Month: March 2018

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Easter Vacancy

Text: Mark 16:1-8
Date: The Resurrection of Our Lord + 4/1/18

Do you remember how we started this journey of telling the story of Jesus Christ? Though this is the year of St. Mark we didn’t start with him. We didn’t begin with Mark chapter one because the Evangelist doesn’t begin with any account of Christmas. Rather he begins his gospel with John the Baptist and the beginning of the thirty-year-old savior’s earthly ministry. As we heard today, as Mark didn’t tell us the beginning of the story, now neither does he tell us the end. He just stops abruptly at the empty tomb with no record of our Lord’s many resurrection appearances. Continue reading “Easter Vacancy”

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To Bear Witness to the Truth

 

Text: John 18:36-37
Date: Good Friday + 3/30/18

“My kingdom is not of this world.” “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.” This is the confusion that lay behind our Lord’s final hours ending in His crucifixion. He didn’t deny He had a kingdom and was a king. Pontius Pilate, of course, could only conceive of kingdoms as earthly governments. Those who delivered Jesus to him knew, however, that He was talking about His equality with God and the higher kingdom that is over any and all earthly ones. Pilate saw a threatened rival. The Jews saw blasphemy. Therefore they pressed Pilate’s button when they said, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar” (19:12).

“For this purpose I was born.” Some of the first to discover this, of course, were the wise men from the east years ago who followed his star and came to honor this newborn king. One of the first to hear it was Herod the king who also feared a rival sovereign and sought to wipe Him out as an infant.

But for this purpose He was born, indeed. The descendant of the great king David as God promised, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom…. I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Sam 7:12-14). “Are you the King of the Jews?” asked Pilate. When Jesus did not deny it Pilate said, “So you are a king!”

Just five days ago the people’s praise echoed through the holy city, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (12:13). Pilate has His verdict written and placed above His head on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Yes, Jesus was a king. For this purpose He was born.

The purpose, He said, was “to bear witness to the truth.” Remember that Jesus said of Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). What is truth? Jesus is truth. For He is the savior of sinners.

The truth is “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). None can save himself and so all are in need of a savior. The truth is Jesus is the world’s redeemer. For this purpose He was born. For this purpose He lived a holy life. For this purpose He was anointed “to proclaim good news to the poor…to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk 4:18-19). For this purpose He taught and preached and healed. For this purpose He was baptized by John. For this purpose He freely forgave sins. For this purpose finally He allowed Himself in humble obedience to His Father to be arrested, falsely accused, condemned as a criminal, whipped and beaten and spit upon. For this purpose He was mocked and crucified, died and was buried.

And that’s where we leave this king tonight; in His silent tomb. The silence of the previous night was ominous. The silence of this night, however, gives hope. For His purpose has been accomplished. He was crucified, died and was buried only to proclaim victory over the hordes of hell and to rise again on the third day. For this purpose He has come into the world, to bear witness to the truth and if you continue in His Word you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.

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A Ransom for Many

Text: Mark 10:35-45
Date: Lent V + 3/18/18

This is a most unusual story today. For at first hearing we think it’s all about us, how we are not to be too proud or “lording it over others” as Jesus says, but are to see ourselves as servants after the example of Christ. And that’s part of it. We with the other disciples are taken aback and become indignant at James and John. But it wasn’t because they were any more loyal or faithful than the others, but I suspect but rather jealous that the two Zebedee bros cut in line to request Jesus what they themselves really desired, special reserved seating when Jesus would enter His glory in Jerusalem, rebuilding the Davidic temple and kingdom. And we should say that Jesus will come in His glory. But what is His glory? We are to discover next week that His glory begins with the cross, giving His life as a ransom. Then the kingdom will be fully restored only at the end of time when He comes in glory to gather “the many” who believed and received the gift of His redemption. By then, however, we will have been rid of any prideful boast or desire for recognition over other fellow redeemed sinners.

It does strike us that the two bold disciples are among the first to get bitten, as Luther would say, by the theology of glory. They didn’t understand Jesus’ prediction when he said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise” (Mk 10:33-34). This is the Fifth Sunday in Lent, our last chance as it were to be prepared for the Great and Holy Week. Like the disciples we can be distracted by the normal routines of life and be unprepared and missing the importance of this, the heart and center of the Gospel of salvation, namely, our Lord’s suffering and death, that death we are to proclaim with bread and cup until He comes. Through the tragic story of Jesus’ betrayal, abuse, rejection, His bitter suffering and crucifixion we are to begin to see the true glory for which we long. Continue reading “A Ransom for Many”

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Whoever Believes in Him

Text: John 3:14-21
Date: Lent IV + 3/11/18

The account of Jesus’ night time teaching of Nicodemus is a sedes doctrinae or main seat of the doctrine of the sacrament of Holy Baptism. It therefore plays an important part in the Lenten forming of candidates new to the faith of the Church with the goal of baptism at the Easter Vigil. It is helpful today for you to know that our Gospel is from the end of Jesus’ teaching Nicodemus, saying, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” and, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:3, 5). It seems, however, that we have a similar problem as last week hearing of the cleansing of the temple already at the beginning of John’s Gospel. For if you think purely in terms of the historic sequence of events one is left with questions, not the least of which is, how can Jesus teach about the sacrament of baptism when He hasn’t commanded it yet, until one of the very last things He said before His ascension? The answer from St. John is that baptism receives its power not only from the command to do it, but from the cross of Christ before it and especially the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan river. When a person is baptized he or she receives the new birth from above which is that new creation resulting from the redemptive work of Christ. Continue reading “Whoever Believes in Him”