Homily for Trinity 11 - 2020

"In Which Line Do You Stand?"

Luke 18:9-14

“Get in line, now!” Remember your grade school teacher’s voice repeating that command, several times each school day? Much of our school days were about learning how to stand in line, wait in line, and practice proper “line etiquette.” Stand right behind the child in front of you, not to the side. Don’t squirm or fidget or push others. And certainly do not, ever, cut in line. That got you into trouble in the lunch line and when you went out to recess. No one likes a line-cutter. After all, that’s cheating. Instead, be good, stand and walk single file, wait your turn, and you’ll get where you’re going in due time.

The reason we learn to stand in line during the school day is so that we can properly stand in line the rest of our lives. It’s a skill and an art form. All the more so these days, trying to stand on those social distancing stickers or mentally measuring the appropriate six feet. We do it at Schnucks when we get our groceries. Oh, and the scowls that come when that guy three people behind you cuts ahead of you when you weren’t looking!

Then there’s the sense of shame that comes from standing in the wrong line, waisting your time and having to go to the end of the other line. Think of the DMV, when you go to renew your driver’s license. You walk in, grab your little paper ticket with the number on it, and wait. (At the DMV, sitting in chairs is just another form of standing in line.) Finally, your number is called, you go to the desk and the gal sitting there says, “Sorry, this is the line for plate renewals. You’ll have to go over there and take another number.” So you start all over again.

Today’s Gospel shows two examples of getting in line. The Pharisee was a line-cutter, for sure. He strolled past everyone else and went to the front of the line. The Pharisee had priority. He deserved attention before anyone else. He pulled out his credentials and laid his papers on God’s desk. They were proof of his rights and claims. The Pharisee also knew to be polite. So he politely thanked God. It was only politeness, of course, because he was a self-made man. True thankfulness is the response to a gift. And accepting a gift means admitting you need and receive help from someone else. The Pharisee wasn’t going to admit that and weaken his case. He didn’t need any help. He trusted in himself. But it was still nice to be polite and thank God.

As the Pharisee stood at God’s desk, he looked around at others in the office. “A pretty sorry bunch,” he thought to himself. There’s the man who can’t get customers into his electronics shop. He must be overcharging them, underserving them, or both. Then he sternly looked at the child who suddenly wailed…and even more sternly at the irritated mother who had just corrected her child. The Pharisee saw no one who was like himself. This made him feel comfortable and pleased. His chances were good.

Most of us find it both necessary and gratifying to see someone as less than ourselves. We like our car more when we see that it’s better than someone else’s. When things go wrong in our lives, we console ourselves that others are worse off than we are. We crave being better than others around us. It may be in stronger muscles than the other guy or in a better singing voice than that gal. It may be in making a better salary or having better behaved children.

The Pharisee had no problem finding people less than himself. So he listed his superiorities. He fasted twice a week while most ordinary folks fasted only once a week, if that. The Pharisees thought that their extra measure of fasting would make up for, even atone for, those other schlubs who obviously had more sins. And while the “hoi polloi” would busy themselves at the unclean marketplace, the Pharisees would fast with special services and prayers—for the sins of those at the market, of course.

The Pharisees did the same with the tithe. God’s Law required a tenth of your produce or income. But those poor farmers and traders did not give the required tithe. So Pharisees upped their ante. Not only would they tithe on their income, but also on whatever they purchased. After all, that flour or sheep might just be untithed goods.

So the Pharisees did have a lot to show for themselves. They did live clean, decent, useful lives. They did their best to fulfill God’s Law and be responsible for their neighbors.

Now before we condemn those Pharisees, we should compare their exemplary lives with our own. How many of us are ready to give 10 percent twice to the Lord, first for our income, then second for every purchase we make? How many of us look down on the Pharisees for relying on their works? After all, we Lutherans know we’re saved only by grace through faith; it’s the gift of God, not a result of works. No, dear saints, we may not condemn that Pharisee. Instead, we must learn to recognize and condemn this Pharisee, the one each of us sees in the mirror. You see, each of us measures himself/herself over against other people and finds himself/herself bigger and better than they.

This is not even the height of being a Pharisee. That comes when we take God’s Law and use it to glorify ourselves before God Himself. We think we are good, decent and moral people. We actually expect God to agree with our good opinion of ourselves. We conclude that we are self-made persons whom God Himself should admire and look up to. But such lofty evaluations of ourselves only block us from seeing God, from seeing ourselves alone in His presence.

There was someone that day who did know that he stood alone in the presence of the personal, holy, living God. And he was afraid. He did not get in the line; he stayed outside the church. That line was for the good people who had tamed God. This man didn’t even think he knew how to pray. He did not know the proper phrases or gestures. He just blurted out the truth about himself. He was a sinner. He needed mercy. He cried to God.

Realizing this comes not from comparing oneself with other people, but by standing in the presence of God. There every pretense and deception is stripped away. How does God judge each of us? He says, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). We are not at all as God is. He is holy; we are sinners. No amount of comparing ourselves with others can change that.

So the tax collector blurts out: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” He thinks other people may be all right; he does not judge them. He stands alone before God. It’s between him and God. And sinners have no rights before God. He gave God the right to condemn and reject him. He was a sinner and needed God. He cried to God for blood-bought mercy. Only by the mercy of God could he stand. And so he returned to his house having received mercy. He returned with God. The tax collector was in the right line after all. This line has a sign above it that says: “For Sinners Only.”

Our Lord Jesus does not condemn the exemplary life of the Pharisee, nor does He commend the dishonest life of the tax collector. He simply points out how the Pharisee tries to negotiate and bargain with God, while the tax collector surrenders every right and claim. You see, mercy is possible only when you surrender yourself into God’s hands and God’s decision.

The Pharisee could not and did not do that, but the tax collector did. And he, by God’s grace in Christ crucified and risen, went down to his house justified. He was given mercy by the bloody sacrifice of Jesus. He was forgiven. Now he was God’s free, joyful, and grateful man.

So the question for you is this: in which line do you stand?

“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.” Amen.

Homily for Easter Vigil - 2018

"This Is Our God"
Easter Vigil Readings

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In the early 5th century, Augustine, the head pastor at Hippo, proclaimed the mystery of this night in a short, poetic homily:

Brothers and sisters, we know and we hold with firm faith that Christ died for us but once:

the just for sinners,
the master for slaves,
the free for captives,
the physician for the sick,
the happy for the wretched,
the rich for the needy,
the seeker for the lost,
the redeemer for the sold,
the shepherd for the sheep,
and—what is the most awe-inspiring of all—
the creator for the creature;
keeping to what he always is,
handing over what he became;
hiding as God,
appearing as human;
life-instilling by his power,
dying by his weakness;
unchanging in divinity,
pained in the flesh.

What Augustine proclaimed in the 5th century, we still celebrate in the 21st.

The God who said, “Let there be light” has now brought the light of His Son into our lives so darkened by sin and death. The God who created all things has now recreated us and now prepares us for His new creation.

The God who judged the wicked world with a flood and safely brought eight people through water has now drowned the Old Adam in us and brought us safely through the waters of Baptism, joining us to the death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord.

The God who led His people out of Egyptian slavery and rescued them from Pharaoh’s pursuing army has now brought us through the Red Sea of our Baptism, is now leading us through the wilderness of this fallen world, and will one day lead us into His eternal Promised Land flowing with the milk and honey of His beloved Son’s life and salvation.

The God who sent His only Son into the world to die but once and rise again from the dead as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20) now invites us to “come, buy and eat!” He bids us to delight ourselves in the rich food of His forgiveness and life and salvation. As we hear the proclamation of Christ being raised from the dead, our souls may live once again, even when we mourn the loss of loved ones, even when we face our own falling asleep. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22).

The God who sprinkles us clean in the pure waters of Jesus’ death and resurrection now cleanses us from our all our idols and misplaced devotions. He now gives us a new heart and a new spirit, a heart of flesh that beats with His Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life” (Nicene Creed). As He joins us to Himself, He also joins us to one another to dwell together as His redeemed, enlivened people.

The God who caused breath to enter and enliven the dry, dead bones of His exiled people, giving them new sinews, new flesh, and covering them with new skin, now renews us. In the middle of this valley of the shadow of death, we too are dried up by the effects of sin and death; we too lose our hope when illness, injury, and death strike us or the ones we love. Apart from Jesus we too are clean cut off from the God who loves us. But now that Christ has died and is risen, God puts His Spirit within us and we shall live. He places us in the land He has given, and we know that He is our Lord of life.

The God who allowed Job to be afflicted with loss of property, loss of family, and loss of sound health now gives us the same firm faith and confident confession of that ancient one: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth.” And even though our flesh, or the flesh of our loved ones, may be thus destroyed by death, that last enemy, yet in our flesh we shall see God. It’s not enough to say when we die that our body goes into the ground and our spirit goes to be with Jesus. The story of God’s salvation does not end there! With ancient Job we confess “the resurrection of the body” (Apostles’ Creed). Just as Jesus rose in the body, we too will rise in the body. “Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor. 15:23).

And the God who protected and sustained the three young men even in the midst of the blazing, fiery furnace—by being with them in the midst of the flames—now protects and sustains us in the midst of this world so hostile to the Gospel. Whether the blazing flames are individual temptations, trials or losses, government sponsored attacks on Christians, or a culture careening out of control toward the cliff and speeding to its own fiery demise on the rocks below, our risen Savior is still with us in the midst of the flames. In the end, because all things are subject to our risen Jesus, the fire has no power over our bodies. The hair of our restored heads will not be singed. Our white cloaks of Christ’s righteousness will not be harmed. No smokey smell of sin or death will follow us into the age to come.

This is our God—our risen Lord Jesus—who brings life and immortality to light through the Gospel.

The two Marys and Salome thought they still had to anoint Jesus’ dead body for burial. They fretted over the stone covering the tomb’s entrance. And were they surprised to see that entrance wide open! Then they saw that young man—full of life and vigor, supremely fit and healthy, an image of the new creation! What he told them, he also tells you: “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.” Yes, that happened; Christ died for us but once. But “He has risen; He is not here”…in the tomb, that is. He died but once, but now He lives! And so will we. So will all we love who have departed in the faith. No longer in the tomb, our risen Lord is with us, giving us His life, leading us to His new creation.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Homily for Trinity 18 - 2017

"Do You LOVE God?"
Matthew 22:34-46

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Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” … Do you love God? I don’t expect anyone here actually to say, “No, I rather hate God.” Who in their right mind would say that? But do you really LOVE God? Are you completely devoted to Him? Is He the One you think and daydream about all the time? Is there no one else on earth with whom you would rather spend your time than with God? Is there nothing that you’d rather do than be with God, talk with Him, enjoy His stories, and just revel in His company?

Or is God just Someone we learn about in Catechism class or Bible class or sermons? Learn about Him, but keep Him at a distance. Stick Him under the microscope of our quest for religious knowledge or in the petri dish of our fascination with things spiritual. Is God little more than an intellectual pursuit, once a week or whenever we happen to think of Him? Do we merely learn to say the right words about Him, such as He’s all-present, or all-powerful, or all-knowing? Is God simply Someone we talk about when we want to sound religious? Or do you truly LOVE God?

The Pharisees certainly claimed to love God. But when He came to them in the flesh, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, they put Him to the test. You see, they did not want this God, the One who took on our human frame to free us from sin and death, to get too close to them! They did not want God to get too personal or too intimate. So they tested Jesus: “Which is the great commandment in the [Torah]?” They wanted to reduce all five books of Moses to the bare minimum. They wanted a bumper-sticker slogan that would fully capture the law of God.

We fallen creatures like to do that. We like to defang God’s law—render the Doberman harmless. One speaker called it the “religion of St. Minimum.” What’s the least that I have to do to get by? How often do I really have to go to church? How often do I really need to pray? How much money do I really have to give? How much do I really have to know? What’s the bottom line? What's the bare minimum? The religion of St. Minimum tries to keep things practical, painless, and puny. It delights in loopholes. It bargains with God to be “fair.” “So, Jesus, what’s the one commandment that we really need to keep?” But that’s not love. What boyfriend, fiancé, or husband could get away with telling his sweetheart, “I only want to spend the minimum amount of time with you”?

Jesus sensed the trap. He knows what’s in our hearts. He knows how we like to twist and turn, and wiggle out from under God’s commands. So He gives not one, but two greatest commands. The first one: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” That’s the Hebrew way of saying, “Love God with every last fiber in your being; hold nothing back.” Then Jesus said, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The two go together. You cannot claim to love God if you don’t love your neighbor. When you do love God, you will naturally also love your neighbor whom God gives you. So Jesus does boil God’s law down to a minimum in these two simple commandments. But they are far from minimal in shaping our life. Love God with your whole being; and love whomever God puts next to you.

If you’re still looking for a bumper-sticker slogan, you can distill God’s law down to one four-letter word: L-O-V-E. As St. Paul said, “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10). But we even have troubles with this word “love,” don’t we? For one thing, we think love is a feeling, a warm-fuzzy on our insides. But love is not a feeling. Love is a deliberate action of our will toward another person. When we love God or our neighbor, it does not mean that we have certain feelings about God or our neighbor. Sure, feelings are there with us, but love is not essentially a feeling.

Another trouble we have with “love” is that we think it’s something that we “fall” into. We fall into ditches and holes filled with mud, but we don’t fall into love. Besides, falling means losing your balance, losing your control. Love is not an out of control, loss of balance experience; love is a deliberate action of our will toward another person. To love means deliberately to turn ourselves toward another person. One commentator explained it this way: “[Jesus] opens the hearts of believers, like flowers to the sun, to their living posture. We were made for love…. [Jesus] does not so much give an activity that can be calculably done as he gives a direction to face” (F. D. Bruner, Churchbook, 794). The Bible describes love in self-sacrificing terms: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

How do we love God and neighbor? Let’s count the ways. We love God by having no other gods in our hearts, by giving God our whole-hearted fear, love, and trust. We love God by using His Name in worship and prayer, and by giving glad attention to His Word. We love God by honoring the authorities He has placed over us, starting with our parents; by caring for the health and well-being of our neighbor’s body; by upholding marriage in the way we conduct our sexual lives; by helping our neighbor improve and protect his possessions and income; by upholding our neighbor’s reputation and not participating in gossip or slander; by being content with what we have rather than continually wanting what we don’t have. These are just some of the ways that we love God and our neighbor.

And so we reflect God’s love toward us—the way the moon reflects the light of the sun, or the way a polished mirror reflects the light that strikes it. When God first made Adam and Eve, they perfectly reflected His love. They were created in the “image of God.” God is love, and Adam and Eve were perfect reflectors of God’s love. But their rebellion ruined the mirror. Our self-centeredness and inborn desire to be little gods in place of God has distorted the reflection of God’s love. Just as fingerprints and gunk smudge the reflection in a mirror, so our sinfulness has destroyed our reflection of God’s love.

Do you LOVE God? Do you have wholehearted love for God, sacrificing your all for Him? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? You know you don’t love like that. Not even Mother Teresa loved like that. And here’s why we need the question that Jesus used to test the Pharisees. “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” The Pharisees knew that the Messiah, the Christ, would be a blood descendent of King David. But there’s more to the Messiah than a royal bloodline. He is also David’s “lord.” As David said in Psalm 110: “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The Messiah is David’s son, a human being, but He is also David’s “Lord.” He is both God and Man, begotten of His Father from all eternity and born of the virgin Mary. Jesus is talking about the mystery of His Incarnation. In Him God has become man. And in Him humanity is recreated and renewed. In Him people are restored to be what God intended them to be. He came to restore the image of God to our fallen race. He loves God with His whole heart, with His entire being, with His whole mind. He loves His neighbor as Himself.

St. John said it well: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation—the means of forgiveness—for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:9-10). Jesus loved us to death on the Cross. It was the deliberate action of His divine-human will toward us loveless, unlovely sinners. In Baptism we receive God’s great love in Christ’s death and resurrection. In Holy Absolution, our Lord keeps telling us, “I love you by forgiving you.” And consider the great feast we’re about to enjoy. Here Jesus puts His own Body and Blood into our mouths so that we can love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves. After the Meal, we’ll even pray that God would “strengthen us…in faith toward [Him] and in fervent love toward one another.”

“We love—both God and neighbor—because He first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19). Jesus’ death and resurrection free you to love God and one another. You no longer have to love; you get to love. We don’t love God in order to obtain His love; we already have His love in David’s Son, Jesus. Now we get to love God with every fiber of our being and we get to love our neighbor as ourselves, reflecting the love that our Lord has given to us. Amen.

Homily for Trinity 16 - 2017

"Innards of Mercy"
Luke 7:11-17

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We get a little Easter at the beginning of October. It really shouldn’t surprise us. After all, every Sunday is a little Easter. In this story of Jesus raising the widow’s son, we have a miracle that shows just who Jesus is. He is the great prophet whom God had promised for centuries. He is the fulfillment of their centuries-long hope for rescue from death. When Jesus comes, the age of Messiah—the new creation—has dawned. “The Creator Himself has come in the flesh to re-create His fallen creatures” (Just, 307).

Jesus, His disciples, and a great crowd—probably filled with joy that they were with Jesus—approach the little town of Nain. As they draw near to the town’s gate, they are met by a somber, tear-filled procession of death. A man had died. And not just any man. “The only son of his mother, and she was a widow.” What torture for her! Not only had she buried her husband however long before this, but now she was burying her son, her only-begotten son. Talk about ripping her heart asunder! Now she had absolutely no security in Israelite society. She would have no means of support. Everyone would ignore her. Everyone except Jesus, that is—that other only-begotten Son in our Gospel.

When Jesus sees her completely heartbroken, uncontrollably weeping, utterly despairing, He has compassion on her. This is key. It’s much more than feeling sorry or uttering, “Poor thing.” No, Jesus pours out His inward parts in mercy for her. It’s the same “tender mercy of our God” that Zechariah sang about at the birth of his son, John the Baptizer (Lk. 1:78). It’s the same outpouring of inward parts of mercy shown by the Good Samaritan to the beaten, bloodied man in the ditch (Lk. 10:33). It’s the same outpouring of the bowels of compassion that the prodigal father showed to his prodigal son when that son returned home in repentance (Lk. 15:20). So Jesus pours out His guts of mercy for this poor woman. God’s reign of grace and life is breaking into our world of misery and death.

Then Jesus tells her, “Do not weep.” Can you imagine? If I’m in this woman’s shoes, I’d be bristling at such an outlandish command at such a time as this. “Do not weep?! Sir, how can you even? I’ve lost my only-begotten son, my pride, my joy, my only means of support. Surely you can’t expect me to do a happy dance? Surely you can’t expect me to feel nothing, to be stoic? Of course I’m gonna weep! Of course I’m gonna cry out with the agony that overflows inside!” Now if any of us would say such a thing at a funeral, it would be quite insensitive. But Jesus can say it, and only Jesus can say it. You see, only Jesus can say it because only Jesus can do something about it.

Then Jesus does something verboten—forbidden: He actually touches the coffin-cot. Gasps all around! According to Jewish law, that would make one ritually unclean. But not Jesus! He is the very source of ritual cleanness, the true fount of genuine healing. He may very well take this young man’s death and uncleanness into Himself—soaking it up as a sponge, so to speak. But He also transmits His cleanness and His healing—and His life—into the lifeless man on the coffin-cot.

And Jesus’ words to the young man—“I say to you, arise”—say what they do and actually do what they say. By the way, the original Greek is different from the English. The English makes it sound as though the young man could muster up the energy and willpower to “arise” of his own accord. Not so in the Greek. It’s a passive verb. Jesus actually says, “Young man, I say to you, BE RAISED.” Not “raise yourself,” but “be raised”…that is, by Someone else. And who is that Someone else? Jesus, of course. And how does He raise this dead young man? By His Word, of course. His Word says what it does and does what it says, making alive, forgiving sins, and delivering salvation. As Jesus said elsewhere: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (Jn. 5:24).

So when Jesus comes on the scene—whether in the flesh at Bethlehem or at Nain or on the cross, or even in our midst in His Word—He comes to pour out His guts to give His mercy. He comes to fulfill and complete all those other resurrections in the Bible. The prophet Elijah raised the widow’s son, to be sure (1 Kgs. 17). Then the prophet Elisha raised the Shunammite woman’s son (2 Kgs. 4).  Actually, God raised those two boys through His prophets. Jesus Himself would raise Jairus’ daughter (Lk. 8) and His friend Lazarus (Jn. 11). However, all those resurrections were only the “teaser trailers” or “promo videos.” Jesus comes to show that He is “the resurrection and the life” (Jn. 11:25). He alone has the power, the only power, over death.

According to Martin Luther, the first and main thing to take away from this account of Jesus raising the widow’s son is FAITH—that we recognize our Lord Jesus from His works and believe in Him. Luther makes this application: “This and similar works of Christ should remind us that we must be very courageous and unafraid in times of sickness, pestilence, and life-threatening danger. At moments when the world says, All is lost, the Christian always responds, Not so, God still lives, and Christ rules at the right hand of God” (HP 3:25). The widow at Nain learned that she had a helper and Savior in Jesus. Her son who was resurrected learned that he had a Savior who overcomes death itself.

You and I get to learn and believe the same things, whatever our distress, whatever our lament or grief, whatever comes our way in our lifelong battle against the grave. And we have the benefit of having the rest of the story of Jesus. He showed how much He is our helper and Savior, how completely He has overcome death and the grave by going to a cross, by suffering death itself, and by rising on the third day. Even now in the Gospel and Sacraments—in words, and water, and bread and wine—our Lord spills out His mercy to comfort us, tells us not to weep, and raises us from our sin and death. What a great prophet and Savior we have! God has visited and still visits His people!

Then, according to Luther, there’s a second thing we can take away from this marvelous miracle. That is HOW TO BE MERCIFUL. Just as Jesus poured out His innards of mercy for the widow, and just as He touched the coffin-cot of the dead young man, we also learn to identify with those who suffer and spill out our innards of mercy for them. St. Paul put it this way: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). Luther drives the point home this way: “When my poor neighbor is sick it doesn’t only mean that I should gladly help him, but his suffering must become mine in such a way that I feel it as my own, as we see here with our Lord” (HP 3:26).

Now this being merciful actually goes in two directions. One is the physical, to be sure. The other is the spiritual. Showing mercy when physical tragedy and suffering strike is easy enough to see. Our neighbor may need clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, and so on. So we spill out the innards of mercy to help them.

But mercy is also needed in spiritual matters. What are we to do when young people are not being nurtured and raised to believe in Christ? What are we to do when grown people disregard Jesus coming in His Word and Sacraments? What are we to do with our multitude of neighbors who know nothing of Jesus and His pouring out of His innards of mercy on the cross and through the empty tomb? We weep with those who weep. We identify with them by getting to know them. We speak of Jesus and His works for them. Now and then that may involve confronting our neighbor with his/her sins. And, yes, that is merciful. After all, we don’t want our neighbor to end up separated from God for all eternity. Most of all, we want to carry them on their own coffin-cot of spiritual death to the one Man who can help, the one Man who can say, “Be raised.”

So the greatest lesson from today’s Gospel is this: not to despair when things go badly, especially when we face the grave. We have the greatest Prophet—the Savior Himself—who comes to help us and raise us. And the second is like it: that we, like Jesus, identify ourselves with our neighbor in his grief, whether physical or spiritual. May God lead us in pouring out our innards of mercy, just has He has done for us. Amen.

Homily for Trinity 14 - 2017

"Cleansed to Praise"
Luke 17:11-19

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When you hear and ponder these ten lepers, you want to think of yourself—suffering the ravages of the leprosy of sin. When you hear and ponder Jesus’ healing of these lepers, you want to remember your Baptism—where Jesus cleanses you of what ails you most. And when you ponder the one cleansed leper, the Samaritan, who returned to Jesus—you want to put yourself in his shoes and take your cue from him on how to live all of your life in your Baptism.

First, let’s consider the ten lepers. Johann Gerhard said, “In these ten lepers is given to us a picture of the human race, which has been infected with the leprosy of sin; for sin is in many respects comparable to leprosy.” (Postilla 2:151). The Bible’s term “leprosy” no doubt refers to something like Hansen’s Disease—a bacterial infection that can affect nerves, skin, and eyes and lead to loss of feeling and even paralysis. Biblical “Leprosy” may also refer to something like eczema—more of a skin rash, or dermatitis, with scaly, flaking skin and itchiness. The real point is that leprosy is a most accurate picture for what ails us most: the infection and disease of sin.

To borrow more from Gerhard, our sin is like leprosy in several respects:

• Leprosy affects and destroys the whole body. Sin also totally infects, affects and destroys our strength in both body and soul—nothing sound from head to toe.
• Leprosy is a disease that spreads. So does sin, coming into the world through one man and spreading to us all. St. Paul calls it “the works of the flesh”—you know, all those nasty things of “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger” and so on—all those symptoms that even present themselves in us, at least from time to time.
• Leprosy, at least in Gerhard’s day, could not be healed by man’s efforts. Today, treatments may prevent the disease from getting worse, but they cannot reverse the  damage. And remember the story of Naaman. He sought healing from the King of Israel, but the King of Israel cried out, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive?” (2 Kgs. 5:7). Sin, though, absolutely cannot be healed by human means—not by doctors, paramedics, or politicians. After all, those “desires of the flesh are against the Spirit.”
• Leprosy, according to Gerhard, is a “herpetic contagion”—a viral disease—that spreads to others who are healthy. Modern medicine may quibble with just how it spreads. However, sin itself does spread its contamination. Just think of the many ways our fallen world infects us all in thought, word and deed to think, speak and act in ways that go against God’s Word in mistrusting God and not loving our neighbor—“rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.”
• And leprosy, once it takes hold, eats its way more and more through the body. Likewise, sin. One sin leads to another, and that one easily to yet another. First, the misdeed; then the excuse; then the cover-up; then the lie; and so on.

If it weren't for our leprosy of sin, we would not need police officers and rulings of law courts. If it weren't for our leprosy of sin, we would not have protests, whether peaceful, disruptive, or destructive.

So, let’s imitate the ten lepers as Jesus comes passing along between the Samaria and Galilee of our lives. Let’s lift up our voices and cry out: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” And let’s listen and heed Him when He bids us to show ourselves to the priest—no, not those priests at the Jerusalem temple, but a different priest. Which priest? Jesus, our great High Priest who has passed through the heavens (Heb. 2:14). “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 2:15). As Gerhard asked: “How can one be quit of his spiritual leprosy?…One must find his way to Christ, the sole physician for one’s soul” (Postilla, 2:152). “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 2:16). “Offered was He for greatest and for least, / Himself the victim and Himself the priest” (LSB 637:1).

Actually, we don’t have to find our way to Him. He has found His way to us! Just as the ten lepers were cleansed before they found their way to the priests—and not by their own reason or strength, nor by their decision or will—we are cleansed in the bath of our Baptism—not by our own reason or strength or decision or will. Our baptismal bath sprinkles us with the very blood and water that flowed from the side of Christ crucified. After all, He is the One who comes by water and blood; not by the water only but by the water and the blood (1 Jn. 5:6).

In Leviticus 14, cleansing of lepers happened, first, by killing a bird in an earthen vessel over fresh, living water. Then, a live bird, a piece of cedarwood, and a scarlet yarn were dipped in that blood and fresh water. And then, the priest, using the live bird wet with blood and water, would “sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed of the leprous disease” (Lev. 14:7). Not only is Jesus both victim and priest for you, He is also the dead bird and the living bird for you. He is the One who cleanses you “by the washing of water with [His] word, so that He might present [you] to Himself in splendor” (Eph. 5:26-27), cleansed of your leprosy of sin.

So now we want to put ourselves in the shoes of the one cleansed leper who returned to Jesus. Now we want to take our cue from him on how to live all of life in our Baptism. I’m sure the other nine former lepers were generically thankful as civic courtesy and politeness would dictate. But they went on to live their lives apart from Jesus. However, the one cleansed leper—the Samaritan—“turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.” He actually did more than just giving thanks. He gave Him praise, as Jesus said. He returned to the Giver of the gift of cleansing. He was not merely content to enjoy the gift; he wanted to enjoy and be with the Giver.

That’s living your baptismal life. Not just a generic thankfulness for a quick healing. Not just a slight nod and a mental note that something special happened some time along time ago, but then getting back to “real life” or “your life,” however you might define that for yourself. No, the baptismal life is about living all of life in Jesus, with Jesus, and in the presence of Jesus. Daily contrition and repentance. Drowning that Old Adam in you. Making him die with all sins and evil desires. And then—thank the Lord and sing His praise!—emerging and arising every day to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Your one-time baptismal cleansing becomes your daily routine—not a slogging-through-it routine, but a joyful living in the blood and water that continually heals and cleanses.

We all know how we wrestle with sin every day. That leprous disease keeps flaring up even in us who are cleansed by Jesus’ blood and water. We will keep wrestling with our leprous sin until Jesus returns on the Last Day. It’s not a matter of Jesus’ healing not fully doing its job. It has! But it is a matter of living in faith, continually receiving His cleansing, and thus praising Him as did the Samaritan.

Martin Luther confessed this in the face of those who deny that sin remains after Baptism. The fact that sin remains after Baptism quickly smacks down any perfectionism—that is, thinking you can be free of all sin or attain a sin-free life this side of heaven. It also topples any notion of “once-saved-always-saved.” While the healing for that Samaritan former leper, and the other nine, was instantaneous, Jesus chooses to heal us over the long-haul. The sin is forgiven, to be sure; Jesus’ healing, though, is ongoing. Here’s how Luther expressed it:

“This life…is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.” (“A Defense and Explanation of All Articles” [AE 32:24]).

And so we return to Jesus yet again, around His Table. “Draw near and take the body of the Lord, / And drink the holy blood for you outpoured” (LSB 637:1). We return to receive the healing He gives. We return to give praise to Him. “Let us praise the Word Incarnate, / Christ, who suffered in our place. / Jesus died and rose victorious / That we may know God by grace. / Let us sing for joy and gladness, / Seeing what our God has done; / Let us praise the true Redeemer, / Praise the One who makes us one” (LSB 849:3). Amen.

Homily for Trinity 13 - 2017

"Christ, Our Samaritan"
Luke 10:23-37

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On January 17, 1546, Dr. Martin Luther preached what would be his last sermon in Wittenberg. He would preach five more sermons after that in other places before his death on February 18, 1546. In his final Wittenberg sermon, Luther focused on the text of Romans 12:3, where St. Pauls says, “By the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

Luther began his sermon by highlighting two main points that are to be taught and preached in Christian pulpits. First, we ensure that “faith in Christ is rightly preached.” Second, we preach that “the fruits and good works are rightly taught and practiced” (AE 51:372). First, we preach the “good tree,” to use the picture Jesus gives; then, we preach the fruits of faith that grow from that tree. Then Luther appeals to and explains the parable of the Good Samaritan, our Gospel for today. Notice who the Good Samaritan is:

After baptism there still remains much of the old Adam. For, as we have often said, it is tame that sin is forgiven in baptism, but we are not yet altogether clean, as is shown in the parable of the Samaritan, who carried the man wounded by robbers to an inn [Luke 10:30–37]. He did not take care of him in such a way that he healed him at once, but rather bound up his wounds and poured on oil. The man who fell among robbers suffered two injuries. First, everything that he had was taken from him, he was robbed; and second, he was wounded, so that he was half-dead and would have died, if the Samaritan had not come to him. Adam fell among the robbers and implanted sin in us all. If Christ, the Samaritan, had not come, we should all have had to die. He it is who binds our wounds, carries us into the church and is now healing us. So we are now under the Physician’s care. The sin, it is true, is wholly forgiven, but it has not been wholly purged. If the Holy Spirit is not ruling men, they become corrupt again; but the Holy Spirit must cleanse the wounds daily. (AE 51:373).

Now there’s a Gospel-driven, Christ-centered reading of the Good Samaritan! It’s the very thing that many prophets and kings through the Old Testament desired to see, but did not have the opportunity; they just kept looking forward to it in faith. It’s the very thing that the disciples did get to see, even if they did not quite get it until after Jesus’ death and resurrection. It’s the very thing that the lawyer who stood up to test Jesus needed to hear, but he thought too highly of himself.

Earlier in Luke chapter 10, Jesus sent out the seventy-two, instructing and authorizing them to preach His peace and heal in His name. When they returned, they were exuberant that even the demons were subject to them in Jesus’ name (Lk. 10:17). But Jesus had to temper their enthusiasm, lest they think more highly of themselves than they ought. “Do not rejoice in this,” Jesus said, “that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Lk. 10:2). Then Jesus the Son rejoiced in the Holy Spirit that God the Father actually hides these things from the worldly wise and understanding folks, and instead reveals them to little children—that is, to those who receive Him by faith.

So the lawyer stands up to test Jesus. “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Wrong question, Mr. Lawyer! Not only do you not do anything to receive an inheritance—after all, an inheritance is pure gift—but you’re also thinking more highly of yourself than you ought. But Jesus plays along. Mr. Lawyer asks a what-shall-I-do question, so Jesus gives a here’s-what-to-do answer. He points the lawyer to the Law—love God with every ounce and fiber of your being, and love your neighbor as yourself. “Do this, and you will live.” Oops! The lawyer knows he’s been caught. Can he truly keep all that law? What about those less-than-desirable neighbors? “There must be an exception, an escape clause, for who really counts as my neighbor,” he thinks. Then comes Jesus’ famous story of the Good Samaritan.

You see, the lawyer thought more highly of himself than he ought, and even that height of self-esteem was not high enough. He did not realize that, actually, he was the man who had been robbed and beaten and was lying half-dead in the ditch. He did not realize that he was in need of a Good Samaritan to rescue him and bind up his wounds. After all, the priest and the Levite—symbols of the old law itself—could not and did not help. “For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” Only the Good Samaritan could help.

Only the Good Samaritan can help you and me. We too are that man who has been robbed and beaten by sin, death, and the devil. We are the ones lying half-dead in the ditch along the road. As Luther proclaimed, “Adam fell among the robbers and implanted sin in us all.” If we want to be like the lawyer—thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought—then we only “annul the covenant previously ratified by God” and make void God’s promise of rescue and healing in Jesus. If we want to think and believe and live as though our eternal inheritance “comes by the law”—asking the what-shall-I-do questions in our life with God—then we miss the point that Jesus makes in telling this parable about Himself.

You see, Jesus does it all. He is the Samaritan who comes to your rescue. When He was accused of being a Samaritan and having a demon, Jesus only objected to having a demon (Jn. 8:48-49). He never objected to being a Samaritan, because, after all, He is the Good Samaritan par excellence. Again, as Luther proclaimed, “He it is who binds our wounds, carries us into the church and is now healing us. So we are now under the Physician’s care.” Here we have the cleansing bath of His Baptism, the healing therapy of His words of forgiveness, the sustaining, life-giving medicine of His Supper.

This is the sober judgment of faith that St. Paul urges us to take on—the sober judgment of receiving Christ, our Samaritan and His healing care.

To our friends from Emmaus, this healing is especially for you this day. You have labored long and hard and faithfully to keep the Jefferson Avenue branch of the Good Samaritan’s hospital open and functioning. You have labored long and hard and faithfully to offer other people, robbed and beaten by sin, death, and Satan, the very healing of Jesus and His forgiveness. But this chapter of the Emmaus hospital had to come to a close. And now you no doubt feel much like the man lying half-dead in the ditch. But please do not beat yourselves up. Please do not rob yourselves of the forgiveness and peace that Jesus has given and still gives to you. “He it is who binds [your] wounds, carries [you] into the church and is now healing [you].” Good Samaritan Jesus binds up your wounds so that you may find healing in His wounds. He places you on His beast of burden as He bears your burdens. He still brings you into His inn—His Church, still takes care of you, and still pays for all of your care until He returns.

And I know I can speak for your brothers and sisters here at Hope. With sober judgment we say, “Welcome! We welcome you as fellow sinners being healed by Christ, our Samaritan. Please join us as we all convalesce together under Jesus’ compassion.”

The healing of Christ, our Samaritan, is also for all of us who are concerned over the recent hurricanes—first Harvey, now Irma, and possibly Jose yet to come. Some people are making news by pronouncing these hurricanes as God’s judgment—for our current president, for our decaying Western values, for whatever. Perhaps…but perhaps not. There’s just one problem with pronouncing these hurricanes as God’s specific judgment for some specific problem: God Himself has not clearly told us in His Word. What He has told us is that when tragedies like this happen, we do not point out other peoples’ sins. No, Jesus says, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Lk. 13:3, 5). Translation: do not think more highly of yourself than you ought in pronouncing such judgments on God’s behalf. Added translation: Don’t miss the healing of Good Samaritan Jesus. We all are that man lying half dead in the ditch, even as hurricanes roar. Jesus comes to rescue and heal us all. And, yes, as we convalesce, we get to be neighbors to those who fall prey to such disasters. We get to show the fruits of faith by showing charity and giving relief aid.

This is the Good News of our Good Samaritan, Jesus Himself. Amen.

Homily for Trinity 5 - 2017

The Net of the Gospel
1 Kings 19:11-21; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Luke 5:1-11

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Poor Elijah! He thought he was spent. He thought it was time to retire from his prophetic ministry. “Lord, I’ve served you all these years. Look how fruitless it’s all been. Lord, I’m all alone. I’m done.” But God does not play into Elijah’s pity party. “Now, now, Elijah. Just get up and get back to work. Go and anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Then go and anoint Jehu as king over Israel. And then go and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat as your successor.” Then God told despairing Elijah to stop fretting about the Church. After all, it’s the Lord’s Church, and the Lord promises to take care of her as He sees fit. Elijah just needed to stop wallowing in his self-pity and get on with what God had given him to do.

Then there’s Peter. If Elijah was seeking early retirement, Peter was trying to evade the calling altogether. “Lord, we’re the fishermen. We know how to fish, when to fish—at night—and where to fish—in the shallow water. We’ve been working all night and this fishing trip was just a dud.” And then, when the Lord demonstrated that He is the Lord of all creation—that even He can bring a great catch of fish, and in broad daylight and from the deep waters—then Peter slumped into his own pity party. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” This was most certainly true, of course. But still beside the point. Just as beside the point as Elijah thinking he was the only believer left on the face of the planet.

The point is not that Peter is sinful—he is. The point is that Jesus is gracious. The point is that Jesus is Lord of all creation and all of life, and He overflows with gifts for all. He showed this with that boatful of beautiful flopping fish and the torn nets that had been so carefully mended and stowed away earlier that day. No, Jesus was not going away, as Peter requested. Instead, Jesus wanted to take Peter and his fishing buddies away with Him. Now Jesus would take Peter on a fishing trip—not for fish, but for people. “From now on,” Jesus tells Peter, “you will be catching men.” Literally, it says, “you will catch people alive.”

So, with hearts uplifted and sins forgiven, Peter, Andrew, James and John, got up, walked away from their past, their careers, their incomes, even their families. “They left everything and followed Him.” They put one foot in front of the other and walked behind Jesus. And Jesus began their three-year intensive teaching. What was He teaching them? All about the net that they would toss into the sea of humanity to bring up a catch for God Himself. Let’s call it the net of the Gospel.

In our second reading today, St. Paul does some pondering on this net. Folks have always looked at the message of the Gospel with a good dose of skepticism. They wonder, “You really think you can do something with that—a message about a guy dying on a cross and somehow making you right with God?” “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.”

The Word of the Cross. That’s the net that our Lord Jesus put into the hands of Peter, Andrew, James and John. It’s the net He’s put into the hands of His preachers and pastors in all the years and centuries since. It’s a net of words—nothing but words—cast into a world drowning in words. But these words are different from all the rest. These words—the net of the Gospel—actually have a divine power in them, a power to grab hold of people’s hearts and haul them out of the sea of sin in which they live and bring them into the boat of the Church. And once in the Church, people learn to live from those words and from them alone. “For [the Gospel] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16).

This net, though, is an affront to those who think themselves “wise” in this world. God would actually choose to save people through “the folly of what we preach”? Now, this folly does not refer to the men who are preachers making fools of themselves in the pulpit (They might very well do that from time to time.). No, the folly refers to the content of the Church’s message. That God would choose to send His Son into the world and take on our human flesh and blood? That God would have His Son suffer and die on a cross? That He would actually rise again on the third day? That’s precisely the net of the Gospel—the content of the Church’s message. That’s precisely how God catches people alive and saves those who believe.

“Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom.” And we? “We preach Christ crucified.” And, by the way, the message of the cross is not about any empty cross, no matter what some well-intentioned but misguided preacher may have tried telling you. Not only were empty crosses a dime a dozen, but also empty crosses catch no one for God’s kingdom. Empty crosses can mean only one thing: that the person once nailed to it was taken away. We do not preach an empty cross. We preach a cross on which hangs the Crucified One. He, not the cross itself, makes the cross full of power and salvation. WHO is hanging on that cross and WHY He is hanging there—that’s the net, the story, we cast out into the world to haul people in for the Kingdom of God.

He who is on that Cross is “the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). The Lord of glory confesses that He who is on the Cross is the One who created us at the beginning, the One through whom all things were made. “He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross. He who is King of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns. He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery.” So the Church sings in an ancient hymn for Good Friday.

It is God-in-the-Flesh, the Eternal Son, our Maker, who hangs on that tree. That should lead each of us and all of us to wonder indeed. But the message of the Cross goes beyond the Who to the Why. “Lord, WHY are You hanging there? Why do You permit this outrage? Why did You come into our flesh in the first place? Why, O Lord?”

Are you ready for His answer? He says, “I came to be the Lamb of God who would take away your sin and the sin of the world. I had no sin, but I came to bear your sin and sins in My body on the tree. I came so that you might die to sin and live for righteousness. I, who had no sin, came that I may be made sin for you, that in Me you might become the righteousness of God. I came to pour out My blood and thus blot out the handwriting of the Law that was against you. I came to be wounded for your transgressions, crushed for your iniquities, that upon Me would rest the chastisement that brings you peace, and that by My stripes you may be healed. I came because you—every one of you—like sheep have gone astray, turning to your own way. So the Lord has laid on Me the iniquity of you all. Since you were under the curse—remember, cursed in the person who does not continue in all the things written in the Law—I came to become a curse for you, for cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. Thus I would free you from your curse by means of My own.”

So we cry out: “But why, O Lord? Why would you do this for us? Why would you embrace this suffering and death, this terror and darkness, to free us from what we clearly deserved?” And again comes His answer, both sweet and profound: “Because I love you. Because I want you to share with Me the joys of a life that never ends. Because I did not make you to live for a few measly years and then suffer and die. I made you to live in the joy of My Father’s house forever. And I am utterly committed to doing whatever it takes to bring you there. You matter to me, and I hold you precious.”

That’s the net! That’s the story—not a fiction, but it is a narrative—that He gives us to cast into the world. And is it ever one powerful net, one powerful story! We know its power first hand. After all, it has plucked us up out of the sea of this world and landed us in the boat of the Church. And we have come to believe this story and are even now being saved by the power of this story.

But once in the boat, He bids all of us also to join in casting this net of the Gospel, to bring yet more and more to know this story, to love this Savior, and to find through faith in Him that life that never ends. “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching [people alive].” Armed only with this, our holy net, we go forth from this place to cast it with joy. After all, it is the power of God for salvation! Amen.

Homily for The Resurrection of Our Lord - 2017

"Dawn of New Life and New Creation"
Job 19:23-27 and Mark 16:1-8

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Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Talk about turning the tables! Talk about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat! On Good Friday it all looked hopeless and lost. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God—through whom the universe was created—fought Satan in a duel to the death. It was the culmination of a cosmic battle that began in the Garden of Eden and has raged through the centuries.

It was also the culmination of a thirty years’ war that began way back at Christmas. Accompanied by angel armies, Jesus entered time and space to reclaim and retake His world from Satan and death. Then Jesus went underground, appearing as a helpless baby born to obscure parents. But Satan saw the plan unfolding and strove to extinguish the threat. The battle was joined when Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s attempted assassination of their newborn baby. The fog of war openly intensified when Satan confronted grown-up Jesus in the wilderness, trying to bring Jesus over to his side just as he did with Adam and Eve. And the battles flared every time Jesus expelled an evil spirit, healed a broken body, and raised someone from the dead.

The D-Day of this ages-long war took place on a hill called “Skull Place.” Jesus was crucified and put to death. The Son of God died. Then He was buried in a borrowed tomb. To the naked eye, Satan had won the war. Sixteenth century reformer Martin Luther describes it as Satan dragging the Son of God off His throne, killing Him, and then burying Him under his feet. Nineteenth century pastor C. F. W. Walther expressed it vividly in his Easter hymn, “He’s Risen, He’s Risen.” Describing Jesus’ death, Walther sings:

“The foe was triumphant when on Calvary
The Lord of creation was nailed to the tree.
In Satan’s domain did the hosts shout and jeer,
For Jesus was slain, whom the evil ones fear.”
(LSB 480:2)

But it turns out to be a short-lived victory. As it happens, Jesus turned the tables on Satan. Walther then sings:

“But short was their triumph; the Savior arose,
And death, hell, and Satan He vanquished His foes.”
(LSB 480:3)

What does this mean for us? Everything! All of our life and all of our hope hinges on this one event that changed the course of history forever. A few years ago, the well-known church historian Jaroslav Pelikan died. It’s been reported that he said these last words: “If Jesus has not risen from the dead, nothing else matters; if Jesus has risen from the dead, nothing else matters!” Let me repeat that: “If Jesus has not risen from the dead, nothing else matters; if Jesus has risen from the dead, nothing else matters!” It’s why we call ourselves Christians. It’s why we call out to God in confidence. It’s why we eagerly anticipate eternal life in the age to come!

When He rises from the dead, Jesus opens up the future. From the earliest days of the Church, this day has been known as the eighth day of creation, also called the first day of the new creation. That’s why our baptismal font, and many others, have eight sides to them. It’s in our Baptism where we are born anew and given life in the new creation. Jesus’ resurrection is the vanguard of the new creation.

And because Jesus rose from the dead, so shall we. That’s the joy of Easter. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). When we see the first flower bloom in spring, we know that all the rest are soon to follow. So it is with Jesus. Just as He has risen bodily from the dead, so shall we. And God will complete what He first began in the Garden of Eden. There He raised a human being from dust of the ground. Adam and Eve had access to the Tree of Life. But then they sinned. And God had to expel them from the garden…and from access to the Tree of Life. They were doomed to die, as are we. But now we will be raised again from the ground in the resurrection. “Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:23). We were deprived access to the Tree of Life, but now we have access to the Tree of Life forever. That tree looks like the cross and all that Jesus achieved for us there.

And because we will rise, the earth will also be renewed and restored. We become the first fruits of God’s entire creation. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19). You see, when we are raised from the dead, creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption. It will live under the gracious and benevolent rule of God’s children—us—along with Jesus. So it goes from Jesus to us to all of creation.

What does this mean for the art of living by faith? Does it mean life will be easy for us from now on? Does it mean the prospect of dying one day is easy and no longer fearful? Not necessarily. In fact, the resurrection may even make things more difficult. It might just destroy our illusions and our attempts to avoid, evade, or even sugarcoat what death is.

Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse once pointed out that the message of Easter is not, “Jesus lives,” but rather, “Jesus has risen!” What’s the difference? In our culture, we have become comfortable talking about departed loved ones this way: “So-and-so lives on in our hearts and memories.” Or we say, “They will always be with us.” Huh? What does this even mean? The hard, cold fact is, they died. They’re dead. They’re buried in the earth. Do we mean some kind of disembodied consciousness, floating around somewhere, finally free from the physical world? Do we mean some sort of immortal soul, once entrapped in a body but now freed from that cage?

The resurrection does not necessarily make our dying easier, as if we are moving to some higher form of being with death as a natural portal. No, the resurrection actually makes dying hard. The resurrection clearly shows that death is not a friend at all. It’s not natural at all. It’s an enemy. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Why else do we constantly try to avoid thinking about death, try to cheat death, or try to stem the tide of death? We instinctively know that death is the enemy to life.

That’s why the message of Jesus risen is the message of bodily resurrection. It’s not natural for the body to die and go to the grave. It’s not right for death to rip our body and soul apart. The resurrection is a celebration of bodily life! It’s the celebration of a body given new life, a body enlivened with breath once again, a body that walks on the earth—a body that will live forever. And remember Jesus’ Ascension. When He ascends into heaven, He does not leave His body behind. He ascends bodily!

So Jesus’ resurrection, just like His incarnation, is a wonderful and unqualified affirmation of bodily life. And this is great Good News when we now go through all the pains and sufferings, the aches and pains in our own bodies. The problem is not our bodies; they don’t cause the suffering. The problem is the sin and death that causes the aches and pains to our bodies.

And to what shall we rise? What is this future that Christ has opened for us? What kind of world will we find ourselves in? A feast prepared for us by God Himself! Let’s think of it as a grand welcome-home party. (Remember the parable of the prodigal son?) A feast that we will see, and hear, and feel, and taste.

Perhaps we can think of it as a winery. You’ve heard of Robert Mondavi, the famous California winemaker. It’s been said that whenever he came out with a new wine, he would throw a fabulous party and feast at his winery. He would invite the who’s who of the wine world, the tasters and reviewers. He would invite the rich and the famous, the celebrities and movie stars.

Well, let’s think of Jesus as the One who plants a vineyard, carefully tends it, prunes the branches, manages the canopy cover, tastes the grapes, harvests the grapes, presses them, ferments them, and makes the wine. When all is ready, He sends out the invitations to join Him at His eternal party of food, music, and wine. But these invitations go out not just to the rich and famous; they go out to sinners and rebels, that is, you and me. He has prepared this rich, fabulous feast for you and me in fellowship with Him. This is what awaits us!

Until that day, let’s celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and the devil with the Lord’s Supper! That’s why we worship on Sundays. Here we get to celebrate our Lord’s victory—the first day of the new creation, the first day of the rest of our lives! Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Homily for Good Friday - 2017

"The Day Creation Fell Apart"
John 18-19 with Romans 5:8

If you lived in St. Louis back in 1993, you no doubt remember the great “500-year flood.” If you lived elsewhere, you probably heard about it in the news. The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers both rose to heights not seen in many generations. This flooding happened about a year after the state of Missouri legalized riverboat gambling. So some preachers at the time connected the dots and declared that the flood was God’s judgment on the riverboat gambling. Just one problem: the riverboats survived. After all, they do float! If this were God’s judgment, perhaps lightning would have been more effective.

Viewing God’s judgment in such a way sounds, well, a bit humorous, as though God merely sits on a cloud and shoots down His lightning bolt judgments on various human behaviors, even somewhat arbitrarily. And in our day, many believe that God certainly cannot get angry. After all, He’s a loving God, you know.

So, does God get angry? If so, why? And how does He express that anger or judgment? And upon whom? That’s what Good Friday is all about. The death of Jesus around AD 30 forces us to confront how seriously God takes human sin…and, more importantly, what He does about it.

Through Lent we have explored how God works in and through creation to carry out His purposes. When God blesses, creation flourishes and life abounds. When He curses or judges, creation falls apart and life ceases to exist. The Bible gives many examples of God’s blessing and God’s cursing.

When God created the earth, He blessed it. Life sprouted and blossomed, animals and humans became fruitful and multiplied in number. But also, when Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground. Now that very earth that gave us life would grind us back into dust. And what happened in the flood of Noah’s day? Man’s great evil was judged, the earth and the skies opened with water, creation fell apart.

We can see similar things in our day. But without a clear word of revelation from God, let’s not declare a particular tragedy as God’s judgment on a particular action. But we can speak in a more general way. You see, God’s blessing and curse are embedded in creation. We realize this especially when we remember that everyone dies—sometimes subtly and slowly, other times suddenly and tragically.

We see this in our own bodies. Our own bodies carry God’s creative blessing as well as His judgment. God gives us life through our parents, and He sustains and nourishes that life as we grow into adulthood. But as we grow and age, we also see our bodies slowly fall apart, no matter how healthy we may be.

And because of us, the creation suffers as well. By God’s blessing, planet earth has a stable orbit, babies are born, vineyards grow, and life springs forth, despite sin and evil in the world. At the same time, the curse embedded in the earth fills our lives with toils and worries and tragedies and widespread death. Again, not necessarily specific punishments for specific sins, but certainly times for us to say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

We especially see God’s blessing and God’s curse on Good Friday. God pours out His wrath upon His only-begotten Son. Jesus dies in His created body, the body He took from His mother, Mary. And so Jesus “bowed His head and gave up His spirit/breath.” His body falls apart. It stops functioning. It stops moving. And creation suffers too. The sky darkened and the earth quaked. Creation fell apart—ripped apart at the seams. Jesus’ body grew limp. He was taken down from the cross, wrapped, and placed into a stone tomb.

But as we ponder the death of Jesus, let’s do more than merely dwell on His physical agony—the nails through His hands and feet, the dehydration, the asphyxiation. After all, many others suffered the very same agonies and even for much longer than six hours. And their suffering is not nearly as significant for us or for others. Now, we do not take Jesus’ physical agony lightly, but we do focus on what made His suffering unique. What made Jesus’ agony and bitter pains unique in human history? In that one created human body, Jesus experienced the full outpouring and venting of God’s wrath upon the entire human race from Adam and Eve to the present day. Jesus experienced all of the wrath that God could use to annihilate the world and everything in it. Remember Jesus’ words: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” God’s wrath is being abandoned by God, rather than embraced by Him. And when God abandons us or His creation, everything falls apart.

God does withdraw His support. He does turn His back on the human race and His creation. But He does so to Jesus in our place. St. Paul writes: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Died for us? What does this mean? Jesus died in our place. He died so that we may not have to endure God’s eternal displeasure and disappointment.

The Bible calls this an “atoning sacrifice,” or “propitiation.” This Jesus turns aside God’s wrath. He deflects God’s anger off us and onto Himself. Just as a lightning rod attracts a bolt of lightning, absorbs it, and dissipates it into nothing, that’s what Christ does for us. He attracts the wrath of God to Himself so it will not strike us. He absorbs it and He dissipates it until it is no more. This is no mere man who dies, but the very Son of God in the flesh. He absorbs all of God’s wrath against all of humanity. And He does so in His creaturely body.

So as God turns His back on Jesus, He turns His loving face toward us!

That means we can be certain of God’s love for us. Look how He showed and acted upon that love: He sacrificed His own Son. That’s how much He wanted—and still wants—you and me. That’s how much He wanted—and still wants—us to enjoy the benefits of His love and His gift of life. Let’s never take it for granted, because, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). Amen.

Homily for Lent 3 Evening Prayer

"Redemption--Second Article"
Apostles' Creed, Second Article
(fourth in a catechetical series)

Here we are. The Second Article of the Creed. The heart of the Christian faith. Jesus’ work of redemption for us. Why must Jesus redeem us? Our human sin. Here we deal with human sinners and God the justifier. But notice this: the problem is not that we are creatures. The problem is not that this world is a material world. As we heard last week, these are God’s good works and gifts. In addition, animals did not sin; the physical world did not sin. In a way, they are “innocent” even as they have suffered because of human sin.

No, the problem is us. The problem is that we, God’s prized human creatures, have misused and abused His world. Martin Luther made a very insightful statement in his theses for debate at the town of Heidelberg. He said that “we use the best things in the worst way.” We don’t use bad things in the worst way; we use the best things in the worst way. What do we mean by best things? God’s great gifts to us: our bodies, our lives, our family, our work, our income, and so on. What does it mean to use these things in the worst way? It means we idolize them. We force them to do things for us that they were not created to do. We try to get our security and happiness from them. And when we do that, we further misuse them by keeping them for ourselves rather than for serving our neighbor.

So we become enslaved to and trapped by these best things. Or, better, our desires for them entrap us. Then we become disappointed. You see, these best things cannot give us what we seek from them. Satan has lured us, God’s beloved human creatures, into captivity. We have become POWs behind enemy lines.

But here’s the wonderful and remarkable thing about this Second Article. Since God has created this world, He refuses to let go of His creation. He made it good. He loves it. The world is not the problem. So God does not scrap His creation and start over. No, He sets out to reclaim and restore His creation—beginning with us, because the problem began with us. Just as God made room in His creation for us creatures, now He makes room for us sinful creatures who rebelled against Him. He who created us is He who redeems us—true God and true Man.

How does God redeem us? First, God dives down into the depths of His creation, to take up residence in it and fix it for good. But He does this in a completely unexpected way. Ponder this: God has always been present and active in His creation. The universe cannot contain Him, but, as Luther noted, God is still present and active in the smallest flower petal. It’s how He keeps His creation going. Also ponder this: God revealed Himself in many ways in the Old Testament—the angel to Abraham, the burning bush to Moses, the pillar of cloud and fire to the Israelites.

But now in Jesus Christ, God reveals Himself and intervenes in His creation in a most personal and intimate way. He takes a created body into Himself and He lives a creaturely life. He makes room in His life to take on a human body and all that entails—a human mind, a human history, and human DNA that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. He is “true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary”; Creator of the universe and a creature within that creation, all at the same time. Who would have imagined this?

Jesus’ incarnation affirms the goodness of creation like nothing else. God is saying His creation is good and important to Him. And Jesus does more than just take on a human body to live in the midst of sin and evil. He becomes human in order to do away with, to destroy, and to overcome sin and evil and everything that pollutes and disfigures His beautiful world.

What does this mean for the art of living by faith? First, it means that we cannot and should not look for God anywhere else than in this Man, Jesus Christ. Faith does not look to some spiritual, ethereal realm. It does not look to some impersonal “force” on the outer fringes of the galaxy. No, faith looks to this one Man, our brother, as God Himself. Where Jesus is, there is God. This Man is God; God is this Man. As Jesus said, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). So, whoever rejects Jesus also rejects their Creator God. It’s personal—a personal rejection.

Second, Jesus’ incarnation also means that God’s work of redemption does not devalue the physical creation nor our physical bodies. They are just as important as our souls. They are so important that God Himself has embraced them by becoming part of His own creation. He comes to redeem both body and soul.

Not only does God redeem us by taking on a physical, creaturely, human body, but He also works through that creaturely body to accomplish our redemption. You see, our sin and rebellion were deeply personal. They offended God because they showed our rejection of Him and His good purposes for us. They showed our betrayal of God. And yet God in the most personal way enters His creation, personally takes our sin and rebellion upon Himself, personally does away with it, and personally conquers it.

Our loving God works through His creation—His human body—to accomplish the redemption of all human bodies and all of creation itself. How so? As Luther wrote, “not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.” The Creed itself hammers it home. In His very body Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” And He rose again in that same body.

C. S. Lewis spoke of Jesus as a pearl diver who strips himself, then dives into the murky depths in order to reclaim a priceless pearl, and then bursts back up through the surface with that pearl firmly in his grasp. The entire Christian story turns on this point. As Lewis said: “God really has dived down into the bottom of creation, and has come up bringing the whole redeemed nature on His shoulders [emphasis added]. The miracles that have already happened are, of course…the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on. Christ has risen, and so we shall rise.”

In the First Article, we cannot deal with God apart from His creation. Now in the Second Article, we cannot deal with God’s graciousness in redeeming us from sin apart from the creaturely human body of Jesus. Through this physical human body of a Jewish man we encounter our Redeemer and Lord!

What does this mean for the art of living by faith? It means that we seek God’s gifts only in Jesus Christ, only because of Jesus Christ. Only in the body of Christ does God reveal His attitude and His intentions toward us. Like a devoted parent, God will stop at nothing to reclaim and restore His creation. That includes taking upon Himself a frail human body—a body that He keeps into all eternity. It also includes suffering and dying in that human body at the hands of His rebellious, lost human creatures. All this He does for us—creatures made in His image, creatures made to manage all creation, creatures who rejected Him and tried to usurp His glory. All this He does to restore us and adopt us as His children and heirs of His kingdom.

This changes everything for us. It means that when things happen—things we cannot understand, tragic things that defy explanation, things we cannot make sense of—faith turns to the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

This is what Luther gets at when he speaks of the “hidden God” and the “proclaimed God.” When we look for answers in places other than Jesus, we often get lost, frustrated, and angry. When we look elsewhere, we encounter the silence of God. He doesn’t always give us the answers we want, because, after all, He is not answerable or accountable to us. But in the flesh and blood of Jesus, in His life, and especially in His death and resurrection, we encounter God speaking to us. And what does He say? He speaks His word of love. As Paul said in Romans 5[:8], “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So, when I cannot answer a question, when I have no explanations, I can say, “I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know what this means. But I do know this: nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus my Lord.”

C. S. Lewis once said that Jesus is the missing chapter to our lives, the missing chapter that makes sense of our lives. In Jesus, our stories now make sense. You see, in Jesus, we see our true story, the entire story of our lives. We see in Him our past and our present—He created us and He preserves us. We see in Him our present and our future—He redeems  us and will raise us from the dead. Since He is our Creator and Redeemer, our past, present, and future are all found and united in Him. Amen.

Homily for the Baptism of Our Lord - 2017

"About Being 'Sinner'"
Matthew 3:13-17

Listen here.

Epiphany—revealing—continues today with the Lord Jesus being baptized. Jesus went to His pastor, John the son of Zechariah, and asked to be baptized. Today commemorates Jesus’ own “baptismal birthday.” But if you think about it, something awfully strange is going on. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? The answer really has two parts: 1) to reveal Himself publicly as the Savior, and 2) to show Himself to be a “sinner.” Jesus’ baptism is the first time He comes out publicly to begin His ministry among people. And in that revealing, in that coming out, Jesus identifies Himself as a “sinner.”

First, bear in mind the message Jesus sent just by going to John for baptism. John preached and practiced “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Lk. 3:3). As John was preaching, he was calling sinners to repentance. He was boldly confronting people with the truth: they were sinners who sinned; they were sinners who truly needed help and rescue. John called for repentance—“a new thinking”—as the way to receive the revealed Messiah.

The Greek word for “repentance” quite simply means “a new mind-set," or "a new way of thinking.” This is not a new thinking that you can conjure up on your own. Here’s why. We have to go back to the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve fell into sin. There we see God’s original thinking. He wanted all creatures to live and exist for His praise and glory. Humans were the crown of His creation. He would graciously provide everything for them. He would be in the closest, purest relationship with His people, and His created people would trust and worship Him alone.

But something went tragically wrong. Adam and Eve conjured up a thinking of their own. Let’s call it a “free-thinking.” Adam and Eve thought, and then acted, as if no one—not even their God and Creator—should tell them what to do. “I’m free, man; don’t tell me what to do. Don’t bind me with your notions of good or bad, right or wrong. Life is about what feels good to me.” Sounds like our “free-thinking” today, doesn’t it? Now, Eve could rightly say the devil made her do it. But that was no excuse for having a “free-thinking” that led her into the prison cell of sin and death. It’s no excuse for you either. Freedom from the God who made you and loves you is really no freedom at all! Instead, it’s a curse…on you, me, and all humanity.

Then an amazing thing happened. God decided He would not throw out the whole dead, rotten, sinful mess. No, He decided to cleanse it, purify it, and give it a new thinking—a thinking that would return Adam and Eve, and you and me, to His original thinking.

When Jesus is baptized, we see that plan kicking into high gear. But baptism is only for sinners, not for “good, upright people.” Only sinners, only Satan-seduced “free thinkers,” need baptism. Remember how John the Baptizer chastised the “good” Pharisees when they showed up. They weren’t looking to be baptized; they were merely curious. Besides, the “good, upright” Pharisees themselves would never dare be baptized. That would mean they’d have to confess their sins. After all, they just knew—they presumed—that God saved them without worrying about that messy, ordinary water stuff.

So when Jesus shows up and asks to be baptized by John, John did not want to baptize Him. John knew that Jesus was not a “sinner.” He was without sin, after all! Despite John’s protests, though, Jesus said, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus also knew He had no sin, but He was making Himself a sinner by being baptized.

Yes, you heard that right. Jesus made Himself a “sinner.” He made Himself the chief of sinners. Jesus’ baptism is about Him identifying Himself as “sinner.” You see, Jesus becomes sinner for the benefit of all sinners. Not only does Jesus take on our flesh and blood, and everything about us, but He also takes on our sin, our guilt, our curse. This was to “fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus does this to identify Himself with the cesspool of our lives. Not just the rotten things we do or say or think—that’s too shallow and superficial. Jesus identifies Himself with the rottenness and corruption that dwells within us, within our heart.

You and I could never fulfill all of God’s righteousness. Even if you and I lived a thousand lives and died a million deaths, we could never fulfill God’s justice. When a crime is committed, we want justice to be served. We want the murderer or the thief or the vandal to be arrested, convicted, and sentenced. Rightly so. The same holds for God’s justice. A crime was committed—on God’s perfect creation, on God’s loving care, on whole-hearted trust in God. And we—you and I—are the culprits. There must be justice. Sinners must pay. So Jesus identifies Himself as a sinner by being baptized. He would, and later did, receive the full, crushing weight of God’s arrest, conviction, and sentencing—God’s wrath. When He was baptized, Jesus was marked for death all the way to the bloody cross. And here’s why: “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Cor. 5:21).

In His baptism Jesus made Himself a dirty sinner, so that in our Baptism He might make us clean saints. When Jesus goes through baptism, He hallows it and holds it up as a treasure for us. And, at the same time, our Baptism teaches us to be “sinners.” Ponder that for a moment. When you were baptized, you were identified for all of life as a sinner who needs daily forgiveness. This is the “new thinking” of repentance. You are freed to admit it—you are “sinner.” You cannot save yourself. And once saved, you cannot keep yourself saved. Because of your sinful flesh you are too weak to do that. And so, you need Jesus. You need His Baptism.

It’s a bit like the Alcoholics Anonymous routine. Their first step—and it’s a good one—is for an alcoholic to admit that he/she is an alcoholic. Denying it or avoiding it only prevents the help. The same is true—even more so—for baptized Christians. What does such baptizing with water indicate? “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Remember, sinless Jesus made Himself the chief of sinners for you. You and I have nothing to lose by daily admitting we are sinners who constantly sin in all we do or say or think. In fact, we have everything to gain. The “new thinking” of repentance also includes Jesus’ forgiveness in Baptism. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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” (Rom. 6:3-4). That newness of life is the life of forgiveness—confessing you need it and receiving it in all the ways that God gives it: in water, in words, and in bread and wine. “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11).

This is how Baptism opens heaven for “sinners”—for you, for me. As Matthew tells us, the Spirit of God descended on Jesus as a dove, and the Father’s voice was heard: “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” In your Baptism, the Holy Spirit descended on you in His gentleness and peace. Now that same Spirit leads you in all of your believing and living. In your Baptism, the Father speaks for you just as He spoke for Jesus. Your Father tells you, “You are My beloved son or daughter. I am pleased with you.” How can God say that? Because you are joined to Jesus in that Baptism.

It’s all about being “sinner.” When Jesus was baptized, He identified and revealed Himself as “sinner.” He made Himself one of us so that He might make us like Himself: beloved children of God our Father. Amen.

Homily for Good Friday

"Sacrifice in the Flesh"
John 18:1-19:42 & Luke 1:26-38

Listen here.

This single service called the “Holy Three Days”--Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—is the most sacred time of our Christian year. This year Good Friday also falls on March 25, the day the Church also sets aside for the Annunciation of our Lord—the time when the angel Gabriel came to the Virgin Mary and announced that she would become pregnant with and give birth to the Son of God.

What a marvelous intersection of Jesus’ Birth and Death, of His taking on flesh and His offering the ultimate sacrifice! The very flesh and blood Savior conceived and born of Mary would reveal Himself as God’s great sacrifice in the flesh for you. The Son of God stooped down to take on our human flesh and blood for the express purpose of sacrificing Himself on the cross for you. Without His flesh and blood, He could not have suffered and died for you. And when He suffers and dies in His flesh given by Mary, He restores you, in your flesh, to life with God.

In the ancient world, people thought that a person died on the same day that he was first conceived. Instead of celebrating birthdays, as we do, they would mark the day that a person died and then say, “That’s the day, all those years ago, when Uncle Barnabas was conceived in his mother’s womb.” So the early church marked the day of Jesus’ death as the same day, 33 years earlier, when He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary. So, today we get to mark the day when He first took on flesh and blood along with the day on which He sacrificed Himself in the flesh.

On Annunciation Day we fix our eyes on the Virgin who conceived and bore a Son, and we call Him “Immanuel.” On Good Friday we fix our eyes on the suffering, suffocating, dying Son of God who is with us in our place on the bloody cross. Annunciation draws us to the fullness of time when God sent forth His Son, born of a woman. Good Friday shows us how He redeems us who are born under the law and how God adopts us as His heirs of His heavenly gifts.

God showed His favor to Mary as He prepared for His Son to be born. He shows you His favor through His Son crucified, dead, and buried. Mary was to name Him “Jesus” because, as He shows on the Cross, He saves you, His people, from your sins. Mary was promised that her Son would reign over the house of Jacob forever. You see that promise fulfilled as Jesus hangs lifeless on His cross-shaped throne, crowned with thorns, with the charge “King of the Jews” hanging above His head.

His tiny infant hands grew to bless and heal, to cleanse the temple and comfort the downtrodden. But then they received the piercing nails pinning Him to the cross in your place. His adorable baby feet grew to walk the dusty roads as He proclaimed God’s kingdom, to walk miraculously on the water as He rescued Peter from drowning, and, finally, to stomp on the serpent’s head by being nailed to a tree. His vibrant infant eyes once looked to His Virgin Mother in dependence and adoration, but from the cross He could only see the mocking gestures, the angry faces, and His God who had forsaken Him instead of you. At first, His mouth could only coo and gurgle, but then it would speak the great wisdom of the Triune God and His loving mercy, especially as it uttered those immortal and life-giving words: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34).

The security of swaddling cloths had to give way to the shameful nakedness of the cross, because our sin made us naked in shame before God. But wrapped in Christ’s blood, you have security in His forgiveness. The friendly wood of the manger had to give way to the hard, rough wood of the cross. It might seem like “folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). The sweet milk from Mary’s breast had to give way to the bitter, vinegar-filled cup of God’s wrath. It was the only way that you and I could taste and see that the Lord is good.

Mother Mary made sure to clothe Him as He grew up, but the soldiers made sure to strip Him bare as they lifted Him from the earth. But never fear: in your Baptism you are clothed with the robe of Christ’s perfect life. When Jesus was an infant small, His Virgin Mother held Him and tended His every need. But as He hung from the Cross, He tended to her need as He gave her to the Apostle John and gave John to her as a new son. Not only does this crucified Son of the Highest reconcile you to God, but He also reconciles you to each other and teaches you to sacrifice yourselves for one another.

When Mary took Jesus to the temple to be circumcised, she was told, “A sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Lk. 2:35). But the piercing that saves you and heals you came when the soldier pierced Jesus’ side “and at once there came out blood and water” (Jn. 19:34). Yes, He, not His Mother, was “wounded for [your] transgressions” and “crushed for [your] iniquities…and with His stripes [you] are healed” (Is. 53:5). And long after Jesus last rested in the warm, tender embrace of His Mother, He finally rested in the cold, hard tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus’ rest in the tomb shows you that you now have rest with God.

When we celebrate the Annunciation, we hear Mary respond to the angel, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). When we celebrate Good Friday, we ponder the cruel blows, the mock trials, the contrived death sentence, the scourging that shreds His flesh. We hear the echoes of the nails being pounded into His wrists and feet. We hear the words spoken from the cross. We visualize the blood flowing mingled down, and we recall Him giving up His own breath of life. As we ponder these sacred events, let us also speak Mary’s words: “Let it be to me according to your word.”

And what does that Word say about a crucified and dead Son of God? It says: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). It says, “For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). May God grant you the same faith that the Virgin Mary confessed. Like her, may you ponder and adore the Son of the Highest, especially for His sacrifice in the flesh for you.

St. Ephraem (306-373) teaches us how to pray, ponder, and adore on this Good Friday:

You love humankind, O Christ, and I glorify You for that. You are the only Son, the Lord of all things. You alone are without sin. You gave Yourself up to death for me, an unworthy sinner, the death of the cross. Through this suffering, You have delivered all human beings from the snares of evil. What shall I render to you, Lord, for such goodness?

Glory to You, friend of all!
Glory to You, O merciful Lord!
Glory to You, longsuffering God!
Glory to You, who takes away all sins!
Glory to You, who came to save us!
Glory to You, who became flesh in the womb of the virgin!
Glory to You, bound in cords!
Glory to You, whipped and scourged!
Glory to You, mocked and derided!
Glory to You, nailed to the cross!
Glory to You, buried and risen!
Glory to You, proclaimed to all humankind, who believe in You!
Glory to You, ascended to heaven! Amen.