The Church’s one Foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord – the almighty and eternal Son of the Living God, conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, put to death and buried, risen from the dead, ascended to the Right Hand of the Father, but given and poured out for us Christians to eat and to drink in His Holy Supper here on earth.
He is the Foundation, or, as the Scriptures say, the Cornerstone who gives shape and strength and stability to the Foundation of His Apostles and Prophets. And He is the Wise Man who establishes, builds, protects, and sustains His Church – His House – upon the Rock, as we have heard in this familiar Holy Gospel this afternoon.
Because He builds His House upon the Rock, it stands fast against the winds and waves and storms that rage against it; and according to His Word and promise, even the gates of hell (or Hades) are unable to prevail against His Church.
As to “the Rock,” a lot of ink has been spilled over the years debating what it is and how that works. It’s certainly not Simon Peter in and of himself as a fallen and fallible human being. Indeed, the Holy Gospels do not cover up or hide his human foibles and failings at various points along the way. Yet, the Lord chose Simon Barjona, called him to faith and discipleship, forgave his sins, restored him following his denials, and sent him to preach and administer the Gospel from Jerusalem to Rome (from Pentecost to Martyrdom). Thus do our Lutheran Confessions assert that our Lord addresses Simon Peter as an Apostle, a called and ordained minister of His Word, and says, “Upon this Rock,” that is, upon this Ministry – the Ministry of the Confession of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
And that apostolic Ministry, upon which Christ Jesus builds His Church, continues around the world to this day, to the ends of the earth – and so also to this place – even to the close of the age.
It is to this same Ministry – of the Confession of Christ Jesus – that Pr. Hesse has been ordained, and for which he has now been called to St. John Lutheran Church here in Aurora, Indiana.
So has the Lord intended, from before the foundation of the world, that His servant Mark Hesse should become part of the foundation of His Church in this time and place. To that end, in all that he says and does Pr. Hesse is to be guided and governed by the Word of Christ Jesus, as recorded in the Holy Scriptures by the Holy Prophets, Apostles, and Evangelists.
Pr. Hesse has but one Name to proclaim and declare, one Name in which to Baptize and Absolve you, and one Name to rely upon, come hell or high water against him. That is the Name of the one Lord, Jesus Christ, given here in your midst from God the Father in heaven.
Pr. Hesse will have nothing else to offer you or give you than that, and there is really nothing else in heaven or on earth that you and your congregation need – nothing else that really matters. This is the point and purpose of it all, and it is more than sufficient, more than adequate.
It is revealed and given, first of all, in Holy Baptism, just as it was in the Baptism of our Lord that God the Father anointed Him with the Holy Spirit as the Christ and openly declared Him to be His beloved and well-pleasing Son. That is where Simon Peter learned to know and confess who Jesus is. And so, too, it is in your Holy Baptism that you have been named with His Name, anointed with His Spirit as a Christian, and adopted by God the Father as a beloved and well-pleasing son or daughter in Christ Jesus.
A pastor is given no greater or higher privilege than that of baptizing disciples of Jesus in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for such baptizing with water and the Word works the forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal Life and Salvation to all who believe this, according to the sure and certain promises of God.
And of course, it is not to be forgotten or taken lightly that pastors also have this great blessing and benefit of Holy Baptism. That is not what makes a man a pastor, but it is the confidence and hope in which he is sustained in the Office of the Ministry and in all of his callings and stations in life. You are first and foremost a Christian, a child of God, before you are called, ordained, and sent to be a pastor of the Lord’s people, a shepherd of the Lord’s sheep under the Good Shepherd.
Forgiveness of sin does not begin and end with Holy Baptism. Indeed, forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ Name is at the very center of the Church and Ministry, the heart and soul of this Office and work to which you are called and ordained. You yourself depend upon the forgiveness of your own sins; and you, in turn, are given the tremendous privilege and responsibility to forgive the sins of others.
To be sure, it is the duty of every Christian to forgive as we are freely forgiven by the Lord Jesus, to forgive those who trespass against us, and to be reconciled with those we have trespassed against. But as a pastor, you are also entrusted with the office and exercise of the Keys – the preaching and administration of the Gospel – unto repentance and faith in the forgiveness of sins. You are to hear the confessions of God’s people with the ears of Christ Jesus, and to absolve them with His Word, with His Voice, in His Name and stead. However odd that might seem, that is how our dear Lord Jesus chooses to deal with us on earth.
And that is why it is so fundamental and so necessary to the integrity of the Office, to the Church and Ministry of the Gospel, that you maintain the absolute confidentiality of those things that are confessed to you. As Christ forgives the sins of His people through the Word that He speaks with your lips, it is vital that your lips not speak of those sins to anyone else, anywhere, at any time. They are altogether swallowed up by the Gospel, removed as far as the East is from the West, and remembered no more before God in heaven. Whatever temporal consequences remain on earth are the concern and responsibility of other authorities.
By the same token, where you are given to confront and deal with those who refuse to repent of their sins but persist in them with hardness of heart, there you must exercise the binding key, as needs may be, that the Lord’s Church and Ministry not become agents of evil or a den of thieves. Our hope and prayer, even then, is that the Lord in His mercy would work repentance in their hearts, unto faith in His free and full forgiveness of sins. But His forgiveness is deliverance from sin and every evil, not a license to continue in sin.
To those who believe and are baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus, who live in the promise and significance of their Holy Baptism, and who by faith confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, you are also given the profound privilege – as already here this afternoon – of administering His Body and His Blood in remembrance of Him. That goes hand-in-hand with the proclamation of His death until He comes, the preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins in His Name. To celebrate the Lord’s Supper is an exercise of pastoral care, within a context of ongoing pastoral care. It is the Family Meal at the heart of the Lord’s House, and you are the housefather entrusted with the stewardship of this Mystery for the children of God under your care.
Are you up to the task? No, of course not! None of us are, not of ourselves. Consider again St. Peter and his faults and failings. As Luther confesses, if this Ministry depended on us, it would all fall apart and go to rack and ruin. Yet, this is how the Lord has determined to preserve, protect, and prosper His Church on earth, and so shall He be with you, strengthen and sustain you in this Office and work. Your labors are not in vain in Him! He rather delights to work by the way of His Cross, and He manifests His glorious power precisely in such weakness, in the frailty of flesh and blood.
There is salvation by no other way or means than the Ministry of the Confession of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. Though He is despised and rejected by the world, He is the Cornerstone upon whom everything rests and depends. And by the preaching of His Word and the Ministry of His Gospel, He has granted to you – to His pastors and to all His people – such exceedingly precious and very great promises, that you should become partakers of the divine nature in Him. For He became like you, that you should become like Him.
As He was crucified for your transgressions and has been raised for your justification, so are you raised from death to eternal Life, in both body and soul, in and with Him. This is what it means that the gates of hell (or Hades) shall not prevail against His Church. Death and the grave do not get to have the last word against you, because they are defeated, undone, and burst apart from the inside-out by the Lord Jesus Christ. Death no longer has any hold on Him, and neither shall it be able to hold onto you. For Christ is risen from the dead, and He has opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all who believe and are baptized in His Name.
Built on this Rock, the Church shall stand, even when steeples are falling. For here stands the Font before our eyes, declaring how God has received us. The Altar recalls Christ’s Sacrifice and what His Supper here gives us. And here sound the Scriptures that proclaim Christ Jesus, forever the same, our Savior and our Redeemer!
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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