The Song of Christ and His Israel

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia.

Sing to the Lord, you friends of God, for He has triumphed gloriously. He has brought you out of darkness and death — by His strong arms and outstretched hands — through the Red Sea waters of Holy Baptism into His marvelous Light and Life and Salvation.

Behold what He has done and accomplished for you! See how your foes have all be drowned beneath the waves, within the very waters through which Jesus the Christ has brought you in safety and in peace. For He, the Lord, has gone into the depths, into the heart of the sea, and now He has arisen and emerged and returned to His God and Father on your behalf, with you in tow. He has gone into the waters to defeat your enemies and deliver you from them, and He has come out of the waters to bring you to the Father in Himself, into freedom forever and ever.

Why are the waters red? They are permeated through and through with His precious Blood, as of the Lamb unblemished and spotless. For He has overcome the swift horses and fierce riders who pursued you by His own self-sacrifice, by laying down His life in love, by pouring Himself out.

The waters of your Baptism are truly a “Red Sea,” because they surge with the Life of the Lamb. By those waters you are saved. You are set free from every peril. You are cleansed and holy.

Do you remember how scared you were? How sad you were? How sure and certain you were — with Pharaoh breathing down your neck, hot on your heals — that you would perish in the desert?

And yet, the Lord has saved you, just as He has spoken. Know that He alone is God, and you are Israel, His Son, whom He has called out of Egypt. He has gotten glory over Pharaoh, but He has become your Salvation. Even now, and forever after, He is your Strength and your Song.

Now, therefore, when Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen still pursue you in the wilderness; when day and night they threaten to overtake you, to capture or destroy you, to enslave you once again; and when the old leaven of Egypt still clings to you, infiltrating your thoughts, words, and actions with the world’s influence and idolatry; when you are empty, alone and afraid, so much so that you turn back your heart and mind, and sometimes, too, your hand and your mouth, to the fleshpots of Egypt; when you long for and try to reclaim the life that you knew there, although it was a living hell of slavery to sin and hard labor unto death; or, when it seems “they” have taken your Lord away, and you don’t know where to find Him, because you are still searching for the Jesus you have known back in Egypt, in the house of bondage, under the whip, under the cross—

Then the crucified and risen Lord Jesus sings to you. He gently intones your own name, for He knows you and He loves you dearly; and He sweetly serenades you with His Gospel of Peace.

He sings the story of the Scriptures, which He has fulfilled and accomplished by His Cross and Passion and in His Resurrection from the dead. He sings the forgiveness of your sins. He sings the daily and lifelong significance of your one Holy Baptism into Him. He sings the true Passover, which is His Body given and the New Testament in His Blood poured out for you.

His Passover means that His Exodus is at hand. Not just once upon a time, but as often as He sings that precious Word with which He gives to you His Body and pours out for you His Blood. That is the verse and refrain that echoes throughout the ages, even in the desert wilderness, until He comes again in glory and calls you, in both body and soul, to the neverending feast of Paradise, and to the everlasting song of God and of the Lamb, which surpasses that of Moses and Israel.

With His Song of the Gospel, the Lord, who is your Passover Lamb, the firstborn Son of God, snatches you back out of Egypt again to Himself. He brings you through the waters out of bondage into freedom through repentance and forgiveness of all your sins. He brings you to and from the tomb, in and out of death with Him, into His Resurrection and Ascension to the Father.

In His rising from the dead, Christ Himself is your New Song. He not only teaches you to sing, as your Rabonni, but He sings for you, and with you, and in you, as your Kantor; so that you also learn to sing Him — not just about Him, but you sing Christ Himself — with your whole heart and soul; with body, mind and spirit; with all your words and actions, and with your whole life, in fact.

It may seem a frivolous thing to sing: a pleasant pastime, maybe, but not productive. Yet, to sing to the Lord is the first and foremost thing His people do, His Israel, His Church in heaven and on earth. It doesn’t have to be “productive,” because God the Lord has already delivered you from sin, death, and the power of the devil. What more has to be done, accomplished, or produced? But now, with the New Song of Christ Jesus, who has saved you by His death, you rise up with Him, and in Him, in His Resurrection and Ascension, into the Holy of Holies of heaven itself.

For He has gone ahead of you to His God and Father, and He has done so as your Brother in the Flesh; and by your Holy Baptism in His Name, His God and Father is now your God and Father. So it is that you are welcomed and received, warmly embraced and at home with Him, even now.

Whether or not you may feel like singing — on this or any other particular day — the certainty and substance of your Song, of your Salvation, and of your Sonship in relation to God the Father, is and remains the Body and Blood, the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus: the very things that are given to you, into your mouth, into your body and soul, with His Word and in His Sacrament!

As often as He sings that sweet song of His Supper, He brings clarity and light into your darkness, wherever confusion, doubt and fear have reigned. He cleanses all of the accumulated leaven out of your life, day after day, week after week, and year after year, and He makes all things brand new for you again. For His mercies are new every morning, and He makes every day a new beginning.

Sadness may sometimes threaten to undo you, tears may blind your eyes. And your weeping may remain for a night. But there is new joy and gladness and feasting at the dawn: not only on this Easter morning, but at the dawn of each new day. For God raised Jesus from the dead, and nothing shall ever be the same again. It has not gotten worse, but so much better. Indeed, it is very good.

Celebrate His Feast in this way, therefore: Not by clinging to the flesh of Egypt, but by receiving the Body and Blood of the Lamb. Do not return to the works of darkness. Do not leaven your lump with licentiousness, nor with legalism, either. But rather ascend with Christ Jesus to your own dear God and Father in heaven — in heart and mind, body and soul — in the New Song of the Lamb.

Sing His Word and chant His holy Name. Let your whole life sing the Glory of His Resurrection. For He calls you by name, dear little lamb, and He sings His Gospel of mercy and forgiveness to you, in order to give you His whole Life and His whole Self.

Look, there, in the waters of your Baptism: Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen have all been drowned and destroyed. They are defeated. All the leaven of your old man has been washed away. And here at the Lord’s Table is the Passover Lamb, who has been slain, who has been sacrificed for you and for all, who has risen from the dead, who even now sings you to His Father in peace.

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

His God and Father Is Your God and Father

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made that has been made. And that same Word has become Flesh and dwelt among us, conceived and born of St. Mary, in order that we may behold His Glory, the Glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

So has He come down from the Father in heaven, and taken our sins upon Himself, into His own Body of flesh and blood, and gone to the Cross, and laid down His Life for all of us in holy Love. In this way — by His Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead — He has departed from this vale of tears and returned in the Flesh to His God and Father, that we should live with God in Him.

This is the great journey of the Son of God, from heaven above to earth below, and back again with you in tow. He comes down to raise you up. He becomes like you, that you should become like Him. He has taken your sins upon Himself in order to atone for them, to remove them and be rid of them. But He has taken your Flesh to be His own and retains it in His Resurrection, free of sin and set free from death, in order to give you Communion with the Holy Trinity in body and soul.

It is precisely in this journey of the only-begotten Son that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And no one comes to the Father but by Him, who has come down from the Father and returned to the Father through the suffering and death of His Cross into His great and glorious Resurrection.

That is why He says to you, today, in the accomplished fact of His Cross and Passion, that He is now ascending to His God and Father — who is now also your God and your Father in Christ! For as you share His death by your Baptism in His Name, so do you share His Resurrection from the dead, and His Ascension into heaven, and His Sonship, and His Spirit, and His God and Father. Thus do you live with Him in His Kingdom in His righteousness and purity, now and forever.

In this same pattern of the Cross and Resurrection, such as you share with Christ Jesus by way of His Holy Baptism, so have you heard that Mary Magdalene was brought from darkness into Light.

She came to the tomb while yet in the darkness of her unbelief, overcome with grief and sorrow, and forgetting the promise of the Resurrection. But by His Word and Spirit she was brought into the Light of the revelation of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. By His grace and tender mercy, she was given to see the Lord in whose crucified and risen Flesh the Father is revealed.

His Resurrection is the dawning of the New Creation, a new “in the beginning,” not only for dear St. Mary, but for all the beloved disciples of Jesus — for all of those whom He calls to Himself and catechizes in the one true faith. It is thus on the first day of the week that the Word-made-Flesh declares, in the Voice of His Resurrection from the dead, “Let there be Light!” And it is so.

There is a similar transition from darkness to light, from unbelief to faith, in the case of Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loves. But their journey from death to life in Christ is more ambiguous in this Holy Gospel, and not as poignant or as intimate as that of Mary Magdalene.

Consider how it was for poor, dear Mary to begin with. She comes in the darkness, and then she flees from the empty tomb in fear and sadness and confusion. Even after she returns, she is at a loss and does not know what to do. She weeps with anguish and despair, and she stands there frozen in perplexity and grief. She does not recognize Jesus when He appears, nor does she perceive the evidence of His Resurrection. She supposes that He must be a gardener, as though He were the old Adam who must die, and not the New Man who lives. She is so consumed by her concern for the handling of a corpse, for the burial of the dead, that she cannot comprehend the Light of Christ.

It is rather pathetic, yet also far too familiar to all of us poor sinners.

But Jesus the Good Shepherd calls this poor little sheep, this tender lamb of His, by her name: “Mary,” He says, in much the same way that He has called you by name, and given you His own Name, in your Holy Baptism. And just as He has promised, His sheep hear His voice, they know Him, and they follow Him. As her Teacher, her Rabboni, Jesus catechizes Mary to recognize Him in His risen Flesh. And so does He catechize you by His Word to recognize Him in His Supper.

Even then, dear Mary still wants to cling to the Jesus she has known before — not in the Flesh of His Resurrection, but according to the mortal flesh that bore our sins and griefs and sorrows to the death of His Cross. It is not that He is two different Men with two different Bodies, but that she must let go of the past and lift up her heart and mind to her crucified and risen Lord Jesus.

Here is the problem: Mary at first is trying to hang on to the perishable and the mortal, just as you are tempted to hang on to your old Adam, and to the comfortable familiarity of your life in this world, despite the fact that it is cumbered by sin, by sickness and death. And when a loved one has died, is there not a place in your heart that longs to have him back and keep him here in this vale of tears — even though you know better — because you are selfish and lonely and afraid?

But Jesus, your dear Savior, your crucified and risen Lord, He is not to be sought in the commerce or confines of this body and life. His Kingdom is not of this world. He has returned to the Father in the life of the Resurrection from the dead. He has not left the Body behind; it is in His Body that He has risen from the dead and ascended to the Right Hand of the Father. But so has He also, in His Body, put sin and death and the legacy of sin and death to an end, once and for all. He has put mortality down, in order to raise you up to immortality. He has risen, and He is never to die again.

He thus declares that He is your Brother, and that His God and Father is yours forever in Him. He does not leave humanity behind, but in His Resurrection He reveals Himself as the true and perfect Man, in whom you are justified, reconciled to God, and sanctified by His Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus you are rescued from sin, raised up from death, and seated with Him in the heavenly places.

In His innocent suffering and death, He has descended into the depths of your depravity, into your sin, death, and hell. And so it is that, in His Resurrection and Ascension, He raises you up with Himself to the heights of His divine glory, even to the Bosom of His God and Father in heaven.

Out of the darkness of death He calls you by His Gospel — by His Word of forgiveness, as by the washing of the water with His Word and Holy Spirit — into this Light and Life of His Salvation.

By His preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of your sins, He calls you from your unbelief to fear, love, and trust in Him by faith in His Word and promises. He opens your eyes to see that He is your Lord and Savior — to behold in His Flesh the divine Glory of His God and Father, and yet, by His grace, to call this Lord your own dear Brother, and this God your own dear Father.

In this faith and trust and confidence, in this beautiful new relationship that you have been given with the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit — as a beloved child of God in Christ Jesus — He tenderly invites you to lay hold of Him, to embrace Him and cling to Him, to worship and adore Him, here and now at His Altar in His Church, in His holy Body and precious Blood.

Indeed, He thus lays hold of you and clings to you in Love, so that nothing at all, neither sin, nor death, nor the devil and hell, nor anything else, shall ever be able to snatch you away from Him.

Crucified and risen from the dead, immortal, imperishable, and glorious, He gives Himself to you in this Sacrament. He feeds your mortal body with His own Flesh as the guarantee and surety of your own bodily resurrection from the dead to the Life everlasting of your body and soul in Him.

Has He not caused it to be written, and given you to know and believe, that He is your Redeemer, and that He lives!? Indeed He has, and so He does. And as He lives, who once was dead, so shall you also live forever in His Body. Even after your skin and bones have been destroyed, yet, from your own flesh, in the resurrection of your body, with your own two eyes made clear and bright by the Holy Spirit, you shall behold your Savior and your God, and your own dear Father in Him.

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

Hear the Voice of Christ Jesus, Calling You by Name

Christ has died, and Christ is risen; He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Of course you know and believe this, you boldly and gladly confess it.  That is why you are here.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, your Savior, has made your death and grave His own, so that His Resurrection and His Life may be yours also.  So it is, and so shall it ever be, by virtue of your Holy Baptism in His Name.  For His bodily Resurrection from the dead is God’s resounding “Yes, and Amen!” to your every prayer, the surety of your Life and your Salvation.

So it is that this holy and blessed morning and this glorious Easter Day are full of joy and gladness.  Indeed, the entire Christian faith and life are buoyed up by this very Easter joy.  Even your fasting is not without a joyful hope in Christ; and your feasting is ever and always exuberant. Alleluia!

Yet, even on this happy morning, your joy may yet be tinged with sadness — some sorrow in your heart or in the back of your mind — some bittersweet memory or aching regret, or the encroaching threats of life in this world, which do not seem to be at all resolved by such things as the Gospel, not even on Easter Sunday.  And perhaps there are other days and nights when joy is an elusive stranger and sadness reigns over you like a dark cloud ready to burst and drown you in its torrents.

How easily, it seems, your Jesus and your joy in Him appear to be taken away and hidden from you — and you do not know where or how to find Him.

You may be fully convinced of His death, His holy Cross and Passion, but you cannot understand what it really means — far less are you able to comprehend His Resurrection from the dead — not by way of your fallen human reason or the senses of your flesh.  Not when you insist on looking for Him in your empty tomb, and not when you fail to hear and heed His voice.  Then you perceive only suffering and death — not only His, but your own — and you cannot see the Resurrection.

Then you are like Israel, backed up against the Red Sea, hounded by Pharaoh, and scared to death, even though your Passover Lamb has been sacrificed and the angel of death has passed over you.

But now give attention to the Holy Gospel you have heard again this morning.  It is not in the tomb that you will find Jesus, nor in the garden, but in His voice, calling you by name, calling you from death to life in Him.  Where Christ is now laid is upon your heart by the Holy Spirit with the Word of the Gospel, that you may believe in Him, and that, believing, you may have life in His name.

But why, then, are you weeping?  Whether within your heart and mind or outwardly for all to see, why do you sorrow and cry?  What is the matter?  Why are you so troubled and so sad?

When you look at your life, what do you see and perceive?  If it is not Christ Jesus and His joy, where and how are you looking?  What do you seek, if not Him, who is both crucified and risen?

Do you not know, and have you not heard?  Have you not yet understood the Holy Scriptures, that the Christ must rise from the dead?  Not only in Himself, but for you, and in you by His grace.

Let Him be your Teacher and Rabboni.  Listen to Him, and learn from Him.  Hear and heed His voice, as He is calling you by name; for you are His own sheep, and He is your Good Shepherd.

Do not attempt to grasp or cling to the Lord Jesus Christ in this world as you have come to know it in your comfort zone.  Your worldly wisdom, knowledge, and experience never will be able to find or comprehend Him.  But, no, be rid of the yeast and leaven of this body and life on earth — not by hiding yourself away or taking your own life, but by the cleansing Word of Christ Jesus.

Repent of your sorrow and despair, that you may feast upon the same Lord Jesus Christ, your true Passover Lamb, who has been sacrificed for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of sins.

But, again, how shall you find Him, that you may feast upon Him in faith and with thanksgiving?

Hear His Word to you, and so receive what His voice gives to you, which is nothing less than Himself, His Father and His Spirit, His Life and health and every good, His Body and His Blood.  For with His Word He reveals Himself to you, gives Himself to you, and brings you through the Red Sea (and the Jordan) to His Father in heaven — who is now also your God and your Father.

Cling to your Savior and Good Shepherd, then, by hearing His Word and treasuring it in your heart and life.  For with His Word, indeed, He places Himself into your hand, into your mouth and body.  So does He pour out His holy and precious Blood for you, which covers you and shields you from death and the devil.  And He feeds you with His crucified and risen Body.

Consider that!  Have you not heard?  His Body has not been lost or taken away, but it is given to you here and now within His Church on earth; so that your body, also, shall likewise be raised up from death to life and glorified in Him; and that your heart may find true peace and joy in Him.

Today and every day, He is your Strength and your Song; for He has become your Salvation!  He was put to death for your sins, but He is risen for your justification.  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

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

Your Passover, Christ, Has Been Sacrificed

There’s no denying the victory that God has won for His people.  It’s there before their eyes, that the Lord has gotten glory for Himself over Pharaoh.  So Moses and Israel sing with great joy, and praise the Name of the Lord, and celebrate their salvation from slavery and death in Egypt.

But then what?  Within a chapter the people are groaning and complaining against the same Lord God, and against His servant Moses, because they are hungry and thirsty, bored and restless.

From the waters of the Red Sea they are confronted by the wilderness with its harsh and difficult conditions.  That is what they will have to face and deal with for the next forty years.  Only two of the grownups will live to enter the Promised Land.  So it’s out of the frying pan, into the fire.

And so it is for you, as well, who share the Exodus of Christ Jesus by virtue of your Baptism into His Cross and Resurrection.  You die and rise with Him, and then you still have to face the fallen world with all its sins and griefs and sorrows, as you sojourn through this vale of tears.

The Christian faith and life are a struggle against the ongoing experience of sin and death, and against the knowledge of natural reason, which may be persuaded by the evidence and the facts, but cannot comprehend the Scriptures.  As of yet, you do not know as you are known.

On the one hand, you are confronted and seemingly trapped by your enemies, who hate you and hurt you and hurl abuse at you.  And on the other hand, you must grapple with the poverty and depravity of your own life, within your heart and mind and outwardly in your words and actions.

The Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead is in fact your rescue from all of this, no doubt.  It is the saving grace of God, the answer and solution to all of your problems.  But it hardly seems real for the time being, and it may not appear to be making any difference or doing any good.

You’re still sinning against God and your neighbor, still grumbling and complaining against the Lord and against His servants.  What is more, your neighbors and the devil are still sinning against you; if not Pharaoh and his minions, there are plenty of others who oppress you and fight with you.  And on both counts, you’re still dying, day by day, year after year, both inside and out.

So there is this wrestling match within you, in your heart and mind, and in your flesh, between faith and unbelief, and between real love and the lies of anger and fear, apathy and despair.

Against all that, again, there is the fact that Christ has died — once for all, never to die again — and that Christ is risen — He is risen indeed, just as He said!  But He seems to have disappeared, to be missing in action, and frankly you don’t know what to do with yourself.  “They” have taken away your Lord (whoever “they” are), and you do not know where or how to find Him.

So you’re in the same quandary as those dear first Christians who have gone before you in the struggle of faith — from the waters of Baptism into the wilderness under the shadow of the Cross.

Like Mary Magdalene, from whom the Lord cast out seven demons; who loved Him with such deep gratitude, and depended on His mercy and compassion, even as she served and supported Him.  She’s there first thing to pay her respects, to remember and grieve, but she’s still in the dark.  And when she finds the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, she is beside herself with sorrow and weeping.  She is at an utter loss.  How will she ever know any peace or happiness again?

And there is Simon Peter, so bold and brave on occasion, but now living with the deep sadness and bitter regret of his denials.  How often hasn’t he spoken out of turn without understanding, but he did not speak up when he should have done, and now he is dumbfounded by the death of Christ and the discovery of an empty tomb.  Is there any hope for Peter?  Any chance for reconciliation?

Even the disciple whom Jesus loves — the Teacher’s pet, the golden boy, the wunderkind — he, too, is at a loss.  He enters the empty tomb, he sees with his own eyes, and he believes the facts of the case before him, but he does not yet know what it means.  So he goes home.  But what now?

And how is it for you and yours?

Whether in confidence or desperation, you race ahead to get where you’re going, to wherever it is you think you should be, but you also come up short.  Johnny or Suzie on the spot — up before the dawn, or burning the midnight oil — but then it’s the proverbial “hurry up and wait.”

With misplaced zeal, you cling to the wrong things, because they seem so good and so right, and yet, you fail to see or recognize the Lord Himself when He is standing before you in His Gospel.  Your overeager efforts do not help, but lead you instead to exhaustion and disappointment.

Maybe you have brief glimpses of clarity and insight, moments when everything seems to make sense.  But then it all shatters and fades away, and you’re left again with perplexity and confusion.

Despite all that you know and believe, there is still this darkness that weighs upon you, and hovers over you, and follows after you like Eeyore’s little black rain cloud.  It threatens to expose all your junk, to destroy your carefully crafted façade, and to bring you to shame and disgrace.

Whatever the contours and particulars of your own story, there is all this old leaven in you, which permeates your being and nature, your heart and soul, your body, mind, and spirit.

And the solution, which you already know but don’t yet understand — the great Salvation of your Savior Jesus Christ — is so counter-intuitive and scary, because it is first of all your own undoing.

It’s not just that you can do nothing to save yourself, but that you must be utterly undone in order to be saved.  It doesn’t matter who you are, the good, the bad, or the ugly: You must be undone.

For the Lord God is a Warrior, Yahweh Sabaoth.  In drowning and destroying Pharaoh and all his host, the same Lord also puts you to death — to yourself, to your sin, to your own righteousness, and to the whole world of sin and death, both near and far, all around you and within you.

You must be purged of the leaven on which you have relied.  You must enter into the depths, to pass through the waters — with your enemies hot on your heels, breathing threats and murder.

Not only that, but what awaits you on the far side of the deadly waters is a desert, and who knows how many years of wandering, in which you will not feed or clothe yourself, but you will be fed and cared for by the Lord your God.  He is the One who brings you through the wilderness — into Paradise at last — by His grace alone: By the true Bread of Life from heaven, and by the Living and Life-Giving Water that flows from the innermost Being of Christ into your body and soul.

Do not cling to what you have known or experienced in the past, but let it go, and be done with it altogether.  Do not pine away for the fleshpots of Egypt, no matter how hard the desert may be.

It’s not a game.  The Lord is not teasing you.  The ordeal is not pointless.  For it is on this journey through the wilderness that you are catechized — day by day, year after year, your whole life long — unto repentance and faith.  Thus are you taught to rely upon the Lord, to trust His Promise of the Resurrection, even as you are being put to death or simply wasting away.

How, then, shall you be saved?  And how shall you be able to sing in the midst of the struggle?

It is by the Lamb who was slain, and yet, behold, He lives!  He is your Strength and your Song, because He has become your Salvation.  He is your Passover, who has been sacrificed for you, who now feeds you with Himself, with His own flesh and blood.  Indeed, His Blood covers you and cleanses you, and anoints you in body and soul, inside and out.  And His Body enlivens you and strengthens you with forgiveness of sins and communion with God.

The same Lord Jesus Christ has passed through the deep waters — ahead of you, and with you — in order to bring you through death and the grave into His Resurrection and His Life Everlasting.

So does He travel before you and with you — He is your Vanguard and your Rearguard — through the wilderness into the Promised Land.  His Ministry of the Gospel and His Means of Grace are the Pillar of Cloud by day and the Pillar of Fire by night, by which He leads and guides you all the way.  And as He has passed through the waters of the Jordan into Canaan by His own Baptism — that is to say, by His Cross and Resurrection — so do you enter with Him, by your Holy Baptism, into the Good Land that God has promised and pledged to you in the Body of Christ Jesus.

For in His Body, with His Blood, Christ ascends to His God and Father in heaven, that you might also be with Him there; and not only with Him, but like Him, and one with Him; that His God be your God, and His Father your Father, by adoption and by grace, both now and forevermore.

You also are His disciple whom He loves.  You follow after Him and learn from Him, who has in fact also made Himself your Brother in the flesh, in death as in life, unto the Life Everlasting.

To your enemies within and without (including your own old Adam) He is a fierce and mighty Warrior, and the thunder of His mighty Law is not to be denied.  But hearken to this Holy Gospel, and hear how He also speaks to you so gently, and how He calls you by name to Himself, and calls you by His own Name.  For you are His dear lamb, and He is your Good Shepherd forever.

With His gentle voice of the Gospel, He raises you from doubt and fear to faith and joy, from perplexity to confidence and peace, from death and the grave to divine eternal Life in Him.

He teaches you sincerity and truth in all your dealings with others, by His own Word and Spirit of the Gospel in all His dealings with you, that is, by His mercy and His forgiveness of all your sins.

Mary Magdalene is not forgotten or forsaken.  Simon Peter is not cast away or rejected.  And you are not abandoned, condemned, or denied, either, but you are surely rescued, renewed, and made righteous before your God and Father in Christ Jesus.

As He feeds you here in His own House with the unleavened Bread of His own Body, so do you become brand new in your body and soul, and you live a new life in Him as a member of His Body.

In this Paschal Feast He brings you into the Paradise of His New Creation, and He establishes you in the true Sanctuary, made without hands, eternal in the heavens, which is His crucified and risen Body.  You enter through the Veil of His Flesh, cleansed and redeemed by His Blood, anointed and sanctified by His Spirit, and so do you worship the Father in Him, in the Spirit and the Truth.

Beloved of the Lord, as He thus calls you by His Word and lays hold of you with His own flesh and blood, given and poured out for you, so cling to Him in these Means of Grace.  You will not find Him in the fleshpots of Egypt, nor in the old leaven of malice and envy, but here at His Altar is where you find Him and know Him rightly as He is: Your Savior and Redeemer.

Therefore, let us keep this Feast of feasts to which the Lord invites you.  For He, your Passover, is sacrificed and risen for you, and ever lives for you as your merciful and great High Priest.  So shall you sing the New Song of Christ, of God and of the Lamb.  And all the host of Yahweh, together with His whole Church in heaven and on earth, the true Israel of God, sings with you in the joy of His Resurrection, to the praise of His glorious grace.

For Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

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