Pentecost 9, 2024: John 6:1-21

            For the next number of Sundays we give our ears to the Gospel of John, Chapter Six. This is a great text of Scripture. It begins with the familiar story of the feeding of the multitude in the desert, as we just heard, calling to mind the wanderings of the 12 tribes of Israel in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land; on this pilgrim way of old, the hunger of the people of God was met with manna sent from heaven by the same God who had liberated them from bondage in Egypt and promised to lead them to a dwelling place of freedom, justice and peace. In coming weeks, we listen in on the discourse of Jesus that follows His own feeding of the multitude, the Bread of Life discourse as it is called. Here Jesus calls himself the true Manna, the Bread of God come down from heaven to give eternal life the world; no longer the temporary bread, our daily bread for the body, but lasting bread, the bread of eternal life. In this fashion, John gives us his teaching on the meaning of the Holy Meal, the Lord’s Supper, the true Eucharist or Thanksgiving.

As we shall hear in coming weeks, the discourse builds until Jesus finally declares: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” John tells us that this was a “hard saying,” that many who had followed Jesus to this point turned away;  indeed, Jesus then asked the remaining disciples if they too would now leave him. Peter replies in the words we sing every time the gospel is read: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The words of eternal life are: “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you.” Or, as John rephrases:  Jesus is the Bread of heaven, who having come to set us from free bondage to sin and death, feeds us on the way to life in God forever.

It is an exceedingly rich theme. Consider for a moment how the church sings about it in hymns. Here is a random sampling from many such examples: “O living Bread from heaven , how well you feed your guest… for you O Lord have given, what earth could never buy, the bread of life from heaven, that now I shall not die…” (LBW 197) “I come O Savior to your table, for weak and weary is my soul. You, Bread of life alone are able to satisfy and make me whole…” (LBW 213) “O Bread of life from heaven, O food to pilgrims given, O Manna from above, Feed with the blessed sweetness of your divine completeness the souls that want and need your love” (LBW 222 ). “Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, Feed me now and ever more, feed me now and ever more.” (LBW 343).  We sense the deep affection in these prayers, the warm emotion of faith expressed in such lyrics. What inspires it? How can it be ours?

            Just as the Manna God sent from heaven had fed the twelve tribes during their wanderings, just as the prophet Elisha fed one hundred people with twenty loaves of barley bread, Jesus likewise feeds the hungry who have left behind the old world of sin and death but still wander into the wilderness on their stumbling way to the new and promised land. They gather on their pilgrim way around him and hear his promising word of the new world of God that awaits. Thus when the people ate and were satisfied, the disciples gathered up 12 baskets of leftovers, reminiscent of the 12 tribes of Israel, and so that when the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

            They got it half right. They recognized that in feeding those pilgrims seeking God in the wilderness, speaks for God like Moses and Elisha as a prophet sent from God. But now there is a twist to the story in John’s telling. He writes that when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. The crowd got Jesus only half right. They thought the sign meant that Jesus would be their military liberator, like Moses or Joshua or David or Elijah of old, that Jesus would lead them in combat to regain their promised land lost to foreign occupiers, that Jesus would be their king who would lead a revolt against the occupying Romans. Sensing this, Jesus flees.

Why? How we see today that our afflicted earth does not need any more holy crusaders, wars in God’s name, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Isis. These Muslim names get our attention, but truth be told Christians have in history all too often thought to crusade in God’s name and under His blessing. But our suffering world surely does not need another warrior-king of any religion. What the world needs is different kind of king altogether, with a different kind of weapon than swords and chariots and tanks and hypersonic missiles and predator drones, with a different kind of life to offer than one of conquest and domination over others in a zero-sum turf war. So, not by accident in John’s telling, Jesus --who runs away from those who want to make him their kind of warrior king-- returns to disciples on a storm tossed boat. For here in the little company on the ark of faith, Jesus can reign truly, his own kind of king, as the merciful and saving Lord.

It was now dark… the sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. This little storm-tossed ship in the dark and dangerous night on the stormy sea is a figure of us, the church, the unlikely kingdom of Jesus in the world, the community of his disciples, those called out of the world, whether into the wilderness or onto the raging seas, nevertheless on the way to eternal life. So little, so alone, endangered, abandoned, in darkness, about to sink and forever disappear under the billowing waves, at the mercy of the raging wind, rowing hard but getting nowhere, wracked by fear. Who would go there? Indeed, the scene does not look like the glorious kingdom of the Messiah of God, this little storm tossed boat in the middle of threatening waves. But see the wonder! The very Jesus who fled the crowd that wanted to make him their kind of king instead comes to reign here instead. Manna in the wilderness! Safety in the storm! Here is where he wants to be, in the midst of the storm with his people, on the ship of the church tossed by the waves, present not to sight looking for a warrior king but to faith in his word casting out fear.

But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." These are the words of eternal life which cast out fear, which feed the hungry on their pilgrim way, which still the storm. How can they do that? Who is this One who speaks? Why should his presence make this difference? “It is I.” Who is that? Jesus, yes indeed, but which Jesus? The One they wanted to make their king? No, the real Jesus fled from that. The Jesus who wants to be with his storm-tossed people, casting out their fear, delivering them safely to the other shore? Yes, that Jesus. That is the One. But how shall we know him? How shall we recognize him? How shall we meet him and greet him and receive him and abide in him, when the storm overwhelms and all our rowing seems futile and in vain.

The wonder of the coming of the eternal Word, the Son of God, into human flesh continues in the sacrament. “This my body given for you. This cup is the blood of the covenant poured out for you.” When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he did not mean, “Say, every so often when you happen to think about it or feel like it, perform this ritual.” His meaning is just the opposite. There are all sorts of ways people remember Jesus and all sorts of ways they want to use him, to make him their kind of king. Among all these ways, however, it is by pointing to bread broken for us, to wine poured out for us as signs of His cross, the church remembers Jesus as He really is, not just as a phenomenon of the historical past, but the living and life-giving one who comes to renew His promise and assure: “I am the true Bread of God come down from heaven for the life of the world.” Bread because like the grains of wheat crushed and milled and baked, I laid down my life to give you life. True Bread because the love for you which moved me to give myself for you is my Father’s love as well, who gave me the victory over death and grave, my Spirit’s love as well whom I send on you to cast out fear and inspire the courage of faith operative in love. I am not some vague and slippery ghost that people can use and abuse as they please.  But I really am the One who gave his body and blood for you; forever I bear these scars by which you may recognize me. This is who I am. The Bread of Life who wants to be with his storm tossed people and brings them safe to the other shore. Amen.

Pentecost 8, 2024: Jer. 23:1-6, Eph. 2:11-22, Mk 6:30-34, 53-56

The word, “pastor,” comes from the Latin language in which it stands for “shepherd,” one who keeps watch over a flock of sheep. My grandfather was a shepherd boy in Europe. He would leave with the flock as soon as springtime sunshine brought new green growth to the mountain meadows. Up there he would spend the summers, fattening the flock on the alpine grasses, guarding them against attack by wolves. A pastor is like this, an “under-shepherd,” as it were, of the one truly Good Shepherd who is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the good shepherd because he laid down his life for the sheep to keep them from the wolves and lead them every day into the verdant pastures of his self-giving love. Jesus’ compassion is the key to how we should regard the work and office of a pastor, how a pastor is to tend a flock of God’s people.

For good or for ill, a pastor is a living symbol of the Good Shepherd whom he or she proclaims, just as is said in the liturgy of confession and forgiveness of sin, “As a called and ordained servant of Christ and by his authority I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins.” Representing Christ, the pastor says the words, but it is the risen Christ himself who truly is speaking. Someone might take offense at this: By what right do you claim to speak for Christ and represent him to us? 

How glad I am that you asked! How delighted I am to tell you how it is that pastors speak with a definite and certain authority as a living re-presentation:  in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But first a concession. There can be bad pastors, bad shepherds who lead the flock of God astray, just like there can be bad symbols which mislead us more than lead us, or dead symbols which communicate nothing. That is what the OT text from Jeremiah says, Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Jeremiah’s announcement of God’s judgement falls especially upon the religious leadership of his day and age who were guilty of scattering rather than uniting God’s people. What makes them bad pastors? Ther failure to care for the flock with loving compassion based on the teaching of God’s Word incarnate as Jesus Christ. The Lord therefore announces  through Jeremiah that he will replace these bad pastors with new pastors, who will care for the people, so that they fear no more and not a single one will be lost through neglect or apathy. In promising this new kind of pastor, the Lord above all promises to send a new and truly Good Shepherd from the line of David, who will be our righteousness. Thus the text points forward to Christ, One who will be our righteousness, our Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep and in doing so became the very righteousness ove loving compassion that they lacked.

In this light we see that no pastor can be good enough -- unless Christ is his righteousness too. No relation of pastor and people can be good -- unless Jesus Christ is our common righteousness. Only by overlooking our own very real faults and failures, both pastor’s and people’s, and looking together upon Christ the Good Shepherd can we live together and flourish together as a caring community of Christ’s people, a flock of God’s people in a world apathetic, if not hostile and hateful.

On this common ground, however, a pastor has the special responsibility to represent Christ precisely this way, to see to it that his Word and Sacraments are faithfully communicated. The new kind of shepherd Jeremiah promises will always preach, teach, counsel and embody Christ’s self-sacrificing, righteousness-bestowing love. They will be moved with Christ’s own compassion for the people, as the Gospel text from Mark depicts, totally engrossed in the ministry of healing people by teaching the gospel word of God, the word concerning Jesus. They will not be on their own ego trip, they will not seek their own glory. Least of all will they imagine they can in and of themselves save anybody. But they will lead the people in glorifying God for all his rich mercy in Christ.

So here we have a scriptural criterion for distinguishing good and bad pastors. Bad pastors divide the people because, like politicians playing favorites and factions, they have no compassion for household of God. They neglect the teaching of God’s Word and instead try to make themselves the center of attention, preaching their own wisdom, experience or pet agenda. But good pastors unite otherwise diverse people. Visibly moved by Christ’s own loving compassion, physically communicating Christ’s own love in their very personal bearing, in this way living icons or symbols of Christ, they constantly teach Christ as God’s Word incarnate in our human flesh. Pastors have the particular duty and office so to make Christ the center of attention. For when Christ is the center of attention, we are all united and drawn together in him. That is how it should be in the church!

So our epistle lesson from Ephesians says powerfully today. Christ is our peace –notice not merely or primarily my private peace or your personal tranquility of soul—but our peace, the public peace of our church life together. Christ has made us –Jews and Gentiles, but also workers and bosses, Americans and foreigners, black and white, Christ has made us all one, since on the cross he once and for all broke down the dividing wall of hostility erected by our self-justifying “identities,” as we say nowadays. He is healing us, not only as individual bodies, but also together as the flock, the congregation, the assembly, the new covenant people of God. For us sin no longer erects a dividing wall of hostility, since we are reconciled to God and to one another by the unique and saving sacrifice of the only Son of God on the cross. Christ is our Good Shepherd who unites us by self-sacrificing love. For in the very moment I in faith realize and grasp that Christ laid down his life for me, dear brother and sister, in that very moment I am forever bound to every other one for whom Christ lived and died and now lives and reigns. Since Christ is our peace, pastors are appointed to Christ’s peace-makers: conveying this good news, extending this compassion, awakening this faith, realizing this new covenant unity.

So in light of all this wonderful scripture, let me answer the objection,
“By what right does a pastor represent Christ?” Answer: nothing less than Christ’s own real, concrete and divine-human love for us, which takes an ordinary person from among us, like you and me, and makes of him or her his own voice and presence in the midst of the flock of God. So we are to receive a pastor as representing Christ for us. We are to honor his work and his office as Christ’s own. We are to ignore all irrelevant considerations and focus with him or her on Christ, who must be the center of attention. Do you imagine for a moment that all this makes the pastors somehow better or holier than you? No, of course not. But in precisely this way of the ordained pastoral ministry of Word and Sacrament God makes all of us truly better people, truly holy, truly enthralled with the compassion of Christ, each living it out in his or her own way.

Look at how the people respond to Jesus and the disciples in our gospel lesson. Can you think yourselves into this scriptural scene? Do you see where you come into the story today? Here is the model of how you should be welcoming this new pastor into your midst. Get excited about that. Rejoice! Anticipate! Listen to these words again, Wherever he came, in villages, cities or country, they laid the sick in the market places and besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched it were made well. This is what the church of Jesus Christ should be like, a place in the world radiating with the knowledge of God and the healing compassion of Christ, which draws all who are troubled into its bosom where they find peace and healing.

This collective responsibility to honor your pastor as a representative of Christ falls upon each of you individually. Pastors are very vulnerable people because everything depends on their good name and reputation. How can they represent Christ when their person is besmirched? One little evil word of gossip or hearsay or badmouthing or innuendocan alienate someone from the ministry of Christ which they so desperately need. Pastors are very vulnerable, of course, because they are indeed merely human, mere earthen vessels of gospel treasures. Nothing is easier than to point out their flaws and failings.

But if you have an issue, dear Christian, have the courage, have the decency to go face to face and work it out. Otherwise be silent and bear your cross in faith for the good of the ministry. Pastors are very vulnerable, because every Tom, Dick and Mary has his or her private, usually unscriptural idea of what a pastor should be. Well, put your individual prejudices aside and be instructed by Christ himself about what a pastor is and does. Even if the pastor’s personality doesn’t turn you on, respect the work and the office which he or she does for the sake of community, respect Christ who wants to work through him or her. Pastors, like Christ, are very vulnerable and can get crucified, abandoned, betrayed and denied by their very own people. Wow! Don’t you be the Judas who betrays your pastor, the Peter who denies him, the cowards who flee from him in time of trouble! Stand by your pastor with your constant prayers, sincere and articulate good will, faithful friendship and willingness to learn what he has from God to teach you. Pastors may be very vulnerable, but I tell you what. When they are welcomed in Christ’s name and loved and honored for what they truly are, Christ’s own under-shepherds, the happiness, love, joy, peace, and fulfillment of that unique and special relationship between pastor and people is unexcelled in human experience. Let that be the collective goal for which each one of you takes personal responsibility. Receive your pastor as a gift from God; welcome him as the representative of Christ in your midst, join with him in Christian ministry until the light of Christ in this place radiates love and healing to all around. Amen.

Pentecost 7, 2024: Amos 7:7-15, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:14-29

I have been struck by the currency of a particular expression of piety that I don't remember hearing so much earlier in my life. I don't wish to criticize the faith behind this sentiment, though I worry that the expression is becoming something of a thoughtless, even misleading cliché. It pops up most frequently when people are dealing with unexpected adversity. It is a way of coping with the puzzling reality of bad things happening to good people. "God has a plan."

There is scriptural truth to this affirmation of faith, as we see today from first chapter of Ephesians. But I worry that people do not have in mind Ephesians’ understanding of "God’s plan." For biblically, it's a plan, as we see from the gospel reading, that can allow the whimsical murder of righteous John the Baptist by a vainglorious political sovereign, connived by powers behind the throne, to blunt the prophetic cut of John's preaching. It's a plan, as we learn from the Old Testament prophet Amos today, which involves confronting religious as a well as political authorities with their unrighteousness, including blasphemous attempts to harness religion to the cause of their unrighteousness. In short, yes, God has an eternal purpose and so a “plan” unfolding in time –his name is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. It is a plan to reconcile the sinful world by conforming us worldlings to the death and resurrection of his beloved Son.

With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. This is how Scripture speaks the “plan” of God. The term in Greek is oikonomia, translated “plan,” which comes into English as the word "economy." The meaning of this Greek word is a management plan for the household, a sense of which we still hear traces in older terms like "household” or “domestic”  economy – telling how the pre-modern “Lady of the House” managed the kitchen and the laundry and her staff of helpers, be they workers or children or, in the bad old days, the enslaved. So the passage from Ephesians depicts God arranging and directing events over the entire human world as if one household economy.

There was a school of ancient philosophers among the Greeks called the Stoics who had a similar idea; to put it in modern language, they thought of the world as a big eco-system in which every creature had its own niche and definite role to play for the benefit of the whole. But there the similarity with Ephesians ends. The Stoics were quite happy with the way things are and perceived no injustice at all, but rather a natural and rational “natural” order in the established hierarchies of power dominating a rigidly stratified human social world. But from the Exodus onward the biblical God is in the business – in the economy-- of putting things right in his world that have gone wrong, “casting down the mighty from their thrones and exalting them of low degree,” as Mary, mother of our Lord, sang in the Magnificat, when she welcomed into our suffering world of injustice the child in her womb who is and enacts the unfolding plan of God to rectify and reconcile.

You see, God's household, our human world, is not some pristine and harmonious natural ecology as the Stoics thought, but rather in and through us human beings the whole creation suffers corruption. For we have defected from God's purpose and filled the earth with injury and deep frustration as a result. This dysfunctional household of ours is full of harm and, therefore, needs to be reconciled, that means, straightened out, rectified, if finally it is to receive the good things which God intends.

That is why at the mysterious center of God's revealed plan in Jesus Christ and him crucified, as our Ephesians text states: we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. Our God executes his plan to put things right in that unjust people may now die spiritually in Christ to their injustices, and so forgiven, rise up in his power to newness of joyful life in righteousness, freedom and peace. Moreover, this Jesus Christ, at the center of God's plan in whom God is putting things right, is not God second thought – as if, “Gee, Adam sinned, now what do I do?” But Jesus is and has always been God's first thought: He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. For all of us so chosen with the gift and burden of faith in Jesus Christ, God's plan is not something that just happens around or over us without us, but we now, endowed by the same Holy Spirit, actively live to the praise of his glory in new works of goodness for others in need – truly good works which flow naturally and spontaneously from recipients of the amazing grace given in Jesus Christ. What newness of life! Not passive pawns of a “plan” running on automatic but we get to be instruments in God's unfolding economy of reconciliation by the event of gospel word and Spirit.

We see by way of contrast the usual way of this unjust world in the story of the political murder of John the Baptist, by characters drunk on their own power, ignorant of God and his rectifying plan, intent instead to live only for the gain and glory of this life here and now. What vainglory, what conceit, what spiritual pride, what office politics, political intrigue and trickery! And all of this wickedness-as-usual falls upon the neck of John the Baptist because he dared to hold up covenantal fidelity in marriage as a mirror before the adulterous royalty.

We do not know the fate of the prophet Amos, who lived 700 years before John the Baptist, but we can infer from the survival in writing of his prophecies, that he lived to deliver his message to the northern kingdom of ancient Israel. The message was that the kingdom had deviated from the straight plumb line of God's covenant justice and was being built up crookedly on the necks of the working poor. But the special accent of our little story today is how Amos showed up in the national cathedral of ancient Israel at Bethel and disrupted it solemn ceremonies with his message of judgment. What is telling is the rebuke issued by the presiding priest of this temple, Amaziah, who said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Notice two things here: first, that Amaziah regards the temple at Bethel as the property of the king in service of his kingdom; second, that Amaziah regards prophecy as a for-profit enterprise and so tells Amos to go find religious work for hire elsewhere. We know from Amos's retort that he was not a professional prophet –one who makes a living off of flattering predictions on behalf of the status quo-- but a working man who was making a humble living tending sheep and orchards when he was plucked out of his normal existence to deliver the message of God's judgment upon the king and his unjust kingdom.

So the question for us from this text is simply this: whose church is it anyway, this community predestined in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love to the praise of his glory? It's not my church and it's not your church; if it is truely church, it is the church of Jesus Christ, as we sing, “with his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.” Just the same, the pastor is not our hired hand to do our bidding but bound and authorized to serve us the word of God in season and out, like John and Amos, in judgment as in grace – so that we actually are a sacred community of Christians, not a religious club doing our own thing but living out of and enacting the economy of God.

Yes, God has a plan and his name is Jesus Christ. It is an eternal plan to reconcile and fulfill the lost and sinful creation and it comes into effect wherever and whenever the prophetic message of judgment and grace prevails by uniting us in faith to Jesus crucified and risen. According to this biblical plan of God, bad things can happen to good people just as surely as they did to John the Baptist foreshadowing the cross of Christ, the Lord himself and beloved Son. Bad things do not happen outside of God's sovereign plan. Perhaps we can say that that is God's cold comfort when we suffer adversity: even when we have fallen into the hands of persecutors we have not fallen out of the hands of our God.

Far better, however, pearl of great price, is God's warm comfort, the Holy Spirit's bearing witness to our spirits that we are indeed children of God, come what may, so that whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. It is the work of faith, when adversity befalls, to interpret the bad things that happen as tools God uses to humble the exalted and to exalt the humbled. So comforted truly we rise up as active agents and living instruments of God's plan, challenging unrighteousness, manifesting our righteousness in Christ abounding in works of merciful goodness through the union of faith with Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory now and forever.

Pentecost 5 -- July 4, 2021: Ezekiel 2:1-5, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

In our gospel reading today Jesus experiences incredulity at home coming. The home town folks know the guy since he was a toddler. Why, they know the whole gang, all the brothers and sisters. And they know that he's a working man without higher credentials. So, no matter the buzz about his wisdom and works of power, they were offended at his person. Just to do you think you are, Jesus?

In theology we call this offense taken at uncredentialed Jesus the scandal of particularity. Why shouldn't God's grace and love and healing power be universally accessible? Why shouldn't these good things of God be available generally without fuss and bother, like electrical current when we flip the switch to turn on the lights? Why should the good things of God be communicated in this most unlikely person, a carpenter from podunk Nazareth? Why him in particular? Hence, the scandal of particularity!

Notice that they are not scandalized by reports of his wisdom and healing power. They are not scandalized that God should be gracious and good to his suffering and sinful creatures. Jews, children of the Hebrew Scriptures, our Christian Old Testament, have been taught to expect such good things from God. What they take offense at is the delivery system, the good things of God showing up in a most ordinary human being like the rest of us. And how much more scandalous this human being Jesus becomes in the course of his story, ending up, so far as the world can see, abandoned by man and by God in a terrible death. Why this ordinary human being doing extraordinary things but dying in extraordinarily terrible death – why should this particular Jesus be the delivery system of the good things of God?

Such was the offense taken by the hometown crowd that faith was crowded out by it and Jesus consequently could do little of God's healing will in their midst. Faith, you see, goes together hand and glove with the particular delivery system who Jesus is. We do not see with our eyes nor comprehend with our reason the glorious God but instead behold the humble man who nevertheless is delivering the good things God – cognitive dissonance! Incomprehensible to our reason! Yet faith does not wonder how, nor look a gift horse in the mouth, but is rather elated with joy at the good things of God nevertheless coming through this unlikely man in particular. Because faith trusts in the good will of God, Jesus is able to deliver the good things which God wills for his lost and sinful creatures. So faith, you see, is just as much a miraculous work and gift of God the Holy Spirit as the healing deeds of Jesus.

But let's dig a little deeper. Jesus’s comment about this hometown unbelief is instructive, "a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown." Notice that in the process of making this comment, Jesus represents himself as a prophet. That is to say, not merely a wise man and wonder-working healer, but one who speaks the word of God, concretely, to the here and now situation. As the snippet from Ezekiel today shows, true prophets rarely win popularity contests; in fact they often meet the fate which Jesus finally met at the cross because they speak unpopular truth in the name of God. Thus Jesus indicates the deeper reason for the scandal the folks from Nazareth find in him. It is not merely that unlikely Jesus is delivering the good things long promised by God, but that in the process he personally and prophetically brings God much too close, too close for comfort, to close to the wrong kind of people, being himself the wrong kind of expected deliverer. After all the healthy have no need of a physician, the righteous have no need of forgiveness, the living have no need of resurrection. So Jesus is the prophet who delivers the word of God to those who have been humbled by their experience of life in this wayward creation just as he himself appears as nothing other than a loser like so many others in this wayward creation of dog eat dog.

Jesus does not give up on his mission because of the unbelief but moves on, commissioning his disciples to extend the healing will of God by expelling unclean spirits afflicting the diseased to heal them just as the word of God which he is and enacts finds faith. Notice, however, how Jesus requires these disciples to be as vulnerable to offense as he himself is. They can hardly profiteer off of his commission – no bread, no bag, no money in their belts -- and must rely on the God whose kingdom they proclaim and enact. And just so be ready to suffer the kind of rejection Jesus suffered in his own hometown of Nazareth. Authentically to serve Jesus and his mission, the disciples must be vulnerable in the same way that he is vulnerable –which is another way of describing faith.

How powerfully Paul the apostle bears witness to the same vulnerability of faith in our reading today from 2 Corinthians. Paul has been put on the defensive. Interlopers are trying to alienate the Corinthians from Paul, the apostle who had founded their church by his preaching of the gospel. Paul sarcastically describes these interlopers as super apostles because they pretend to be clothed with divine invulnerability and so to extend that invulnerability to the Corinthians --if Paul's congregation will submit to their proselytizing. Paul could go toe to toe with these guys. He cleverly mentions his own profound experience of revelation, transported into the heavens to see the glory of God. But like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, Paul returned to the valley below into the hardships of his apostolic ministry, meeting in parallel the resistance which Jesus warns the disciples they too will experience.

And Paul’s reward? He was conformed to the sufferings of Christ by a God given thorn in the flesh! Like Jesus in Gethsemane, he prayed for deliverance from this bitter cup and like Jesus in Gethsemane he got the answer: My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.

Is God's grace is sufficient for us? Is God's grace the pearl of great price for which we will abandon all if only to possess it as our own? The humble, suffering life of Jesus, of his disciples and of his apostle Paul are visible portraits of this invisible grace at work in human lives. Certainly the God of the Scriptures wills all good things for his lost and sinful creatures but in order to deliver these good things these creatures must be delivered from their false loves, addictions really, to things which are not good – most deeply the fantasy of and heedless pursuit for invulnerability. They must know that they have a problem as creatures with their Creator, a deep problem that goes to the root of their being. That problem is the outward pride but inward despair of unfaith with its hopeless but frentic aspiration for invulnerability; its solution is the humility and consequent vulnerability of faith. For the power of God is perfected in weakness.

This is a very hard truth for us. But we may well ponder in its light whether our looming darkness in America is a God-sent thorn in the flesh, to humble us by showing us anew our inescapable creaturely vulnerability to awaken new scandalous faith in the particularity of Jesus Have we as a nation been humbled by the great recession, costly endless war, the pandemic, political polarization, inflation, climate change, lawlessness, the authoritarian temptations? Have we been taught again our need for loving solidarity to protect us from such ravages? Humble faith active in love is the only real balm to human vulnerability by which we bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

After this Independence Day we give thanks for the remarkable goodness that has been given to us in these United States of America even as we are painfully aware of the acute divisions among us which have been stretched to the breaking point by manifold exposures of our inescapable human vulnerability. Of course we cannot speak for others but as Christians in America can we not once again receive the humble vulnerable Jesus? He comes to the vulnerable as we really are that we may be converted to the grace of God sufficient in life and in death.

Pentecost 6, 2024: Lamentations 3:22-33; 2 Cor 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

            Our reading today from the Old Testament’s Book of Lamentations beautifully speaks the promise of God to people in the midst of great difficulties. The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. It is called the Book of Lamentations because it a collection of songs of grief sung by the people after military defeat, conquest by enemies and exile from homeland. In these poems they lamented their situation.

Our God requires faithful people to be brave in the courage of faith, but he does not require them to be Stoics who suppress their feelings of hurt and disappointment.  Rather they are to lift their sorrows up to the Lord who cares for them and promises final healing. "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. God’s faithful people are adults who realize that it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD… Why is such patience truly the good of maturing believers? The Lord will not reject forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. Though we are afflicted in many ways, though it is through many trials and tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God, we follow Jesus through it all, each taking up one’s own cross in the Spirit to follow him through the cross to the crown. We people of faith thus have good courage in the face of testing and trial, trusting in the steadfast love of the LORD which never ceases, whose mercies never come to an end but are new every morning.

            How do we get such courageous faith for the living of real life, in good times and bad? How do we ever and again become God’s faithful people? Our reading from the gospel of Mark today shows us how. It is a remarkable passage that weaves together two stories of Jesus the healer. In the first Jarius the president of a synagogue comes to Jesus imploring his presence in his house where his little daughter lies dying. All of us parents who have helplessly watched our child sick and hurting know the fright of this Jarius. Perhaps Jarius is just desperate when he turns for help to Jesus the healer of whom he has heard. In any case, he asks and Jesus agrees to come with him. On the way, the crowds are mobbing Jesus. In their midst was a women sick, as they used to say, with female problems. Doctors had cost her everything and helped not at all. Her affliction is embarrassing to her. She doesn’t want to announce it to the world. She thinks to herself, Jesus can heal without shaming me! God hears her thought and when she touches Jesus the healing occurs. Jesus stops in the middle of the throng and asks, bizarrely, as it seems: Who touched me? All were pressing in on him!

Now notice the interplay of fear and faith as Mark tells us what happens: But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.  She was evidently ashamed of her anonymous theft of power from Jesus. The woman who was not afraid secretly to touch Jesus was afraid to fess up until called out. Why was she afraid to tell? Was she yet afraid that Jesus would crush her, humiliate her, broadcast her very personal problem, even take back what she had secretly stolen? Perhaps all of this, perhaps none. In any event, the word of Jesus to her is as healing to her soul as the act of power had been to her body: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." Rather than embarrassing her or scolding her presumption, Jesus lifts up her faith to trump her fear. Yet while he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." The theme repeats: faith casts out paralyzing fear so that God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.

            It is faith that saves, faith that casts out fear, the same courageous faith of God’s faithful people of which we heard earlier in Israel’s Lamentations: "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. Saving faith is such patient expectation in time and for eternity. It is persevering courage face to face with sickness and death.

Yet, as if to challenge Jesus word of blessing on the woman’s faith, sad word came that Jarius’s daughter had died. The natural reaction is one with which we are all familiar. What’s done is done and cannot be undone. Leave Jesus be, he cannot help now. Let us grieve as people who have no further hope. Never mind, Jesus says: "Do not fear, only believe." Once again, the text shows us exactly what faith really is by contrasting it with fear. Faith does not deny bad facts, faith does not ignore the danger, but neither does faith give up and run away, slinking into a dark hole of despair: "Do not fear, Jesus summons, only believe." Here on the earth, in the chances of time and accidents of space, through trial and tribulation, as we faithful people walk patiently through the valley of the shadow of death our hope is in God, knowing the Lord will not reject forever. Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone. And just so, Jesus proceeds to the house of Jarius who has become faithful, not fearful, and there restores to him his precious daughter in a wonder that anticipates the final healing, the resurrection of the dead.

We know from long Christian experience that God sends his rain to fall upon the just and the unjust alike and causes his sun to shine on the good and theevil together. Our faith is vested in the ultimate healing in the eternal life of the living God. So it is not a faith that we should be magically preserved from all affliction in our journey but rather that we should survive it, purged and purified  by it, to be made new on the last day. Indeed whatever healing we experience in this life is but temporary; it is meant to point us forward to that final healing of the resurrection of the dead.

Someday Jarius’ daughter will grow old and die. Someday the women with hemorrhage will also pass away. Their healings were not forever but for time and rather point us forward to the healing which is forever, to the Lord who is himself our hope, our joy, our salvation, our rock and fortress in life and in death, who shares himself in Jesus our healer, who shares his own eternal life, now by the down payment of the Spirit, forever in the resurrection of the dead. Knowing this promise of God is one thing; applying this in one’s own life in the midst of troubles in fearless faith is quite another. For faith grows weak when troubles arise and threaten to swallow us up. Fear returns. How shall we summon up courage to fear not, only believe?

St Paul points us to the One who commands such faith, but also gives to us this very courageous faith which he demands: For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. The woman was afraid to tell what had happened until Jesus acknowledged her faith and blessed it; Jarius became a faithful, not fearful father at Jesus’ imperative, Do not fear; only believe. By his command we become strong. By his poverty, we become rich, Paul says. That means: by focusing on him who knew no disease, nor suffering, nor fear, nor doubt but came to us who do, who not only came to us but dwelt among us, who not only dwelt among us but with boundless compassion called us and made us his own-- though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor – poor with us, taking on us, treasuring us, dirty hands and dirty hearts notwithstanding, thus acquiring the right, the standing, the authority powerfully to command us to be strong and fearless in union with him. When we meet Jesus in his saving word, Fear not, only believe! when anyone encounters Jesus in his self-giving poverty by which he makes rich, Take eat, given for you! Take drink, shed for you! --fear subsides and faith arises. Jesus, taking us on in our poverty is how we get such rich, strong faith. Jesus is how we become God’s faithful people.

Paul spoke this word to his troubled congregation at Corinth. He was urging them, not demanding or requiring, but exhorting them to give generously to a charitable donation he was gathering for the poor Christians in Jerusalem. In this way, the new Gentile Christians could demonstrate their solidarity with old Jewish Christians. So he reminds his readers of the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, as a motive and example. Brothers and sisters, the faith that Jesus gives us, the faith that saves, the faith that frees us to live bravely facing difficulty – this precious faith is not for me, myself and I alone. It restores us to fellowship broken by sickness and death, by sin and injustice. It puts us in solidarity of love with all the others likewise connected to Jesus by the same faith. As God’s faithful people, we come to church for all these reasons: to have faith renewed by meeting Jesus anew in Word and Sacrament, to express generously the solidarity of Christian love with one another, to sing then not only blues in songs of lamentation, but finally songs of praise of the steadfast love of the LORD which never ceases, whose mercies never come to an end but are new every morning, who commands but also gives his Spirit so to live: Fear not; only believe!

Pentecost 5, 2024: Job 38, 2 Corinthians 6, Mark 4

At the end of the Book of Job, we are told, the Creator of all the vast cosmos spoke to Job from out of a tornado. Imagine that awesome scene! Sublime! Awe-some! Awe-inspiring -- not only that stupendous whirlwind but the voice of God thundering from it. Fearsome, threatening, issuing rebuke: Tell me, mere mortal, if you have understanding! Suffering Job had only wanted to hear from the Lord, only wanted to plead his case and be heard, satisfied with whatever the Lord replied. You are familiar with the tale: a pious and righteous man, Job was given into the hands of the Satan to be sorely tested whether or not he would continue to fear, love and trust in God if all his earthly good were stripped away from him.

Why should such bad things happen to good people? The Satan taunts God in heaven, “Of course Job fears you – you’ve done nothing but bless him. Let me take away the blessings and see if he still blesses you.” Job, we learn, passes this devilish test, saying, “The Lord has given. The Lord has taken. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” But tried and tested Job still wants to know why-- why me?

Curious thing: we who read the book of Job know the inside story about the Satan’s taunt but Job throughout remains in the dark. He is threatened, then, not just physically with the loss of all his temporal goods but threatened spiritually with the meaninglessness of his life’s tragedy. Resignation and despair are knocking at the door. He just wants to know why. In this light the ending of the story with the Lord speaking from the whirlwind may be unsatisfying to us since Job never learns the secret which we readers know about the Satan’s challenge that Job’s love for God be put to the test. Job gets only the bare minimum of what he asked for: to see the Lord face-to-face, to know that his complaint and lament has been heard by the Most High – but that’s it.

Other than the divine rebuke: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? And a little further on: Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb… and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, `Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed'?

Clothed in such cosmic majesty God is deeply hidden in the sense that we cannot make out rhyme or reason for the suffering inflicted upon human beings by the course of nature which goes its way indifferently to our concerns. The Satan works these through natural means to deprive Job of all his earthly goods and loves. To add to his torture, so-called friends urged him to confess some secret sin which has brought this series of disasters upon him. Job refuses, protests his innocence and appeals again and again to a hearing face-to-face with the Lord who alone can judge the secrets of his heart. \

It’s fascinating that when the Lord finally appears at the end of the book, he vindicates Job’s insistence upon his innocence and rebukes the friends for demanding that he unveil some guilt that merited his suffering. For his lament of innocent, underserved suffering, the Lord judges Job to be righteous. But with this verdict pronounced, God emerges from the hiddenness of his majesty to reveal himself as one who vindicates the innocent. These two ideas go together in the Bible: The God who reveals himself is otherwise hidden. The God who hides reveals himself. We echo this as we begin our Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven…” God is in heaven, states the book of Ecclesiastes, but we mortals are on the earth! God is God and we are not. And yet Jesus invites us in unity with him to address the heavenly God of unfathomable majesty intimately as “our Father.” As heavenly, God the Father is not like mortal fathers who ultimately pass away and so cease care for their children, let alone sinful fathers who abuse fatherhood to harm children. As our Father in heaven, the curtain of cosmic majesty is pulled back to reveal a heart beating with love for us. This self-revelation comes about in the Father’s Son, Jesus Christ.

And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Awoken from seeming sleep by the desperate petitions of disciples in fear of drowning, emerging as it were from hiddenness, like the God who rebukes Job for disrespecting his cosmic majesty, Jesus rebukes the powerful natural forces of wind and wave threatening to swamp the boat. "Peace! Be still!" -- `Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

We could be skeptical in either case, that God appeared and spoke to Job in a whirlwind or that Jesus calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee solely by word in a majestic command. In either case we would be skeptical of the wrong thing. What should scandalize us is the combination. That the really hidden God emerges from the whirling wind and thrashing wave of his Majesty to humbly and helpfully appear as a fellow mortal, the human being, Jesus Christ. That’s the mystery or the stumbling block. Perceiving this, we would cry out with the disciples on the boat, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" -- just as he had sharply said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?"

In the gospel of Mark, fright and faith are often paired by way of contrast. The common assumption in this antithetical pairing is that human life on the earth is in perpetual danger. Job had been richly blessed but suddenly put to the test when the dangers materialized and robbed everything from him. As we’ve already heard, Job nevertheless courageously insisted upon his innocence, refused to  curse God and rather implored God to appear and render an account. In that we see faith because faith existentially is courage, courage in the face of danger which is resourced not in our human ability to row the boat safely to shore or bail water rapidly enough, but courageous faith is resourced in the self-revelation of the God hidden in Majesty who speaks himself in Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of this Abba Father, the God of Israel.

The apostle Paul today puts on display the courage of faith. He announces the grace of God which has been revealed in Jesus Christ, making this moment and every moment in its hearing the acceptable time; the day of salvation. Is Paul boasting of his ministry? Strange boast! As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way, he begins, namely, through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger. Who would ever think that a man afflicted --like Job himself-- could credibly be ambassador of the majestic God whose kingdom comes? In the midst of this very real apostolic suffering, however, Paul points to the reality of the grace of God at work in his afflicted ministry: By purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, in honor and dishonor. This is the courage of faith operating in love in the midst of real hostility, uncomprehending opposition, envious colleagues, suspicious neighbors, cruel authorities, material poverty. It is the same courage of holy Job, updated by the self-revelation of the God of Majesty who spoke from the whirlwind but speaks now again in the humble way of Jesus Christ.

Note well how Paul’s courage of faith is not resourced in his own wisdom, literary polish, oratorical skill, charismatic personality or any other human skill or talent. It is resourced in the conviction that God has sought and found him in Jesus Christ, when he was not looking for God – indeed when he thought he had God in the hip pocket of his self-righteousness. It is resourced in the self-revelation of God; so he confesses: We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. As we glimpsed already in holy Job, the question, why do bad things happen to good people, has been left behind. The one good human being Jesus Christ was crucified.

All those captured by this one who loved me and gave himself for me know better than to make any claims on the basis of their own moral merit even as they often enough suffer innocently, indeed for righteousness’s sake, in this as yet unredeemed world. Now following Jesus they live courageously by faith - which faith as in Jesus Christ is operative in vulnerable love. Paul has put all his cards on the table and shown himself the improbable apostle of an even more improbable Lord: majestic in hardship, sovereign in adversity, valuing the new community bound together by self-giving love. So Paul concludes today: Corinthians; our heart is wide. In return -- I speak as to children -- widen your hearts also. This is a word that speaks also to us in the congregation. For our sakes the God of the whirlwind opens up his heart and speaks to us in the humble way of the man Jesus so that we open our hearts to God and to one another in the blessed ties that bind our hearts in Christian love. Secure in that love no wind or wave imperils.

Pentecost 4. 2024: Ezekiel 17; 2 Corinthians 5; Mark 4

Jesus spoke and taught in parables. Parables are extended metaphors or similes as the case may be; both are ways of making something unknown known by comparison to something already familiar. Jesus begins today, “the kingdom of God is as if…” And he goes on to narrate the familiar scene of a farmer casting seed upon the ground and watching its growth until harvest time. And he continues later, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it?” And here Jesus picks up upon a prophetic precedent: the parable of Ezekiel about the Lord who trims a little bow from the top of the cedar tree and replants it in to grow and offer shelter for many and various creatures. But in Jesus’s version of the parable, the point of comparison and cause of wonder is how the tiniest seed can produce the biggest shrub, thus shelter, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

Ezekiel had concluded with the declaration, I the LORD have spoken, and I will do it. So also Jesus. In these parables we are talking about the righteous rule of God in the action of its coming into effect. Jesus emphasizes that the farmer witnesses how the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The wonder –indicating divine action-- is how the littlest of seeds produces the magnificent shrub to shelter a variety of creatues.

Such extended metaphors told in story form are certainly a good teaching device when introducing unfamiliar material, in this case the nature and purpose of the righteous reign or rule of God which occurs, according to our Lord’s Prayer, when the will of God is done on earth as it is done in heaven. But it can also happen that biases, prejudices, preconceptions and other such mental blocks, can block understanding of the comparisons. Here parables are obscure. They leave people befuddled. They just don’t get it. This too, however, is a reason why Jesus employs parables. Because his message is in fact an attack on certain biases, prejudices and preconceptions in his audience. Some may be thinking the kingdom of God already exists in the temple worship at Jerusalem; others may be thinking that the kingdom of God will come when we have the courage to rise up violently against the Roman occupation; still others may be thinking that the kingdom of God will come supernaturally if and when Israel will finally perfect obedience to all the rules written in the law of Moses.

It is against such preconceptions that Jesus in public deliberately teaches in parables. As Mark makes clear he clarifies the sense to his disciples privately. With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. Parables are subversive acts sneaking in the true sense of the kingdom of God over against prevailing religious ideologies; even disciples need help understanding them.

It is really quite impressive, then, how the apostle Paul captures this subversive but also transformative sense of Jesus’s teaching in parables. He concludes today: From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. You see, for the apostle Paul, Jesus who told parables has himself become in person the great parable of God. What is familiar from a human point of view, you see, is that an evidently deluded Jew who proclaimed the kingdom of God ended up crucified on account of it, rejected and refuted. However, because of his resurrection and vindication by the God whose reign he had proclaimed, Paul says, we regard him thus no longer. Indeed, Paul’s resurrection-extended narrative-parable reveals the coming into effect of the kingdom of God. The righteous rule of God comes into effect with the resurrection-vindication of the crucified prophet of the kingdom of God! This is what the kingdom of God is like: giving life to the dead, hope to the hopeless, righteousness to sinners. So Paul explains the parable of the crucified but risen Jesus accordingly: One has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

So clarified that we understand the sense of the story parable of Jesus crucified but raised and exalted is our new in saving Lord, Paul spells out its meaning for living in this world here and now. Namely this: we are always of good courage.  Existentially this is what faith in Jesus Christ, crucified but risen means for us: courage in every trial and testing of this life, knowing we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage so whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

Courage of course is the righteous way to face danger. But what danger? Whom really do we fear? Peer pressure? The twitter mob? The classroom bullies? The office politics? With one swift stroke, Paul eliminates all such dangerous to tell the true one: we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.

Yet courageously facing this true danger of the judgment of God upon us, in the light of God’s justification even of sinners who have cast themselves upon the mercy of Christ, we are truly delivered from the tyranny of opinion. Therefore, Paul continues, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men; but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. What truly we are is in fact secure in the judgment of God just as we may hope that it is also known among conscientious fellow Christians. For the love of Christ controls us! Such people themselves become little parables of God, ordinary lives transformed by the astounding love of God for us. So the kingdom of God actually comes even here and now without the fireworks some expect. So under the radar the kingdom of God grows slowly, often imperceptibly, but tangibly offering shelter to all suffering creatures in body and soul. Because in fact, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.  You are such parables of God!

Pentecost 3, 2024: Genesis 3, 2 Cor 4, Mark 3

Our Scripture lessons today are so rich that each one deserves the full time allotted for our sermon this morning. Yet let me, for brevity’s sake, simply state the essence of each here at the outset: 1) the Genesis narrative illustrates how, when found out in our own sin, we scapegoat. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent and in effect both blame God the creator of Eve as also creator of the serpent. 2) The lesson from 2 Corinthians teaches how the free grace of God in Christ Jesus stirs about in us and through us so that in more and more people thanksgiving increases, glorifying God – even  in defiance of terrible affliction-- since we have an eternal home with God in the heavens. 3) The gospel lesson today puts the foregoing two lessons into the context of the great conflict of good and evil: between the Satan bound and determined to bring God’s creation to ruin but God our Creator and Redeemer at work to undo the Satan’s cruel tyranny, redeeming the creation by creating the new community gathered around Jesus where we learn to do the will of God on the earth as it is done in heaven. So the rule of God breaks in upon the earth and the kingdom of the devil is rolled back.

Consequently, Jesus is – and remains – controversial. Even his family members think that he is out of his mind. Representatives of the Jerusalem establishment, feeling the sting of Jesus’s ministry of mercy against their merciless exploitation in the religion business, accuse him of being in cahoots with the devil himself. Why? For violating traditional taboos for the sake of healing of the afflicted. "He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons." In a wrestling match in, it is sometimes difficult to know who is who. The combatants are all tangled up with the one another.

In the midst of this controversy, Jesus tells a little a little parable to reveal who is who and what is at stake. No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, he says, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house. The picture is, indeed, grim and drastic. Jesus likens us to hostages or captives, perhaps so fully captivated that we have grown accustomed to our captivity, consider it normal, business as usual, having internalized our oppression. Willingly or unwillingly, in either case we are the goods held captive within the strong man’s house.

And the strong man? In context it is clear that the reference is to a prince of the devils, Beelzebub, the Satan. These are the unholy spirits who oppose the Holy Spirit. Their demonic purpose is to usurp, defy and subvert the reign of God our creator. Why? As Martin Luther succinctly put it: they want to be God and do not want to be God to be God. You could thus say that at root such unholy spirits are motivated by envy. They see nothing in another but what they want for themselves to take possession of it as parasites. And so they deceive hapless humans with all the false promises instigating and others the same obsessive envy that inspires them beginning with, as in Genesis 2, the serpent’s false assurance, "You shall be as God knowing good and evil." And so, succumbing to envy, we are taken captive, imprisoned in the strong man's house by our own complicity in the primordial sin.

Finally, Jesus likens himself to a home invader who has broken into the strong man’s house to bind him and plunder his goods. A militant picture! This is what is controversial about Jesus: he breaks into this strong man's house and binds him to liberate his captives. If that were not perplexing enough, this home invader does not accomplish his work of liberation with violent force or deceptive false promises. He does not fight demonic fire with demonic fire. He simply rebukes the unholy spirits with the authority of the creator reclaiming his own creation for the blessing he intends.

Breaking into the strong man's house this way is both bold and vulnerable. It is bold because he dares to bind and plunder the powerful one but it is vulnerable because all he has to do this is his word and Spirit. We see bold vulnerability in the declaration that all sins will be forgiven but the sin against the Holy Spirit. Bold because of the amnesty he declares overall the liberated captives whatever their degree of complicity. Vulnerable, because he claims to do so in the power of the Holy Spirit victorious over the unclean spirits. That leaves us at a crossroads before the controversial Jesus. Will we leave even family behind to join in the improbable gathering around Jesus and in doing do to the will of God? "Who are my mother and my brothers?" 34 And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother."

Let the controversy be clear: Jesus breaks into our lives uninvited like a home invader. In binding the powers that control is, he sets us free. But! Do we want this freedom of life led by the Holy Spirit rather than the unclean spirits? We can hanker after the fleshpots of Egypt. Take flight at the scary journey of freedom on the way to an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison? Prefer deadening security to the pilgrim journey to Promised Land, where awaits us a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens?

The apostle speaks to this Christian anxiety, saying: we do not lose heart. Indeed, we take courage and strength in seeing that in all our troubles on this pilgrim way the Holy Spirit is at work conforming to Jesus. In principle and in power we are broken free from the captivity of our desires to unholy things motivated by greed and envy. This complicity resurfaces again and again so long as we also must live in the unredeemed world where we are bombarded with the propaganda of envy and greed. The Holy Spirit has much work still to do in us on the way. This is what the apostle means when he says that although our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us, purifying us, refining us, sanctifying us. We are not deceived by present appearances any longer, not captured the glitter and allures of this passing reality. Because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. What is promised to us is still not seen. What is promised to us is seen in Jesus, the controversial Jesus, in whom we live now by the same Holy Spirit which conducted him through the cross to the crown. So when we fail, even as Christians, we no longer scapegoat but take responsibility for our sins before God confessing and repairing the damage to those sinned against. And thus, we do not lose heart just because we see in our own lives that we have been claimed by a new Lord, Jesus Christ, whose Holy Spirit is at work in us, in whom we share the same hope.

Pentecost 2, 2024: Deut 5; 2 Cor 4; Mark 2-3

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. So Moses spoke to the people Israel as they prepared to enter the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. They are to remember their origin as the Lord’s liberated people and weekly bring it to mind that they were once enslaved as aliens in a hostile land. They are to remember the Lord who liberated them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. This is the true meaning of keeping the Sabbath just as in our Christian worship we remember the night in which Jesus was betrayed. In this weekly remembrance our Exodus from the wicked Egypt of this world we are renewed in the deliverance to the fresh clean air of faith in the liberating God who rescues us from the depraved and depraving powers of sin and death and devil. This is our Holy Spirit Sabbath keeping.

In our text today we have an important insight into how to read the letter of the Bible spiritually, that is, in accordance with the Holy Spirit’s intention in the text. That does not mean we disregard what the letters say, but using our critical intelligence we discern the intention of the author who is not finally the human writer but the Holy Spirit who employs the human writer for God’s saving purpose. In our Lutheran tradition, this is the very reason why theology matters: we read the Bible theologically when we discern from it the word of God for us today. This is not a blind search. We are given the key that unlocks the Bible by the same Holy Spirit. We know this key as the saving purpose of God in Jesus Christ. So we gain this insight into reading Scripture theologically from the very way Jesus disputed legalistic literalism to read the Sabbath commandment spiritually.

In the time of Jesus the point of Sabbath keeping was reduced into a rigorous abstention from any kind of labor, as if one honored the liberating Lord by sheer immobility. Some Pharisees had the idea that the Messiah would not come until all Israel kept the Sabbath perfectly for a number of successive weeks. God would come to liberate again only if perfect obedience triggered the day of the Lord. So we hear the controversy stories today from the beginning of Mark’s gospel. Jesus is confronted by such Pharisees. We might get the impression from the Gospels that the Pharisees were really bad guys. They were not. They were upright and clean living, the kind of folks you’d like as neighbors. But rather than honoring in spirit and in truth the meaning of the Sabbath as the remembrance of the Lord who looked with favor upon despised and suffering slaves and came to their rescue, they made a rigorously detailed refrain from labor on the seventh day into an observable measure of holiness. This preoccupation with a religious work or performance, as if to force God’s hand, obscured the real thrust of Sabbath keeping, as Moses had explained: you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. See, the point of Sabbath keeping is not a woodenly literal imitation of a behavior conditioned by its ancient circumstances but rather that the liberating work of God should continue to ripple through the chain of social relationships all the way down to the lowliest people, even also livestock. So Jesus concludes with the spiritual interpretation of Moses’s commandment: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” And he adds, “So the Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath."

Some Pharisees could’ve gone along with Jesus up until the last point. There were Pharisees who understood the law spiritually in this way. They knew that under the creator’s blessing we work to live; we do not live to work. We are to remember and imitate, therefore, not the literal behavior of past legal text like Moses speaking to subsistence farmers in a primitive economy, but we are to remember and imitate the mind, the mentality, the purpose and intention of the lawgiver like Moses. What is lawful is what comports in all changing circumstances with the double love commandment, that above all we love the Lord our maker and liberating Redeemer. And in and under that chief love we are to love and set free in turn all of his suffering creatures in our reach. Note well: what angers Jesus on account of the love of the liberating God of Israel for the poor in power is the hardhearted lovelessness and spiritual blindness of some who could not affirm true honoring of the Sabbath by doing the truly good work of protecting and healing life. And we should take to heart Jesus’s anger. It provides the true sense of the inescapable biblical theme of the wrath of God. As theologian Paul Tillich famously taught: “The God of love must be against what is against love.”

As I said, some Pharisees could have gone along with Jesus up until his final statement asserting his own authority to render the true sense of the law of Moses, namely, as the very law of the living God our Creator and Redeemer whose purposes life and its blessing. “So the Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath." In their ears this word of Jesus about his authority to render the true sense of Scripture as word of God was blasphemy. He acted not as one rabbi among others engaging in debate about the law but as Lord of the law who clarifies its true intention. Who, then, is this fellow who sets himself up over the law as its Lord? Foreshadowing Jesus’s ultimate, fate Mark reports in the end of the episode how the Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. See the point: in living this life of healing and forgiveness for our sakes, Jesus from the beginning of Mark’s gospel narrative is on the path to his cross. In the end he will die for us because in this way he has lived for us, cutting through the fog of religious works by which human beings would manipulate God and clarifying the truly good works of obedience to God’s liberating intentions and not in his words only but in his life deed and holy passion.

But let us then humbly reflect: don’t these Pharisees have a point? By what right do we Christians elevate Jesus to the divine role we ascribe to him when we invoke his authority, fulfilling but also superseding the many words of Moses and the prophets to become the one word of God which we are to hear and obey in life and in death? Is it not idolatry, even blasphemy to pray to Jesus and to expect him to become present as he has promised and the breaking of our bread at the Eucharist? This is far more than mere human remembrance but a divine re-presentation of a human being into our midst, not as an equal or brother but as the liberating Lord not only of Scripture or Sabbath but of our very selves. How dare we? Not to mention, as we celebrated last Sunday, making a dogma with --to the Pharisees’ mind-- the unheard of proposition of the Trinity of God, the second member of which was born of the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate? Dear Christian, how dare you?

The apostle Paul dares to, indeed, he insists upon this daring proposition and indeed immediately spells out the ethical conditions of its truthful proclamation. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. There is no hesitancy at all here about the asserting the divine and liberating authority of Jesus Christ as Lord. For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Yet as the proclaimer of it, Paul knows that his only authority is as a servant of the proclamation. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. He represents himself as the earthen vessel; some commentators believe this is a reference to the old-fashioned chamber pot. Treasure in a chamber pot! What an image! Be that as it may, Paul not only distinguishes but insists upon the distinction as integral to the truth of the proclamation. This means that you can test Paul to see whether his human behavior and speech truly corresponds to the treasure which is Jesus Christ as saving Lord.

Does Paul pass this test of judging his speech and behavior in accordance with the crucified but risen and vindicated life of Jesus which he proclaims? That is a question which every baptized Christian is to ask of their preachers, if indeed their only authority is to preach not themselves but Jesus Christ as Lord. In the remarkably poignant passage which follows, Paul spells out his discipleship, his own biographical credentials as an authentic proclaimer of the crucified Lord.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. Here Paul thinks of the floggings he has received, the imprisonments he has endured, the shipwrecks he has suffered, the betrayals by fellow preachers, the defections of some of the congregations he has founded. He has not talked the talk only of Jesus Christ as Lord, he has walked this talk. It is a profound point however for all Christians in their discipleship. To say that Jesus Christ is my liberating Lord is true and necessary yet it entails not a mere lip service but true life service doing truly good works of liberating love. So Paul can truly conclude his authentication to the Corinthians: So death is at work in us, but life in you. True pastors understand Paul sense here very well.

The word of God is true and valid as spoken to be sure, even if it is ethically betrayed by its preacher, as Jesus remain true despite his betrayal by Judas. But we understand what obedience and what betrayal is today by our Scriptures which give us the tools to read the Scripture spiritually as God the Holy Spirit intends by the key which is Jesus Christ crucified and risen for us and our salvation. This treasure is given to every baptized Christian in order to be used in life, if only we bear in mind that we remain the earthen vessels, not the treasure it bears.

Trinity 2024: Isa 6; Rom 8; John 3

            And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." Isaiah was at prayer in the temple in Jerusalem. In a vision, he looked up and saw the Lord on his heavenly throne. Hovering about him, strange flying beasts called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." In the thrice repeated “holy, holy, holy” the church has heard a veiled reference the three person God: Jesus, his Father and their Spirit. And so this story of Isaiah’s call is often read on Trinity Sunday. But the connection is even deeper.

For the holy name of God is given to us in our baptismal calling to go to work in the world in speaking prophetically on God’s behalf. We are baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit so that united with Jesus, in the power of the Spirit we too may do battle with unholy spirits that haunt the world lives. How? By speaking the powerful, effective word of the Lord. Like Isaiah we too may shrink from the task as unworthy. "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" At this, the seraph in his vision puts a burning coal to Isaiah’s lip, burning away the sin, purifying his lips, his tongue, his voice that he may speak the Word of God. "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." So also our baptism into the death of Christ takes away the burden of our guilt by the free forgiveness of sins and in its place makes us ready and able to respond to the calling of God, as did Isaiah. I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

            What shall we say? What is the powerful, prophetic message? For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. The same God whom Isaiah saw in his vision of old, the almighty Lord high and lifted up, seated on his throne in heavenly glory, this God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, this God who chose Israel to whom he gave the covenant, the promises, the oracles, the law and the prophets, this God of the Bible loves the whole world no matter how unholy and unclean. He calls Israel, he called Isaiah, he calls you and me and all the others through Jesus -- not as if to say, ‘You I love, the others I hate.’ Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Love for the loveless shown – this is God’s gospel purpose. He calls each one of us in particular as one of the unholy world that he nevertheless loves, and so he calls each one of us in order to send us to those others with the same message of transformative love.

This way of God’s Son to the cross is no ordinary love, no merely human love but divine and holy and astonishing. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son… God’s love is self-giving. God’s love is self-sacrificing. God’s love is costly. God’s love reaches down into the depths to what is not lovely or worthy or pretty or attractive to make worthy and lovely. God sends his Son to the cross in order to seek and find us there. This is the gospel message God speaks to us and breaks through to us.

            Those who hear it and receive it are born anew from above, as God’s holy and astonishing love makes them new people. This message of God’s love is God himself, as we heard last week, God the Holy Spirit hearing in us God’s Word of love spoken in Jesus Christ, really hearing it, being convinced of it, being persuaded by it, being swept up in it in trust, hope, love and new obedience – this is no human act of willpower but God himself effectively at work in our hearts. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God… This is what the Holy Spirit accomplishes in those who believe. He takes the Word of God spoken in Jesus Christ out of mid-air where it hangs and brings it home in the human heart. Very truly I tell you, Jesus says, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above… no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. By the water of baptism, the Holy Spirit says to each one: you too, united with Jesus, are also God’s beloved child, adopted by grace into his family.

It is impressive how naturally the language of the Trinity occurs when we speak the gospel this way. Holy, holy, holy the seraphs cry out in praise. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. When we cry, Abba! Father! It is the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. This is the first thing to notice. Sometimes you hear critics say that the doctrine of the Trinity was made up by the church hundreds of years later. But we believe in the one, holy, catholic church which the Spirit guides to all truth. It is true that the teaching about the Trinity was defined in the Nicene Creed some 300 years after Christ. But what they defined was simply the truth of this gospel language about God. God really is as he appears in giving his Son and sending his Spirit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not temporary masks he puts on and then takes off, as if something different behind the masks. God’s love for us really hangs on this truth. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. We did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but we have received a spirit of adoption. And therefore we sing, Holy, holy, holy!

But, the critics object, the Trinity is incomprehensible. How can three be one? Friends, it is no objection to a purported truth about God that it goes beyond what our reason can comprehend. If we could understand God we would be God. In all eternity God will remain mysteriously more than we can fathom. Yet this is not a mathematical riddle, but the gospel dynamic of the living God. In his love God has given himself to us and made us known to him. Here then is a true and simple way to think of the Trinity. God speaks. God is spoken. God is heard. Or again: God gives. God is given. God is received. The Father speaks and gives his Word. The Son is sent and given on the cross. The Spirit brings this home into our hearts where it is received. In these actions God is one in his love speaking, spoken and heard, giving, given and received. And therefore we sing with the seraphs to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: Holy, holy, holy!

That is what we sing in the church when we gather to worship in anticipation of the heavenly banquet. But remember there is still a hurting unloved world out there which God nevertheless so loves. Remember that so many suffer with a spirit of timidity to fall back into fear. Remember that so few understand that to be born anew from above is simply to hear and receive in trusting love and gratitude that for Jesus’ sake one is a beloved child of God. Remembering this with Isaiah, we hear the blessed holy Trinity asking: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Now that God’s love has made us worthy, we joyfully say, "Here am I; send me!" United with Jesus by water and the Spirit, empowered therefore with his same Spirit, rising up to live new life to the glory of the Father, "Here am I; send me!" Let others do as they will: "Here am I; send me!" Make my life, O Lord, the song which sings, Holy, holy, holy: "Here am I; send me!"

Pentecost 2024: Acts 2, Romans 8, John 15-16

Today we celebrate the Lord and Giver of Life who made Jesus alive again from the grave on Easter morn, revealing him the Christ, the Son of God.  So also on the day of the Jewish festival of Pentecost, the very same Spirit fell upon the witnesses of the resurrection in Jerusalem. This is God the Holy Spirit who likewise makes Jesus alive to us, making us by faith brothers and sisters of Christ, thus the new born children of God. Today we worship and glorify the Holy Spirit, together with the Father and Son, who brings the Father’s delight to rest upon the Son and brings the beloved Son to live in self-giving love to the Father, the same Holy Spirit who makes us beloved children in whom God delights so that freely and joyfully we offer to God our times, talents and possessions in return.

Today, then, we turn attention not to God who speaks, the Almighty Father; nor to God who is spoken, the Word of the Father who appeared in the flesh, Jesus Christ the Son; but to God who is heard in our midst, the Holy Spirit who hears the Father’s love in Jesus Christ spreading in our ears, into our hearts, into our minds, bearing witness to our spirits that we are indeed the children of God. So we may courageously live this Jesus way as we patiently await the redemption of our bodies. Today is our Pentecost, the festival of the Holy Spirit.

Apart from the Holy Spirit there is no Pentecost birthday of the church, no living faith in Jesus Christ for you and me, no Word nor sacraments, no caring community of Christian people, no new members or faithful old ones, no works of love and mission, no remembrance of Jesus in the holy communion as we proclaim his death until he comes again, nor testimony to him nor prophetic criticism of this blind and sinful world, no truth to trust in at all. In all these works the Holy Spirit, who came upon the apostles at the first Pentecost, continues to come upon the church to make us who were dead to God alive, lost to God found, far from God near. For also my faith and yours is God’s Word heard and obeyed in God, by God, through God the Holy Spirit. Our new life in Christ is God’s Word doing what is says, performing what it tells, effecting what it declares – by the Holy Spirit. For the Triune God does not merely demand but gives what he demands. The Triune God does not merely ask but supplies what he asks. The Triune God does not merely wish but works what he wills. This effective accomplishment in us of what the Father wills and what the Son has done for us is the blessed work of the Holy Spirit who fights for our faith and wins our hearts and pries open our minds by telling the truth to the world about Jesus.

Jesus in today’s gospel compares the Holy Spirit to a prosecuting attorney; this is what the word Advocate means. Notice how legal the language sounds, like being summoned to the witness stand and swearing before God to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. Dou you not hear it? God is conducting a great trial with the world and the disciples are called to the stand in daily circumstances: You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning… What they are to tell is simply the truth about Jesus, he who befriended us when we were friendless, who healed us when no one else would touch us, who brought God near to us who had wandered and were off afar. Yet the world refuses this truth. It will not hear. And so it cannot believe. Thus the world disputes this truth. But when the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus says, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. As prosecuting attorney, the Holy Spirit makes God’s case in his trial with the world: the love of Jesus for sinners is God’s own saving righteousness which condemns the unholy sprit and triumphs over it. The Holy Spirit convinces us of this by convicting us of our sin and convincing us nevertheless of God’s loving mercy. So the prosecuting attorney becomes the defense attorney of those who hear the gospel with faith.

            How else does anyone become persuaded of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? It is not an ordinary conviction, but a heavenly one. To human wisdom, the man ended on the cross, abandoned by all, his life’s work refuted. To human wisdom, the dead do not rise nor can what is done be undone. To human wisdom, Jesus who lived in love for sinners in the end got what he deserved, the same fate that sinners get. To human wisdom, that’s the way things are. Heavenly wisdom says otherwise. It says that our heavenly Father looked upon Jesus’ completed act of total love for us and thundered through the sealed tomb bursting its walls, “That’s my Son indeed, my beloved Son.” Heavenly wisdom says that the holy law which condemns sin got all that it deserves and more, and so was satisfied when innocent Jesus once and for all died, the righteous in the place of the unrighteous. Heavenly wisdom says that with God nothing is impossible. The voice of this heavenly wisdom is the Holy Spirit who convinces us to believe in Jesus Christ by convicting us that we are that very sinner for whom lived, died and rose again, therefore also with him a beloved child of God. So God’s word is heard.

When we talk about the Holy Spirit we are not talking about some manic impersonal force making us act like fools, but about the Lord and Giver of life, a Person as are the Father and the Son, who deals with us personally to attest, convince and persuade -- not impersonally like electricity zapping us or a wave of water sweeping us away in araging flood or a mind altering hallucinogenic. Paul says that love, joy and peace are the fruits of the Spirit who identifies us with the groaning of the oppressed creation to inspire the patient work of healing love in the suffering world. He says that the Holy Spirit manifests many gifts, but his work is one and the same in any and all gifts as he is one and the same Spirit of the Father and the Son: to make us children of God in principle and power, not by forcing us, but by persuading us to repentance and faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.

Why is the Holy Spirit necessary? Jesus is and remains controversial. He has been so from the beginning. Remembering Jesus and telling the truth about him can get very uncomfortable in this world of spin and lies. It is, humanly speaking, easier to forget him and be done with it – to leave him dead and buried in the tomb. Jesus comes by the Holy Spirit to ask us to give up our sin to him and take in its place his righteousness. He asks us to believe in him, that by right of his innocent death he has condemned the devil and ascended to the Father and holds us all in his powerful hands. This was controversial even for the first disciples: But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Or again: I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Who can ever bear this? Who can ever believe this? Who can ever trust this? -- No one can apart from the Holy Spirit! Thus Jesus promises the disciples Pentecost, not only that God’s Word will be spoken to them but also that God’s Word will be heard, trusted and obeyed in them. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you… When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

It is to our advantage not to be couch potato Christians and passive spectators but doers of the Word, not hearers only, but Holy Spirit hearers, active participants in the great contest with the world about the truth of Jesus’ love. What is the truth of Jesus to which we are led? All that the Father has is mine. Because Jesus truly is the Son of this Father, his life was lived for all, his death was died for all, his resurrection is life for all. What a strange and marvelous contest the Holy Spirit conducts with the unbelieving world, which hates the God of love, which excludes the act of inclusion at the cross, which refuses the Easter offer of mercy for one and for all. However it is that we finally come to terms with this painful riddle, it is surely a fact of Christian experience that one believes and another does not. The unbelieving world refuses the love of God and we who believe, who receive and do not refuse the love of God, we see in ourselves no difference to merit such grace from others who do not receive by hearing with faith. But in us the Holy Spirit has seen to it that God’s Word is not only spoken to us but heard in us. Why we should so be chosen to hear and to believe is a marvel we cannot fathom but only worship and adore.

But this we can fathom. The Holy Spirit is joy in all sorrows, peace in all strife, love amid all the apathy and malice of the world. The Holy Spirit is the love of God in Jesus Christ poured out in our hearts causing us to cry in union with Jesus, Abba Father! The Holy Spirit is God’s down payment, as it were, on our future in his victorious kingdom at the last. The Holy Spirit is freedom now from the tyranny of all other opinions, the royal freedom of the children of God. The Holy Spirit is power to do what God wills and love what God commands. The Holy Spirit leads us to the truth who is Jesus in all the confusion of life and leads us to each other, to form the body of Christ on the earth, the witnesses of Jesus in God’s great trial with the world. Come Holy Spirit, God and Lord!

Easter 7, 2024: Acts 1; I John 5; John 17

Have you ever been betrayed? Or worse, have you ever betrayed? Ponder these awful possibilities for a moment to imagine the injury and sorrow inflicted when trust is betrayed. We heard reflections today in early Christianity about this dark event of betrayal that occurred when, as Peter tells, Judas became a guide for those who arrested Jesus-- for Judas was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. Peter interprets Judas’s betrayal of trust by prophecy of Scripture which had to be fulfilled. Likewise the Jesus of the Gospel of John declares: I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. The dark experience of betrayal thus generates the very dark interpretation of destiny. Could Judas have done otherwise? Was he fated to betray? That is a speculative question best reserved for the back-and-forth of discussion in the classroom.

What matters to the Scriptures today is an affirmation of faith: that even when Jesus had fallen into the hands of traitors and persecutors, he has not fallen out of the hand of God. And this confidence in our divine destination to salvation applies also to us, disciples of Jesus. So Jesus prays: I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.  Jesus as much as says in the hearing of his disciples, “I never promised you a rose garden, ” but only strength to endure. For, if we are truly disciples of Jesus, we will experience the same enmity of the world as he did. We will experience enmity because we are in the world but we do not belong, heart and soul and conscience, we do not belong to the world. History is not God but more often than not the triumph of unrighteous victors in the lying games of partisan power politics, if not open war. By contrast, Jesus emphasizes: Disciples do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. That’s our situation: set apart, conformed to Jesus by the word and fortified by the Spirit, we are made strong to be like Jesus vulnerable witnesses to a truth that the world does not heed, or even perceive. The light of this witness of Jesus and consequently of the disciples of Jesus is the light shining in real darkness.

Perhaps we realize these hard truths afresh in these days when everything seems to be spin and propaganda bombards us, incoming from every angle, while polarizing tensions, wars and rumors of war seem to accelerate, dashing bygone hopes of human progress on planet Earth. Lest we succumb to despair, it is imperative today that we focus closely upon the liberating truth of Jesus, not only so that we hold onto it as the ark of our salvation in the raging seas of malice and injustice, but in fact shine with its light in a storm-darkening world. So what is this word of truth that sanctifies?

Jesus begins his prayer-discourse discourse today with a striking formulation: I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. What is he talking about? Don’t we all know already the name of God? Isn’t his name, well, just “God?” Actually, that is not so. In the Bible, the word “God” is not a name but a title, as we can understand from the old-fashioned expression “the one true God,” that is, the one who is truly God, the character who truly deserves this title. That is why there can be many and various false gods, authorities, celebrities, powers, movements, and anything else under the sun claiming to be the key to the riddle of history and the ultimate meaning of human life on the earth. How are we to pick out the one true God even today when “the Western way of life,” or “the Russian world,” or the Marxist-Leninism of communist China, or the Shiite revolution of Iran with its proxy forces in Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis and their campus followers in the universities of the United States, or messianic forms of Zionism – shall I continue? – when one and all claim our allegiance? Which represents the one true God? How shall we pick this one out?

Into this cauldron of confusion, Jesus speaks: I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. Note well, in giving us the personal name of God, Jesus means precisely to deliver us from the world of contested and contesting idolatries claiming our final allegiance, to deliver us from ever more fanatical conflict. So what is this name of God which delivers us? Jesus prays, Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

As happens so often in the Gospel of John, here we have Jesus expressing the deeper truth of the Lord’s Prayer which we have learned from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Especially how it begins, “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name.” Jesus names the God of Israel, the one true God who is creator of all that is not God, who loves all creatures and wills for them abundant blessing, Holy Father. And he immediately explains how this naming of God works to identify Jesus as the beloved Son of the Holy Father. Just as in the Lord’s prayer we address the one true God is also our Father at the invitation and in union with Jesus the Son, so also in John’s exposition, the will of God is done on earth as in heaven when each believer is united to the Father through the Son; each believer is therewith also united with all the other believers in one flock under one shepherd.

Certainly there is a problem of sensitivities here. Some believers have suffered from violent or abusive fathers and find it difficult to address God in this way, especially if they are erroneously thinking that Christian prayer is a projection of our human experiences onto the divine. Certainly there is also scriptural warrant for feminine metaphors for the one true God. Jesus would gather the people of Jerusalem like a hen gathers the chicks under her wings. Paul the apostle is in travail until he gives birth to his children in Christ. But a metaphor which tells us what something is like is not the same as a name which picks an individual out of the crowd to identify it personally.

That is precisely what the name of God, Holy Father, does: it picks from out of all the various candidates for divinity in the contested and contesting world of darkness and confusion the One who has given his name to the beloved Son, Jesus, in order to give it to us as well, so that we be delivered into the loving unity of Christian faith. And notice as well that this does not name an earthly father, but the heavenly Holy Father, the Father who is in heaven and not on the earth. The Holy Father of the beloved Son Jesus is anything but a projection of our human experiences of fatherhood. Such projection would be just another idol. Rather, by this fatherhood of Jesus all true fatherhood on the earth is measured – a sharp judgment against all unholy fathers on earth who use and abuse defenseless little one entrusted to their care.

What a distance we have traveled in the sermon! From the experience of betrayal to the confidence that nevertheless the God of love will prevail for us. Our sins are many but finite, the love of the Holy Father of the beloved Son Jesus is boundless, infinite.

And this movement is a fitting way to conclude the Easter season, just as Jesus concludes the prayer in what is often called his Farewell Discourse: And now I am no longer in the world, but the disciples are in the world… As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. People have odd ideas about holiness or sanctity. It is often justly lampooned as puritanical repression or sanctimonious self-righteousness. But in the Bible holiness is really about the divine power of belonging, being picked out by the Spirit, gathered in for holy communion, destined for eternal salvation. This act of making holy, of sanctification, begins with the resurrection of the crucified, dead, and buried Jesus, shrouded in the sin of the world which he forgave in his Father’s name and whose burden he took upon himself. On this unfathomable act of faithful love, the Holy Father on Easter morn said yes and amen. And so the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead and exalted him as our Savior and Lord.

      Therefore, this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life. And where there is life, there is holiness and sanctification. The elder who has written 1 John, from whom we have heard so often in these weeks of the Easter season, wraps up our meditation this morning with his concluding words: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. The name is Jesus sent by the Holy Father for us and our salvation. Now we await the Pentecost manifestation of the Holy Spirit to complete the revelation of the Holy Trinity, the God of the gospel.

Easter 6, 2024: Acts 10, 1 John 5, John 15

"Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" Peter’s rhetorical question displays the radical hospitality of the gospel. He is talking about the oppressor, the household of Cornelius, the Roman centurion. All are welcome in the capacious house of the gospel, into the new humanity of the children of God. What is that? Or rather, who is that new human? The reading from 1 John spells it out. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God… By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. Jesus spells out that commandment of joy in today’s gospel: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. The life of the church into which we enter by baptism is the community formed and ever enlivened by the loving Holy Spirit of Jesus and his Abba-Father. The reality of our new humanity does not depend, then, on worldly status or patronage, popularity or power; none of the polarizations of this world count any longer. Indeed desire for any of these things actually corrupts its reality. Its reality is the Spirit uniting people together in the love of Jesus to the glory of God the Father.

Let us ponder and fully digest that summary statement of our three lessons today on this sixth Sunday of the Easter season. The reality of the church is the Spirit uniting people together in the love of Jesus to the glory of God the Father. Peter recognizes the loving Holy Spirit at work in the amazing fact that these Gentiles were speaking in tongues and extolling God. It’s easy here for us to get hung up by the reported phenomena of speaking in tongues when the point is rather that it is the unclean, the ungodly, the Gentiles who are praising the God of Israel. What this ecstatic phenomena consists in is extolling God. That is the substance of the gift of the Spirit who pours the love of Jesus into human hearts so that in turn they sing love in praise to the God of love.

This Spirit-given love may take as the many forms as there are human cultures and be expressed in as many tongues as there are languages. What is decisive is that all human boasting ceases and instead hearts are lifted up to the Lord in prayer, praise and thanksgiving. That is the sure and certain sign that it is the Holy Spirit who has fallen on hearers of the gospel word. Baptism into the unity of the new humanity of God comes about when we no longer boast of our diverse identities, regarding them as superior to others, giving heed to a lust for domination, but rather in the power of the Spirit united with Jesus and thus to one another, we glorify the God of Israel who has included us in his outreaching love.

This knowledge of the Spirit’s movement provides us with a criterion for discernment, for testing the spirits to see whether they are indeed of God. Any spirit who inspires human boasting of one’s own superiority over others is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of Jesus and his Abba-father is the Spirit who turns us out of our preoccupation with entrenched worldly identities, status, heritage or power towards love for others to the glorification of God. Just this straightening out, this rectification of our human selves, reorienting life in the direction of mutual love is the Holy Spirit at work. And the Holy Spirit does this work by uniting each and every believer to Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ to every other believer, one and all united in the praise of God. This community of disciples, united in the love of Jesus, is the divine ferment in this world, under the radar of its powers and authorities, of the aborning kingdom of God.

In what does this union with Jesus Christ consist? How are we to recognize it? To begin with, Jesus says today: You did not choose me, but I chose you. See, that is the end of all human boasting – and especially any ecclesiastical boasting – when in true humility we acknowledge that our faith and discipleship does not come about by our own initiative and power, but rather by the great choice of Jesus Christ for us one and all. Today he voices that great choice: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. This is what Jesus has done in choosing his disciples. So he continues, I have appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another.

There is a purpose for us, then, in the great and saving choice that Jesus made for one and for all. The promise that prayer will be heard is not a blank check. The instruction is to pray in accord with God’s purpose. The purpose is that his love, which has sought and found and grasped you just as every other believer, should channel through you to unite in love with others for whom this truly good Shepherd has also laid down his life. Believers need to know this purpose of God! They need to know this purpose in the love of Jesus that there joy may be full.  They need to know this because, he says, no longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

The servant just follows orders without knowing the purpose or intention. But a friend knows the choice of Jesus and the purpose of Jesus’s choice so that the friend of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, knowingly cooperates in the purposes of God the Father. So, just as the Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus and his love, Jesus refers us back to the Holy Spirit who makes us into his friends, knowing the purpose of God the Father who has sent the Son to us and, then, the Holy Spirit upon us that we intelligently and actively cooperating with the purpose of God to the glory of God and true human good.

Peter asked, "Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" We have heard how 1 John answers: Who is it that overcomes the world but whoever believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  Such remarkable faith issuing in the glorification of God, the Abba Father of this Son Jesus, is the militant work of the Holy Spirit victoriously overcoming the darkness of this world. As born anew by faith, our intelligent and active cooperation in the community of Christian love is imperative – it is a gospel commandment! – in the Holy Spirit’s battle against the malice and injustice, the apathy and lovelessness of the unbelieving world. The community of disciples bound together in self-giving love is both a refuge against the darkness of this world and a beacon-light of witness shining in it to point out the better way.

In just this Holy Spirit light, Jesus’s commandments are not burdensome. They would be burdensome for a mere servant who works by rote, to be sure. How different, however, for those who are born of God! Newly born by the work of the Holy Spirit uniting them with the love of Jesus and through that with love for one another,  just this friend of Jesus, no longer servant, but friend overcomes the world and already tastes the victory that overcomes the world in our Spirit-supplied faith.

Many of us in today’s church are discouraged and alarmed by the decline of our institutions. There are good reasons and bad reasons for this decline which faithful people need patiently to sort through so that we discern the divine criticism of our Christian failures from the hostile attacks of enemies, gleefully kicking us when we are down. The place for that is the meeting room where there can be give-and-take and discussion rather than from the pulpit, where the word of God is to be proclaimed. Yet to all who are discouraged and in dismay about the state of the church, Jesus concludes today, These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you.

The joy of Jesus is this. Baptism is the radical hospitality of the gospel. Baptism is the work of the Holy Spirit converting us from self-preoccupied suspicion and coldhearted lovelessness. Baptism unites us with Jesus Christ, the good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep so that there be one flock, one shepherd. The baptized rise up in the power of the Spirit to knowing and active cooperation in the outreaching ingathering purpose of God to create caring communities of Christ’s people, the little yeast that leavens the whole lump of the surrounding world. Our labor in the Lord is not in vain, then, nor is it joyless drudgery. We take to heart and bear in mind: These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you. In this joy we persevere, blessing the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. Amen, so be it, Amen.

Easter 5, 2024: Acts 8; 1 John 4; John 15

See, here is water! What is to prevent my being baptized? So queries the Ethiopian eunuch upon understanding how Jesus became that suffering servant of the Lord of whom Isaiah wrote, the One on whom was laid the iniquities of us all to free us from them. The story of Philip evangelizing the Ethiopian on a chariot ride is illustrative of Luke's purpose in the Book of Acts; he describes the Spirit’s Easter explosion as early Christianity streamed out to the nations of the earth. Upon hearing Easter’s strange but astonishingly good news of a sheep led to the slaughter, of a silent lamb before its shearer in whose humiliation for our sakes justice was denied, the eunuch asked for baptism. He henceforth wants to be identified with the Lamb who was slain for him by the baptismal sign of death by drowning. He wants to be baptized. What is to prevent my being baptized? he asks. Nothing! No barriers of race, nationality or sexuality block him. He gets to be baptized.

Now, notice that the entire episode in Luke’s telling has been orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. See, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Whether one looks back at one’s baptism as an infant or as an adult looks forward to baptism, in either case the event of our conversion to Christ is the good and gracious work of the Holy Spirit. That is essential so that even in our own precious personal faith we do not rely on ourselves to put our faith in faith, but rely solely on the gracious work of God the Holy Spirit who binds us to Christ to the glory of God the Father. To be sure, then, the story indicates that there could be something to prevent one from being baptized. Without the Spirit at work in human hearing and understanding the good news of the Christ who lived for all who are poor in power and died for those dead in their sins, and thus in faith wanting this oddly good news to be valid also for oneself, baptism might be withheld on the grounds that it has been reduced to nothing but a human ceremony, shorn of its divine meaning and purpose.

One thinks here of merely ceremonial christenings of newborns. Years ago I remember getting a random phone call from someone I did not know asking me if “he could get his kid done in my church.” Of course, it’s not “my” church but Christ’s church, of which I am a faithful steward as a called an ordained minister. When I said that it’s possible but I require counseling for parents who present their children from baptism, he quickly ended the conversation. I’m suspect he kept looking for easier clergy through the phone book listings. Of course, for many centuries we have baptized little ones brought forward by parents or guardians who solemnly promise that the baptized child will be raised to understand the good news of Christ so that by the time of their confirmation in adolescence, they may affirm by personal and public confession that they indeed want this good news of Jesus crucified and risen to be valid for themselves. The ministry of the church thus has the holy duty to instruct parents and guardians in the promises that they are making on behalf of the child. For centuries prior, the custom had been for confirmands to receive their first communion on this occasion.

There are some outspoken in recent days who in the name of "radical hospitality" advocate offering Holy Communion to anyone who attends the worship service, regardless of faith, baptism, or any other “legalistic,” as they claim, requirement. This is wrongheaded. Holy Baptism is the radical hospitality of the gospel, radical because in it we are spiritually crucified with Christ that we may henceforth and daily die as members bound to the malice and injustice of the old and passing age to rise as members of the body of Christ, harbingers of God’s new humanity. Holy Communion nurtures the baptized in their new Christian lives as disciples of the Lord Jesus. It is meant for the nurture of Christian living. Whenever one communes, indeed, one joins in proclaiming the death of Christ until he comes again. Partaking of Christ’s self-donation of his body and blood, one ever freshly takes the cross of Christ upon oneself for the daily struggle against sin in oneself and for greater righteousness in one's world. One does not "have" to be baptized to commune as if some legalistic hoop to jump through. Rather, it is the baptized who want to commune with Christ and his people. The radical hospitality of the Christian message is on display in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, who earnestly asked, What is to prevent my being baptized?

These advocates advertise communion as offering "a little taste of grace" to seekers and visitors. In reality, this is grace so cheap they can hardly give it away. Certainly, unbaptized seekers and visitors should be heartily welcomed at the Eucharistic assembly of the faithful in appropriate ways. But this marketing of Holy Communion as a little taste of grace" is a profanation; it is a trivialization because grace is never little.  Grace is always hugely, indeed altogether radically transformative as seen in the story of the Ethiopian. Grace transforms by uniting us with the death of Jesus for us in order that we rise with Jesus to newness of life. Just this is the radical love of God captured by the word "grace." So the First Letter of John testifies today: God is love. 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 loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

The precious statement that, "God is love," is at the heart of our Christian faith and just so it dare not be trivialized. It is trivialized when “love” becomes a platitude, a cliché really, a religious bromide, a conscience-dulling narcotic, a marketing gimmick that obscures the holy battle of the God of love against our lovelessness, a divine battle engaged in baptism to rescue us from the daunting powers of sin, death and devil. The love of God is trivialized when pulpits offer a clichéd love of mere permissiveness. But all we get in this way is a cheap covering for our sins to produce a deceived but easy conscience, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously warned. The point being made in 1 John today is that radical love, the creative love of God's grace, is not cheap but costly. It costs God to love real, not imaginary, but the real sinners of which we and our world consist.

May I convince you? How often in fact are we tempted to give up on this world when we are confronted again and again in dismay and disgust at the sorry spectacle of human malice and injustice. How much more so – think of the formative story of Noah and the flood in the book of Genesis – might our Creator, seeing our human wickedness, resolve to eradicate us as hopeless and beyond repair? Indeed, how much more so might we in our own dismay and disgust be tempted to pull the trigger of eradication on our enemies, perceived and real, which in today's world would surely amount to mutually assured destruction?

Now, the truly radical love of God confronts just this well-justified dismay and disgust by the costly way of Jesus's expiation or our sins. If our Christian love is to bear one another's burdens, the divine love of Christ, which is the root of our little Christian love, is that before God he bore the sin of the world that God might once and for all judge and condemn our lovelessness and bury it forever in his tomb, ever giving us a new and fresh start on life. That is what this word, "expiation," means. That is why at the conclusion of the Eucharistic rite we sang the Agnus Dei, "Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us your peace, amen."

And just this proclamation together with Holy Spirit transformative faith, is how the baptized, nurtured at the Lord's Supper, remain rooted in the true vine who is Christ. Here we see again why the “little taste of grace” pitch is so much false advertising, reflecting a sorry false consciousness among its advocates. Today Jesus says something that ought to sober them up – or rather, sober us all up:  I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. We play with fire when we cheapen grace. Those who take and eat at this meal, I said, renew themselves in Christ by taking his cross upon themselves. That is what Jesus speaks about under the figure of the vinedresser who cuts out the dead branches and prunes with sharp shears even the fruit bearing ones. You can’t just have a little taste of grace and walk away from it. Because grace is huge and radical and life transformative. Therefore we hear this warning: If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. This warning applies more to the hawkers of cheap grace than to the poor souls that they have deceived.

But for us who have wanted to be baptized into Christ, the promises of the text we have heard today from Jesus are far more encouraging. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. For us it is not a threat, but rather a clear and clarifying, thus empowering explanation. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Nothing at all prevents anyone from being baptized but a willful and stubborn desire to stay at home in the world of malice and injustice. Being baptized, we are united with Christ who is the living source of any righteousness and love that we in fact perform. Truth be told, most of the time we don’t even notice, because the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives of righteousness and love emerges organically from the vine, Christ, in whom we are grafted. How utterly natural, then, for baptized Christians to glory in Jesus’s final word to us today:  By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. So by radical grace, we baptized are grafted into the vine who is Christ to bear the fruit of his love and righteousness into the world to the glory of God.

Easter 4, 2024: Acts 4, 1 John 3, John 10

In the joyful confidence of the Easter message of the vindication of the crucified Jesus, let’s face up to some real difficulties today. Namely this, if you would want to cause offense in today’s world, just recite out loud and assert in public the conclusion of Peter’s sermon this morning, And there is salvation in no one else [than Jesus Christ of Nazareth], for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

To be sure, Easter people are not ashamed of the gospel. How could we be? But everything here depends it being the gospel’s offense and on our getting that offense right, not giving offense with an arrogant claim to our religious or cultural superiority. To the contrary, in a social environment where so much is propaganda being spun from every angle, we know that Christ died for all because God wants all to be saved. We want rightly to avoid the hateful appearance of damning to hell sheep not of our fold. We are constrained by a conscientious Christian reservation, concerned that brashly quoting this easily misunderstood word of Peter could be just one more exercise in self-serving propaganda alongside all the others out there. Is our proclamation of the gospel in fact just propaganda? Is evangelism proselytism? I don’t think so and neither should you. But let’s see why. By facing the difficulty, we have occasion to dig deeper for a better understanding of Peter’s claim for no other name and a wiser approach to proclaiming the Easter victory of the Lord Jesus also in today’s world. Our lessons today help us do that.

Some years back the late theologian George Lindbeck proposed a thought experiment. He asked about the ethical conditions in which a claim like Peter’s about no other name could be true or for that matter false, or rather falsified. His point was that the Easter proclamation is not simply an intellectual proposition but also a performance, that is to say an ethical act. For it was God’s ethical act to hand his righteous Son over into the hands of sinners to bear away their sin and the sin of all the world, in this way to find the path forward from the divine judgment of love on lovelessness to the mercy of love for all us unloving ones. This is the divine proclamation of the gospel, both God’s assertion of salvation in Jesus and God’s performance of surpassing love. Just so, we too may speak the Easter word of God.  But we can also falsify it. To illustrate this important point about falsifying, Lindbeck asked about a medieval crusader lopping off the head of an infidel with his sword and crying out, “Jesus is Lord!” The question he asked is whether this statement true under those ethical conditions. Or do those conditions of aggression in fanatical religious warfare betray the content of the statement, Jesus is Lord, and thus make it practically false? Because Jesus is emphatically not that kind of Lord?

Lindbeck’s parable parallels the teaching from the First Letter of John which we have heard today: By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth. Our joyful Easter faith, so our Gospel lesson today tells, is in the good shepherd [who] lays down his life for the sheep; it is faith in the self-sacrificing, not self-serving love of Jesus that is operative in our corresponding performances of love, taking form in our little echoes of the good Shepherd’s great love in caring for the needy. The proclamation of the saving love of Jesus and the performance of it are a package deal: This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another. One betrays the faith, falsifies faith, even when -- no, especially when-- a statement like there is no other name under heaven, is deployed insensitively, let alone purposely to express one’s own religious superiority, to disrespect or denigrate others as inferiors, let alone to incite hatred instead of love. Rather, we, believers in the divine love named by the name of Jesus are to hate our own lovelessness just as we love all neighbors, even our enemies.

Does this love for others extend to those outside the community of Christian faith? Because it is Jesus, friend of sinners, healer of all in need of a physician, champion of any who are poor in power, Jesus who in final solidarity bore the sin of our entire world on the cross to bear it away to be left behind, buried forever in his tomb, this Jesus, unlike all the rest of us in his self-donating love for lesser and unworthy beings, because it is Jesus who is acclaimed Lord we can truthfully say that there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved, where the little pronoun, “we,” includes all and excludes no one from the scope of his saving love.

In this light, let’s take a second look at Peter’s sermon this morning. Peter it is on trial for naming the name of Jesus when he told a crippled beggar that he had neither silver nor gold to give him, but what he did have he would freely share. So, he declared, “In the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk!” And the man did. For this naming the name, Jesus, and doing a corresponding act of salvation in its power, Peter is now on trial. Peter is on trial for performing ethically a powerful act of mercy and what is especially disruptive, for giving healing freely as pure gift. These are practices which threaten the lucrative religion business of the temple moneychangers. You see, the Temple establishment in Jerusalem was in theological and political cahoots with the Roman occupiers. They were not interested in something as fantastic in their eyes as “salvation.” Unlike many other Jews of the time, the Sadducees controlling the Temple had no use for the idea of the resurrection and did not look kindly on the little resurrection in their midst in Peter’s healing of a cripple. For them, the only realistic future lay in the physical perpetuation of the temple. If cripples and other broken lives could eke out a meager living by begging in its precincts that was all realistically that could be hoped for. Salvation just was not on the agenda. Indeed proclaiming and enacting God’s healing in Jesus’s name was perceived as a threat, just as the healer named Jesus actually had been, whom they nailed to the tree.

We have now put our finger on the genuine offense of the gospel of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. The key insight from a more careful look at our passage today is that not everyone is looking for the salvation of which Peter speaks, not even the crippled man expected it. How many people today do you know who are troubled about, looking for, or concerned with salvation? Not many, I venture, excepting those few poor souls who have been traumatized by ruthless, cruel, fire-and-brimstone propaganda posing as preaching in toxic forms of contemporary Christianity. To be sure, many people are looking for some kind of liberation, or therapy, or even justice but they are not looking for these things from God the creator, so inevitably they fall for propaganda marketing some human project of self-salvation. So here comes the genuine offense of the Peter’s proclamation of no other name: Will you be the sinner for whom Christ died? Will you therefore live your life now banking all on the hope of his resurrection?

When Peter affirms that there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved, it is a claim composed of two parts: first, that the name, Jesus, refers to the single shepherd of our human history who laid down his life for the sheep and second, that what he gives us in this way is the salvation of God. These two are proclaimed together by Peter as news, good news, hitherto unheard of news. Unexpected because not everyone is asking for the salvation of God and even fewer are expecting to be given the salvation of God as a gift, let alone a gift performed in a self-sacrificing act of love for those otherwise helpless and unworthy. We understand well what we are saying if we repeat Peter’s claim when, and only when, we know ourselves as those helpless and unworthy who have no claim in ourselves to be better than any others but are ourselves the spiritually crippled, begging for wholeness. Why, if I must be saved by the self-giving love of God in Jesus Christ, who am I to exclude any others?? How, then, can I not like Peter freely share what I have received, the saving love of Jesus?

How then are we today to proclaim this very message of Peter’s, particularly after some rather notorious failures of Christianity in our history to live the love which the faith of Christ names? Lindbeck quite intentionally used the historical example of the Crusades in his little parable; as well he could have mentioned colonial depredations of indigenous populations by later day European Protestants and Catholics alike, and many other failures. The great disasters of the 20th century, Hitler, Hiroshima and Stalin, were all perpetuated from the soil of allegedly Christian civilizations. Christians today bear the heavy burden of these historical failures. To be sure, real enemies of Christianity deploy this shameful history in their own propaganda to discredit Christianity. But we dare not respond in kind, perpetuating arrogance with more lies and half-truths. Rather we are to courageously discern through the fog of anti-Christian propaganda the accusation of God against our own failures to believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another.  In just this careful discernment we come to our present challenge. How do we publicly proclaim the gospel of the blessed and inclusive finality of Jesus Christ when it can easily sound like more of the same old Christian triumphalism, i.e. as if the Easter victory of Jesus was our victory, the demonstration of the superiority of our civilization or our religion over competitors, rather than God’s astounding victory for all of us ungodly?

By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Guilt can be paralyzing and troubled consciences don’t have any idea what to do that does not make matters worse. If that guilt blocks arrogant triumphalism, it is the strange fruit but certain work of God. Yet God is greater than his own sharp critique of his own people. Indeed, it is as Christians that we ever need a Savior and receive the salvation of God who is faithful to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, if only we confess them. We are given a fresh start every time we pass through the death of divine critique to the newness of life of faith operative in love. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.

Evangelism? Proclamation of the victory of God in Christ for us all? Here is the key. It is the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for the sheep who speaks his own good news. It is risen! He who is risen speaks in and through our chastened and humble works of faith active in love, bearing witness to him in word and deed.  The mission is his, this charge I have received from my Father, he says.  He protects the flock, by saving even from their own sins, even betrayals of his name. And it is he who says I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd. That is the mission of an evangelism that proclaims the victory of God for all in word and deed. So we do not proselytize but leave it to the Holy Spirit to call, gather, unite and enlighten the people of God on earth, harbinger of salvation. Critically clarified, that is sense of the claim that there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.

As we sing, “Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, till all the world adore his sacred name.”

Easter III 2018: Luke 24, Acts 3, 1 John 3

Christ is Risen!

“What in the world is that?” That’s the question these astonished, or perhaps astounded, even better, confounded disciples, “startled and terrified” asked when from out of nowhere they were greeted with the words, Peace be with you. Luke tells us what they thought they were seeing—the Greek word is pneuma, the same word we translate as spirit, as in Holy Spirit—Luke tells us that they thought they were seeing a spirit. The New Revised Standard Version translates pneuma here as “ghost”—some of us are old enough to remember when we used to call the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost. In the case of the Holy Spirit, the word pneuma is appropriate for he comes and goes like the wind, visible only in his effects. By contrast, the mysterious figure appearing to the disciples makes a point of showing them the wounds of crucifixion and while some were still in doubt, asks for and eats some broiled fish, expressly denying that he is a “ghost.” So that’s their question: what in the world is this confounding figure standing before them suddenly appearing in the closed room? What in the world is that?

It’s a pretty natural human question, isn’t it, which we put to unanticipated phenomena; when something new appears for which we don’t have ready categories with which to classify it, and thus comprehend it. That’s how human understanding works, by categorizing things, putting the unfamiliar into a general category or dictionary definition that masters the strangeness and gives us a way of approaching it. So when I was digging in the dirt around an old farmhouse on our property and noticed shiny, gleaming objects catching the sun, I asked, “What in the world is that?” The broken fragments didn’t immediately tell me what they were, but I understood when I recognized ceramic and glass, and said, “Aha, these are shards from pottery thrown out as trash in years gone by.” That’s how human understanding works. Our first question about something novel is, what in the world is that?

The ready category available to the first disciples was that of a spirit or ghost, because you know, dead is dead, buried in the tomb, end of story. What in the world is that? It’s a spirit, a ghost. Wrong! That is not the novelty here. Jesus does not first contradict the disciples’ supposition that what stands before them is a ghost. Rather, he wishes to change the question they are asking. They are asking, What is this? But the right question to ask is instead, Who is this? See, Jesus first asserts, It is I, and to verify his identity shows the scars on his body as the one who had been crucified. The one who is standing before you, in other words, is the very one who had been crucified. That is what is important to apprehend, not, that a dead person now appears—something we would ordinarily regard as a terrifying apparition—but rather that Jesus, friend of sinners, all the way to death, even death on a cross, presents himself with tidings of victory for them, Peace be with you. It is I.

Consequently in our Christian faith, the question who—who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? Who among the spirits blowing through humanity is the Holy One? Who, then, believes truly as a Christian?—the question who comes first and indeed it governs how we ask go on to ask the question, what? Only when we know that it is Jesus who is risen, Jesus who is the vindicated Son of his Abba Father’s love, Jesus who speaks to disciples victory peace and breathes on them his own Holy Spirit, only then can we begin correctly to think about what has occurred. Otherwise we will turn Easter into something ghostly and keep it at a distance when the crucified but risen Jesus rather would come into our midst to bring about a corresponding transformation of who we are.

In historical fact, the first great life and death struggle for the truth of the gospel in early Christianity had to do with some believers who insisted that the risen Jesus is a ghost. Our reading from First John today elsewhere refers to the deviant belief of those who deny that Jesus “has come in the flesh.” They think that the body with scarred hands and feet was at best a kind of masquerade that an otherworldly spirit temporarily adopted, only to discard the body like a shell when it was time for the spirit to go back to heaven. This false understanding of what the resurrection is, and as a result what our salvation brought by the risen Jesus is, happens when we let our natural question, What is it? overrule or disregard the plain text of the New Testament. As we have seen, however, Luke insists on first identifying who it is who is risen, the very One crucified for our sins, as Paul the Apostle would put it, in order that he be raised for our justification. Because we have no natural way of understanding what the risen Jesus truly is, we turn him into a ghost, and even worse, think that the salvation he brings would be for us also to turn into ghosts. But early Christianity rightly regarded this reasoning as a temptation. The salvation Jesus brings is, in the words of St. Paul, the redemption of our bodies. As an early Church Father put it, whatever of our humanity Jesus did not share in, that part would be without healing or salvation. Jesus, as Luther would put it, is and ever remains God deep in the flesh.

Consequently First John today similarly tells us, See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is [who] we are. See again the priority of the question who. Jesus is risen—so who are you? You are the beloved children of God! We are God’s children now... but what we will be has not yet been revealed. See? The question, what, is not yet answered. It lies in the future, so the letter continues. What we know is this: when he is revealed we shall be like him, for we will see him as he is—in his risen glory.

Likewise today after the healing of the crippled man in the name of Jesus, Peter preaches by telling who Jesus is, what his name stands for. He says, The God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected… you rejected the holy and righteous one, and you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead.  See, this reversal of his destiny is the real wonder, mystery, and supremely good tiding of Easter, not simply that a dead one returns, however we might try to make sense of that, but instead that this particular one, Jesus, a man holy and righteous, a worker of healing and life, although rejected by this world of malice and injustice, has nevertheless been recognized, vindicated, honored, exalted, glorified by the Abba Father whom he trusted in death as in life. He does not die again, therefore, nor persist merely as a shadowy ghost but lives eternally to reign as one who has conquered real death not only for himself but for all who bodily identify with him and through him become beloved children of God.

Dear Christian friends, when we ask what we are, we can be tempted to pride or to despair. We are tempted to pride when we reduce the question about who we are to some attractive but false notion of what we are. I am a proud boy, boasting of my white supremacy. Or, what is the same,  I am my ethnicity, my language group, my gender, in proud solidarity with others in my class of the oppressed. Either way, I abandon my concrete and actual personhood into some stereotypical definition of what I am or supposed to be. I surrender my mind to some herd mentality and my conscience to the dictates of group think. Closer to painful home in the loneliness of such pseudo-identifications, however, we are tempted to despair if and when we see truly what we are, as such identities fail us: weak, faltering, in the blunt but honest language of a Luther, all too plainly sinful and perishing. If we try to answer the question of who we are with some bogus notion of what we are, we wander in the darkness, evermore alone.

But everything, ourselves too, is bathed in new light, transfigured, if instead we ask whose we are, children of the Father’s love; no, it does not yet appear what we shall be when we see Christ in risen glory.  That must wait. In the interim it suffices for the Christian life of imperishable joy already now to know who Christ is, who made all of us his own, even to death on a cross that we might all belong to Him now and forever. That is whose we are even as what we are is now destined for transformation to life eternal. Amen. Christ is Risen!

Easter 2, 2024 Acts 4, 1 John 1, John 20

An abundance of riches today from the Scriptures, so worthy of devout attention! Where to begin? We begin where Peter and the apostles began, actually where the Christian faith truly began, when with the great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

It helps us to know this beginning since apart from Easter morn, the cross would spread no shadow. Apart from Easter morn, the life, teaching, ministry, mission and holy obedience of Jesus would have been lost in the dustbin of history, Jesus forgotten like so many other Jews of his time crushed by cruel Roman crucifixion. Apart from Easter morn, then, there would be no power let loose in the world for living together in the true community of these first Christians, sharing their all with one another. Apart from Easter morn, we would not be gathered here today or on any other Sunday, the day of his resurrection and the dawning of our new creation. Apart from Easter morn, we could not know nor could we trust that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we could not trust God in this knowledge of the Easter faith, we would lack orientation and empowerment for living as children of the light in a world still so full of darkness – darkness, which would otherwise easily overcome us.

Indeed, we know from later in the Book of Acts that the early Christian community life was disrupted in fact by the penetration into it of the darkness of our world. There we read about religious hucksters who tried to buy the power of the Spirit and how greed and deceit subverted the sharing of goods in the community. In other words, as the community lived in the world shining as light in the darkness, the darkness struck back, assailed and penetrated it, corrupting it. In the world but not of the world, community in Christ found itself then and ever since on the very battle line between the God of the gospel and the forces of darkness.

That is why we have the striking back-and-forth today in the lesson from the first epistle of John. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. So far so good. But John immediately adds: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. You might wonder about this. Presumably you have not cussed out your parents today, not murdered nor committed adultery, not robbed a bank. Perhaps you coveted but you managed to keep your envy secret and under cover. So how is it that upright Christians like me and you can be called liars if we say that I have no sin? Alas, I am linked by my body to the structures of this world of darkness where malice and injustice prevail. I participate in them inevitably, whether I like it or not. I am thusly caught up in the tragic conflicts of the world where there is no exit, no escape. Indeed in this conflicted world I am partisan of some faction of contending forces and so I become complicit in its rivalries in malice and injustice. Whether or not I have personally committed a crime, I have certainly failed to love God with my all and to love all his creatures in and under God. I have omitted to do much good that I could. Thus I have sin.

But John continues: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Because we are walking in the light, we see ourselves in its light and thus discover the darkness not only around us but also still within us. This was our painful Lenten self-examination which reveals our continuing need of a Savior even as we now live as blessed, beloved enlightened children of God. So John concludes this back-and-forth discussion with his purpose statement: My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. The Savior whom we need daily is Jesus Christ, the one righteous man in all our human history, he who loved God above all by loving us, even sinners living in darkmess, to the end. Just so he is the expiation -- that means the One who innocently bore the sin of the world to bury it all in his tomb, death of death and hell’s destruction. This is the great wonder of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, how our creator sought and found the way to us in our true need in the amazing divine solidarity of creative love for all our tragically conflicted world. We may therefore take great comfort every Sunday when we sang the Agnus Dei at the end of the Eucharistic prayer. As we contemplate the sinfulness of our human world, seeing the darkness in the light of God, and even our complicities in it, we also see how profoundly this God of light has not abandoned nor forsaken us, neither our enemies. Our risen Jesus is advocate with the Father who perpetually intercedes for us one and all.

And so we come to a paradigmatic intercession of the risen Jesus in the well-known story of doubting Thomas – but also how it is so frequently misunderstood, as if what Thomas doubted was news of a miracle, whether a wonder like a corpse coming back to life can really happen. That is not what Thomas doubts. Thomas does not doubt that his fellow disciples have seen something. Thomas does not doubt that in general miracles can happen. What Thomas doubts is that the figure who wondrously appeared to the other disciples was in fact the same Jesus who was crucified. Thomas doubts the identity of Jesus who was crucified with the apparition his fellow disciples claimed to have beheld.

Why should he doubt just this? The world is full of pseudo-prophets and false messiahs who can do wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect of God. The world is full of apparitions and hallucinations, even if nowadays we imagine exotic visitors from deep space or secret conspirators surveilling us, pulling the algorithm levers to beguile us. That is why Thomas demands to see the scars marking the crucifixion: to confirm that the risen one who had appeared is in fact the same Jesus, the crucified one.

Perhaps you have heard of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. While some scholars think it contains material that goes back to Jesus, this book in fact represents a deviant form of early Christianity that disputed the identity of Jesus who was crucified with the risen Christ. They in fact taught that Christ only seemed to be human and was in reality an invulnerable spirit who could not suffer crucifixion but had only used the body of Jesus temporarily as a mouthpiece to deliver oracles privately to a selected few. No wonder this Gospel of Thomas was excluded from the New Testament! It is perhaps the case, however, that the Gospel of John’s concluding story of doubting Thomas is written as a rebuttal to this form of early Christianity which in the name of Thomas denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. So in reply to that, the Gospel of John concludes with Thomas kneeling down before the crucified but the risen Jesus, one and the same person, confessing my Lord and my God! – the very picture of true Easter faith.

The identity of Jesus who is risen with Jesus who was crucified is the linchpin of our salvation. What we need to be saved from is the sin of the whole world of which we are part. What we need to pass through safely is the righteous judgment of God upon the sin of the world which ruins his good creation. What we need to be saved for is the beloved community of God in which sins are forgiven, light shines in the darkness, so that in principle and in power we share our all with one another in love for God above all and all creatures in and under God. This sharing is already the foretaste of eternal life and the fullness of salvation. Christ is risen! Hallelujah!

Easter Sunday 2024: Acts 10:36-43; I Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16: 1-8

What a strange ending! So the women went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them: and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. No appearance of the Risen one? Flight, fear and silence? That’s it? The end? Sure doesn’t sound like Easter to me! Or a proper ending to the Gospel of Mark. Our other two lessons this morning sound far more familiar. Peter in the Book of Acts preaches: They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest,  not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. Likewise the apostle Paul: He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. So what gives with Mark’s strange ending where the women fled the tomb and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid?

It surely did not sound like Easter to early readers of Mark’s Gospel. If you look in your Bibles, you will see long and short endings that early copyists appended to Mark’s strange conclusion, explaining how the story got out anyway. Attempts to fill in the story didn’t end there. Luke begins his Gospel referring to earlier attempts—undoubtedly meaning Mark’s—which told the story of Jesus in a “disorderly” way, which he would now be correcting. And Matthew fills in what’s missing in Mark by telling how it came about that the disciples saw the risen Jesus in Galilee, just as the young man in the tomb had told the women in Mark. Clearly, just as for us, Mark’s ending did not sound like Easter to a host of early readers.

And indeed there is much that is puzzling about Mark’s ending. To begin with, how would Mark ever have known that the women at the tomb fled in terror and said nothing, unless eventually they fessed up and the truth came out?  But why, then, did Mark end his “beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” as he titled his Gospel in the very first verse, in this enigmatic way? Let’s do some Easter Sunday detective work, since that evidently is how Mark wants to engage us, like a mystery novel.

Let’s look at the clues. First, on the way to the tomb the women are wondering who will roll away the great stone that covers the entrance to the tomb. Careful readers of Mark will recall that this question reflects exactly how this Gospel characterizes God, namely, as the One for whom all things are possible, hence, as the One who becomes manifest when human possibilities are at their end, who makes a way out of no way all the way back to parting the Red Sea for the cornered Hebrew slaves to escape the pursuing slavemasters. When the rich young man went away sad, and the disciples wondered who could ever be saved, if it were easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, Jesus sharply replied: “With human beings it is impossible. But not with God. With God all things are possible.” And in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus in prayer surrendered to His Abba Father’s strange will that he be delivered into the hands of sinners to drink the bitter cup, Jesus had addressed him precisely as the one to whom all things are possible, hence trusting in the promise of the resurrection. From this, careful students of Mark’s Gospel see that the women’s perplexity about rolling away the stone is asking the single great question about God whose possibilities begin to manifest where human possibilities come to their natural or historical end, who makes a way out of no way.

Now some more clues. The young man in bright array, who greets the women at the tomb, certifies that they were seeking the body of Jesus who was crucified. He points to the place where the corpse was laid. This is an revelatory act of identification. Son of God, Christ, the Risen One – these are not free-floating titles that can apply to just anyone. Imagine if I preached something like this: “I’ve got good news. Someone’s risen from the dead, and conquered death. He’s on the move. He’s coming to finish the work, and his name is….Joseph Stalin!” Would that be good news? I don’t think so!

Everything depends on identifying the Risen One as Jesus of Nazareth, as Luke attests, anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him, who was crucified for our sins, as Paul says today, according to the Scriptures; that this Jesus is risen, friend of sinners and the hurting all the way to cross and grave -- that is good news indeed. Since he lives we are no longer dead in our sins! Since he lives, we too shall live and be healed of all our hurts! Good news for time and eternity.

The next clue. The young man in dazzling array addresses a message through the women to the disciples, singling out Peter. Peter, we had just learned in Mark’s Gospel, was the one who vowed to go to death with Jesus, but in the hour of trial denied his Lord, and wept bitterly. If you think about Peter’s leadership role in following Jesus all through Mark’s story, this denouement seems to be saying something like this: in one’s human power, it is impossible –and not only for the rich-- impossible to follow Jesus. Like the disciples, we too in human power are poor; we too betray, abandon, and deny Him who calls us to follow in the Spirit’s freedom and divine power. How remarkable, then, that the lead denier, Peter, is singled out on Easter morn as if to say, “Now, Peter, because of the life I lived for you and the death I died for you,  now you can rise up in divine power truly to follow me.” And so Peter would in the Spirit follow Jesus, as early church tradition has it, to his eventual death as a martyr at the command of the emperor Nero in Rome.

Next clue. It is not just geography, then, when the angel tells the women that they will see Jesus in Galilee. In Mark’s Gospel Galilee stands for this groaning earth, this sorrowing creation, where the anti-divine powers of sin and death cruelly dominate a captive humanity. This is the region into which Spirit-endowed Jesus first broke in to bind up the strong man, namely the devil, and recapture his goods, namely suffering humanity. This is where the risen Jesus is risen to be, not to be absent far away in some idle heaven, but to be present as the very man on the mission that he was and is and always will be – in the Galilee of your life too, then, as in mine!

Final clue. The readers of Mark’s Gospel have known from the first verse the mystery of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. They have been made privy to the divine voice’s pronouncement at His baptism, “You are my beloved Son.” They have watched as the demons, exposed and threatened by His presence, cry out, revealing His secret, “You are the Son of God. You have come to destroy us.” They have witnessed how ineptly human beings in their own power identify Jesus -- how even the disciples who walked and talked with Jesus on the dusty byways continually got it wrong. Indeed, in Mark’s Gospel the only human being who correctly identifies Jesus as the Son of God is the executioner, upon seeing how Jesus died. This uncanny recognition is not, then, some clever human insight, but a divine disclosure, a revelation or apocalypse. Nor is it by accident that Mark mentions at just this moment that the veil of the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the profane and sinful world was torn in two. So the secret is disclosed: Jesus in true divine Sonship has laid down his life as a ransom for many, as if to say, “Dear reader! If you don’t get it here, at the cross, you won’t get it at all –even if you should see a risen One!” But the Risen One is and forever remains Jesus who once and for all was crucified, truly Son of God.

Mark’s readers, and we too, already believe in the Risen One. Indeed, Mark already has told a resurrection story, if you will, a resurrection appearance, though he has placed it in the middle of his Gospel at the Transfiguration. Here precisely the identity of Jesus, who knowingly and obediently heads to Jerusalem to suffer, to die, be buried, and to be raised again as the glorious Son of God, beloved delight of His Abba Father, has already been enunciated. The burning question Mark puts to us is not whether there is a Risen One somewhere, but whether the Risen One is Jesus who was crucified, hence the One who ever comes to meet us in the Galilees of this life.

I’ve got good news. Someone has risen from the dead, and conquered death for us. Now He is on the march to Galilee. He is coming to finish the job in Galilee. And his name is…Jesus.

Thanks be to GOD, Christ Jesus is risen.

The Sunday of the Passion: Homiletical comments on the Passion according to Mark

[In my youth “Palm Sunday” was some kind of strange celebration of the onset of Spring, a warm-up for Easter Sunday to come. Liturgical renewal came to the realization that the passion of Christ was eclipsed in this fashion and slowly the name of the Sunday has been changed to “The Sunday of the Passion.” It is typical now to read the passion narrative as a whole on this day. But I do not think it is good to read it without interpretive proclamation. Our parishioners are not monks in the monastery suited for “divine reading.” The law and the gospel need to be proclaimed from the text for them. On this day such proclamation should be short, sweet and to the point as I hope the following illustrates.]

The Conspiracy

It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, "Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people."

The lethal conflict is with the temple establishment. The cleansing of the temple was the provocation that triggered the conspiracy. The issue is the true worship of God. In Holy Week we ask about ourselves: Is our house of worship a place of prayer for all peoples or have we turned it into a business or a private club?

Annointed beforehand for Burial

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, "Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor." And they scolded her. But Jesus said, "Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her." Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.

The person of Jesus is our priceless treasure wherever the church is neither a business nor private club. Because Jesus is our priceless treasure, we show kindness to the poor for which there is ongoing and ample need. When we turn church into a business, even in the name of charity, we betray Jesus just as Judas did. But spiritually we anoint Jesus in anticipation of his self-sacrifice to his God and Father on our behalf. In so doing we identify with the unnamed woman who stands for all little or forgotten but true Christians through the ages.

The Passover Meal

On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, "Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?" So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, 'The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there." So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. When it was evening, he came with the twelve. And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me." They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, "Surely, not I?" He said to them, "It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born."

Observing the Passover meal in Jerusalem locates Jesus inextricably within the people Israel. The great act of salvation of the enslaved Hebrews is commemorated and brought forward into the present at this meal. But not all Israelites are true Israelites. Jesus goes as the 53rd chapter of Isaiah tells, the suffering servant of God on whom was laid the iniquities of us all. But woe to the traitor. With whom do we identify?

The Lord’s Supper Instituted

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, "You will all become deserters; for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." Peter said to him, "Even though all become deserters, I will not." Jesus said to him, "Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times." But he said vehemently, "Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you." And all of them said the same.

The self-questioning about false discipleship continues. It brackets the institution narrative of the Lord’s Supper. The self-giving of Jesus is bodily. Like us, Jesus is his body and blood. But uniquely his is poured out for many, even false disciples who will desert and deny him. It is as the risen and vindicated one who drinks the fruit of the vine new in the kingdom of God, that Jesus will regather the scattered and restore even the denier. So by grace we are saved; it is not of works lest anyone should boast. This self-understanding is the test of true discipleship.

The Agony in the Garden

They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake." And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want." He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. He came a third time and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand."

The terror of torture and death compounded by the desolation of abandonment, not only by disciples, but by his God and Father who asks him to drink this bitter cup, falls upon Jesus as he is fallen on the ground to pray. Yet the resolve to do his Father’s will in the obedience of faith prevails. What a contrast is painted for us here: agonized Jesus wrestling to do God’s will while disciples are nodding off. So defenseless Jesus is handed over into the hands of sinners presuming to have him in their power. With whom do we identify?

The Betrayal

Immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, "The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard." So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, "Rabbi!" and kissed him. Then they laid hands on him and arrested him.  But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to them, "Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled." All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.

The conspiracy works in secrecy aided by the traitor who singles out the victim with a treacherous kiss. A disciple reaches for his sword and strikes but Jesus rebukes those who work in darkness because their deeds are evil. He has borne witness publicly against the corruption of the Temple establishment. But now the Scriptures must be fulfilled. At this all the disciples flee, one of them naked and ashamed.

The Trial

They took Jesus to the high priest; and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes were assembled. Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest; and he was sitting with the guards, warming himself at the fire. Now the chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death; but they found none. For many gave false testimony against him, and their testimony did not agree. Some stood up and gave false testimony against him, saying, "We heard him say, 'I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.'" But even on this point their testimony did not agree. Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, "Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?" But he was silent and did not answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus said, "I am; and 'you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,' and 'coming with the clouds of heaven.'" Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy! What is your decision?" All of them condemned him as deserving death. Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, "Prophesy!" The guards also took him over and beat him.

The disciples have fled. They have not confessed their adherence to Jesus. Now Jesus is alone and on trial before the Temple establishment. Jesus makes no reply to the false accusations, silent like a sheep being led to the slaughter. He does not speak until the high priest raises the only accusation that matters: "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" We recall that hitherto Jesus has suppressed any acknowledgment of his true identity throughout the gospel of Mark. Only now, when the confession of this identity will incriminate him, does Jesus answer, “I am.” And he points to his future vindication even though it means presently mockery, torture and death.

Peter’s Denial

While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant-girls of the high priest came by. When she saw Peter warming himself, she stared at him and said, "You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth." But he denied it, saying, "I do not know or understand what you are talking about." And he went out into the forecourt. Then the cock crowed. And the servant-girl, on seeing him, began again to say to the bystanders, "This man is one of them." But again he denied it. Then after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, "Certainly you are one of them; for you are a Galilean." But he began to curse, and he swore an oath, "I do not know this man you are talking about." At that moment the cock crowed for the second time. Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, "Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times." And he broke down and wept.

So the self-incriminating confession of Jesus’s identity is bracketed by the flight of the disciples beforehand and now by Peter’s denial after. Jesus confesses himself, his followers deny him. Who are we in this story?

Jesus Condemned, Barabbas Set Free

As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" He answered him, "You say so." Then the chief priests accused him of many things. Pilate asked him again, "Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you." But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed. Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Then he answered them, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. Pilate spoke to them again, "Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" They shouted back, "Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him!" So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.

Mob violence is rarely the innocent uprising of the oppressed. Mob violence may rationalize itself this way. Surely Barabbas had so thought about his insurrectionary violence. But mob violence is more often motivated and manipulated by those in power who use its threat of chaos to reinforce their own power. In any case, that is what has happened here. “The chief priests stirred up the crowd…” So we have presented to us the contrast between the rebel guilty in fact of violence and Jesus who has incriminated himself for the deed of cleansing the temple with the claim of messianic authority to have done so. And the mob chants that he be crucified.

Jesus Mocked

Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters ); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews." And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.  Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!" In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

The ignominy of cruel death by crucifixion is compounded by the mockery of the crucifiers. The spiritual suffering of Jesus is as real and tangible as the physical. He is shamed. Every pretension of being of the beloved Son, the coming Son of Man, the Messiah of Israel, the King of the Jews is met with abuse and mockery and taunting. The whole human world has turned against him.

Jesus Dies Forsaken by God

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, "Listen, he is calling for Elijah." And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was God's Son!"

Jesus dies screaming his abandonment by his God. This is the bitter cup which he has now drunk to the bottom. The foolish onlookers misunderstand his quotation of Psalm 22 and think he is calling out now at last to be delivered supernaturally by the prophet Elijah from of old. In reality, the curtain in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from sinful humanity is rendered in two. This is the apocalypse of the gospel of Mark. It is the revelation that resolves the secrecy of Jesus’s identity by asserting the mystery of it. So the executioner, seeing how Jesus has died forsaken by all pronounces on his identity. Jesus is the crucified Son of God and just so has given his life a ransom for many.

Jesus Dead and Buried

There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem. When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.

The women disciples were onlookers, although from a distance, only because as women they were not regarded as insurrectionary threats like the male disciples. Even so, it was a man, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Temple establishment, who secured the body of Jesus for burial as the women looked on. As the Sabbath day rapidly approached, the burial customs would have to be delayed until Sunday morning. And so the silence of a real death leaves us hanging. What will his God and Father do at the sight of his beloved Son, shrouded in death by the sin of the world, having faithfully obeyed and drunk to the dregs the bitter cup of his solidarity with us? Who then are we?

Lent 5, 2024: John 12, Hebrews 5. Jeremiah 31

For the last several weeks our Lenten journey has taken us through the remarkable Gospel of John. The ancient church regarded the gospel of John as the spiritual gospel which interpreted the previous Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. By this name, “spiritual,” meant that the Holy Spirit used the Gospel of John to unveil deeper significance for us and our salvation of the story of Jesus culminating in his passion. The deeper meaning is what the passion of Jesus means not only for us, but also for God. We see a remarkable instance of this unveiling in today’s reading from John 12 as we approach the Holy Week of the Passion.

First of all, it is the inquiry of some Greeks in the Temple precincts that occasions Jesus’s prediction of his impending suffering and death. You may recall that in the other Gospels this prediction occurs three times to the disciples on route to Jerusalem. But in John it is an inquiry of those from outside the range of the Jerusalem Temple who are seeking Jesus that triggers this stranger version of Jesus’s prediction of his suffering, humiliation, death and burial. Stranger, I say, because Jesus names the hour of his approaching passion as his hour of glorification! And what is this strange glory? It is the glory, he says, of a grain of wheat falling into the ground to die so that from it new life will emerge. And the new life will include the ingathering of the outsider Greeks into a new and spiritual temple, who is the crucified-glorified Jesus in person drawing all people to himself.

Now it’s also very interesting to observe that in John’s telling there is no episode of the Garden of Gethsemane, you remember from the other Gospels, where on the eve of his death Jesus prays in agony to be delivered from drinking the bitter cup. Nor is there any account of the Transfiguration in John. But in the next several verses, John retells these stories; first of Gethsemane: Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? `Father, save me from this hour'? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Notice that John does not deny the anguish of Jesus. His soul is troubled just as in Gethsemane. But John accentuates Jesus’s final, firm resolve, just as in Gethsemane “Thy will be done!” The effect is to portray Jesus’s fidelity to his calling, his obedience of faith to his mission, his willing surrender to his Father’s will overriding his natural human desire to be spared. He has come to this hour for this very purpose that lifted up upon the cross he will draw all peoples to himself.

The reading today from the letter to the Hebrews supplements John’s account: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. That spells out the astonishing thought! The divine Son of God is humble, willing as truly human to learn obedience! Yes this humility to be human and to learn obedience is, neither for John nor for Hebrews, no diminution of his almighty deity but actually it’s true and proper expression! Jesus learned obedience through suffering, showing himself this way truly to be the Son of God.

So, returning now to the Gospel of John, having thus pronounced himself and confirmed his divinely appointed purpose, Jesus prays, Father, glorify thy name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. Notice that like John’s retelloing of the Garden of Gethsemane and the passion predictions, here also this next event take place in public, on the grounds of the temple in Jerusalem, and not only in the presence of a few select disciples. So in John’s distillation, the Transfiguration episode occurs right here, not on a remote mountain but in the courts of the Jerusalem Temple. And yet with another twist. In John it is not so much revealing that Jesus is the beloved Son to whom we are to listen, for in John Jesus has been openly declaring himself as the Son all along and indeed has been walking on this earth as already the transfigured One. But in John it is rather that heavenly voice sounding in the temple precincts declares the God of Israel, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Mount Zion and the and the throne of David, this very God of Israel answers publicly to confirm Jesus’s address to him, Father. The bewildered people, just like the bewildered disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, wondered what had just happened. Jesus explains: This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.

As it is the glory of the Son to come down to the depths and to be exalted or lifted up, not upon some royal throne of this earth, but upon the imperial stake, so it is also true that in just this way the Father’s judgment falls upon the world which crucified him – and just so the evil usurper of the kingdom of God on this earth is dethroned. How can this be? How can the cross be an enthronement, the humiliation of Jesus his exaltation, this profoundest weakness an all the more profound display of divine power exorcizing the forces of darkness?

 On the grounds of the Jerusalem temple that will be destroyed within a generation by the siege of Roman legions, just here Jesus becomes himself the tabernacle of God in whom the nations are gathered to worship in Spirit and in truth. As the letter to the Hebrews today comments: So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, "Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee"; as he says also in another place, "Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." And being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest … Jesus is the high priest of the new “spiritual” temple, for he offers not a substitute, not a scapegoat, but himself. He gives himself, the righteous for the unrighteous, the worthy for the unworthy, the beloved Son for disgraced prodigals who have made a ruin of their inheritance. And this self-giving suffices once and for all, not repeatedly as in the animal sacrifices of the old temple, but persists as an everlasting intercession which may be presented again and again as accomplished and sufficient to us in our need. So it is that Jesus is lifted up upon the cross to draw all people to himself. And just this eternal intercession of our great high priest is how the evil ruler of this fallen world is cast out.

Or, are we too proud to be drawn into the crucified Savior as our only tabernacle in life and in death? Too proud to glory in the cross of Christ towering over the wrecks of time? Too proud to live by the grace of his intercession as our great high priest? Too proud to give away our status and power under the evil ruler of this fallen world?

Consider: what real power has this evil ruler? Biblically, Ha Shatan, literally, the accuser; he is not God’s equal, but a usurper. He is some kind of corrupt creature maliciously doing what it can to undo God’s purpose to redeem all that he is made – precisely from the ruinous sinful pride of which this Satan does repent. So what power really does the proud and malicious devil, a liar and murderer from the beginning, have? Only this: to entice us to vanity in its own proud image and then, when our vanity fails, as surely it does, and we come to our senses and want a new start, the malicious devil doubles down to prosecute, accuse, lash us with bitter reminders of our proud failures to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. And so he would confirm us in sinful pride making us too proud to receive the humble Son of God given in our place, too proud to tabernacle at the cross, too proud to give up the status and power of our sins. That is the sum and total of the demonic power.

Yet this malicious pride of the devil has in reality been undone by the astonishing humility of the divine Son of God. Just this one who did not exalt himself but has come as our faithful friend and is now made our intercessor, a true priest who pleads for us ceaselessly to comfort us as the Lamb of God who really takes away the sin of the world. So we may in truth and power prevail against the evil ruler of this world, if only we pour contempt on all our pride before the humble Son of God. One little word defeats him: “I am Christ’s and he is mine. He is written by the Holy Spirit on my heart so you have no power over me.”

Thus, according to our testimonies today from the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Hebrews, to know these marvelous things is to possess priceless treasure in life and in death. We are not talking here merely about intellectual knowledge, some item of information that we can store in our memory banks, call up and use as the need may be. We are talking about the kind of knowledge which lovers have, the empowering knowledge of new life together. So the prophet Jeremiah gave voice to the word of the Lord, speaking of all of us in the figure of his people Israel, us who he took by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. [Yet] my covenant they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. See, the Lord knew his people, but his people did not know the Lord. And thus they proved faithless. The Lord does not respond in kind but resolves to give his people the very knowledge of him that they lack with the new covenant:  I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.