For Now You Sing, Not by Sight, But by Faith in His Word

Christ is risen indeed.  (Alleluia!)  And if Christ is risen, you also shall rise.  For He is the Alpha and the Omega, He is the Beginning and the End.  He is the First, and He is the Last, the One who remains forever.  He has become the Firstborn of many brethren, and you are among them.

He is the Firstborn from the dead.  And in His crucified and risen Body, His saints also are raised — even now, by faith, and hereafter forever in the Resurrection of the body unto Life everlasting.

Where you are, Jesus is also.  And where He is, there you shall follow after.  But you have grief for now because, for a little while, you cannot see the Lord Jesus Christ.  You do not perceive Him.  You do not feel Him.  You do not experience His Resurrection in your day-to-day life on earth.

You do not see Him for a little while, and so you weep, and you mourn, and you grieve, while the world laughs at you, and mocks you, and rejoices over you at your expense.

You have such grief for now, for this little while, because you do not see Jesus.  But then again, after a little while, you will see Him, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy will never end.

He speaks here of His Cross and Resurrection.  But He speaks of these, not only historically, but theologically and pastorally; not only for His disciples there and then, but for you here and now.

He speaks of His Cross and Resurrection, not only with reference to those days when He was led to His Passion and crucified under Pontius Pilate, when He was dead and buried, and when He then arose from the dead according to the Scriptures.  Everything else depends on those events, but He speaks here of the way His Cross also forms and shapes His Church on earth.  And He speaks of the way He comes to you and deals with you by the ways and means of His Cross, even now — that is to say, by ways and means that you cannot perceive with your eyes, but only by faith in His Gospel, by the gracious working of His Holy Spirit through the Word He preaches into your ears.

It is not what your eyes see, nor what your flesh senses, nor what your emotions feel in the world, but the preaching of the Word of Christ, that reveals to you where He is, and conveys to you His gracious forgiveness and life from the Sacrifice of His Cross and His Resurrection from the dead.

You do not see Jesus as He is, because He comes now in that glorious Cloud, His means of grace, hidden within the womb of His Church in such simple and ordinary means.  You do not see Him for a little while, because He reveals and gives Himself to you in the Breaking of the Bread.  And having given you that revelation of His grace and His glory in the Sacrament of the Altar, He is for now hidden from your sight.  You know Him only by the Word He speaks.  Thus do you behold Him by faith in the Breaking of the Bread, in the Holy Communion, and in His Body, the Church.

You do not yet see Him as He is, and you do not see Him in your neighbor, either.  You do not see Him in His many brethren with which you are surrounded.  In them you see frailty and weakness.  In them you still see sin and death.  You see and perceive their irritability, their laziness and greed; and it is a challenge not to focus on those flaws, because for now you do not see Jesus in them.

And yet, you hear His Word declare that these also are His little ones, these baptized brothers and sisters who are so dear to Him, for whom He has given His body and life and shed His own blood.  You hear Him say that, as you love them, you love Him; in serving them, you serve Him.  You hear His command that, just as He forgives you, so are you to forgive your neighbors their trespasses against you.  Though you see none of this, you see your neighbors by faith in the Word of Christ.

You do not see Him in yourself, either.  You hear the Word of God in Christ Jesus, that you are a beloved and well-pleasing child of the Father in heaven.  You hear the Word of Christ declare that you are a member of His Body and Bride, the Church, and that He will never leave you nor forsake you.  You hear that He rejoices over you in love; that He delights in you and cherishes you.  And you hear His promise, that He does not seek to harm you but to give you all good things.

But for all of that, you do not see Him or perceive Him in yourself.  In yourself, in your flesh, in your body and life, you find nothing else but sin and death and all manner of evil.  In yourself you experience hurt and pain, disappointment, scars, and regrets.  In yourself you see all that is lacking.  You do not perceive yourself as a child of God, but as a wretched sinner and a dying mortal.  You do not appear good looking but disgraceful; neither loved nor lovable, but forsaken and forgotten.

But Christ Jesus speaks to you concerning both His Cross and His Resurrection.  And by His grace, by the power of His Holy Spirit, you rejoice, give thanks, and sing of both.  You sing and give thanks even for His Cross and Passion, knowing that His voluntary Sacrifice is His Victory, and that His Resurrection is the outcome of what He has purchased and won for you by His innocent suffering and death, by His holy and precious Blood.  Although for now you cannot see Him, you sing and rejoice in both the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, because His Word is true — and because His Spirit helps you in your weakness, that you might pray and sing in holy faith.

These Mysteries of God are great indeed.  They are hidden from your eyes, and they confound your old Adam with all your sinful hungers and perverted passions.  It seems more than strange that by His Cross He raises you up, and that He brings you through suffering and death into His Glory.

But it is most certainly true.  And so it is that, by His grace, by His Word and Holy Spirit, you sing.  For it is by His Cross that He makes all things new: First of all in His own Body, crucified and risen from the dead; but so also, now, in your body and life, baptized into His dying and rising.  Thus are you a member of His Body and Bride, and a beloved child of His own God and Father.

It is by and from His Cross that He adorns His Church with His own righteousness and holiness, as a Bride made ready for her Husband.  By the Word of His Cross He pours out the Holy Spirit on Jews and Gentiles alike, cleansing them by His grace and sanctifying them in body and soul.

The animals and the people that St. Peter saw were unclean, but God declared them to be clean and holy by His Word.  So also for you.  As God has declared you to be clean, do not regard yourself as unholy.  As God has declared your neighbor to be clean, do not regard your neighbor as unholy.  But rather, with the eyes of faith, see in yourself and in your neighbor that which Christ sees and that which Christ says: That you are dressed beautifully, and that you are a gorgeous Bride, and that you have such a Husband who is so happy with you and so eager to receive you to Himself.

It is by the way and the means of the Cross, by His Word of the Cross, that He begets children of God also through you and through His Church on earth.  By His Cross and Passion, by that painful labor and delivery, He brings forth sons and daughters for the Father, and fruits of righteousness, of love and joy and peace and gladness.  And it is by His Cross and Passion that He conforms you to His own Image, that you might abide in the Image of God.  For it is by His Cross that He works in you the repentance which leads to life.  And it is by His Cross that you live as a child of God.

Such are the fruits of His Cross, the good fruits of Christ Himself, which the Holy Spirit discloses to you, bestows upon you, and produces in you by the preaching of the Gospel, by that forgiveness which comes to you from the Body of Christ the Crucified — which is poured out into His Font and Chalice — which is preached into your ears — which is fed into your mouth and your body — which is surely yours, as Christ presses it into your hand and gently declares, “This is for you.”

It matters not what you have been or done.  It matters not what others have done or said to you.  It matters not what you see or perceive in yourself, far less what the world perceives in you.

What does matter is what Christ Jesus says and does and gives to you.  For His Cross, which is His Victory over death and the grave — His Cross, which has atoned for the sins of the world — His Cross, which reconciles the world to God — His Cross also bears fruit after its own kind in you.

So it is that, in a little while, you also see Jesus in yourself, in the fruits that He produces in you as a branch of His Tree.  In the righteousness that He causes to be at work in you through His Holy Spirit.  In the comfort of your heart, and in the comfort that you give to others.  In that compassion which He has for you, which you in turn have for your neighbors who are hurting and afraid.

It is by the Cross that He begets children, and so also through your speaking of His Gospel.  If you are a father or mother and you teach your little children the things of Christ, know what a glorious good work that is.  And if you have failed in that responsibility, do not despair but repent now, and rejoice that in a little while you will see the Lord Jesus.  If you have not done what you should, begin to do so.  Bear the fruits that Christ produces and brings forth in you by His Word and Holy Spirit.  Rejoice in His Cross.  Rejoice also in His Resurrection and His Life.  For these are yours.

If you have no children of your own, you may yet speak the Gospel to your parents — whereby the child becomes a parent and gives birth to the children of God through the comfort and confession of the Gospel.  So it is when you forgive your father and mother where they have sinned against you, and when you are patient with them and honor them, as Christ has commanded for His sake.

Or if you speak the Gospel to your brother or your sister, whether he or she is younger or older, the Gospel that you speak is that of Christ Jesus.  And by that speaking the Spirit discloses Christ Jesus to your brother and sister and grants them joy and gladness in the salvation of the Lord.

If you have no family at all, you are yet given to speak the Word of the Gospel to your neighbor.  And if you are cut off from everyone, still you may confess the Gospel before your God and Father in heaven.  And you can sing with and for His Church, even when all else and all others are silent.

Rejoice, give thanks, and sing.  For that is one of the fruits of the Cross: To sing of the Atonement, to sing of the Resurrection of Jesus, to sing of His Gospel, and by your singing to confess and pray twice over.  You sing the New Song of the Lamb by virtue of His Cross and Resurrection.  You sing the New Song of the New Heavens and the New Earth.  You sing the New Song of the New Jerusalem, which is the Song of Christ Jesus.  For having become His, and He being yours, what you speak and sing is the Word of Christ.  And though you cannot see Him, yet you love Him.  And though you cannot see Him, yet the Song that you sing is true, and it is full of the Holy Spirit.

Consider St. Paul’s Epistles to the Church at Ephesus and Colossae.  He urges you to comfort one another — and to give the Holy Spirit to each other! — by the singing of Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs.  That is the singing of Christ Jesus, whereby He is heard upon your lips.

For a little while you do not see Him, not in Himself, nor in your neighbor, nor in yourself.  And yet, your life in Him is as sure and true and certain as Christ Himself, crucified and risen from the dead for you.  For now you have grief, but your grief shall be turned into joy, and your joy shall not be taken away from you.  It shall not.  You shall never be snatched out of the Lord’s hand.

It is through trials and tribulations that you enter the Kingdom of God.  It is through the narrow passage of the Cross that you are conceived and born of Christ and His Church.  And so it is by the Word and Spirit of His Holy Cross and Passion that you in turn beget other children of God.

But for the joy of Christ, for the Glory of His Resurrection, and for the Peace and Comfort of His forgiveness of all of your sins, you forget the grief, and you leave the pain behind.  Not as though you were already done, but knowing that your life is in Christ; that He is yours; that where you are, He is also; and where He is, there you shall be, both now and forever.  For He is the First, and He is the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, and He has made you His own.

What He sees, already now in you, is a beloved child of His God and Father and a member of His own beautiful Bride, in whom His heart rejoices and is glad, and over whom He sings in love.

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

He Takes Your Sad Song and Makes It Better

Sing to the Lord, you children of God, for you are baptized into Christ.  And who is Christ?  He is the Son of God, true God and Man.  And He is the Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed for you.  His Blood now marks your door, but, see, this same Blood of Christ also touches your lips.  How, then, shall they not sing, when your lips are thus cleansed, and you are forgiven and set free?

Death is here served notice that you belong, not to him, but to the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.  For Christ is also your great Redeemer, whose right hand and holy arm have worked salvation for Him, for you and all His people, for His Name’s sake.  He has truly done marvelous things, and He is with you in steadfast love and faithfulness.  By the wood of His Cross He has defeated the tyrants who held you captive; He has broken the chains that bound you; and He has opened the way before you, through the water into freedom, into life.

You are baptized into His Exodus.  Therefore, sing to Him, sing praise to Him, and bless His Holy Name.  Come into His presence with thanksgiving; enter the courts of the Lord’s House with songs of praise.  For the floods have lifted up their voice, and the waves of many waters worship Him.  So let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it.  Let all the earth break forth into joyous songs and sing praises.  As also the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven sing to the Lamb upon His throne; who was slain, and yet, behold, He lives.  For He has redeemed you with His precious Blood; He has purchased and won you for life with God; and He has saved you for the singing of this Song, here in time, and hereafter in eternity.

You know this Song.  You do.  You know the words and the tune.  You infants and nursing babies, you are not excluded, for the Lord Himself opens your mouth to show forth His praise.  You little children, sons and daughters, young men, old men, and ladies, this is your Song.  It is taught by the Spirit of Christ Jesus, who sings to you by the Gospel.  He has sung to you by the washing of the water with His Word.  He sings to you from the Holy Scriptures and the Catechism.  He sings to you in the Creeds and in the prayers of the Church, in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

He sings to you at the Altar and in Holy Absolution.  He sings the forgiveness of all your sins, the Peace of Christ for you, reconciliation with God and with your neighbor, and your Sabbath Rest.

This is the New Song, which the Spirit of Jesus sings for you; and which you also now sing by the same Spirit.  Do not receive this grace of God in vain, nor make it bad.  Dear little Mockingjay, as you have heard this Song, now echo it and sing.  Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, and let that be your verse and chorus all the time, in every place.  Rehearse it with your words and with your actions.  Let His Gospel be the tune that you sing, His mercy the melody of your whole life.

For as the Spirit sings the Song of Christ into your ears, and through your ears into your heart and mind, into your body and your soul, so do you bestow the same Holy Spirit upon your neighbor by the singing of this Song that He has taught you.  Your lips and tongue become the vehicles of God Himself, as they reverberate with His Words of love and forgiveness.

You parents, sing to your children, and you children, sing to your parents.  You husbands and wives, sing to each other.  You brothers and sisters in Christ, sing together in peace and joy, in the fellowship of one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all.  And as you sing, so also live.  Let the New Song that you sing resonate in everything that you do.

For in this New Song, Christ Himself is with you, bestowing the Spirit and all the good gifts of the Father upon you.  Everything that belongs to Him, is sung to you in this Gospel, and thereby given to you.  As this Word is in your ears, in your mind and in your heart, so is the Lord Jesus near you.  And He is with you, also, when you confess this Word and sing this Song with your own lips.

That is the Truth, even though it seems and feels as though He were absent, as though He had gone away and left you all alone.  In the world around you, there is trouble and pain: people who are hurting, and people who are hurting you.  And in yourself, in your own life and actions, there is much to suggest that you and Christ Jesus are not very close, and that you really don’t know Him at all.  In your sorrow there is an overwhelming sense of emptiness and loneliness.  In your anger there is no righteousness of God.  In all your terrible fear, it appears that Christ has deserted you.

So maybe you don’t feel much like singing; or at all.  Or, maybe you’d just rather sing the blues.

There is a reason that sad songs say so much, that so many of them have been written, and that, for all their melancholy, those are the songs that strike the heart and stick.  Often they bewail the pain and sadness of goodbyes, which everyone experiences and knows, and the music helps you to feel it tangibly, to taste it on your lips, so that the person you are missing is almost present in the song: almost, but not quite; not really.  It seems almost cruel, but misery loves company, and so you savor the bittersweet comfort of knowing that someone else has hurt the way that you are hurting.

If silly love songs are always popular, the sad songs of lost or unrequited love are more poignant.

So long as your beloved is still “out there” in the world, there is mingled along with sadness the hope of his or her return, of reconciliation and recovery, of love requited.  Sad songs seize upon that hope as a kind of plea, a cry for pity.  But death intrudes even there with even greater sadness, which suffocates whatever little hope you may have had.  You can hardly catch your breath to sing anything then; whatever words you do manage get caught in your throat.  After all, isn’t death the permanent departure and the ultimate distance between you and those you love?  Whether you had the chance to say “goodbye” or not; and whether you resolved what needed to be resolved, or not.

There are plenty of songs about that sorrow of mourning and regret.  Some of them simply play upon emotions, and your reveling in that kind of manipulated grief — making yourself feel sad — becomes a way of trying to atone for your guilt over missed opportunities or unamended wrongs.  Other songs simply wail and lament, because there is nothing else that can be done or expressed in the face of death.  That sadness feels good, and it offers some measure of comfort; not because of any hope, but because sadness is all that you have left.  Sadness fills your heart, and the song helps you to bring it out and examine it, even if you have to rely on someone else to sing it for you.

There are plenty of people who seem to think that Lutheran hymns are like those kinds of songs, those laments.  After all, how many clichés are there about Lutheran “funeral dirges”?  We do sing of death, no doubt, and we certainly do take a sober and serious approach to mortal life in a fallen world, which withers and fades like the grass.  But that is not all there is to what we say and sing.  We do not mourn as those who have no hope.  We do not weep and wail as though death were going to get the last word.  We know, even through our tears, that sorrow will be turned to joy.

The Truth of the matter is, that the Word and Spirit of Christ enter into that sorrow — into that terrible hurt and pain — into the depths of despair, and into the darkness of death and the grave.  God the Father was His source, and back to God He ran His course. But into hell His road went down, and back then to His throne and crown.  That is how He turns it all around.  He does not deny the departure of death, but He goes the distance, and then He returns with you and all His people in hand.  That is the journey of which He speaks to His disciples, His return to the Father who sent Him: not that He is leaving you, but that He is coming to get you, by way of the Cross, in order to bring you home to the Father, in and with Himself, in His Resurrection from the dead.

He takes your sorrow seriously; He takes it on Himself; He takes your sad song and makes it better.

That is the story our poets sing, the Psalmists and the best of the Church’s hymn writers across the ages.  That is the New Song of David and Asaph, of Luther and Gerhardt, of Nicolai, Heermann and Rist, among many others.  It is the Song of the Cross, and of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.  It the Song of real hurt and pain, of sorrow, grief and loss, but also of the Gospel, of comfort, joy and peace.  It is sung from the depths of woe — it is sung from where you are in misery, anger and fear — but so does it also rise up with Christ to be sung in the hope of His mercy and forgiveness.

Music itself, which is a good and perfect gift of God, as part of His good creation, participates in that journey of Christ; for all of creation is redeemed, raised up, and renewed in His Resurrection.  Music surely knows the fall into sin and the sadness of death, but now it also knows the glory of Christ and the power of His indestructible life.  Thus, as Luther well knew, music with its beauty, with its artistry and grace, is able to chase away the devil and to cheer up the sorrowing spirit.

When such music carries the Word of Christ, how much more then does it bring healing and life.  For then it truly bears the Life-giving Holy Spirit, as St. Paul teaches the Church in his Epistles.

The Spirit sings Christ Jesus to you, as I have said; not only with the poetry and melody of Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, but with the Gospel itself, in all the many ways that it is proclaimed and administered in the Name of the Lord Jesus.  For the Word of the Gospel itself, which is the Word of Christ, is the music and the Song which give you life, no matter how it may be spoken, chanted, or sung.  Like Aslan singing Narnia into existence in The Magician’s Nephew.

That sweet Song of the Gospel carries Christ from the Father to you, and the Spirit of Christ Jesus, because it conveys to you the same faith and life once delivered to the saints and Apostles of old.  It implants the same Word of God in you, in order to save you from death and give you new life.

If you have forgotten the Song — if you have lost the Words or failed to take them to heart — He who sings the Song to you has not forgotten.  He remembers the Song, as the Father remembers His Son; and He still sings the Song to you, because He remembers you in faithfulness and love.

Rest assured, you do not carry the world upon your shoulders, no matter how heavy it may feel.  But this Song of Christ and His Spirit lifts you up and carries you: out of sin and sorrow, out of the depths of death and despair, and out of darkness into Light, to God the Father in Christ Jesus.

For Christ Himself, the Word-made-Flesh, He is the New Song that is sung to you in the whole Gospel, throughout His Church on earth and in your Christian home.  And He is the New Song that you now sing, by faith, as He opens your mouth to pray and confess His Word.

He is your Song, and He is your Strength in the singing of His Gospel, because He has become your Salvation.  He has accomplished everything in Himself, in His own Body of flesh and blood, by His journey from the Father to His death upon the Cross, and in His rising from the dead and His ascending to the Right Hand of the Father.  He is the Sacrifice of your Atonement, and now He is your Song because He is your Sacrifice of praise and your sweet-smelling Incense of prayer.

It is to your great advantage that He has thus returned to the Father, for He has done so as your Great High Priest, on your behalf.  All that He has, whatever is His from the Father, and everything He does, it is all given to you and becomes yours in this Song of the Gospel.  Therefore, you also rise and return to the Father in Him.  Even now that is so, although you make that journey, as He has done before you, by the way of His Cross, which is sorrowful.  But do not be afraid.  For He has taken your sad song and made it His, so that His New Song of the Resurrection may be yours.

The Name that has been sung upon you in the waters of your Holy Baptism — in the preaching of the Holy Gospel of Christ Jesus, in the Word of Absolution, and in the Benediction — that is the Name which you now sing, by His grace and by His Spirit, in calling upon the Lord your God.  And as surely as Christ is risen from the dead and ever lives to intercede for you before His God and Father, so surely are you heard, and you are saved, by the same God who is your own dear Father in Christ.  For His Name is exalted in Christ, His Son, and you also are exalted in Him.

So, too, the Word that is here sung to you — the Word of the Word-made-Flesh, with which He gives to you His Body to eat and pours out His Blood for you to drink — this is the Song that now rings in your ears and sings upon your lips; which resonates in your heart and mind, and in your flesh and blood.  For He is both the Singer and the Song, who sings to you the forgiveness of all your sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Love of God the Father, unto the life everlasting.

To Him be the worship, the blessing and honor and glory and praise, forever and ever.  Amen.