23 August 2020

Upon This Rock Christ Builds His Church

He is the Son of a carpenter, after all.  Our Lord’s father on earth, St. Joseph, is described as a carpenter, a craftsman, a builder of things.  So, perhaps it should not be surprising that our Lord is also a Builder, a Carpenter of sorts, who builds a House to the glory of His Father in heaven — a House wherein He dwells among and with His people on earth — His Church upon the Rock.

We’ve recently heard how King David came up with the grand idea that he would build a temple for the Lord.  After all, he reasoned, he already had his own palace made of cedar, while the Ark of the Lord was still kept in a tent.  So David, the Lord’s anointed, would build for God a worthy house.  Except that God said, “No, that’s not going to happen. You will not build a house for Me, but I will make a House for you. Your Son, however, He will build a House for My Name.”

Now, Solomon did build the Old Testament Temple that his father David had envisioned.  And a glorious Temple, a glorious House it was, which God blessed with His Word and Holy Spirit.  God did cause His Name and His Glory to dwell among His people in that House that Solomon built.

There’s yet another son of David who had a privilege even Solomon did not; and here, again, I’m thinking of St. Joseph, the husband of St. Mary.  Whether or not he actually built a structure for his family out of wood, he did make a house and a home for his wife and her Son, and in his vocation as a husband and father he took care of his household and family in this life on earth.

But as always, our focus is on the Lord’s Anointed, Jesus Christ, who is the Builder of His Church, as surely as His true God and Father in heaven is the Builder of all things.  For Christ Jesus is the living and eternal Word of God by whom and through whom and for whom all things have been created and continue to exist.  What is more, Christ Jesus is the Wisdom of God, by whom all of creation is crafted, structured, ordered, and arranged in a good and right and beautiful manner.

The same Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, has come down from heaven to establish and build an even more beautiful Creation.  To establish for Himself a Household and Family — in His vocation as a Husband to His Bride, the Church.  For He is like His Father in all things, and He does and says all that His Father has given Him to do and say.  So has He come to build His Church on earth as a place of safety and security, peace and rest, for you and all His people.

To this end, He first of all establishes the Rock foundation of His Church — in His own Body of human flesh and blood just like your own, with skin and muscle, and bone and sinew, and blood running through His veins; with hair, as you have hair; with toenails and fingernails, just like you.  He became true Man in every way, conceived and born of St. Mary.  And as true Man, in His own Body, He establishes the foundation of His Church.  But He does it, oddly enough, by the way and the means of His Cross — by His innocent suffering and death, by His holy and precious Blood.

Because the foundation is laid by the Cross — cornerstoned on the crucified Body of Christ Jesus — it is deeply hidden from the world.  You cannot see it by any reason or strength of your simple flesh and blood.  You can do as we have sung.  You can look up here and see the Font before your eyes; you can behold the Altar; you can look upon the Crucifix.  And you know by faith what these things signify, what God has done for you through His means of grace.  But you cannot see the strength.  You cannot see the power and the glory.  You cannot see the firmness of the foundation.

What you do see is foolish in the eyes of the world and to your own mortal flesh.  It is scandalous, offensive, and ridiculous.  It makes no human sense that anyone should build a house of any kind upon the death of a Man condemned and executed as a criminal.  On water, bread and wine, and words that speak such foolish things as the forgiveness of sins.  None of this looks or seems like a firm foundation at all, but already a catastrophe, a failed effort before it has even begun.

But such is the way of the Lord, Yahweh, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who once established a household and a family and a people for Himself, beginning with Abraham and Sarah when they were old and childless, and their bodies were already as good as dead.  As He created all things out of nothing by His Word, so does He bring forth new life from out of death, according to His Word of promise.  He gives to Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, in their old age and weakness.

It is from this very household and family of Abraham and Sarah that our Lord Jesus Christ received His human flesh and blood in the fulness of time, when He was conceived and born of the Woman, St. Mary.  And then what?  His Father hands Him over — and He willingly hands Himself over — to His sacrificial death upon the Cross; as Father Abraham was once prepared to offer his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord, according to His Word (trusting that God would indeed raise Isaac from the dead, in order to fulfill His promise).

The Lord God stayed Abraham’s hand, and He provided a Lamb for Himself, a sheep, a ram caught in the thicket, as a sacrifice in place of Isaac.  But God the Father has not spared His own beloved Son, who is in fact given as the Lamb, as the Ram caught upon the horns of the Cross for you.

He and His Cross are hidden and foolish to the eyes of the world; and to your own outward senses He is hidden, and He is foolish.  Yet, the confession of Christ the Crucified is the foundation on which He builds His Church, on earth as it is in heaven.  It is to the Ministry of that confession — to the preaching and administration of the Gospel in His Name — that Christ Jesus called and commissioned St. Peter and the other Apostles; so that, by the foolish preaching of His foolish Cross through foolish men of flesh and blood, He would establish and preserve His Holy Church.

It is by the preaching of Christ and His Cross that His Church prevails over death and the grave, because He is the almighty and eternal Son of God in the Flesh, and He is the Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit in His Body of flesh and blood, from His conception in the womb and His Baptism in the Jordan River, to His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, for your Atonement, your Justification, your Redemption and Sanctification, unto the Life everlasting in both body and soul.

He has gone the way of the Cross, and He has submitted Himself to death and the grave, because you have been subject to death and the grave; because your flesh is mortal; because you are a sinner in your thoughts, words, and actions.  He journeyed into Hades, and right back out again, that you should not die but live; that you should rise from death and enter into heaven with Him.

He was anointed for death.  And in love for His Father and in love for you, He voluntary subjected Himself to humility, to weakness, to suffering and death, to sacrifice Himself in steadfast faith and holy love.  And then, just as He trusted, just as He believed, just as He prayed, His Father raised Him up from death and the grave, and glorified Him, and exonerated Him before all of Creation.

His Cross and Resurrection are the Key that opens heaven to you and to all who believe and are baptized into Him.  That is what is done for you and given to you in the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of your sins.  For such repentance, which God works in you by His Word and Holy Spirit, is your dying and rising with Christ Jesus from your Baptism to the Life everlasting.

In your Holy Baptism you died with Christ Jesus; and so it is that by your Baptism you daily rise and live with Him, as well.  Even now you live, although you are yet mortal and dying.  For God raises you up to newness of life through His free and full forgiveness of your sins.  It’s a hidden life, to be sure, as Christ and His Glory are hidden for now under the Cross.  What you see and feel and experience is that you keep on sinning every day.  You think and say and do what you should not; whereas you often fail to do what you should.  But you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  So, you do live by faith; and at the last, you shall live, for God will raise you up.

Your poor body, right now dead and dying, sinful and unclean — He will raise that same body from the dust of the earth.  And you shall not only be a living creature, but you shall be glorious as Christ is glorious, immortal, and imperishable.  That is as sure and certain as your Baptism, and your Baptism is as sure and certain as the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, the Son of God.

And all that was given to you in your Baptism is worked in you and given to you in Confession and Holy Absolution.  By that Word of the Gospel your sins are forgiven before God in heaven.

So, too, in the Holy Communion, the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ feeds you with His own Body and Blood, not only for the forgiveness of your sins (just as He says), but as a down payment on the resurrection of your body to the Life everlasting of your body and soul with Him forever.

Each of these means of grace gives to you and works in you the Life-giving Fruits and Benefits of the Cross of Christ — and therefore also raises you up from death to life in His Resurrection.

This Apostolic Ministry of the Gospel — which began with St. Peter and the other Apostles — continues even to the ends of the earth, even to the close of the age.  It continues here and now among us by the special authority of Christ Jesus our Lord — by His Word.  And that Apostolic Ministry exceeds that of the holy Prophets, and even that of St. John the Baptist, because Christ has come in the Flesh, and He has conquered the gates of Hades by His own Cross and Passion.

For years I never understood that expression of Jesus, that even the gates of Hades shall not prevail against His Church.  That always seemed backwards to me, because I pictured the Church outside of the gates, somehow beating against them.  But I was the one who had it all backwards.  The gates of Hades are the bars and bonds of death — the grave — the box that you put your loved ones in — the box that you may have already picked out for yourself — your hole in the ground.  But none of that will prevail against the Life that Christ Jesus gives to you by His Gospel.

The gates of Hades are brought down.  Those whom death has claimed, Christ has set free.  By His own death He tread death underfoot, and in His Resurrection the whole thing was blown apart.

By His innocent suffering and death, by His holy Bloodshed, sin has been atoned for.  And where sin is atoned for, where sin is forgiven, death is defeated.  And the devil’s head and jaw and face and teeth are smashed.  The devil has got nothing left to work with; he’s got no sins to accuse you of; he’s got no fear of death to hang over your head; he’s got nothing.  Christ Jesus has defeated the devil and plundered the house of death — by that foolish and ridiculous way of the Cross.

Thus and thereby God has reconciled the whole world to Himself in Christ Jesus.  God is at peace with you, and all of Creation is made brand new in the Body of Christ.  In His Body, crucified and risen from the dead, a new Garden of Eden has been planted and raised, the Paradise of God for you and your children.  And His Cross is the Tree of Life in the midst of that Garden, from which He feeds you with His Body given and His Blood poured out — here within His Church on earth.

Indeed, in this Body of Christ the Kingdom of heaven is established and built on earth in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which is the Household and Family of God.  Beginning with one Man, consider how He fills the earth with His beloved and well-pleasing sons and daughters.

With the Ministry of the Gospel — the Ministry of the Confession of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God — the Father gives to you a place within His House, a place within His Family.  He gives to you a place within His Church and His Kingdom.  He gives you freedom.  You are not a slave, but a son, and a free citizen of the Kingdom of God.  You are set free from sin and death.

So are you also free to give your body and life as a living sacrifice of faith and love to the glory of God and for the good of your neighbor.  You are free to give yourself, as Christ has given Himself for you and all by His Sacrifice on the Cross; because even as you are poured out for others, even unto death, your life and your place remain safe and secure with Christ in His House.  Indeed, you are at home with Him, even on that long, hard journey to the far country of death and the grave.  For even death cannot separate you from the Love of God that is yours in Christ Jesus.

Hades cannot have you, no more than death and the grave could hold on to Christ Jesus, your Savior from sin and death.  You shall not die but live.  Already here on earth it is given and done for you in heaven.  So, your life remains with God, and that shall never be taken away from you.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

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