Creation Is Perfected in the Body of Christ the Crucified

On the sixth day, God created Man in His own Image and Likeness. And what God began on that first Friday, He finishes and fulfills on this Good Friday. For here, in truth, is the Image and Likeness of God, in which man is created:

“Behold the Man,” the King of Creation, reigning from the Tree of His Cross

It is not uncommon, of course, that you may attempt a good work, only to have it go badly wrong and blow up in your face. But that is most certainly not what has happened here. God’s original intention has not been thwarted by the sin of man. What He has done, He has in fact purposed from the very beginning, indeed, from before the foundation of the world.

For the sake of His divine and holy love, God freely chose to create the heavens and the earth. Not for His own benefit, but for the sake of loving His creatures and benefitting them. He creates all things in order to love the man and the woman, the king and the queen of His first creation, made in His Image to live and reign with Him in Paradise eternally.

Already then, the Lord not only knows how things are going to go, but He willingly and graciously commits Himself to that very suffering and death which we here remember on this sacred day.

No one takes His life from Him, but He lays it down willingly for us poor sinners, His fallen and rebellious creatures, in order to raise us up with Himself by His Cross and in His Resurrection.

Thus, Adam was created in the Image and Likeness of this Man, the incarnate Son, the Seed of the Woman, who is more specifically the Crucified One, sacrificed for us men and our salvation.

Yet, even though God has created you to be and to live in the Image and Likeness of Christ, your sinful proclivity is to “create” gods of your own likeness, in your own image — false gods of selfish, self-serving, self-centered self-love. Those false gods and idols of yours are gods of power and greed and competition, gods of envy and revenge. And in your worship of such gods, your self-love is matched only by your hatred of anything that would hurt you, by your fear of anything that would threaten your freedom, and by your animosity toward anyone who might insult you.

The one true God is utterly unlike those false gods and idols that you worship and serve in your sinful unbelief. And so it is that, when He reveals Himself as He truly is in the Man of sorrows, you do not even recognize Him as a Man, far less as God in the Flesh. But so indeed He is. His almighty power is thus made known chiefly in showing mercy and pity toward those who deserve nothing but punishment. And the height of His divine glory is not selfishness, but Self-sacrificing love for poor, miserable sinners like yourself, who hate Him, and hurt Him, and betray Him for money, who deny Him and flee from Him, and who put Him to death, even death on the Cross.

He turns the other cheek to those who hit and punch and slap Him, and He does not retaliate. He loves His enemies, and He prays for those who persecute Him. He likewise prays for you, as well, that His Father would not hold your sins against you.

It is therefore in the frailty and weakness of His flesh and blood upon the Cross — in His Body made mortal by your sins — in His bitter suffering and innocent death, and in the shedding of His holy, precious Blood — it is there that the Image and Likeness of God are most clearly and fully revealed, and are now accomplished and perfected in this one true Man, the new and better Adam.

It is in this Image, in the Likeness of Christ, the Crucified One, that you are recreated to live with Him in His Kingdom forever. To live as He has lived in the fear and faith of His God and Father. To love as He loves you. To forgive others as He forgives you. And to sacrifice yourself for the sake of your neighbor, within your own calling, as Jesus Christ has sacrificed Himself for you.

So it is that, as the woman, Eve, was taken from the side of the man, Adam, and then brought to the man and given to him as his bride, now the Bride of Christ, His Holy Church, the Mother of all the living, is taken from the riven side of this Man, Jesus Christ, and made alive in the river of living water and life-giving blood that He pours out from His Body in the sacred sleep of death.

If you would be His disciple, His man or His woman, you are entrusted to this Holy Mother, His Church on earth as it is in heaven. You are born again by the water, Word, and Spirit of Christ. And as often as your sin has robbed you of His Breath of Life, you are resuscitated by His Word of Peace, His Word of Holy Absolution, the forgiveness of all your sins in His Name and stead. There is nothing that is held against you, since He has made Atonement for all of your iniquities.

Thus are you nourished at the Church’s festal board, fed with the Body and Blood of the firstborn Son who has been given in the place of lambs and sheep who love to wander, and who has been slain upon the Cross for you and for all of the children of men.

By the same token, the Woman herself, the Bride of Christ, His Holy Church, the Mother of all the sons and daughters of God, she is entrusted to the one who testifies. She is committed in body and soul to the Apostolic witness of the Cross and Crucifixion of the New Adam, Jesus Christ. And she is cared for by the preaching and confession of this same Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, whose Blood cleanses the Woman and all of her children. It is His Blood that also covers you and shields you from the death and damnation you deserve.

In Him who is the very Image and Likeness of God, crucified for your transgressions and raised for your justification — though you are a child of dust, subject to death and the grave for your sins — yet, in Him, you are resurrected from the dust of the earth and returned to the Garden of God, to Paradise the blest, where you are fed forevermore with the Fruits of this Tree of Life. “Behold the life-giving Cross, on which was hung the salvation of the world!” Take and eat. Drink of it, all of you. Taste and see that the Lord is very good, and that His loving-kindness endures forever.

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

Behold the Image of God in Man, Given and Poured Out for You

It is amazing how visual the Gospel of the Passion is.  “Look!” you are told, again and again.  “Behold the Lamb of God.”  “Behold the Man.”  “Behold your King.”  “Like this,” St. John will describe, as though you could actually see some gesture he is making while he preaches.

No one has ever seen God at any time, but now the Incarnate Son, who resides in the bosom of the Father, He reveals God to us.  For the Word of God, who is God, by whom all things are made — He has become Flesh.  In Him God tabernacles among us.  In Him you behold the one true God.

In the beginning was this Word — the Word was with God, and the Word was God — and as God spoke this Word of His, who is in fact the Father’s only-begotten Son from all eternity, so did creation come into being out of nothing.  “Let there be Light,” He said, and there was Light.  For this Word is the Light in the darkness, which is the Life and Love of God.

And on the Sixth Day, on that first Friday of creation, God said, “Let Us make Man in Our Image.”  Then He crafted the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his body the Breath of Life, which is the Spirit of the Lord.  So did man become a living being.  And that he should be and live in the Image and Likeness of the Holy Trinity — an eternal relationship of mutual Love between the Father and His Son in the Holy Spirit — the Lord God caused the man to sleep, and opened up his side, and from his body crafted the woman, his beautiful bride, to be a helpmate comparable to him.  The Lord then brought her to the man to be his wife; and behold, it was very good.

But the Image of God is not a static or stationary work of art, which simply stays put and looks pretty on the wall, on a mantle or a shelf.  In order to see God in man, the man is given to live in mutual love with God and with his neighbor, receiving and requiting the Love of God, and loving the Household and Family of God in His Name.  Such Love, by its very nature, cannot be forced, demanded, or manipulated.  It is given and received in freedom, in the peace of friendship.

In that freedom, though they were the friends of God, the man and the woman doubted and denied His Word, and so betrayed Him with their disobedience.  Though they were His own creation and His beloved children, to whom He had already given a cornucopia of good things, they chose to flee in faithless fear from His Image, and they sought instead the knowledge of self-righteousness, which is not the Truth at all but the likeness of death.  They ran from God and returned to the dust.

The first man and his wife were blinded by their sin.  They could no longer perceive or understand the Lord their God in His good creation with the clarity of faith and love.  Instead, they were afraid and ashamed.  They were lost and confused.  They were no longer free to live and love in peace, but trapped in a pit of desperation.  They were no longer fully alive, but subject to death and decay.

Nevertheless, God still beheld them in His mercy, and the gracious freedom of His Love for them was not defeated by their disobedience.  He did not destroy them or turn Himself against them.  He did not look with contempt upon their nakedness, but covered and clothed them with animal skins.  Thus did the Lord offer the first sacrifice, in order to remove the shame of fallen man.

And the Promise was first given, that God would remedy the problem, rectify what was broken, and make all things new.  The Seed of the Woman would crush the adversary’s head and reconcile the world to God.  In Him the Image and Likeness of God would be seen in perfect clarity.

Behold, this is the New Creation that God has accomplished in Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, conceived and born of the Woman.  He does not scrap the first creation and start over, but He redeems and restores it, raises it up, and perfects it in this Man.  He is the completion of Creation.

So it was that, on the Sixth Day, on the Good Friday of His Cross, God the Father said to His dear Son, “Let Us make Man in Our Image and after Our Likeness.”  And that is what He has done.

Indeed, this is what the one true God looks like in His Creation.  Here is the fullness of the Deity embodied and enfleshed.  Which means, also, that here is the true Man.  For Christ the Crucified is the very Model and Pattern — the Image and Likeness of God — in which the first man, Adam, was fashioned and formed.  From the beginning, yes, even from before the foundation of the world, it was this Man, Christ Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Son, whom God the Father beheld in Love, and for whose sake He created the heavens and the earth, Adam & Eve, and everything else.

It is specifically His Sacrifice for the salvation of sinners that reveals the grace and glory of God most clearly.  So, if you want to know what God and Man are like, look at Him upon the Cross.

He lives and dies, not for Himself — He does what He does, not for His own sake or benefit — but in love for His Father and in love for you and all His creatures.  It is such divine Love that you behold in Him, and perfect faith in His God and Father; for He is the faithful and obedient Son.

Thus He becomes your merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God; not only for a little while, but forever and always.  As the true Man He has fully taken your place; and in His own human Flesh and Blood He has established His place as the Son of God for you.

He has taken your place, not only by His Incarnation, by His conception and birth of the Woman, but also by coming in the likeness of fallen flesh.  That is, although He has no sins of His own, He takes the sins of the whole world upon Himself and bears the entire brunt of their burden, the full extent of their curse and consequence.  Though He is Life Itself, He is made mortal and subject to death.  He suffers all your pain and grief and sorrow from the cradle to the grave.  He is tempted in all the ways that you are tempted.  He sympathizes with all of your frailties and weaknesses.

He takes your place — the place of Adam and of all the children of men — the place of the skull.

You know that no one takes His life from Him; He lays it down willingly in love, and so shall He take it up again by the Spirit of His Father.  And He takes that place of yours on purpose, that place of death and the grave, so that He might take you up from there to His own place with the Father.

As your great High Priest He offers Himself up to God — the Son offers Himself up to the Father — in the faith and love for which you have been created.  He does so, not under ideal conditions, not in the bliss of Paradise, but from within the curse of death and damnation, under the terrible weight of your sin.  Burdened by all the hate and hurt and heartache of this fallen world, still He perseveres in the fear, love, and trust of His Father.  He has no other gods but Him.

It’s not as though it were easy for Him, but He does it all because He is faithful and true, because He is the true Man, and because He loves you.  So He calls upon the Name of the Lord, even with tears, with loud cries and deep groans of anguish, and He entrusts Himself entirely to His God and Father.  He takes the Cup and drinks it, confident in the One who is able to save Him out of death.

And He is heard because of His piety!  Not only that but, consequently, His matchless piety now and forever avails for you before the Father in heaven!  For the Body of Christ Jesus, who has been crucified for your iniquities, is your Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies.  Therein He ever stands for you as your merciful and great High Priest, and there He ever lives to make intercession for you.  His priestly garment, His unrent seamless tunic, covers your naked guilt and shame.  Do not run away and hide, therefore, but draw near in peace, since you are reconciled to God in Christ Jesus.

As surely as He is your great High Priest, so is He also the Christ, the Lord’s Anointed, that is, the King of the Lord’s Creation.  He truly is the King of the Jews, for salvation is from the Jews.  He is the King of Israel, indeed, of all who are the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by faith in the Promise.  But He is also the King of the world, even though His Kingdom is not from here — just as Pilate decrees by the authority that was given to him from above, that Jesus of Nazareth is “the King of the Jews.”  Thus it is written in the languages of the whole world, and so shall it be wherever in the world the Gospel is preached concerning this crucified King and His Cross.

As the New Adam He has become the Head of a new humanity.  But see how His headship is so different from the rulers of this world.  They lord it over their subjects and use their power to serve themselves, to promote their own advantage and agendas.  The Lord Jesus is not like that at all.  He reigns in love, He rules in peace.  He lays down His own life in order to give life to His people.  His Kingdom and His Power and His Glory are the Gospel of His Cross.

And so it is that His own Bride, His Queen, His Holy Church is taken from His opened side as He sleeps the deep sleep of death upon His Cross.  By the Water and the Blood that pour forth out of His innermost being, the New Woman is fashioned and formed after the Image of this New Man, to be a helpmate comparable to Him.  Even His own blessed Mother is given this new identity, as she who once gave birth to Him is given new life by Him.  She, too, is redeemed and sanctified by His atoning death, by His holy and precious Blood, which she beholds at the foot of His Cross.

She stands there, beneath His Tree, as a member and an icon of His Holy Church, the Mother of all the living.  And so does the beloved disciple stand there with her, as an icon of each and every Christian, each and all of whom are the children of God by grace, by His gracious adoption of sons.  Behold, in this Mother and this Son, the Household and Family of God in Christ Jesus.

She is entrusted to the care of the apostolic witness and preaching of Christ the Crucified.  And by the Word and Spirit of God the Church conceives and gives birth to His children, in much the same way that Mother Mary conceived and gave birth to the Christ Child Himself.  Born from the waters of the font, they are nourished by His Blood and Flesh at the Altar of His Holy Church.

These are the Fruits of His Tree, the Water, Blood, and Spirit which He hands over and gives out from the Cross; His gracious Word of forgiveness; and His Body given for you and for the many.

As He enters upon His Holy Passion from the garden, and as His sacred Body is temporarily laid to rest in the garden, so is the Cross of Christ the true Tree of Life in the midst of Paradise.  Its good and holy Fruits are no evil, no poison or hurt, but the very Medicine of Immortality, the true Ambrosia, by which you have life and health and strength in body and soul, forever and ever.

You don’t have to get yourself back to the garden.  Nor could you ever have done so.  On your own you can only return to the dust from which you were taken.  But here the Garden of God has come to you, as it is found wherever Christ the Crucified is lifted up in the preaching of His Cross, and wherever He is given and poured out in the Fruits of His Cross, His Body and His Blood.

You now, beloved of the Lord, who are born from His Body in the Water and the Blood, and who are fed from His Tree of Life with His own Flesh — you are now like Him, who made Himself to be like you.  You are made brand new in Him.  You are what you eat and drink: the Image of God.

Do not doubt that it is true.  Despite the outward appearance of the Cross, which the world despises in Christ Jesus and so now also in you, and notwithstanding the fact and experience of sin, which remains in your fallen flesh — where you feel it, and the Law reveals it daily — nevertheless, the Truth of Christ Jesus stands fast and remains forever and ever for you.

He is the Man, and He is the Image of God in Man.  As He has taken your place, even unto death upon the Cross, so has He given you His place as the Son of God, even unto Life everlasting.

That is what His God and Father graciously beholds in you.  Not your nakedness and shame, your suffering, sin, and death, which Christ Jesus bears on your behalf, but the perfect piety, steadfast faith, and holy love with which He has gone to the Cross for you and for all people, and which He now lavishly bestows upon you by His Holy Gospel.  Amen, amen, it is and ever shall be so.

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

Behold the One True Man of God

Dear Christians, one and all, your God and Father loves you.  He is not mad at you; He is at peace with you in Christ Jesus, His beloved Son.  And He is not mean.  You have known meanness, and you have been mean yourself, but your God and Father is not mean.  He is not cruel, as the devil would have you believe, but gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in Love.

Everything He does proceeds in Love.  And in His great Love for you, He desires to give you only good things — because He desires that you should live with Him forever in faith and love.

So does your Father give you good gifts.  And not only that, but He also gives you the freedom to receive them and to enjoy them.  Indeed, He gives you the freedom to love Him, or to leave Him.  He takes that risk, because He desires to have a real relationship with you.  He would have you be His dear child, His friend, a member of His Bride, and not His slave.  So He gives you freedom.

But His earnest desire is that you would love Him — that you would love and trust in Him above all others and all other things — not because He is insecure, prideful, or selfish, but that you should have true and lasting Life in Him who is your greatest good.  It is true that He is jealous, as the Scriptures testify.  He is a jealous God.  But understand that He is jealous for you — not as though He were petty, the way that you are sometimes petty — but He is jealous for you because He loves you, the way a husband is jealous for his wife and a mother for her child.  He will not permit any other gods to take you from Him, nor to rob you of His Life and Light and Love.

In much the same way, and for the very same reason, He is angry with your sin, and He punishes your sin, because your sin cuts you off from Him; your sin causes you harm and is killing you.

Therefore, your God and Father in heaven disciplines you in His great love for you, as any loving father must disciplines his sons and daughters.  He thereby calls you to repentance and to faith.

You parents, if your child were running out into the road, into the path of a car, you would holler at him or her, you would reach out to stop him or her, and you would be angry — not because you desire your child’s hurt, but precisely because you desire that your child not be hurt.  And when your Father disciplines you, that is likewise what He is about.  But His Love is more pure and more perfect than that of any father or mother here on earth.  His desire is always that you would live.

It is by repentance and faith that you live in and with Him, and that is a high and holy calling.  And it is for such Life that He has created you in love.  To live in that way, by faith in God, is to live as true Man in the Image of God.  To live by such faith is to be truly human, to be a man or a woman as the Lord your God intends.  And to live by such faith is to trust and rely upon the Word of your God and Father in all circumstances, even if everything else is screaming contradiction.

To live by faith in God is to wait on Him in steady hope and quiet confidence.  It is to give thanks in both prosperity and poverty.  It is to be patient in affliction.  It is to be patient with your family, as your God and Father in heaven is patient and long-suffering with you.  It is to be patient with your neighbor, gladly forgiving and continuing to do good to those who trespass against you.  It is to suffer all manner of wrongs and hurts and sorrows in the certain promise of the Resurrection, not striking back or seeking revenge, but calling on the Lord to vindicate and save you in love.  To live by faith in God is to have your heart so fixed on Him that even in death you fear no evil.

It is for such life that you have been created in the Image of God, and to such a life you are called.  What is more, the One who calls you is faithful and true.  He’s not playing games with you.  He’s not teasing you or tricking you.  The Life to which He calls you is a blessed and beautiful Life, notwithstanding the fact that it is obtained for you and given to you by the way of the Cross.

The One who calls you is faithful and true — not only because He is God, and so of course He keeps His Word and promises — but because He truly loves you from His great heart of Love.  With the very depths of His Being He loves you; and everything He does proceeds in that Love.

His Love for you is unmatched and unsurpassed.  But it is not uncontested.  Indeed, the Love of God is resisted and rejected on all sides, within and without.  Your own sinful heart is covetous; you desire what God has not given you, and you desire what is not God.  The whole world, too, is idolatrous.  It worships things.  It loves the creature while hating the Creator.  It is not content with what God has given, but strives to get for itself.  Meanwhile, the devil is furious and rages against you; he is hateful and murderous, and he does whatever it takes to deceive you, mislead you, and destroy you.  Thus do the devil, the world, and your own fallen flesh conspire against you — and against the Life and Love of God, which He desires to give you freely in Christ Jesus.

“Skin for skin,” the devil says, as he did when he went after righteous Job.  “Skin for skin.”  And all too easily, all too often, you fall into that trap.  When God commands you to love Him, you regard that as too burdensome.  And when He commands you to love your neighbor, you regard that as unfair and unrealistic.  When God punishes your sin, you do not perceive His love for you, but only wrath and anger, as though He were out to get you and destroy you.  So, too, when He disciplines you in love and calls you to repentance and faith, you run away from Him and flee to the false “freedom” of idolatry.  You make a god of yourself and try to make a life for yourself.

Although the Lord your God is so desirous to give you real Life with Himself, you prefer to go your own way, futilely supposing that you’ll do better on your own.  The fact is that, while your sinful heart is dreadfully afraid of death, it actually knows nothing other than the pursuit of death.  You don’t fear God as you should, and yet you are afraid of Him.  You worry that He’s out to get you, and so you run away and try to hide — running yourself headlong into death and destruction.

Do fear the Lord your God — not in the terror of death, but in faith and love — because there is forgiveness, salvation, and Life with Him in the Flesh and Blood of the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus.

It is your sin that brings you to sorrow, grief, and death.  But in His Love for you, in order to save you, the Son of God has taken all of that upon Himself, all your sin, your sorrow, grief, and death.

Behold the Lamb of God, the one true Man of God, who takes away your sins and the sins of the whole world.  In Him, in His Body on the Cross, you behold the Lord your God as He is, perfect in Love.  And in Him you also behold true Man, as Man was meant to be, perfect in faith and love.

In this Man, all that has been broken, including your relationship with God, is repaired and healed and made new.  In His Body of Flesh and Blood, God completes and fulfills His good Creation.

It is in Christ Jesus that Man lives with God by faith and lives in love for God and man.  It is in Him that Man is rescued from sin and death, vindicated in righteousness, and prevails in peace.  For He trusted in His God and Father, He humbled Himself and became obedient, even unto death upon the Cross; and His God and Father saved Him from out of death and the grave, and granted Him the Victory of Life in His bodily Resurrection from the dead and His Ascension into heaven.  That Victory is not yet seen, except by the eyes of faith in His Word, but it is already true in Him.

In His Passion and on the Cross, Christ Jesus has nothing but His God and Father.  And when even His God and Father turns away from Him in righteous judgment against the sins of the world that He bears vicariously in His Body, the Lord Jesus still calls upon God as His God and His Father.  He does not curse, but He believes.  He perseveres in faith.  And He is heard because of His piety.

So it is that sin and death and all that separate you from God is undone.  The brokenness is broken, and death is put to death, because this one true Man, Christ Jesus, remains faithful even unto death.  He lives and dies in perfect faith and holy love.  And all of this He does for you, in your skin, in your own flesh, so that sin and the curse of death and all their hold on Man are utterly defeated.

Everything is achieved and accomplished in Christ Jesus, and established for you in Christ Jesus, in His Body of Flesh and Blood, crucified and risen from the dead.  He is your merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God, so your relationship with God is safe and sound in Him.

God and Man, faith and love, righteousness and peace, all are in perfect harmony in Christ Jesus.  And all His faithfulness, His Faith and Love, His Cross and Resurrection, and His Life with God, all of these are yours by the grace of His Gospel.  That is what He gives to you, into your body, from His Cross and from His Altar in His Church, that you should live with Him in body and soul.

Here is not only God’s pledge and promise to you, but the one true God and Man given to you.  And in the Body and Blood of God the Son, God the Father’s heart is fully open to you in Love, for He thus delights to give you every good and perfect gift in Christ Jesus.  Whatever else may happen to you in this poor life of labor, the Life and Love of God are yours in Him forevermore.

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

The Willing Self-Sacrifice of God the Son

It is clear throughout the Passion of our Lord that none of these events happen by accident.  None of these things unfold or transpire apart from the Will of the Father and the Son.  Each of the holy Evangelists has made that clear in his own way, but none more so than St. John, not only in the way that he has described these events, but in the Words of our Lord Jesus throughout the Holy Gospel and in the course of His Passion.  It is made clear, as Jesus Himself says at one point, that no one takes His life from Him, but He lays it down willingly, and He will take it up again.

It is not simply that He knows ahead of time what is going to happen.  He wills what is going to happen.  His Father hands Him over for the salvation of mankind, and the Son of God — in love for His Father, and in love for you and for all people — willingly hands Himself over to death.

Which is not to say or suggest that it was easy for Him.  It surely was not.  And it is certainly not as though any of this were necessary for His own benefit.  He lacked nothing.  He needed nothing.  There was nothing that He had to do for Himself.  There is only what He chose to do in His divine and holy love, that He should save you from your sins and death and give to you eternal Life.

That is why all of these things happen.  It is the fulfillment of God’s creative purpose, God’s good and gracious will, His holy intention from the very beginning.  So is it also the fulfillment of all that God has spoken and promised throughout the Holy Scriptures — as He promised to our first parents in the Garden of Eden following their fall into sin, and as He repeated by the mouth of His Prophets throughout the ages, even down to us — that God and Man should be perfectly united and brought together in harmony with one another, in faith and love, in peace and reconciliation.

That union of God and Man is already perfectly accomplished in the Person of Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, who is both true God and true Man.  In Him God and Man are perfectly one.  But this He has accomplished in Himself, in order to open the way for you, to make it possible for you to live in harmony with God, for you to be united with God in peace, in faith, and in love.

When God first created Man in His own Image, when He shaped Adam out of dirt from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life, it was in the likeness of this Man, Jesus Christ.  Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, begotten of His Father from eternity, but also conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the fullness of time — He is the Model after which Man is created.  He is the Image of God in whom you have been created and given life.  So it is that you live as a son of God by grace when you are conformed to the pattern of this Man, Jesus, by faith in Him.

Now, suffering and death were not a part of God’s original Creation.  It was not His desire that any of His creatures should suffer and die, but that all should live by His grace.  It is rather on account of man’s sinful disobedience that God uses suffering and death to accomplish His true purposes.

Although He did not desire man’s suffering and death, it is yet by His own suffering and death that He exemplifies the true divine life of faith and love within the context of this fallen world.  That is to say, it is with perfect faith in His God and Father, and with perfect love for both His Father and for all the children of men, in steadfast faithfulness even to the end, that the incarnate Son of God, Christ Jesus, willingly submits Himself to His innocent suffering and death, to His Cross and Passion, in order to atone for the sins of the world.  In order to conquer death.  In order to reconcile Man to God in Himself.  In order to save you and give you life.  And all of this He has done.

So, if you want to know what the one true God is really like, and if you want to know what Man is truly supposed to be like, then look to Christ on the Cross.  There you see God opening His great heart of love to you, revealing Himself to you, giving Himself for you.  And there you see true Man living by perfect faith, living in perfect love, dying in the confidence that He will live with God.

The Jews actually have it right, therefore, in spite of their malice, when they declare that according to the Law of God this Man must die.  Not because He has broken the Law; indeed, He has not, not in any part.  But it is according to the Law that He must die, precisely because He, being the Son of God, the very Word made Flesh, is the fulfillment of the Law.  And it is precisely by His innocent suffering and death that He fulfills the entire Law for the salvation of all mankind.  It is by His death that He fulfills the Law and the Prophets and all the Words and promises of God.

It is in this same way, and in this same sense, therefore, that He is also the true King.  So in that respect, it is Pontius Pilate who gets it right — in the ascription that he assigns to the Cross.  And his soldiers likewise get it right, although they do so in mockery of Jesus.  Even if they don’t get anything else right, they are correct in calling Jesus the King of the Jews.  He is more than that.  He is the King of the world, the King of all creation.  He is your King, because He is your Savior.

Jesus is not the cruel taskmaster, the slave driver that Pharaoh is.  No, He is a kind and gentle King who saves His people from death, who serves His subjects with His own body and life.  On your behalf He is a mighty Champion, He is a Warrior against your enemies.  And yet, at the same time, He is a kind and gentle Shepherd who cares for His subjects like sheep, who feeds you and waters you, who guards and protects you.  He is the perfect King.  He is the true King.  And He reigns in love and mercy for you from the Tree of His Cross, crowned with thorns and pierced with nails.

And as your King, by His Cross and in His Resurrection, He has brought you out of the kingdom of the devil, in which you were enslaved and trapped, into the Kingdom of His God and Father, wherein you now live by grace through faith in Him, as a free citizen, as a royal priest of God.

In this respect, not only is Jesus a far better King than Pharaoh, but He is Himself the firstborn Son who is slain; and He is also the Passover Lamb who is sacrificed on your behalf, in order to set you free from sin and death — in order to give you life with God forever.  For He is sacrificed once for all upon the Altar of His Cross, that the Angel of death should pass over you.  You shall not die, you shall live, because this Son of God has given Himself and suffered and died in your place.

And even to the end of the age He remembers you.  He remembers you in love.  He remembers you by acting.  He remembers you from the Altar of His Church by feeding you with the Fruits of His Cross, with His own holy Flesh, His holy and precious Blood.  As the true Passover Lamb of God, He is not only sacrificed for you, in your place, but He is also given and poured out for you as your Meat and Drink indeed, as the festival Meal of all the children of God within the Father’s House.

In eating this Lamb who has been sacrificed in your place, you are brought out of death into life, out from under Pharaoh and his bitter yoke into the Kingdom of your gracious Lord and Savior.  No more are you held in bondage.  No more are you subject to the fear of death.  No more are you a slave to your own sin, enticed, ensnared, and led about by the temptations of the devil.  No more are you condemned by Satan’s accusations.  No more are you trapped under the curse of the fall.

You are set free.  Your bonds are burst asunder by the willing Sacrifice of this Man, this Lamb of God, your Savior, Jesus Christ.  His Blood has atoned for all your sins, and His death has defeated your death and the devil.  The Son of God has set you free, and you are free indeed.

In feasting upon His Body, which is the true Manna from heaven — in drinking His holy Blood, which is your true spiritual Drink from the side of this Rock, who is Christ — in eating this Food and drinking this Drink, you are strengthened and sustained in the true faith on your pilgrimage through the desert from Egypt to Canaan, even into Paradise, where you live with Jesus forever.

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

The One Who Thirsts for Your Salvation

It was also about the sixth hour when Jesus met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and asked her to give Him a drink.  And of course, as that story unfolded, it was not that He was seeking to get something from her, but that He was teaching her to seek the gift of living Water from Him — Water that would become a fountain springing up to everlasting life in her and in all who would hear and heed His Word.  For so does He bestow the free gift of the Holy Spirit from the Father.

Indeed, at the Feast of Tabernacles a few chapters later in St. John’s Holy Gospel, Jesus declares to the crowds in Jerusalem, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”  For as the Holy Scriptures have said, “From out of His innermost being will flow rivers of living Water.”  And this He said concerning the Holy Spirit, who would be freely given to all who believe in Christ Jesus; though the Spirit was not yet given, then, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Now the Hour has come, when the Son of Man is glorified by the way and the means of His Cross and Passion, the atoning sacrifice of true God in the flesh.  And so it is from this very Hour that He pours out the Holy Spirit generously upon all those who believe and are baptized in His Name.

It is by the voluntary suffering and death of the incarnate Son of God that forgiveness of sins is obtained, and that sinners are redeemed and reconciled to God the Father in Him.  Apart from that forgiveness and redemption, the fallen sons and daughters of Adam could neither receive the Holy Spirit nor ever hope to abide in the presence of God, far less to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.  Apart from the Atonement of Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit would be for sinners a deadly Flood and a consuming Fire, but not the Breath of Life and the Living Water that He desires to be for you.

But Christ the Lord, the Son of God, has given Himself into death upon the Cross as your merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God.  And by way of that willing Self-Sacrifice, in His Resurrection from the dead and His Ascension to the right hand of the Father, He has become the true Temple of God.  In His own Body, crucified and risen from the dead, God tabernacles with His people in the flesh; and through His flesh and blood you come to the Father in the Spirit and the Truth, that is, by faith in the Word and Spirit of this one Lord, Jesus Christ.

So it is that, by and from the Cross of Christ the Crucified — from His innermost being, from the depths of His Body, pierced and wounded for you and your salvation — the Holy Spirit is poured out generously upon the Church on earth.  The Spirit flows from the open heart of Christ as a River of living Water and as a Fountain springing up, even in the desert, unto everlasting Life.

As St. John will write in his Book of the Revelation, this pure River of the Water of Life flows from the Throne of God and of the Lamb — from the Body of the Lamb who was slain, and yet, behold, He lives.  That River flows into all the world with healing and refreshment, that all who thirst might drink freely, without cost, and live.  And again, that living and Life-giving Water is the Holy Spirit, who is freely given to all who thirst in the Ministry of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, bestowing life and health and strength to His disciples from all nations.  Whoever drinks of that living Water (by faith in the Gospel) shall never thirst again, nor shall he die anymore forever.

With that in mind, consider what it means for the Lord Jesus Christ — the very Son of God who freely bestows the Holy Spirit from the Father — consider what it means for Him to thirst, as He dies upon the Cross in fulfillment of the Scriptures, completing your Atonement and Redemption.

There can be no doubt that His battered, bruised, beaten, bloody, and beleaguered human body was genuinely thirsty for something to drink, to moisten His parched lips and soothe His dry throat.

But far more important for you and your salvation, the Lord Jesus thirsts for the Spirit of God, for the Kingdom of His God and Father, and for the righteousness by which He justifies and saves the nations.  He hungers and thirsts to do the will of His Father in fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures, in order to bestow the free gift of the Holy Spirit upon dead and dying sinners: To pour out the Spirit generously upon you through His Word of the Gospel, the forgiveness of all your sins.

When you are thirsty, it is for yourself, for your own benefit and comfort, for your own pleasure and satisfaction, your own refreshment and hydration.  Not that it is wrong for you to receive and benefit from the good gifts of God for your body and life, but your thirst is for your own needs.

By contrast, the Lord Jesus Christ is thirsty, not for Himself and His own needs, but for the good and gracious will of God, for the life and salvation of all the fallen children of Adam and Eve.

Jesus does not thirst for anything that you might provide Him or give to Him.  Instead, He thirsts to provide for you and give to you all that you have lacked and needed in both body and soul — Atonement for your sins, Redemption from death and the devil, Reconciliation and Peace with God, and the Life everlasting in His Kingdom.

To that end, His thirst is not quenched with the cool, clear, and refreshing water of life, but with the last dregs of that bitter Cup which the Father has given Him to drink, the sour wine of God’s righteous wrath and anger against the sins of the world — that the thunder of God’s wrath against you and your sins should be quieted, and that you should be righteous and holy before Him.

It is in His perfect fulfillment of the Righteousness of God, by His suffering and death upon the Cross, that Christ Jesus hands over the Spirit — that you might receive the Holy Spirit from Him.  He thirsts, in other words, that you might drink freely of His Spirit and never thirst again; that you should not die but live forever with Him, body and soul, in the presence of His God and Father.

So it is that Christ Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit upon you in that sacred Fountain of Water and Blood that flows from His innermost being on the Cross.  For these holy things of which St. John adamantly testifies are all connected: The Spirit, the Water, and the Blood are all in agreement.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, your merciful and great High Priest, He drinks the sour wine, the vinegar with gall, the poison in the Cup, in order to pour out the Water and the Blood from His Body as the good and best Wine for you and for the many — which you are now given to drink with Him in His Kingdom, in the royal wedding Banquet of the Lamb and His Wife.

So has He filled His Font and His Chalice with the life-giving Fruits and Benefits of His Sacrifice upon the Cross.  He gives you not only Himself but the gift of the Holy Spirit from God the Father in heaven; not for condemnation, but in and with His free and full forgiveness of all your sins.

And so it is that, in the waters of your Holy Baptism, to which you are daily returned by the Word of the Law and the Gospel, by repentance and faith in the forgiveness of your sins — and in the Cup of the Holy Communion, which is the New Testament in the very Blood of Christ Jesus — you are given to drink freely and deeply from the River of Life.

Thus are you redeemed and justified, cleansed and sanctified, body and soul, both now and forever.  Thus are you rescued from the bondage of sin, the fear of death, the power of the devil, and the punishment of hell.  And thus are you given the Spirit of God, by whom you have Life everlasting.

It is likewise by these gracious gifts of God in Christ that you worship the Father in Spirit and Truth: By hearing and receiving the Divine Service of His Gospel in faith and with thanksgiving, and by confessing His Word and calling on His Name in prayer and praise.

So also do you worship the Lord your God by loving your neighbor in the Name and for the sake of Jesus Christ — not least of all by giving drink to those who thirst, since Christ the Lord has also thirsted for you and them.  You live and love as He does, because the Spirit of God wells up in you as a Fountain of life for your neighbor, and because Christ Jesus Himself lives and loves in you.

Though the Lord does all things for you, provides you with all that you need, and has no need of anything from you, He would have you love and serve your neighbor as an exercise and expression of your faith and gratitude.  It is in your thirsty neighbor, as Christ Himself has taught you, that you are given the opportunity to give your Lord a drink, to quench His thirst, even with a cup of cool water.  And He has promised that all who do so in His Name shall by no means lose their reward.

Even so, for all those ways in which you find yourself still parched and thirsty in the desert, so spent upon yourself that you have nothing left for anyone else, ask of Him who has thirsted on the Cross in your place, who has fulfilled the Scriptures and accomplished the will of God the Father, and who has opened the Kingdom of God to all who believe and are baptized in His Name — ask, and He will pour out for you such living Water as will satisfy your deepest thirst.  For He forgives you all your sins and remembers them no more; He fills you with His Spirit and commends you to His Father in peace; and He raises you from death to life in His own righteousness and holiness.

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

Today You Are with Christ in Paradise

Beloved of the Lord, do you not fear God?

It is meet and right that you should do so.  For God threatens to punish all those who break His Commandments, visiting the sins of the fathers upon their children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Him.  Therefore, you should fear His wrath and not disobey Him.

But how does it actually stand with you, with your heart and mind, and in your words and actions?

Do you fear the Lord your God above all things?  Or do you rather fear for your mortal body and your temporal life, without much regard for your soul or with your standing before God?

Are you more concerned about keeping your stuff, your power and position in this world, and about your health and home and family, than you are about keeping the Ten Commandments?

Do you not fear God?  It is only right that you should.  For do not doubt that you are accountable for the wrongs that you have done, and for all the good that you have failed to do.

Maybe you think it doesn’t matter.  Or maybe you don’t even care.

But if you would know what God actually thinks of your sin, and just how seriously He takes it, consider the Cross of your Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified for your transgressions.  For by His Cross He has suffered the condemnation and punishment that you have merited by your sins.

Do not presume to say that, since He is the Christ and He has suffered for you, it is now “okay” or “safe” for you to go about doing whatever you like with impunity and without consequences.  May it never be!  Do not blaspheme the Lord and His Passion with such wicked notions!

The Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of the Living God, has not suffered and died so that you might go on sinning, but so that you might be brought to repentance and newness of life in Him.

For such repentance and new life, however, you must be crucified and put to death with Christ.

To begin with, the proclivity of your fallen flesh and sinful heart is to covet and to crave what is not yours, to take what has not been given to you, to rob and to steal.  As a child of old Adam you are selfish and self-serving.  You do not think of what is right or wrong, but of what’s in it for you.

You are like your first parents, who took and ate the forbidden fruit and suffered the consequences for it.  The Lord removed them from the Paradise of Eden and barred them from the Tree of Life.  He did so, not to be petty and vindictive, but to spare them from the living hell of an eternal death.

Despite the deceptions of your heart, mind, and flesh, the truth is that any “life” apart from God is nothing but death and damnation.  To persist in your sins is thus to perish apart from God.

What you need, therefore, is not some miracle drug, nor a fountain of youth, nor a handful of magic beans; but what you need is the forgiveness of your sins, repentance, and reconciliation with God.

It is for this purpose that Christ has come, and in this way that He has saved you.  Not for a “life” of sinning, but to save you from your sins, from death, and from the power of the devil.

He was numbered with transgressors, and He was hung between two criminals, for the same reason that He submitted Himself to St. John’s Baptism of repentance, and for the same reason that He received publicans, prostitutes, and other sinners, and ate with them.  Not as though to condone sin, nor even simply to look the other way with a wink and a nod, but in order to redeem the lost.

In order to accomplish that redemption and salvation of sinners, He has taken sin and death upon Himself.  Indeed, He has taken the sins of the world and all their curse and consequences upon Himself.  He has taken all of your sins and the punishment of all your sins upon Himself.  And He has borne the whole horrible, terrible lot of it in His Body on the Cross.  Thus has He suffered and satisfied the sentence of condemnation that was leveled against you and the entire world.

For you to persist in your sins, therefore, is to make a mockery of His Cross and Passion.

Yet for you, nonetheless, and for all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, He has done this great thing.  He has redeemed you from the curse of the Law, and from the curse of sin and death.

Not only that, but He has also opened up the way of righteousness and life in the Resurrection of His Body from the dead.  All of which is yours, by His grace alone, through faith in His Word.

Not only has He suffered all the punishments of the Law against the sins of the whole world, but He has also fulfilled the entire Law of God in perfect faith and holy love.  Everything the Law requires, He has done it on your behalf, in your stead, and also for your eternal benefit.

It is for this reason that God the Father raised this same Jesus from the dead; and so does He also raise all those who believe and are baptized into Him.  All things are made new in the crucified and risen Body of Christ Jesus.  For by His Cross and Passion the satisfaction and fulfillment of the Law have been accomplished and completed.  Not only as the punishment due, but as the pinnacle of faith and love: Steadfast faith in God, and fervent love for all of His neighbors, including you.

Accordingly, it is precisely by His Cross and through His Passion that Christ Jesus comes into His Kingdom as the Savior of mankind.  And so does He reign in love from the Tree of His Cross.

It is likewise by the way and the means of His Cross that you enter with Him into His Kingdom.  For His Cross is the shape and power of Holy Baptism, and His Cross is the way of repentance unto life.  It is by the Cross that your old Adam is crucified, put to death, and buried with Christ Jesus, together with all your sinful lusts and wicked desires.  But so is it also the case that you are raised up as a brand new man or woman in Christ through the forgiveness of His Cross.

The Cross does lay bare your sins and nails you for them.  But it does so for the sake of calling you to repentance, to confession, and to the free and full forgiveness of all your sins.  For the Cross is also the proclamation of the Gospel to all who believe.  It is the very power of God unto salvation.

Indeed, the Tree of His Cross is the true Tree of Life, which stands in the midst of Paradise.

And because the Lord Jesus has atoned for all of your sins and accomplished your redemption by that Tree, its life-giving Fruits are not forbidden to you; they are rather given and poured out for your salvation, that you should eat and drink at His Word in faith and with thanksgiving.

That is how Jesus remembers you.  He acts in love to feed you with Himself, with His Body and His Blood, in order to forgive your sins, to strengthen your faith, and to give you life with God, in and with Himself, in both your body and your soul, both here and now and hereafter forever.

As often as you eat those blessed Fruits of His Holy Cross and Passion, you truly are with Him in the Paradise of God.  For He is surely with you in His Holy Supper.  He is with you always at His Altar, and He will never leave you nor forsake you.  He lives and dies with you here, He bears the Cross and suffers with you here, so that you might be with Him where He is and live with Him.

No longer are you a robber or a thief, no matter what your past has held.  You are a beloved child and a welcome guest at your own dear Father’s Table.  You need not steal to get what you want, not when you are so richly fed and given every good and perfect gift in the Lord Jesus Christ.

To be sure, you certainly should  fear God, for the plain and simple fact that He is God and you are not.  But so are you also called to love and trust in Him, because He is the Author and Giver of Life who loves you and preserves your life in body and soul with His Medicine of Immortality.  Indeed, it is with tender mercy and compassion that He cares for you and well provides for you.

Do not go on sinning for your supper, but receive the good things that Christ has obtained for you.  For His Cross is the Tree of Life for you, and so has He saved you from sin, death, the devil, and hell, that you might live with Him in the presence of God, not only today, but forever and always.

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

"Woman, Behold Thy Son!" "Behold Thy Mother"

Aside from this Word of Jesus from the Cross, there is only one other time when the Blessed Virgin Mary is mentioned in the Gospel According to St. John — namely, at the familiar Wedding in Cana.  There, as you know, the Mother of Jesus requested that He supply the wine that was lacking for the feast.  Indeed, He did so, changing water into wine as the first Sign of His Glory.

But that was not yet His “Hour,” when His Glory would be fully manifested and all that He had come to do and accomplish for us and our salvation would be finished and fulfilled in His flesh.

Today, however, that Hour has come.  Behold the Glory of God in Christ the Crucified!

Again the Blessed Virgin Mary is there.  Once more, as before, St. John has not identified her by name, but only as “the Mother of Jesus.”  And Jesus addresses her in each case as “Woman.”

It might seem rude or impolite, or perhaps too casual and crass.  Or we might assume that it stems from the customs of a different time and culture than our own.  But our dear Lord Jesus Christ could hardly have used a more exalted word for His dear Mother than to call her “Woman.”

In doing so, He recalls that first promise of the Gospel — given to Adam and Eve in the Garden following their Fall into Sin.  You remember the story.  To the serpent, that old dragon, the devil or Satan, God declared: “I will put enmity between you and the Woman, between your seed and her Seed.  He shall crush your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”

Now, here on the Cross, the Seed of the Woman is doing what He has come to do.  He crushes the head of the serpent under His feet, at the cost of His life.  And there is “the Woman,” watching, beholding all the Words and promises of God fulfilled in the Cross and Passion of her Son.

For St. John to describe this holy, faithful Woman, not by name, but only as “the Mother of Jesus,” also indicates that she does not stand there at the foot of the Cross only for herself.  But — as also, for example, in St. John’s Book of the Revelation — St. Mary is here a living icon of the Church.

By the Word and Spirit of God she conceived and gave birth to the Son of God, our Savior, Jesus Christ; not by her own merits, but according to His mercies.  So also, by the Word and Spirit of God, the Church on earth gives birth to the children of God — who are the “sons of God” in Christ Jesus — because they die and rise with Him through Baptism into His Cross and Resurrection.

So it is from the Cross, from the depths of His Passion, that this same Lord, Jesus Christ, gives His own dear Mother to be the Mother of His disciple.  He gives the Church to care for His children, and He gives the Ministers of His Word to care for His holy Bride, the Church, in His Name.

This “disciple whom Jesus loved” is universally thought to be St. John himself, the Apostle and Evangelist.  Yet, just as he does not refer to St. Mary by name, neither does he refer to himself by name at any point in his Gospel.  He is always described as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

St. John’s use of this description for himself is neither a pat on the back, nor a case of modesty, but rather an invitation for all the disciples of Jesus — for all of His Christians, including each of you — to recognize themselves in this description: “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”  And so you are!

Of the various places in the Gospel where this “disciple whom Jesus loved” is mentioned, there are a number of cases with particular significance.  He reclined at Jesus’ breast at the Lord’s Supper.  He witnessed the trial, the suffering and death of Jesus, as in this Word of the Gospel that we consider here.  And he witnessed both the empty tomb and the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.

In each of these cases, you also are with Jesus.  In each of these cases, you also are His beloved disciple: In His Cross and Resurrection, and in His Body and Blood in the Holy Communion.

So also does your dear Lord Jesus Christ give you to His Church — who is your Mother in Him.

By the same token, St. John is not only a disciple of Jesus, like yourself; he is also one of the chosen eyewitnesses of the Cross and Resurrection.  He is one of the Apostles of the Lamb.

Therefore, not only is this disciple, St. John, given as a son to the Mother of Jesus, but she also — again representing the Church — is given to St. John.  For the Church on earth is cared for and provided for by way of the Apostolic Holy Ministry of the Gospel–Word and Sacraments.

This Apostolic Ministry by which the Church lives, derives from — and it draws all of its power and authority from — the Cross and Passion of Christ Jesus, which is the sacrifice of His Body and Blood as the Lamb of God for the sins of the world.  The Crucifixion of Christ Jesus is “the Hour” of His Glory, the point on which the entire Gospel hinges and depends, even to the end of time.

So it is from “this Hour” of the Cross that the “Woman,” “the Mother of Jesus,” and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” are given to each other as Church and Christian, as pastor and people of God.

Thus does St. Mary behold the Glory that she anticipated and glimpsed at the Wedding of Cana, when her Son, the Son of God, manifested the Glory of His Cross by changing water into wine.  Even as He would use the water of Holy Baptism to change poor, miserable sinners like you into His beloved disciples and the children of His God and Father; and even as He would change and give wine to be poured out for you and for the many as His holy and precious Blood.

So also was the word of St. Simeon to St. Mary fulfilled, that a sword would pierce her own heart and soul over her dear Son, Jesus, who is here given for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign to be spoken against.

That is the great irony and paradox of Christianity: The Glory of Christ, and His victory over sin, death, the devil, and hell; His forgiveness, life, and salvation, and even His rising from the dead — all derive from His Cross and Passion, from His death by crucifixion for the sins of the world.

Apart from faith in Christ, His Cross appears to be the very opposite of what it actually is.  Instead of divine Glory, it looks like nothing else but mortal humiliation.  Instead of victory, it sure looks like an absolute and utter defeat.  Instead of forgiveness and life, it seems to be no more nor less than the curse and judgment of death.  Instead of the rising, it appears to be nothing but the falling.

“But I, when I am lifted up,” says Jesus, “I will draw all people to Myself.”  I will call them by the Gospel; I will enlighten them with My gifts; and I will sanctify and keep them in the true faith unto life everlasting — “When I am lifted up” in death upon the Cross.

Therefore, set appearances aside.  Hear and heed what your Lord says.  From the Cross He gives life and health and strength and protection to His beloved Church by the Ministry of His Gospel.

From the Cross He makes disciples out of sinners from all the nations.  In doing so, He shares with them both His Cross and His Resurrection from the dead — through Holy Baptism in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He grants them faith by His Word of forgiveness and life, and He entrusts them to the loving care of Holy Mother Church, the Mother of all His Christians.

As a member of His Church, as a disciple whom Jesus loves, by faith you see and confess that the Crucified One is the very Lamb of God, who takes away your sins and the sins of the whole world; who gives you that forgiveness — and with it, His life and salvation — by granting you to recline on His breast at His Holy Supper, to be fed by His holy Body and quenched by His precious Blood.

So then, “dear Woman, behold your sons,” the children of God in Christ Jesus.

And you, dear children, “behold your Mother,” the Church of God in Christ.

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

Receive the Fruits of the Passion in the Church

It is made clear throughout the Holy Gospels, and by the evangelist St. John, in particular, that the Passion of the Christ was undertaken and accomplished voluntarily by the Son of God: out of His great love for the Father, and out of His own divine love for this whole wide world of lost sinners.

He is handed over to His Cross and Passion according to the good and gracious will of God, in accordance with, and in fulfilment of, the Old Testament Scriptures.

In short, Jesus lays down His life willingly and freely, graciously and lovingly.  In doing so, He bears the sins and iniquities of the entire world, and all the consequent griefs and sorrows thereof.  He endures the judgment, condemnation, and punishment of the Law, the righteous wrath of God against all sins, even the eternal damnation of hell, compressed into those hours of His Passion.

So it is, that, yes, by His stripes you are healed.

But this healing of your body and life from sin, death, and hell, and the gift of health and strength and eternal salvation in Christ Jesus, are actually administered and given to you as a medicine of immortality in the Gospel–Word and Sacraments of Christ Jesus within His Holy Christian Church.  These means of grace are the life-giving Fruits of His Holy Cross and Passion.

So it is that St. John directs you to hear and receive the Passion of the Christ, and to embrace the benefits of His Passion by faith within His Church on earth, by giving attention to the preaching of His Word and by partaking of His Holy Sacraments.  For the Cross and Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ will do you no good apart from faith in the Ministry of His Gospel.

There are actually a number of ways by which St. John points you to this life of the Church and indicates that it is the place where the Passion of the Christ is now given to you for life in Him.

There is, most profoundly, the way that Jesus gives His Mother to the disciple whom He loves, and His beloved disciple to His Mother.  Neither St. Mary nor St. John is identified by name, but they stand at the foot of the Cross as living icons of the Church herself and of all the disciples of Jesus.

The Church is here entrusted to the Apostolic Ministry of the Word; and the disciples of Jesus, the children of His God and Father in heaven, are here entrusted to His Church on earth.  For in much the same way that St. Mary conceived and gave birth to the Son of God by the Word and Spirit of His Father, so does the Church conceive and give birth to the children of God by the preaching of the Word of Christ and by the washing of the water with His Word and Spirit in Holy Baptism.  And as you have received that new birth from His Church, so are you a disciple whom He loves.

It is within His Church on earth that Jesus speaks His Word openly for all the world to hear and believe, or to reject to their own demise.  Just as Jesus declared before the high priest, Caiaphas, that He had always spoken openly in the synagogues and in the Temple.  So does He continue to speak in the congregations of His Christian Church by the Ministry of His Gospel.  That is where He preaches, and that is where and how you apprehend Him, not with violence, but by faith.

In particular, Christ Jesus speaks to His Church from the Cross, by the Word of His Cross, which is the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name.  And it is by this preaching that He pours out the Holy Spirit upon His people from the atoning Sacrifice of His Crucifixion.  Otherwise, apart from the Atonement of His Cross and Passion, you would never be able to receive the Holy Spirit and survive, since you are sinful and unclean, unrighteous and unholy.

But when Jesus has finished His work of redemption, He brings it to perfection by giving up His Spirit from the Cross; or, to say it better, in the way that St. John does, He hands the Spirit over.

He breathes His Holy Spirit upon you, in order to give you life with God in your body and soul, by the Word of forgiveness that He speaks through His ministers of the Gospel who are sent in His Name and stead.  St. John makes that clear in the next chapter of the Holy Gospel, as we’ll hear again on the Second Sunday of Easter.  For by and with His Spirit, the Lord Jesus gives the Office of the Keys to His Church on earth for the binding and releasing of sins with His own authority.

Along with the Gift of the Holy Spirit from the Cross, St. John also describes and emphasizes that Jesus then pours out the water and the blood from His wounded side in the accomplished fact of His Sacrifice.  Not only does the Evangelist testify to this event here in the Holy Gospel, but he refers again to the triune testimony of the Spirit, the water, and the blood in his First Epistle.

On the sixth day of the first Creation, the Lord caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep, and from his side, from one of his ribs, God crafted the Woman and brought her to the Man to be his bride.  So, now, on the sixth day of the New Creation, on this Good Friday, the new and better Adam enters the sacred sleep of death upon the Tree of His Cross, and from His side His holy Bride, the Church, is born from the water and the blood of her dear Lord Jesus Christ.

The Church herself receives her entire life from the Body of Christ, even as she lives in His Body and becomes one flesh with Him.  She is both cleansed and covered by the washing of the water with His Word, like a Bride made ready for her Husband.  And she is enlivened and sustained on her pilgrimage by the Spiritual Drink of His holy and precious Blood.  In the same way, in turn, her children are born from the waters of the font and nursed on the Blood of Christ at His Altar.

Indeed, it is not possible to think or speak rightly about the Sacrifice of Christ, the Passover Lamb of God, without also considering the sacred Meal of His Body and His Blood.  For He not only dies in the place of sinners, but He calls them to newness of life in His crucified and risen Body, and He feeds them with the Fruits of His Cross.  He feeds you with His own Flesh and Blood.

St. John makes this point, that Jesus is the Passover Lamb, throughout his account of the Passion.  Sometimes the connection is subtly expressed, but it is persistent, not only in the Passion but really throughout the Holy Gospel.  Already in the preaching of St. John the Baptist, you have heard that Jesus is the Lamb of God; and again, that means not only that He is sacrificed for the sins of the world, but that His Flesh is given for the life of the world, to be eaten by His disciples in holy faith.

Jesus is crucified as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed.  And in fulfilment of the Scriptures, “not a bone of Him is broken,” as per the Old Testament cooking instructions for the Passover.

So, then, you partake of the Cross and Passion of Christ Jesus by participating in His Supper, by eating the Body that was crucified for your transgressions and raised for your justification, and by drinking of the Blood that was poured out from His side to cover and protect you from death.  To do so is not a private matter, nor even a simple gathering of your own little family in your home.  It is the Feast of the Father and the Son in the Household and Family of God.  It is celebrated in His Church, and it binds together His disciples from all nations in the one Body of Christ Jesus.

In the same vein, let us also consider the Cup which Jesus receives from the hand of His Father, which He drinks for all of us and our salvation.  It is for Him the Cup of wrath, of the judgment of God, of suffering and bitter death, which He endures for the sins of the entire world.  This Cup He drinks down to the dregs, in order to remove its deadly and damnable sting from you and all.

In draining that Cup through His Sacrifice upon the Cross, He has thereby also filled it with His own precious Blood, which He now pours out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of sins.  It is the New Testament in His Blood, He says to His disciples.  It binds you to God in Christ, not for the punishment that you have otherwise deserved, but for Communion with the Holy Trinity.

By the Cross and Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Cup of wrath and judgment and suffering and death has become for you the Cup of Blessing, which we bless in and with His Name.  And this Cup of the Lord now overflows with His forgiveness and His life, poured out for you in peace.

As you take up this Cup of Salvation and call on the Name of the Lord, you give all thanks and praise to God through Jesus Christ, and in His tender mercies you are given to drink from the Fountain of His crucified and risen Body.  You feast at His Table in His House under the shelter of His Cross, and so shall you abide in Him, as He abides in you, unto the life everlasting.

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

Jesus Enters into the Glory of His Kingdom

That Jesus was crucified between two criminals, “one on His right, and the other on His left,” recalls two earlier incidents in His life and ministry, both of which are quite important and shed light on the significance of this second Word from the Cross.

On one occasion, the two sons of Zebedee, James & John, came to Jesus with a request, that they be allowed to sit, “one on His right, and the other on His left” when He came into the glory of His Kingdom.  In response, Jesus catechized His disciples to understand that He would come into His Kingdom, His power, and His Glory, by the way of His Cross.  He also indicated that His disciples would share His Cross and His Kingdom by way of His Baptism and His Chalice.  But, as for those on His right and on His left, that would be for those for whom it had been prepared.

And here now on the Cross, ironically enough, is the fulfillment of that Word, as the two criminals are crucified with Jesus, “one on His right, and the other on His left.”  For so is He, the King of the Jews, numbered with transgressors in His glorious Passion, even unto death.

The world cannot comprehend this Glory of Christ the Crucified, but it is for this purpose that He has come from the Father and returns to Him.  Already at His Baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus has taken His place with poor, miserable sinners, such as you, in order to associate sinners with Himself, and to reconcile sinners to His God and Father in His crucified and risen Body.  Hence His reputation for welcoming sinners and eating with them.  For like St. John before Him, and like the holy Apostles who will follow after, He preaches repentance and forgiveness of sins.

It is no different for you or anyone else, when He calls you to take up the Cross and follow Him, to be baptized into His death, and to rise with Him to newness of life in faith and love.

His Cross is indeed the decisive way and means by which all of these things are accomplished, and the decisive measure by which all people are finally and forever divided.  For you know that, when the Son of Man comes in His Glory and is seated on His glorious Throne, He will separate the sheep from the goats, “one on His right, and the other on His left.”  In the middle is the One who was crucified for their transgressions and raised from the dead for their justification.

So, then, if He is numbered with transgressors and hung on the Cross for their transgressions, it is clear that this Hour of His Passion is the defining moment in all of history.  His Cross is the line in the sand between those who are righteous by grace alone through faith in Him, and those who are condemned and sentenced as unrighteous under the Law.


Confronted by that momentous event — the Crucifixion of Jesus the Christ — one of the criminals who is crucified with Him is called to repentance and brought to faith.  By the Word and Spirit of God, he makes a beautiful confession in the midst of his suffering, and in the face of his death.

According to the Law, he rightly judges himself a sinner, deserving of nothing but punishment.  Yet, by faith in the Gospel, he acknowledges that Jesus is God and King, that He is righteous and suffering innocently, and that, even now, He is on His way to victory and has the power to save.  Whatever that man’s crimes have been, he knows the promise of the Resurrection and the life everlasting, and he fixes his hope for that life on Jesus.

He calls upon the Name of the Lord.  He prays that Jesus will remember him when He comes into His Kingdom.  And in this way that poor sinner lays hold of the fact that Yahweh remembers His people with forgiveness and deals with them according to His mercy and steadfast love.  Dying to himself, he perceives and confesses the profound theology of the Cross, that God the Lord is not absent from but revealed in the Sacrifice of Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son.  That is a mighty faith indeed, in the most unlikely and yet most appropriate of places.

And Jesus responds with those familiar words of grace:  Amen, Amen, it shall be so!  Today you shall be with Me in Paradise.  There is God’s resounding “Yes” in Christ Jesus.

His Kingdom is not of this world, but is the Paradise of the New Creation.  He enters upon His reign by returning to His Father via the Cross, and in doing so He brings Man back to the Garden.  What is more, it is entirely by grace.  It is granted freely, not to those who work hard and keep their noses clean, but to those who own their faults and acknowledge them in humble repentance, who call upon the Lord by faith in His Word.  Thus, to the man who is rightly punished for his crimes, Paradise is given as a gift by and from the Cross of Christ

This beautiful Word of the Gospel, such as Jesus speaks from the Cross to that one repentant thief, is a Word that He speaks to you, as well, also from the Cross, down through the ages in His Church.  And it is just as sure and certain, just as comforting and precious, for you as for that man.

The Lord Jesus does remember you in mercy and forgiveness.  He remembers the Name by which He has named you in your Holy Baptism, and so does He call you by name back to Himself day after day.  He remembers you with His Word of the Gospel, which He preaches to you in love, that you should thus believe in Him and live by His grace.  He remembers you in the Holy Communion, as He gives to you His Body and His Chalice, that you should Feast with Him in His Kingdom.

And when you are brought to an awareness of your sins, and you are sorely accused by the devil, and you are suffering the consequences of your crimes, the Lord Jesus remembers you by calling you to repentance and speaking His Word of Absolution through your pastor.  He stretches out His hands to the right and to the left, to gather you to Himself, to bless you with His Spirit, and to grant you His free and full Salvation.  None of this according to your merit, but according to His mercy.

When Jesus thus remembers you in each and all of these ways and means of His grace, He is not simply thinking about you — nor recalling you, as though He had ever once forgotten you — but He is actively present and close at hand to love you and to save you.  He is by your side upon the plain with His good gifts and Spirit.  He is hung beside you on the Cross, dying with you here on earth, that you should also be with Him, where He is, and live with Him in Paradise forever.

As He was numbered with you in your transgressions and your death, so are you numbered with Him in His righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.  For He was counted as a criminal, Himself, so that you should be counted as a beloved child of God in Him and glorified in His Resurrection.

Now, to be sure, He does not yet remove the Cross from you in this poor life of labor; no more than He would come down from the Cross in order to save Himself from death and the grave.  Instead, He gives you the promise of His Resurrection and His Life by the way of His Cross and Passion.

Think of that repentant criminal, who prayed for mercy and received it.  He was not rescued from the Cross; he continued to suffer, and he died.  Yet, by faith in Christ the Crucified, he was brought through his suffering and death into the glorious Kingdom of the Son of God.

Recognize in this example that the Cross you bear in your life on earth, your suffering in the flesh, and finally your death from this vale of tears, are no indication that God has forgotten you or cast you away from His presence.  For one thing, you are crucified with Him, and He with you.  He is not far away from you but shares your Cross and suffering.  So also do His death and yours serve the purpose of putting sin to death and into the grave.  You are crucified to yourself, to your sin, and to the world, that you should rise and live with Jesus in His Kingdom and His Righteousness.  Even as your mortal flesh perishes, so do you enter, both body and soul, into Paradise with Him.

Cling to His Word and promise, to His resounding “Yes” and “Amen” in answer to your prayer of faith.  Remember Him, as He remembers you.  For He is faithful, and He will surely do as He has promised.  Indeed, already in His Church on earth, in the Holy Communion, Jesus brings you into His Paradise — into His glorious Garden of Eden, made brand new and better than ever — by feeding you with the Fruits of His Cross, which is the Tree of Life.  As always, His Cross is at the center, in the midst of the Garden, not for death but for life on the right hand and on the left.

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

It Is Finished

In the beginning was the Word.

As we consider the “seven words of Jesus from the Cross,” it is well to remember that there is really the one Word of God, that is, our dear Lord Jesus Christ Himself: the almighty and eternal Son of God, who has become flesh and tabernacles among us.  It is chiefly that one Word of God, which the Father speaks in the Body of flesh and blood upon the Cross, crucified for all your sins, which you are called upon to hear and receive on this Good Friday, and no less on Easter Sunday, and on Pentecost Day, and at Christmas, and throughout the whole year and your whole life.

It is with that Word of God in Christ that the holy evangelist, St. John, begins his record of the Holy Gospel.  For Christ Jesus, the only begotten Son, was in the beginning with God; and He is God; and by Him were all things made, as God spoke His Word, and it was so.  In taking up that divine Word, St. John proclaims the Gospel in the Light of Genesis and the Creation.

In fact, there are a number of points and places in the course of St. John’s Gospel that manifest the Lord Jesus as the Creator of the heavens and the earth.  And He has come in the flesh in order to redeem and sanctify His own Creation, to bring it to the fulfillment of His good and gracious will for those whom He has made in His Image and Likeness.

In the first place, He is the Light of the world, and He is the Life of men, as in the beginning He called forth the light out of the darkness and breathed His Breath of Life into Adam.

And as He separated the land from the water and brought forth the fruits of the earth on the third day of Creation, so it was “on the third day” that Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, manifesting in advance the dawn of the New Creation.

So is He the One who gives new birth through water and the Spirit; Who also works and heals and gives life, even on the Sabbath.  For as the Father is always working, creating and preserving life, so does the Son — the Word of God — continue to work and give life, thus providing rest for man.

Indeed, He is the Resurrection and the Life, so that all who believe in Him, even though they die — as did His friend Lazarus — yet shall they live — as surely as Lazarus was raised from the dead.

For all of that, even His raising of Lazarus is still only the anticipation of the Hour of Jesus, when He will finally accomplish and manifest His divine Glory in the flesh.  In fact, ironically enough, it is His raising of Lazarus that precipitates the Hour of His Glory, the Hour when He is lifted up for the life of the world in His death upon the Cross, and He thereby draws all people to Himself.

So it is that the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the Author and Giver of Life, Who is Himself the Life and the Light of the world, comes into His Glory by way of suffering and death.

What is the point and purpose of God in all of this, in the Person and work of His incarnate Son, Christ Jesus?  What does it mean that He is glorified in Crucifixion?  How can this be?  And why?

Once more, we must begin with the beginning, when the Lord God created all things out of nothing, by and through His Word, for the sake of His own divine Love.  That is to say, it is the Father’s divine, eternal Love for His Son — and the Son’s divine, eternal Love for His Father — in the Holy Spirit — it is for this Love that the Holy Triune God created the heavens and the earth.

He created all things, and man in particular, in order to share His own divine, eternal Life — His own Being of Love — with others outside of Himself; to love and serve His own creatures.

More to the point at hand, and also to put this more personally, He created you in order to love you.  That is why you exist: namely, so that God may love you with Himself.

Thus, again, the Holy Triune God created man in His own Image, in the sense and for the purpose of sharing Himself, His Life and His Love, with man; so that all the children of man, receiving these gifts and graces of God, would also reflect the Glory of God in both soul and body.

In thus creating man in His Image and Likeness — out of the dust of the ground, into the flesh — and breathing into man His living and Life-giving Spirit — the Father was already anticipating the Incarnation of His dear Son, our dear Lord Jesus Christ, who is Himself the Image of God.

Tragically, though, in contradiction of God’s good and gracious will for us men and our salvation, when we fell into sin through unbelief and disobedience, we brought death and destruction upon ourselves.  We cut ourselves off from the Word and Spirit of God, and thereby rejected the Life and the Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Incarnation of the Son of God was therefore undertaken for a two-fold purpose:

On the one hand, the Incarnation is the way and the means by which God has firmly established His divine Image in the flesh and blood of Man, in the Person of Jesus Christ, in the very Body of Him who is both true God and true Man.  He thereby accomplishes in Himself the primary purpose of His Creation.  And on the other hand, in the same Lord Jesus Christ, He rescues man from sin, death, and hell through the forgiveness of sin, the defeat of death, and the satisfaction of judgment.

Thus, what began with the creation of all things by and through the Word of God, is fulfilled in the Incarnation of the same Word, culminating in His voluntary Cross and in His Resurrection.

It is for the sake of the same divine Love for which all things are made, that God Himself in the flesh lays down His own body and life in loving Self-sacrifice for the salvation of His creatures.

All of this the Lord our God has done, for you and for all people, by subjecting Himself to the utter depths of that death and damnation which you brought upon yourself by your sin.  So that, even there — in your death and damnation — you are no longer separated from His Life and His Love.

Indeed, He has spoken His Word — His “Let it Be!” in the flesh — in the midst of the darkness to which you had succumbed.  He has invaded the nothingness to which you had returned by your sin, and He calls you to come forth again from out of your tomb, out of your hole in the ground.

Once more, the Lord God creates out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) by and through His Word, precisely by submitting Himself, in the Person of His Word, His only-begotten Son, to the utter depths of death and the grave.  Everything is thereby turned inside-out, because the Light of God has entered the darkness, and the divine Life has stormed the gates of Hades.

So does He also, then, “give up the Spirit.”  Which is to say, in this Holy Gospel, that He hands over and restores the living and Life-giving Spirit of God to the children of man, who otherwise return to the dust from which they have come.  So it is that, in His Resurrection, Jesus breathes the Spirit upon His disciple — and through them into you by the Holy Absolution of all your sins.

This forgiveness of sins by and from the Cross, unto the life and salvation of your body and soul — that is the Glory of God, and the Hour of His Glory.  Thus, “It is finished,” as He says from the Cross.  What is “it”?  The point and purpose of God’s Creation.  And how is it “finished”?  By the death of God in the flesh, for the redemption and salvation — and the restoration — of Creation.

Once again — as in Genesis, when God had finished all His work and He rested — so does Christ also rest in His tomb on the Sabbath — whereby He sanctifies and establishes this perfect Sabbath Rest for man.  Therefore, even death is no longer able to frighten or alarm you, because it has been filled with the Peace and presence of Christ.  As He who is the Light of the world and the Life of men has entered into your tomb, so are you called to enter into His rest by faith in His Gospel.

And in the Light and Life of this completed New Creation in Christ, a brand new day begins — a day beyond the Sabbath, a never-ending day beyond the days and weeks of this temporal world: A new eternal “Eighth Day” dawns for you in His Resurrection from the dead on Easter.

That new, eternal Day begins, and it is manifested in His Resurrection for the whole world to receive and enter into it and live forever in Christ Jesus, because all of His work of Creation and Redemption has been accomplished, completed, and perfected on this day, on this Good Friday — the Sixth Day — in the Cross and Crucifixion of the incarnate Son of God.  Everything henceforth is the “It Was So” of this final “Let It Be!”

And the Lord God saw all the works of His hands, which He had finished, and, behold, it was very good!  So may you also rest in His Peace, both now and forever.

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

Forsaken for the Sake of Your Salvation

It is at the Ninth Hour, the hour of the evening sacrifice and prayer, when the Lord Jesus Christ lays down His life and lets go His Spirit.  Better to burn out than fade away, but Jesus does neither.  He lays down His life in the strength of perfect faith and perfect love, and hands over His Spirit to the Father who has handed Him over to the Cross.  He takes and drinks the Cup that He has been given, conforming His will to that of His God and Father, in the hope of the Resurrection.

As the priests at the Temple are beginning the daily rites and ceremonies of the evening sacrifice — the sin offering and the whole burnt offering, and then the incense offering from the golden altar  before the veil of the Most Holy Place — at that very Hour, the Son of God in human flesh becomes them all; He completes and fulfills them all in Himself, for the sake of your salvation.

This Man, Jesus the Nazarene, is the Sin Offering who is sacrificed once for all, for the propitiation of the sins of the world; He is the Whole Burnt Offering, by whom God and man are reconciled; and He is the sweet-smelling Incense that arises as your acceptable Prayer in the presence of God.  With all of that, He is Himself your merciful and great High Priest, who enters on your behalf into the Holy of Holies made without hands, eternal in the heavens, in order to bring you to the Father in and with Himself, to live and abide with Him there.

Despite appearances, He is under no compulsion; no one takes His life from Him, but He lays it down willingly.  He is moved entirely by His own divine Love for His Father, for you and for all.  It is in accordance with the good and gracious will of the Holy Trinity that He sacrifices Himself on the Cross for your salvation; on account of your sin, first of all; and, not only that, but that you might also be sanctified and live forever in the holiness and righteousness of the Lord your God.

Thus, although He is the Son of God from all eternity, He learns obedience by what He suffers in His own human flesh and blood, made mortal by your sin, and subjected to your death.  He does not turn aside from the duty of His calling as the Christ, but humbles Himself and perseveres to its completion on the Cross.  In this Sacrifice, He is perfected as the True Man, and so becomes the Fountain and Source of eternal salvation to all who hear and heed His Word in faith.

He lives and dies by faith in His Father, and He is heard because of His piety and reverence; even though it would appear that His God and Father has either forgotten or rejected Him at the last.  For He is not spared from suffering and death; far from it.  Indeed, there is no suffering that He has not suffered, no death that He has not died.  And yet, as St. Matthew indicates even at the Hour of His death, He is vindicated and glorified in His Resurrection from the dead.  All as your merciful and great High Priest, that you who sleep in the dust of the earth might also rise and live in Him.

He remains faithful to the uttermost of adversity, bearing the full burden and consequence of sin and death.  And He cries out from such depths of real anguish; neither as a pretense or a sham, nor in wretched unbelief and hopeless despair, but, even now, in steadfast faith and fervent love.  For He cries out with a loud voice, again and again, to the One who shall raise Him up from death.

But let us not underestimate or neglect to consider what our dear Lord suffers on our behalf, not only in His body, but as much or more so in His heart and mind, within His human soul and spirit; that He bears, not only the reproach of man, but also the forsaking of His God and Father.

Is this not a contradiction?  A paradox of the highest order and of the deepest mystery?  That our Lord, who remains faithful unto death, cries out to His God and Father, who is faithful in all things and changes not; and yet, the Son cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

It is not simply a case of misunderstanding or emotional dismay; neither is it the exasperated retort of bitter disappointment or cynical depression.  What our Lord Jesus cries out is a confession of the truth, a solid expression of the raw facts that He is actually experiencing.

Although the Father and the Son remain united in the perfect unity of the Holy Spirit, within the one eternal Godhead of the Holy Trinity, the Father does not spare His Son from death upon the Cross, but wills that He should suffer and die that death for you and for all people.  He hands Him over to it, and He does not act to stop it.  He does not blow the whistle, throw a flag, or call a foul to call a halt to the injustice of it all.  He does not stay the execution, as He did for Abraham’s son, but He offers up His own beloved Son as the Passover Lamb, in order to spare all the others.

Neither does the Son exercise His own divine prerogative or power to save Himself from the Cross and suffering, but He submits to it in humble obedience to His Father.  He trusts that His God and Father will accomplish His purpose in this way, and that He will glorify Himself in His Son, first of all by His sacrificial death for the salvation of the world, and then also by raising Him from the dead as the Firstfruits of the New Creation.

Jesus isn’t pouting or complaining, therefore, but He cries out from within His genuine anguish to the One who remains, even now in death, His true and only God.  His experience is painful and real, but it does not alter or undo the fact of His relationship with the Father; nor does it destroy His faith in His Father’s Word and promise.  Indeed, it is that Word that He confesses and prays here, from the Psalter.  He takes upon His lips the song of Israel.  He who dies thus, dies well.

His suffering is genuine, make no mistake, as is the curse of sin and death that He not only bears but becomes in your stead.  But, even so, His Father will yet rescue and restore Him from the dust of the earth, from the depths of Sheol, even from death and the grave.  Why?  And what for?  So that the people of God, reduced to dust and dried-up dead bones by their sins, should also be raised up from the dead and live forever with the Lord.  So that the alienation and separation of sin and death should be overcome and undone, from the inside-out, through Jesus Christ our Savior.

The death of Christ is the death of death.  That is why the earth quakes and the rocks are split; because the broken-ness of this broken world is broken.  The old passes away, and, behold, all things are made brand new.  All of creation passes through death into life in the Body of Christ.

For, truth be told, Elijah has already come in order to fulfill all righteousness and restore all things.  He has already come in the Office and Ministry of St. John the Baptist; and look at what they did to him!  He was finally imprisoned and beheaded for his faithful confession of the Word of God.  But he had come preaching a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; to which Christ Jesus submitted Himself as the Lamb of God, for the repentance and forgiveness of the world.

By that Elijah, He was Baptized into His own death, in order to take upon Himself and bear away the sins of the world in His own Body, to suffer and die for them all; but then, also, to emerge and arise unto newness of life in body and soul, to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

By His Baptism — which is really to say, by His Cross and Resurrection — the heavens have been opened to all who believe and are baptized into Him.  And thus, the curtain also is opened, and God is revealed in the awe-full Glory of His own crucified Body.  For His Body is the Ark of the New Covenant, the Mercy Seat, and your Anchor behind the Veil; so that you now have access into the presence of God through the Flesh of Christ, and by His Blood, given and poured out for you.

As He has suffered and died for you, in your place, on your behalf, so it is that, in His Resurrection from the dead, you also come out of your tomb and enter the Holy City.  Not only on the last day, but even now, in the Body of Christ, in the Holy Communion, which is already the Holy of Holies on earth, as it is in heaven.  In His flesh and blood, you rise up with Him as incense to the Father.

Take your cues, then, dear child of God, from the way and the what that Jesus prays.  He prays the Psalter, which you also are given to pray.  It is not only instructive in the faith and knowledge of God, but it exercises your faith and love, as it opens up your lips and mouth to praise Him rightly.

There is a stark and refreshing candor to the Psalms, which honestly lay before the Lord your grief and hurt and pleas for mercy in the day of trouble.  Everywhere they give you words to cry out to the Lord for rescue and protection, for vindication, and even for vengeance against your enemies.

Among their appeals for deliverance, the Psalms often point out that the dead cannot praise God; their lips are silenced in Sheol.  On the other hand, the Psalms frequently confess that the one who trusts in the Lord shall not be put to shame, but shall be saved from every evil of body and soul.

Yet, here now, in the Psalm that Jesus prays from the Cross, everything is turned inside-out, as it is fulfilled in Him, in His Cross and Passion, and in His Resurrection from the dead.  For here is the Righteous One who trusts in the Lord unfailingly, and still He suffers all measure of abuse and pain from all sides.  But then the “Why?” of His God-forsaken-ness is answered:

For it comes to pass, in His faithfulness even unto death, that the dead who sleep in the dust of the earth shall in fact praise the Lord!  For this Lord Jesus Christ retrieves them from the grave and saves them, as He Himself is raised up from the dead by the Glory of His God and Father.

It is precisely in the midst of deep darkness that He thus brings forth the Light of eternal Day.

And what does this mean for you?

It is the answer to all your “Why’s?” and “Wherefore’s?”  It is the answer to all the Psalms, and the Father’s resounding “Yes” and “Amen” to all your prayers.

As Christ Jesus, the beloved Son, has been forsaken by the Father in His suffering and death on the Cross, so has He taken His place with you and joined Himself to you in the suffering of your sin and the darkness of your death.  But that is not the end of the story; neither His, nor yours.

Notice, again, how St. Matthew, at the very point that He records the death of Christ, he is already writing of His Resurrection; and not only of His Resurrection, but of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting of the saints, the holy ones of God, and of their entry into the Holy City.

As you are baptized into Christ, you are baptized into His death.  You share His Cross and Passion.  Not only because of your sin, that you should thus be called to repentance, but also because of your righteousness by faith in Christ Jesus.  Your faith and righteousness are exercised, strengthened, and confessed, therefore, in the suffering of His Cross.  And so do you also share the Resurrection and the Life everlasting of the same Lord Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God.

The alienation and separation of your sin and death are no longer decisive, nor does any of that get to have the last word.  It is real enough, so long as it lasts; but, though you die, yet shall you live.

The Lord, who has joined Himself to you in the darkness of sin and death, shall never leave you nor forsake you, but shall raise you up from death to life.  The One who promises is faithful, and He shall do it.  For it is in Him, in His crucified and risen Body of flesh and blood, that you behold the Glory of God and actually live and abide in His presence.  So it is that, even now, from your mortal flesh and blood, you praise and glorify the God and Father of your dear Lord Jesus Christ, as a beloved son or daughter in Him.

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