accept Him as your personal Savior. He comes invading you in the waters of baptism.
And the Word of your invader Christ Jesus that was proclaimed over you that you know you can believe because it was brought not simply by a Spirit of truth, but by the Spirit who is defined as truth in itself; this Word is simply that you belong to this invader-Christ Jesus. This Word is that as the Father loves you, so Christ Jesus has loved you. This Word that was proclaimed over you in your baptism means that the cleansing you received in baptism was not merely a sign or not merely an external cleansing, but a purification from the inward pollution that comes from your having been born into sin, freeing you from an evil conscience, bringing you forgiveness of sin and a good conscience.
And this forgiveness of sin that you receive in the invasion that took place at your baptism is brought forth not through anything that you brought to baptism but through the innocent suffering and death of Christ Jesus who took upon Himself all of your sin. In fact this One who had no sin, Christ Jesus, literally became sin on the cross for you. He had to invade you so that He could take upon Himself all of your sin. And the blood that He shed on the cross He shed for you and it is that blood that frees you from sin, death, and the devil.
This is why John writes in our second lesson for this morning that Christ Jesus has come by water and blood-not any blood mind you, but the holy and precious blood of Christ Jesus. You see the Word of promise that was proclaimed over you at your baptism is the very means by which Christ reigns in the world. This Word imparts to you the effective power of the blood of Christ shed on the cross for you. It literally brings you the forgiveness of your sin. In your baptism you experienced nothing short of being cleansed by the blood of Christ.
But Christ Jesus didn’t stop there because, as we read in 1st Peter 3:21, baptism saves you not as a removal of dirt from your body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Christ Jesus. What this means is that Christ Jesus did not stop at cleansing you in baptism, but now, knowing that you have been cleansed He is at the right hand of His Father appealing to Him on your behalf.
This passage is not, as some are prone to suggest, referring to a human appeal to God, which is dependent upon our sincerity- but rather Christ Jesus declaring to His Father that He has done what He was sent to do in your baptism; that He has cleansed you of your sin and that you have been joined with Christ in a death like His, having put to death the sinful old creature in you, so that you would certainly be joined with Christ in a resurrection like His-having been brought forth as a new creation in Christ-born of God.
So maybe you’re thinking, “Wait a minute. I didn’t grow up Lutheran or in one of these other traditions where baptism plays such a big part. I’ve never even been baptized. Have I somehow been spared from this invasion?” Oh no, for as I said earlier, Christ reigns on earth through the preaching of His Word. The water in baptism is dependent upon this Word, but the Word in baptism is not dependent upon the water.
What this means is that this invasion continues right now through the words of my mouth. Every time the Holy Spirit brings forth the Gospel through the words of a broken and sinful preacher in your midst for you to hear, you are subject to this same invasion. For this is what we see in the first lesson for today from Acts. Peter spoke and the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the Word. Peter realized that the Holy Spirit had come upon them when he saw them speaking in tongues.
Now the point is not that they spoke in tongues. And of course neither is that insignificant. But what the fact that these gentiles had begun speaking in tongues showed to Peter is that the Word that he had proclaimed to these gentiles had created faith in them. And so in light of this all he could say was “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
And so I say to you if you have never been baptized, as you are confronted with the very Word of Christ which creates faith in the minds and hearts of repentant hearers “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing you?” You are being invaded right now by Christ Jesus through the Word that creates faith. Faith is being created, nurtured and sustained in you right now.
And you see none of this is your doing, for as we read in the Gospel lesson for this morning you did not choose Christ Jesus but rather He chose you. And because He chose you, He invades you through His Word. He invades you through His sacraments. He invades you through the Body of Christ. He invades you so that He can cleanse you of all your sin and claim you as His own.
And so what are you to do in the face of this invasion that is taking place? Surrender. Wave the white flag. Let go of all of your self-deluded attempts to climb to God on your own terms. Let the Word of Christ do what it does; create faith in you, cleanse you, bring you the forgiveness of sin, making of you a new creation born of God.
For as John writes “….whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.” Your faith in this One who gave all of Himself for you conquers the world. The world is not conquered through your personal prosperity, or your piety or your good works. The world is conquered through the faith that is created in you by the invading Christ Jesus.
Now, make no mistake about it, sin, death, and the devil are not going to take this lying down. They will continue to attack the faith that attacks and destroys them. And so you will continue to struggle with sin and despair. There will be misfortune. There will be doubt. There will be uncertainty. There will be dysfunctional relationships. There will be struggles in your relationships. There will be health problems and unhealthy habits. And death, there will be death. And in the midst of all this sin, death and the devil will continue their assaults on the faith that conquers them.
And Christ Jesus knows that on your own you are defenseless to these attacks from sin, death and the devil. So for this reason He continues to invade you in Word and sacrament creating, nurturing and sustaining in you the faith that conquers sin, death and the devil. In a few minutes you will come forward and receive once again the body and blood of your Lord Jesus in the bread and the wine. You will receive the good gifts of faith and forgiveness, and once again the world, sin, death and the devil will be conquered. And you will once again be made a conqueror so that you can go forth from here and share with your neighbor the forgiveness of your sins and the faith that has been created in you through God’s Word so that the invasion will continue through you.
Amen

Sermon, Sunday May 10 2009

Fifth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The great Lutheran theologian Francis Pieper once wrote that there are only two religions in the world; religion of the Gospel and religion of the law. And between these two groups there really is no common understanding of the word ‘religion.’
We speak of religion today as if there really isn’t that big a difference between various religions, and that ultimately it doesn’t really matter what religion we ascribe to. But when you break religions down to religion of the Gospel and religion of the law and you take a good, honest, objective look at scripture, then you would see that, when it comes to our very salvation, to being reconciled to God, when it comes to the forgiveness of our sin-God’s Word tells us otherwise. God’s Word tells us that it does matter.
For you see, what religion means to those who ascribe to religion of law is completely different from what it means to those who ascribe to religion of the Gospel. Those who ascribe to religion of law do not really know the Gospel, but do have some knowledge of the law, for the law is written on all of our hearts. So for them, religion is simply the means for humanity to appease God through their own best-efforts-be it good works, worship, social-justice causes, moralism or whatever.
But religion of the Gospel is completely different from religion of the law. For those who ascribe to religion of the Gospel-religion is simply this-faith in the Gospel. It is not a vague, nebulous non-descript faith that says, “…it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you believe something.” No, religion of the Gospel is simply what it says it is-faith in the Gospel-faith in the glorious promise that through the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been reconciled to God-faith in the promise that Paul writes in Galatians-that we are not justified by works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ and that in that faith we obtain the forgiveness of sins.
And our Lord Jesus comes to us today in the Gospel lesson telling us, quite simply, what it means to be of the religion of the Gospel. For you see the religion of the Gospel has as it’s very origin-the Almighty God, Creator of the universe, and so we know the religion of the Gospel is true and bursting with new-life and God’s promises. Whereas the religion of the law originates with humans, and as such is doomed to failure and ultimately leads only to death and condemnation.
Christ Jesus comes to you in the Gospel lesson this morning telling you that He is the Vine and you are the branches-that you are cleansed by the Word spoken over you in the waters of baptism. He is the Vine who abides in you so that when you abide in Him you will bear fruit, but apart from Him you can do nothing. And so to be of the religion of the Gospel is nothing other than to abide in Christ Jesus as He abides in you so that you will bear fruit.
But the temptation of sin and the devil are still around and still try to lure you back to religion of the law. Religion of the law is what our sinful nature just naturally gravitates us toward. We actually like the religion of the law because it is inherently human-centered. We like it because it gives us the illusion that we are the ones in control. We like religion of the law because we fool ourselves into thinking that it gives us a way to live by sight rather than by faith.
But in spite of our best efforts to make the religion of the law palatable and workable for us, we inevitably end up running into the complete and utter futility of the religion of the law. For to live by this is to abide in oneself and to abide in things of this world, this broken and sinful world. And to put your hope in or abide in anything of this world only leads to despair; be it despair from financial struggles related to job lay-offs or from continued health problems related to Cancer or some other disease that you can’t seem to get a grip of, or maybe problems in your marriage or some of your other relationships or any other struggles that this world throws at you.
When you embrace religion which can be boiled down to nothing more than your efforts to appease God through your good works and receive what you perceive as your due rewards, you are going to be vastly disappointed, and you will fall into despair. And so when things don’t go quite the way you were hoping in your quest to control the law; sin, death and the devil will come in and seek to convince you that all of the struggles that this world throws at you are your fault, or that they are evidence that God has abandoned you, or that your faith must not be strong enough-otherwise you surely wouldn’t be going through these struggles. Or maybe you’ll be left thinking that perhaps God doesn’t exist.
And our Lord Jesus tells us this morning that this can have deadly results for He says that those who do not abide in Him are thrown away like a branch and withers, and that these branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned.
But that is not what you Father in Heaven wants, and so He sends His Son so that you would know He does exist and does love you and does care for you and He has not abandoned you, and He does not want you to be thrown away into the fire and so the Spirit comes to you and tells you again to abide in God’s only Son Christ Jesus. And Christ Jesus Himself has a role in this. He does not leave this up to you, for He promises in this passage that you have been cleansed already by His Word. It’s done.
Not even your faith is your work. For Christ Jesus calls you to abide in Him and He does the very thing that brings forth faith in people-laying down His life for you, and in doing this God shows His love for you, for John writes in the second lesson that it was in that way, through God sending His Son into the world to be the atoning sacrifice for your sins, that God’s love was revealed among us. And this was done so that we might live through Him. And the new life we receive in Him which gives us hope and promise beyond this broken and sinful world, we receive through faith. Ultimately faith is the fruit that He produces in us-and frees us to please God by loving and serving our neighbor.
Christ Jesus wants nothing less for you than for you to abide in Him that He may continue to abide in you, so that your place with Him in His eternal Kingdom will be preserved. And on your own this could not happen. On your own you would continue to wallow in the despair of religion of the law. On your own you are merely lost and condemned under the accusations of sin, death and the devil.
And for this reason, it was absolutely necessary that Christ Jesus come into the world and place Himself into the very hands of His enemies and betrayers so that in laying down His life for you, God’s love would be revealed as your sins were atoned for, and so that in His resurrection a new world, beyond this broken and sinful world that offers only despair, hopelessness and condemnation-that a new world would be opened up for you, a new world bursting forth with promises and hope beyond the despair of this world.
And so as you find yourself perhaps searching and clinging for hope, searching for answers, the One who abides in you so that you might abide in Him comes to you in a Word proclaimed to you through the Words of my mouth, calling you to abide in Him.
This is the case of the Ethiopian eunuch from the lesson from Acts who found himself reading the words of the prophet Isaiah not really knowing what to make of them. And so a preacher is sent to Him so that He would come to the knowledge of the truth of the Gospel-for it says that Phillip started with the scripture from Isaiah; and so we can assume that Phillip revealed to him that all of scripture testifies of Christ Jesus. And Phillip proclaimed to him the good news, and so this Ethiopian eunuch was freed from the shackles of religion of the law that leads only to death and despair, and called into the glorious freedom and eternal life that comes from religion of the Gospel.
And so it is for you today, as Christ Jesus comes to you declaring again that He is the Vine and that you are the branches, and that He is abiding in you that you will abide in Him-that He is the Vine Who sustains you and nourishes you, with His glorious promises and His good gifts of faith-comforting you, strengthening you, forgiving you when you are troubled and in despair, because it is His will that you would not be cast aside, but that you would live with Him in His eternal Kingdom.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday May 3, 2009

Fourth Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Today in this morning’s Gospel lesson our Lord Jesus brings to us an image of what it means to be a baptized child of God that largely flies in the face of the independence and individualism that our culture and our society and really our country as a whole, going back even to the country’s founding fathers, see as virtuous. Indeed our country was founded upon principles rooted largely in freedom from tyranny and personal autonomy. Much of what is cherished about our country and culture is rooted in the personal freedoms that we have. In our country, individualism and independence are largely seen as virtuous.
Even the US Army has gotten in on this. In all branches of the military one of the first things that one experiences in their respective branch of service is having their hair cut nearly completely bald and giving up their civilian clothes and being issued uniforms. And one of the main reasons they do this is so you look like everyone else. The first thing you experience is the attempted curtailing of your individualism. But within the last few years, the Army began a recruiting campaign rooted in the slogan: “An Army of one.” The US Army began a recruiting campaign rooted in individualism. Certainly you can see the irony in that.
Or what about when you are young and we are nervous about doing an oral report, or meeting someone new, or even going out on your first date-what is the advice that parents will often give? “Just be yourself.” And yet in spite of our natural human tendency to embrace individualism and independence Jesus comes to us this morning in His Word telling us that we are to understand ourselves to be like sheep.
Sheep are not independent. Sheep are not individualists. In fact it’s not uncommon to hear the term “sheep” used in a derogatory manner; such as hearing someone say something like “Don’t be such a sheep think for yourself.” But in this morning’s Gospel lesson, Jesus refers to Himself as the good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. But you see, the type of sheep that Jesus is speaking of here, is actually quite different from the type that is often looked down upon in our culture.
You see, in our culture when someone uses the word “sheep” derogitorally referring to a person, what they are usually saying is that the person just kind of follows the crowd and bases their life-choices on what other people think. And indeed Jesus does not want us to be ruled by popular opinion, or social and political correctness.
But you see, the difference is in the alternatives. The alternative that the world offers is to follow ourselves and our own sinful desires. But the alternative that Jesus offers is Himself-the voice of the Good Shepherd who is Christ Jesus our Savior. When Jesus speaks of sheep, He is not speaking of their inability to think for themselves or their tendency to follow the crowd, He is speaking of their complete and utter dependency on their shepherd.
He is speaking of sheep heeding the voice of their shepherd and nobody else. He is speaking of sheep realizing that without the shepherd they are helpless and so they rely purely on the voice of their shepherd to lead them and guide them and to give them help when they are in trouble. He is speaking of sheep realizing that they are incapable of healing themselves and guarding themselves from the danger of the wolf, and are completely dependent upon others and upon the shepherd-and so they know to always keep close to the shepherd and to look to Him and to Him alone for help.
And so it is with us. For without the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for us we are helpless. We are weak, poor and helpless sinners who can do nothing to free ourselves from the sin that we are in bondage to. We are in bondage to sin, and the most powerful way that this bondage reveals itself to us, is not in the external acts of sin that we commit, although that is part of it, but the most crippling effect of the bondage to sin that we all experience, that we are all born into is in our inability to recognize the bondage that we are in bondage.
Oh there might be moments when we’re feeling down on ourselves and it might feel like we’re acknowledging that we are but poor, miserable sinners; but then we’ll see someone who, for whatever reason, seems to be much worse than we are-maybe they struggle with more addictions than you, they struggle with their weight more than you, or maybe they just seem to have a general disdain and distaste for everyone and everything around them. And we see people like that and we think “Well at least I am not as bad as they are.” And so the self-delusion begins anew.
And without the Good Shepherd this is the vicious cycle that we would always be trapped in. Without the Good Shepherd we would be left at the mercy of the wolves of this world of sin and doubt and despair. Without the voice of the Good Shepherd we would be left with the voice of our sinful self leading us into paths of despair that would ultimately lead only to the grave.
But Christ Jesus is the Good Shepherd in Whom alone we can trust. Christ Jesus is the Good Shepherd Who saves us from the wolves of sin, death and the devil by placing Himself into the hands of those very wolves, and lays down His life for us-taking upon Himself all of our sin, and going deep into the valley of death for us, and in exchange giving us righteousness and new-life.
And so, in spite of the world’s objections to the notion of being a sheep, we are called to be sheep. But it is not sheep who merely follow the pattern of the culture around us, tossed about by our culture’s wavering and groundless definition of righteousness and justice and faithfulness. No, the Good Shepherd who gave everything of Himself for us on the cross so that in Him we could receive the forgiveness of our sins and was raised for our salvation, now sits at the right hand of His Father who loves Him and us-and He extends His voice to us and calls us into true righteousness and true faithfulness and true justice.
And so as His sheep we heed the call He extends to us to love one another in truth and action. And it is the truth that produces and brings forth the action. The action is the fruit of our clinging to and believing in the truth. For the Good Shepherd comes to us and brings us the divine Word of the law that brings us the truth of who we are-we are sheep-poor and miserable sinners, completely dependent upon our Shepherd to release us from our bondage to sin.
And so He calls and gathers us to repentance-to see that there is only one voice in Whom we can trust-that following our inner voice which we delude ourselves into believing leads us to the path independence, actually leads us to bondage to our sinful self-and that in following the voice of popular opinion and the crowd-actually leads only to bondage to sin and the devil-and they both lead only to the grave.
And so there is only one voice to follow; the voice of the Good Shepherd Who comes to us in the preaching of His Word and partaking of Holy Communion. He comes to you, as He came to the people of Israel in the lesson from Acts-through Peter who, filled with the Holy Spirit proclaimed to the people that they crucified Christ Jesus and in so doing rejected the stone that would become the Cornerstone. But then Peter proclaimed to them that it was in the name of Christ Jesus and Him alone that there was salvation.
For this is how the sheep are fed-with the truth of who we are; poor, miserable sinners-and the truth of what Christ Jesus the Good Shepherd has done for us His Sheep and is doing for us-freeing us from sin, death and the devil-forgiving us, giving us new and eternal life-calling us, gathering us, enlightening us and sanctifying us in the truth and keeping us in His flock, always making sure we are fed with the truth, always vigilant, always protecting us from the wolves.
Amen

Sunday, April 26 2009

Third Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I first read the lesson from Acts for this morning which begins with verse 12 from chapter 3, my instinct was to think well we gotta read the first eleven verses of Acts 3. The passage opens with the words “When Peter saw it, he addressed the people.” But the problem is that the ‘it’ that the passage refers to takes place in the first eleven verses. What is the ‘it’ that Peter refers to?
The passage continues with Peter saying to this crowd “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” There the picture becomes a little more clear. Peter appears to be talking about some sort of miracle healing, but still it’s not included in the lesson, so you’re not getting the whole context.
Plus they leave out this wonderful event of this crippled man who was miraculously made able to walk through Peter commanding him to walk in the name of Jesus.
But actually, Peter and the testimony that he bears in this lesson is the result of an even greater miracle. For it was not long before this that Peter was hiding for fear of the Jews. And it was not long before that, that Peter had denied Jesus three times in the courtyard.
Within the course of probably a few hours Peter had gone from claiming he would never deny Jesus to denying Him three times. And then even after he had been told by the women who saw the risen Jesus that Jesus had risen from the dead, he still goes and hides in his doubt and despair. And then in this morning’s Gospel lesson, there is Peter once again with the rest of the disciples hiding out once again, still not quite convinced apparently.
And so Jesus appears among Peter and the rest of the disciples and says to them “Peace be with you.” And how do they respond? They are terrified. In fact, Luke writes that they thought that they were seeing a ghost. I mean what do you think was going through Jesus’ mind at this point?? You almost expect Him to say something like; “A ghost?? Really?? Is that what you’re thinking?? I told you I was going to do this.”
But He doesn’t. He doesn’t scold them. He says “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” And then He tells them to look at and touch His hands and His feet to see that it is Him. A ghost does not have flesh and bones. And then to really kind of drive home that He was not a ghost but their real and risen Savior He eats in front of them.
And then Jesus tells them that everything that He told them while He was with them, which would have included telling them of His death and resurrection, was the fulfillment of everything that had been written about Him in the scriptures; in the prophets, the law of Moses, in the psalms-all of it. And it wasn’t until the disciples understood this, we read that their minds had been opened.
Their minds were opened for the very purpose of understanding that all the scriptures testify of Jesus-specifically that the Messiah had to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations-and that they, the disciples, were witnesses of those very things. And this witness went bursting forth from the upper-room to all nations not long after this when the Holy Spirit-who binds Himself to the witness of Christ Jesus-arrived at Pentecost.
And so from this it becomes a little more clear as to why it’s not necessary to include in the reading from Acts-the miraculous healing that takes place before verse 12. For as I said, Peter’s bold testimony is the result of an ever greater miracle than the healing of a crippled man. Peter’s bold testimony that we see in the lesson from Acts is the fruit of the miracle that we see in the Gospel lesson-the miracle that our Lord Jesus did not leave Peter and the disciples in their unbelief and despair.
Christ Jesus came to them in their unbelief and gave them faith. And He opened their minds so that they would finally be able to connect the dots and see that all of scripture testifies of Jesus. Finally they were able to see that this Holy and Righteous One Whom they had denied and abandoned was the One Whom the prophets of their ancestors said would bring forth a new covenant; finally they could see that He is the suffering Servant by Whose stripes we are healed. Finally they could see that He is the One that John the Baptist himself had told them about-the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world-through the blood that He shed on the cross for you.
And so you see, today you will witness more fruit of this miracle taking place among you. Today on confirmation Sunday you will witness seven young people standing before you and affirming their baptism, professing their faith, declaring to you that they too are witnesses of all these things. Today you will see seven young people stand before you and declare unto you that they have heard the Word of Christ-the Messiah who suffered and died for your forgiveness and was raised for your salvation as the prophets foretold and they believe it-faith has come to them. Faith has come to them and will take hold of them and repentance and forgiveness of sins in Christ’s name will be proclaimed in them through the Holy Spirit.
But in spite of all the hoopla and the pomp and splendor connected to confirmation Sunday-there really is nothing unique about today. What you see today is really nothing more than the acknowledgment of what we experience daily-the miracle of Christ Jesus coming to us daily and giving us faith an nurturing and sustaining us in that faith.
And so by His grace through the Holy Spirit-Christ Jesus comes to you once again today. For you see the only real difference between how Christ Jesus finds us daily and how He found those disciples in the upper room is time. Sure were not hiding out in an upper-room like they were, but were also not being actively persecuted by authorities. But the truth is, in many ways we are locked away for fear of an inconvenient understanding of our Lord. For the truth is all of us have failed to understand who God is and what He has come to do for us, among us and is doing for us.
We reduce Jesus into a new law-giver whom we follow in our hopes of achieving a better life now, or simply to live holier lives, or to somehow overcome our shortcomings through our own best efforts and good-works. Or we have reduced Jesus to merely an example of love and compassion to emulate.
But Christ Jesus is much more than that. He is the One who took our sin upon Himself for us on the cross so that in exchange we would receive the righteousness of Christ for our salvation. And daily Christ Jesus comes to us in Word and sacrament and in fellowship with each other and brings us back to that eternal hope that we have in Christ Jesus and in Christ Jesus alone-and away from the false hope and deception of sin and the devil and the false images of Christ Jesus that we create.
Confirmation is not about some big transformative Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues moment where everything is suddenly clear and makes sense. It’s about the Holy Spirit- but it’s about the Holy Spirit doing what He does for you on a daily basis; calling, you, gathering you, enlightening you with His gifts and sanctifying you and keeping you in the true faith-in Christ alone. It’s about the Holy Spirit doing what the Holy Spirit does-testifying to Christ and Christ alone.
And this doesn’t begin and end at confirmation. It’s daily. So Kayla, Collin, Corey, Cassidy, Josh, Tyler, and Alex, if you don’t feel any different today than you did yesterday, that’s no big deal. Now, that also means today is not a graduation or an ending. Today is simply the continuation of the Holy Spirit keeping you united with the whole Christian church on earth and keeping you united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith-just as He did for you yesterday and the day before and will do for you tomorrow and the day after that on and on and on.
These gowns that you are wearing are white to symbolize the righteousness of Christ that you received in baptism. You will be taking these gowns off at the end of the service, but you cannot remove the righteousness that they symbolize. You are God’s children, and because of what Christ Jesus has done for you on the cross, and is doing for you daily uniting you with Him and His church in faith-your Heavenly Father will always see you robed in righteousness. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Amen

Sunday, April 19 2009

Second Sunday of Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Maybe you are wondering why I used a different slightly different translation than the NRSV. Well it really only comes down to one verse-verse 27-where Jesus says to Thomas after Thomas places his hand in Jesus’ side and in the nail mark in Jesus’ hand-“Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
The NRSV has Jesus saying “Do not doubt but believe.” Now perhaps you think that I am just being a little nit-pickey. Maybe you think that I am making a big deal out of nothing. But at the end of the Gospel lesson Jesus says that it is through believing that we have life in His name.
And so by that we know that by not believing in the atoning work of Jesus we remain in death. Paul says the wages of sin is death. And so if in believing we receive new-life in Christ, then through unbelief we are in death. And from this we can see that all sin basically comes down to unbelief. And so, in that light the difference between doubt and unbelief is huge.
If Thomas is merely doubting then Jesus is just coming along and offering Thomas a word of encouragement; as if to say “Oh Thomas stop being such a fuddy-duddy. Get on board with the new thing that God is doing.” If Thomas was merely in doubt, then Jesus was merely showing up to clarify things for Thomas; to tie up some loose ends, before Jesus ascended to His Father.
But Thomas was not merely in doubt, he was in disbelief. The Greek word that the English Standard Version (ESV) rightly translates as ‘disbelieve’ and the NRSV wrongly translates as ‘doubt’ is pronounced apistis. The King James Version actually translates it as faithless. Both ‘faithless’ and ‘unbelieving’ are pretty much accurate summations of the definition of apistis, and so both would work very effectively as English translations of this word. “Disbelieve” as the ESV has it, also works very well.
But “doubt” does not work. From this we can see that to refer to this as the “doubting Thomas” lesson doesn’t quite cut it. It doesn’t have quite the same intensity as what was really going on. Thomas was not merely in doubt, he was faithless, he was unbelieving. And so Jesus was not showing up in that house where Thomas and the rest of the disciples were hiding out, merely to offer words of encouragement, or merely to clarify Thomas’ confusion.
In his unbelief Thomas had actually cut himself off from the apostolic ministry. For those eight days in between when Thomas refused to believe the testimony of the disciples and when Jesus showed Himself to Thomas, Thomas was basically not a disciple. He was unbelieving. He was faithless. And so he was subject to the wages of sin that are death; not just physical death, but eternal death-eternal separation from God.
And so, in that light we can see that when Jesus appeared in the house where Thomas and the disciples were hiding, He was actually showing up to call Thomas back to faith. He was calling Thomas back to the fold of the apostolic ministry. He was calling Thomas from death in unbelief and faithlessness to life in faith in Christ Jesus.
Dr Nestingen speaks of how being justified is to be properly aligned with God; to be put in a proper relationship with God-and that is what was going on in this passage. Jesus was justifying Thomas by bringing him back into a proper relationship with God through faith in Christ Jesus.
And don’t think that the other disciples were doing any better. They had also been told of Jesus’ resurrection. In John’s account of the resurrection, he records Mary Magdalene encountering the empty tomb and then seeing the risen Lord Jesus who tells her to go tell ‘His brothers’ or the rest of the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead. The next time we see the disciples that Mary went to tell is when they were hiding in their house for fear of the Jews. It appears that they weren’t so quick to believe without actually seeing either.
In this account of what should probably be referred to as the unbelieving or faithless disciples we see that when Christ Jesus withdraws Himself from us we are truly helpless. Jesus told them that He would be raised after three days. They had heard from the women that Jesus had done just that-that He had been raised from the dead. They had seen Jesus confirm everything He said about Himself through great miracles of healing performed on the blind and the lame and lepers. They had seen Jesus cast out demons. They had seen Him raise the dead. But still, until they saw Him in the flesh raised from the dead, they were mired in their unbelief and despair.
So what does this mean for us? Does this mean that because we have come generations after the apostles and do not have the good fortune of having been able to see the risen Jesus in the flesh that we are then left in our unbelief and despair? Well, if faith were up to us. If it were up to us to muster our own faith through our own best and most sincere efforts, then essentially yes.
But Jesus does not leave that peace that He brings to Thomas and the rest of the disciples in that house from this morning’s Gospel lesson in that house. He does not leave it in that period of time centuries ago. He acknowledges that Thomas and the other unbelieving disciples finally did believe that Jesus had risen from the dead because they had seen Him risen from the dead. But then He says blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
Jesus is making a promise there. He is not trying to give some extra motivation for those who would not have the good fortune of knowing Jesus in the flesh to believe. He is promising that in spite of the unbelief of the disciples, that the good news of salvation through faith in His perfect life, death and resurrection would continue to be proclaimed and would continue to be believed.
For John writes that these events that took place within the life, death and resurrection of Jesus were written down so that we would come to believe that He is the Messiah, the Son of God and that through believing in Him and what He has done for us; laying down His life for us and atoning for our sin- for our forgiveness and rising from the dead -for our salvation, that we would have eternal life in His name.
Through these simple words we can know that, just as He did not leave the disciples alone in their despair and unbelief, He does not leave us alone in our despair and unbelief. He comes to us in His Word proclaimed. He comes to us in the sacraments; He will come to us in a few minutes in His body and blood in bread and the wine of Holy Communion. And because through these means of grace, He fills us with faith and forgiveness then He comes to us through each other also. He comes to us and He brings us peace-the peace that surpasses all understanding. He re-aligns us. He justifies us.
And so we can hear the words of John from the 2nd lesson that they, these disciples declare to us what was from the beginning, what they have heard, what they have seen with their eyes, what they have looked at and touched with their hands, concerning the word of life-that we may have fellowship with them-and that along with the disciples our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ-whose blood cleanses us from all our sin.
And so we need not fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t have sin. We can face the reality that our unbelief is unbelief. We don’t need to reduce it to doubt. We can go to Christ Jesus and confess our sins of unbelief and despair’ knowing that He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and will give us faith by coming to us as He came to Thomas and the rest of the unbelieving and faithless disciples and bringing us peace and justifying us, through His Word and sacraments.
Amen

Sunday, April 12 2009

Easter Sunday
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ is risen, He is risen indeed!!! This is what we celebrate today. That just three days after Christ Jesus laid down His life for you, atoning for all of your sin, and was placed in the tomb, that the tomb was empty and that the stone was rolled away. And that stone being rolled away is a result of the greatest news that we, as the church can bring to the world, to our neighbor. For the stone being rolled away, the tomb being empty means that Christ Jesus has risen from the grave-that sin, death and the devil have been defeated for you-that your salvation has been won.
So I ask you this morning, do you believe this?? It is not an easy message to believe in a 21st century post-modern culture. Ever since it happened, the devil has worked through skeptics and doubters to try to cast doubt upon this great and glorious event upon which we base our faith.
It wasn’t long at all before people were spreading rumors that somebody had merely stole Jesus’ body from the tomb. And some actually were convinced by this preposterous theory and some are probably convinced to this day. And maybe you are among the doubters. Maybe the idea of someone stealing the body does not seem preposterous to you.
I mean this with the most sincere love and compassion; if you are among the doubters and skeptics and believe someone did steal the body, then there are some questions that need to be addressed. First, if someone stole it then who?? If it was the apostles then the New Testament would be much shorter. Robbing a grave that bore Pilate’s seal would have been a crime against Caesar punishable by death. The first chapter of Acts would have been limited to a summary of the executions of the 11 remaining apostles.
Some say that Jesus’ enemies stole it. That makes no sense either. Why would Jesus’ enemies steal it? If they were trying to discredit Jesus, they wouldn’t want people to think the tomb was empty. Quite to the contrary, if there was a body in the tomb, Jesus’ opponents would have done their level-best to make sure people saw it. Theories like this have been coming up for 2000 years and time after time they are refuted. Often they have led to the reverse of their intended purpose; skeptics being convinced of the truth of the Gospel. Time after time, we are left with no body and an empty tomb.
Time after time we are left with Christ Jesus actually being who He says He is and who John the Baptist proclaimed Him to be, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Savior of all, the firstborn of the inheritors of eternal life, in whose inheritance those who repent and believe upon Him will share.
But these arguments that have come and gone and will continue to come and go, have led to a new false spirit which has also tried to cast doubt upon this glorious event. This more recent development does not focus so much on trying to cast doubt on the truth of the event of the resurrection but rather on whether or not it matters that we believe that it happened, and in that sense argues whether or not it matters that it did happen.
The argument goes “It doesn’t really matter whether or not the resurrection took place. If believing it did gives you comfort and peace then you should believe it.” On the other hand, the argument goes “If you believe that doing good-works and being a good person saves you then you should believe that.” It doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.
Well lets look at this morning’s lessons in light of this theory. In the Gospel we have Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James going to the tomb so that they can anoint the body of Jesus with spices. Both of these women had placed great faith in Jesus.
If they had found Jesus’ dead body in the tomb then they would have never been amazed at the good news of the resurrection, which is how the end of this lesson describes their reaction to receiving the news of Jesus’ resurrection. They would have not been told to go tell the disciples, and Jesus would have never met the disciples in Galilee so that they could see that He had risen from the dead.
In the account of this scene from the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is actually weeping outside of the tomb. If she had never encountered the risen Lord Jesus, then she would have simply remained in her despair. All of the faith and hope that she had placed in this One who had meant so much to her would have been in vain.
And then we have Peter, who we see in the lesson from Acts, who in spite of all of his slip-ups; denying Jesus three times, worrying about who would be the greatest in God’s Kingdom, failing to stay awake for even one hour when Jesus asked him to stay awake; in spite of all of these slip-ups, Peter still had put his faith in Jesus. But if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, Peter’s last memory of Jesus would have been denying Jesus three times before the rooster crowed. Peter was in perhaps greater misery than even the two Marys.
Peter was hiding in the upper-room, presumably from the Jewish authorities, but perhaps he was also hiding from Jesus. Imagine Peter’s despair; the emotional let-down of wondering if this One in Whom He had put so much trust in, had let him down. But imagine also the despair and guilt of his own denial, and perhaps wondering how Jesus might react to Peter’s denial if He saw Peter again, in case He really was able to rise from the dead.. You see it wasn’t until after the resurrection that Peter really began to understand who Christ Jesus is and what His life, death and resurrection means.
And then of course there is Paul whom we encounter, as we so often do, in our second lesson. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, Paul would never have even written this lesson, because he never would have been converted on the road to Damascus. He never would have encountered the risen Christ. In fact he probably would have been one of the most vicious persecutors of Christ’s followers till the day he died.
But Paul’s conversion shows us not only does it matter that the resurrection happened but that you believe in it and that you believe that it was for you. Paul’s conversion shows that it matters who our faith is in.
For Paul was a very faithful Jew. He believed that his good works earned him favor with God. And he would have continued to believe this had he never been converted. And so nearly half of the New Testament would have not been written.
That the resurrection happened matters. And that you believe in it and that it was for you matters. Paul knows this for certain and he wrote this in today’s lesson where he speaks of passing on to the church in Corinth that which was of first importance; that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, also known as Peter.
And indeed He did appear to Peter and He declared unto Peter the entire forgiveness of all of his sins, even the denials. And Peter, having finally begun to understand Jesus would proclaim, as we read in today’s lesson from Acts that he understands that God shows no partiality. In light of his past mistakes this sounds like a confession of repentance as much as a bold confession of faith. That Christ is risen, and that you believe that it happened for you matters. Paul later says that if Christ is not risen from the dead our faith is futile. But it happened and you can rejoice that it happened for it means that the price has been paid for your sins, the sacrifice has been made on your behalf. It means that God loved you enough to take upon Himself the burden of your sin. And the devil and the world will continue to try to tempt you to believe that it doesn’t matter, but through the continuous and repeated hearing of this good news, the receiving of the sacraments, and fellowship with each other you are armed for battle as your faith is strengthened.
On this morning we celebrate nothing short of the triumph over death itself. And it is not some story that we hold to to make us feel better, it is real. There is only one name under Heaven through Which you can receive the faith, hope and promise which sustained Peter, Paul and the two Marys. It is name of Christ Jesus-the One, praise God, who’s glorious resurrection led to the stone being rolled away and the tomb being empty.
The resurrection happened and it matters that it happened. For when you hear it’s call through Word and sacrament and believe that it happened for your salvation from sin and the devil, you are able to bask in the light of the empty tomb knowing that because death could not contain Christ it will not contain you either, and that you are no longer moving from life to death, but from death to life-the death of your sin to the glorious eternal life that awaits all of us in our Lord’s eternal Kingdom. He is risen!! He is risen indeed!!
Amen

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Palm Sunday
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pontius Pilate asks this crowd that has been gathered in front of him “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” This is the crowd that just days before had welcomed Jesus with open arms as they shouted and proclaimed of Christ Jesus “Hosanna!! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David! Hosanna in the highest!”
But now, after some prodding from the chief-priests, this same crowd, these same people are demanding that Pilate release the murdering insurrectionist Barabbas, and that Pilate would condemn Christ Jesus to death.
This crowd that upon Jesus’ arrival seemed so devoted and so enamored, now reveal themselves to be every bit as fickle as, well us. They loved Jesus when He was the latest fad, when it was cool to follow Jesus, but as soon as He fell out of favor, they wanted nothing to do with Him. And we would have been right there with them demanding the release of Barabbas, and the crucifixion of Jesus.
The crowd’s actions are evidence that Christ Jesus was a huge disappointment for them. Just days before they had been proclaiming Him to be the One who comes in the name of the Lord, bringing forth the kingdom of God. With that kind of buildup, how could they not have high expectations? How could they not have expected action? This Jesus is the One who comes bringing forth the Kingdom of God, what else would they expect but instant transformation and instant action?
And is that what they are seeing in Jesus as He stands in front of Pilate? No. Jesus is almost completely silent as He stands in front of Pilate. If you have a Bible that puts the words of Jesus in red letters, when you look in the sections and chapters that lead up to this moment where Jesus is standing in front of Pilate, you see many red-letter words; sentences and paragraphs, almost entire chapters all in red. But as the story gets to this point, the red-letter words almost completely disappear.
Jesus is not saying anything. He is not doing anything. He is not defending Himself. The only time Jesus says something in front of Pilate is when Pilate asks Him if He is the King of the Jews, to which Jesus says “You say so.”
At least Barabbas was a man of action. He was a revolutionary. This is how completely antithetical Jesus is to the hopes and desires that Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem had created in the hearts and minds of those crowds of people who had welcomed Him. He was such a disappointment, their dreams were so shattered that their demand for Jesus’ death was a bitter response to how Jesus had let them down.
Jesus was such a disappointment for this crowd that they had allowed themselves to be manipulated by the chief-priests to demand the release of a revolutionary. Jesus conforms so little to the popular expectations for a deliverer that the Jewish authorities find themselves making an alliance with the very type of person that posed a threat to those in authority-a revolutionary. When war was finally declared on Rome and the temple overthrown, the priestly class was overthrown by revolutionary leaders, like Barabbas.
But this crowd and the chief-priests looked at Barabbas, thinking that in him they saw life, but in reality the revolutionary behavior that he represented and signified merely led to death. But this is the case with us also. Jesus is just as much a stumbling block and foolishness for us today as He was for those crowds back then.
You see even though Jesus says very little in His encounter with Pontius Pilate, what He says completely exposes just how lost the crowds and chief-priests and Pilate were. The one thing that the chief-priests and the crowd and Pontius Pilate had in common was that for various reasons, they rejected Jesus’ answer to Pilate’s question. They rejected Jesus’ declaration, subtle as it was, that He is the King of the Jews and that He is the Messiah and the Son of God.
And that is what unites us with them. For on our own, we cannot recognize Jesus for who He is. On our own we would continue to reject and despise Jesus. As Luther says in the catechism, we cannot believe in Jesus or come to Him by our own power.
But as foolish at it may have appeared to those around Him, Christ Jesus was following the path that was laid out for Him and which God revealed through the prophet Isaiah centuries before Jesus had arrived; Here is our Lord giving His back to those who struck Him and His cheeks to those who pulled out His beard, setting His face like flint, knowing that in spite of what many will perceive to be a shameful appearance-His Father will not allow Him to be put to shame.
And Jesus does this by stepping out in faith. The entire life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus was an obedient act of going forth in faith. Paul writes in the second lesson for this morning that Christ Jesus was born in human likeness. Paul here is giving no doubt that Christ Jesus experienced everything on a human level-all the pain and suffering that comes with being human. Though He was in the form of God and could have utilized that to escape pain and suffering, He didn’t because He did not regard His equality with God as anything to be exploited.
And so in faith, Christ Jesus came among us, and He became One of us. This is the faith that took Him up to this encounter with Pontius Pilate. And it is in this same faith that He was able to remain so silent and obedient in the face of Pilate’s interrogation, never once wavering in the direction of exploiting His equality with God-showing that perfect faithful obedience even unto death, even death on a cross.
You see when Pilate asked that question to the crowd “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” he had the mistaken notion that he was the one in control. In fact in John’s account of this, Jesus tells Pilate that the only authority that Pilate has, has come from God.
Pilate may have thought that he had Jesus under wraps and that by sending Jesus to His death, He was eliminating Jesus as a problem and a threat. And why not?? He was sentencing Him to death.
But what Pilate didn’t know was that by sending Jesus to His death, Pilate was in fact releasing Jesus to the people. He was releasing Him to the moment that Jesus knew was coming; the moment when He would lay down His life, taking upon Himself all of the sins of the world; Pontius Pilate’s, all those in the crowd, the chief-priests, mine and your’s, and bearing the punishment for them all-giving you the gift of righteousness before God, through the laying down of His life-and the gift of your salvation through His resurrection-making of death, the gateway to eternal life.
And the fruits of this faithful act of sacrifice and obedience could be seen immediately after Jesus breathed His last and we hear the centurion say “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
Faith was already being created, even prior to the resurrection. And indeed it would continue after the resurrection as the testimony of what Christ had done for all God’s people was brought forth and countless people were brought into the church of Christ, having repented and believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ; and now He comes to you giving you the faith that the chief-priests and Pontius Pilate and the crowd that called for Jesus’ crucifixion did not have. He has come to you through the Holy Spirit in His Word and revealed to you the glory of that moment that seemed so shameful.
He comes to you in His Word, opening your ear so that you will not be rebellious, so that you will not turn backward but rather turn to Him in repentance and receive the forgiveness of your sin in Word and sacrament, and that you will believe in Christ Jesus and see Him for who He is. The Word of Christ which you hear and is coming to you through the Words of my mouth-is filling you with the mind of Christ, keeping you among His own preserving you until that day when every knee, in heaven and earth and on earth and under the earth will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord-and you will be welcomed home to His glorious and eternal kingdom.
Amen

Sunday Mar 29, 2009

Fifth Sunday in Lent
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus reacts pretty strangely to these Greeks who wanted to meet Him. The use of the word Greek can generally be understood in the same manner as the word Gentile is used in the Bible. Greeks are always presented in contrast to Jews, so a reference to Greeks is a reference to Gentiles. What’s important to recognize by the arrival of these two Greeks is that now there are people outside of the bounds of Judaism seeking to know Jesus.
And when Andrew and Phillip tell Jesus that these Greeks would like to meet Him, Jesus reacts strangely. In fact a superficial reading of this might come to the conclusion that Jesus was kind of blowing them off. Jesus’ response almost seems to suggest that He doesn’t even hear them. Jesus says “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge what He has just been told.
But the truth is, Jesus responds the way He does because of these gentiles. The extremely contemporary translation of the Bible, called “The Message” has Jesus saying, in response to the news about these Greeks, “Time’s up. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Now, I am not a big fan of these overly contemporary translations, but I like the inclusion of the phrase ‘Times up.’ It underscores the truth that the event of these Gentiles seeking to know Jesus is significant. The arrival of these Greeks is nothing less than a prelude of the Kingdom of God which is about to burst forth and to no longer be constrained by the boundaries of geographic Israel and Judaism.
The Gentiles are at the gates and they are desiring a share of the Kingdom, and to that Jesus says “Times up!! Time for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus does not stick around and chat with these men. Instead He proclaims truth for all generations to come. Christ Jesus knows that with the arrival of these Gentiles the time has come for Him to fulfill His calling and His role as the High Priest in the order of Melchizedek. Jesus knows that with the arrival of these Greek Gentiles, the time has come for Him to be made the perfect source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.
But Jesus’ explanation for how this is going to happen flies in the face of what the disciples, these Gentiles, and every one of us if we were there, would have been expecting. The time has come for Jesus to be glorified. So when you think of someone being glorified, what do you think of??
Maybe you think of throngs of people surrounding someone in adoration. Maybe you think of people having great regard and esteem for someone to such a degree that they leave their homes and families to follow this person and tell others about Him. And Jesus had experienced much of that prior to this. But now the time had come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Now things were going to change.
On His way to being glorified, Jesus would see the ones who were waiting with baited breath to hear His next Word, one-by-one deny Him in one way or the other. He would see the people in these very same crowds that once adored Him as the blessed One who comes in the name of the Lord, soon would be calling for His crucifixion, and the release of a murderer named Barrabbas.
This is what our Lord is talking about when He says that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds. The glorification that Christ Jesus was preparing to enter into is a glorification that would come through His suffering and death. And His suffering and death would bring forth much fruit, especially among the Gentiles. It is through suffering and death, that He fulfills His role as our High Priest, becoming the source of our salvation.
And it is through the suffering and death of Christ Jesus, on our behalf, that the new covenant is brought forth. It is through Christ’s suffering and death that He will draw people to Himself, Jew and Gentile alike. What will look to the world like a moment of despair and sadness for Jesus, as He is dying on the cross, is actually the moment of His glorification and the continuing work of God to bring forth His new Kingdom. We see a foretaste of this with the arrival of King David when he united the two separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
And now with the arrival of the Gentiles, Jesus knows that the hour of His glorification has come. The time has come for the bursting forth of the New Covenant. But this will be about much more than simply bringing together two Kingdoms, or even bringing the Gentiles into God’s Kingdom. For the fulfillment of the New Covenant in Christ Jesus is not just about the bringing together of two earthly kingdoms, but the coming together of God and man. It is about the restoring of the relationship between God and man that we destroyed with our sin.
And this covenant is not limited to geographic Israel or Judaism. In fact it has little to do with a place or a religion. This has to do with our Lord calling His people to Himself through His perfect life, death and resurrection. It is about a new Kingdom and a new creation, created and brought forth by the Gospel of our Lord. It is about our Lord making all things new by laying down His life on the cross, fulfilling all righteousness for you, bearing the punishment of your sin.
The glorification of our Lord Jesus is the continuation of the coming forth of His Kingdom, which is not of this World; which is not defined by geography or religion but faith; faith that began with Christ Jesus’ perfect faith that took Him to the cross, even as His heart troubled Him, because He knew that it was for that very hour of His glorification that He came; faith that led to God the Father acknowledging that the faithful obedience of Christ was in fact glorifying God’s name. And this continues with the faith that you receive in baptism.
With the new covenant comes a new Kingdom and your place in this Kingdom is not built upon your being born into the right earthly family or your ability to follow the law. It is built upon your Lord Christ Jesus coming to you in the waters of baptism and claiming you as His own. It is built upon the perfect obedience of Christ Jesus, your High Priest, going into death for you so to become your perfect source of salvation, calling you to Him and producing in you seeds of faith, and nurturing and cultivating those seeds of faith through the hearing of His holy Word and the receiving of the sacraments.
And so now that you have been called to the foot of the cross; now that the Holy Spirit has called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified you in the faith and you have been filled with faith, now you are told that you are to hate your life in this world. But, as a new covenant has been established and a new kingdom has been brought forth, know that this is not the type of hatred that one experiences in the temporal old Kingdom of the flesh. It’s simply the comfort of knowing the promise of Christ- that you belong to Christ and that He has prepared a place for you in His Kingdom, and that nothing will snatch you out of His hands, and knowing that nothing in this world can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus your Lord.
But you still must contend with the old Kingdom and the old creation in you, and Satan. As we read in this lesson, the prince of this world, or Satan has been driven out. This is to say that ultimately Satan has no power. But he is still at work in this world. We know that he has been defeated, and when Christ returns, Satan will be permanently removed from our presence. But we must still contend with him. And nothing scares the old sinner more than dying. And death and the fear of death is one of Satan’s most fearsome weapons, and he uses it on us whenever he can-tempting us to cling not to the cross of Christ, but to the temporary things of this world, to our money, our cars, our homes etc.
And so the One who was glorified by laying down His life on the cross for you, continues to call you to Himself in Word and sacrament; clinging to you, holding onto you when you are tempted to cling to this dying old world. And this ultimately is the answer that Jesus gives to these Gentiles who want to see Him-that a New covenant was being established and it would begin with His glorification on the cross, upon which He would call them and you to Him, as He is doing right now, for He is your High Priest and your perfect source of salvation, and you are included in His new covenant and He promises to keep you in this new covenant.