The Peace of Christ in the Ministry of His Gospel

The Peace of the Lord is with you in body and soul, in heart, mind, and spirit, because the Lord Jesus Christ is with you in this place, in this preaching, and at this Altar in His flesh and blood.

He is with you in peace, with mercy and compassion, because He has reconciled you to Himself and to God the Father by His voluntary suffering and death, by His self-sacrifice upon the Cross.

He is Himself the true and only God from all eternity, the almighty and eternal Son of the Father.  But for you and your salvation He has become true Man, conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And in His own human body of flesh and blood like yours He has borne your sins away, and all your griefs and sorrows, to the Cross.  All of those burdens He has put to death and buried with Himself, to do away with them once and for all, and to leave them forever in the tomb.

Having thus atoned for the sins of the world with His own holy and precious blood, He has also risen from the dead in the very body with which He shares your humanity and in which He has carried all the crushing weight of your sin and death and condemnation.  Thus, in His Resurrection you also are set free, justified and righteous in the presence of God.  For by His death Christ has redeemed you for Himself, for everlasting Life with Him and with His Father in His Holy Spirit.

All of this He has done, whether you believe it or not.  And He is here for you with all of this grace and every blessing, whether you believe it or not — and whether you are here to receive it or not.

You have the testimony of His servants, St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, St. Paul, and all the holy Apostles.  And you have heard again this evening the confession of St. Thomas, that this Jesus who was crucified is the Lord your God.  The confession of the entire Christian Church is that He is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity.  So shall He also raise you from the dead and give eternal life to you and to all who believe in Him, for His own Name’s sake.

Be at peace, therefore.  God and man are reconciled in the Body of Christ Jesus.  Death has been defeated, because sin is forgiven.  Your sin is forgiven.  The devil has no real power over you.  The grave shall not be able to contain you.  Christ has arisen, and you too shall rise and live in Him.

Do not be afraid.  Do not fret or fuss or fight.  Do not be faithless but believing and faithful.  Love and trust the Lord Jesus.  Abide in peace with your neighbor, as God the Father is at peace with you in His beloved Son.  And be gathered together with the disciples of the Lord, in order to be with Him where He is, also.  Do not rely upon yourself.  Do not attempt to go it alone; it is not good for you to be alone.  Do not lean upon your own understanding, nor trust your own wisdom, reason, experience, or strength.  Do not suppose that what you see and feel is truer than the Word of the Gospel that is preached to you.  And do not succumb to skeptical doubt or cynical despair.

Be where Christ is with you, here within His Church on earth.  And so living by faith in Him, live for your neighbor in love.  Live and abide with your fellow disciples in the Liturgy of the Gospel; and as you also belong to the Body of Christ, live for your neighbors in the world round about.  With the hands of Christ, reach out to those whom the Lord your God has set alongside of you.

Speak the Word that is spoken to you.  Confess the Word of the Gospel, which is Spirit, Truth, and Life.  You have nothing else worth saying.  You have nothing else to give but what you are given.

In considering yourself, you are right to conclude that you are not up to the task that you are given.  You are wounded in body and soul by your sins and pierced through the heart with guilt over what you have and have not done.  You are riddled with doubts and fears, surrounded by dangers and death on all sides, within and without.  Your strength wavers, and your body is wearing out; your mind falters, and your spirit faints.  Battered about by winds and waves of strife and temptation, you cannot help but fall and sink.  You are threatened with oblivion on every hand, at every turn.

What you can see and feel and experience is no help at all, and there does not seem to be any hope.  The good that you would do, you do not.  The evil that you should not do, you persist in pursuing.  Death stalks you like a nightmare; it pursues you day and night, and it will eventually catch you.  And so far as you have ever been able to tell, those who die remain dead and buried in the dirt.

Among your family and friends, in your own health and strength, and in all your thoughts, words, and actions, there is nothing at all that would ever be able to save you or anyone else from death.

So, how are you supposed to reach out in love to your neighbors, even to your enemies, when you have no strength with which to lift a finger or even to grasp at straws?  How shall you strengthen anyone else when you are so decrepit and fragile yourself?  How can you encourage your brothers and sisters in the faith when you are so discouraged and doubtful and down?  And how are you to think about your neighbor and his needs when you are so consumed by worries and suspicions?

See here, now, the Lord Jesus Christ reaches out His hand to lay hold of you and help you.  Yet, even this seems a dismal sort of rescue!  If you consider the men He calls and sends to serve His people — with nothing but the Gospel to do it! — you are sorely tempted to despise His gifts.  Cowardly Gideon?  Playboy Samson?  Peter the denier?  Paul the persecutor?  Doubting Thomas?

What are these men but mortal flesh and blood, wounded and weak, sinners no less than yourself?  They stumble and fall badly.  They are put to death and buried.  They have no power in the eyes of the world, no fame or fortune, and no glory but the Cross of Christ and His Word of the Gospel.

Look at these hands of mine.  They have no great strength.  They could not pull you from the fire, nor snatch you back from the precipice.  What good are they?  They have nothing more nor less than what the Lord has put into them.  And what is that?  The pouring of water in His Name?  The blessing of His Absolution?  A bit of bread and a little wine, here served in remembrance of Him?

The entire life of the Church is like this.  It is a minority in the world, make no mistake about it.  Huddled together as a tiny band against the masses, pastors and people alike are frail and always under the weight of more burdens than resources.  If they are not being put to death, they are dying nonetheless.  There’s always far more to be done than time, money, or people to accomplish it.

So it is hardly surprising that you are often tempted to become cynical and sarcastic, skeptical and incredulous.  You want something to believe in, something tangible and solid, something sure and certain, something you can see and feel and touch and handle and rely on with confidence.

Dear child of God, be at peace.  The Lord is with you.  He is here for you.  These poor hands of mine are His own hands for your benefit.  Though they are wounded and scarred in more ways than one — as you and yours are wounded and scarred — know that He has been wounded for your transgressions and pierced for your iniquities, in order that you should be healed by His scars.

Your doubts and fears are faithless unbelief, for which you are called to repentance.  But for all of that, He is and remains always faithful, and by His grace you are forgiven.  Your demands are selfish and impertinent, but He does not hold them against you; He is merciful and comes to serve you with care.  He puts Himself at your disposal.  He places Himself into your hands.  He entrusts Himself to you — as He who rules the cosmic deep entrusted Himself to the arms of His Mother.

Witness His love for you.  His humility is not weakness but the exercise of His strength for your salvation.  His Cross and Passion, suffering and death, are not His defeat but His victory on your behalf.  His Body and Blood are not impotent but salutary gifts and life-giving benefits for you.

His hands and side and feet are pierced and wounded; they bear the marks of His scourging, His crucifixion, His execution, the marks of the nails and the spear.  But Christ the Crucified, the One who was dead and buried, He has risen from the dead, and with compassion He gives life to you.

There is no human logic here, but divine Wisdom.  His Cross is foolishness and weakness in the eyes of the world and in the perception of your flesh, but it is the power of God unto salvation.  His Cross has not defeated Him, but it has conquered death and crushed the devil’s head.  And it is this Cross that saves you and gives you everlasting Life through the forgiveness of your sins.

From the Sacrifice of His Cross, from His crucified and risen Body, the Lord Jesus breathes His life-giving Holy Spirit into your body and soul with His Word of Absolution.  You are forgiven.  Thus do you live, even though you die.  For those who live and believe in Christ will never die.

From His pierced and wounded side is delivered His Eve, His glorious Bride, the Holy Church.  You belong to her, and so to Him, not by your own wisdom, reason, or strength, not by any choice or decision of your own, but solely by His grace.  He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies you with His Gospel, the forgiveness of all your sins.  He removes your guilt and shame and replaces your doubts and fears with His peace.  He heals you of unbelief and raises you up in holy faith.

His wounded hands pour out His Blood of the New Testament, which permeates the waters of your Holy Baptism and cleanses you, even as it now also continues to fill and overflow the Chalice of His Holy Communion, poured out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of all your sins.

So do His wounded hands extend to serve you and reach out to feed you with His Body, given for you, that you should remain a member of His Body.  So hide yourself in Him, here at His Altar.

Reach here your hand.  Take and eat.  Drink from His Cup, the New Testament in His Blood.  Open your mouth and be fed from His wounds.  Do not be unbelieving but believing.  And be at peace.  The Lord is with you, and His Peace is with you always.  The One who died for you has risen, so you also shall live, because He forgives your trespasses and remembers your sins no more.

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

Walter Lives in the Flesh and Blood of Christ

I would not describe Walter as a skeptical man, although I do know that he had his doubts and suspicions about the government and the state of the world.  He was certainly nobody’s fool, that is for sure.  He knew his own mind, and, let’s be honest, he could be rather stubborn about it.

But do not misunderstand.  If Walter could be stubbornly determined at times, he was even more sure and certain about his faith in Christ and his confession of the Gospel.  That is what he lived for, and that is what he trusted and relied upon throughout his life, through various illnesses along the way, even unto death.  There was hardly anything that could keep Walter away from church.

So, it might seem odd to hear about St. Thomas this morning at Walter’s funeral on this Second Day of Christmas.  Perhaps unfairly, Thomas is typically remembered for his doubts, and for the fact that he was missing on that first Easter Sunday.  That sure doesn’t sound like Walter, does it?  But there are several reasons for which we give attention to this Holy Gospel on this occasion.

I know the paper indicates that Walter died this past Thursday, the 22nd of December.  That was when Rob & Sandra discovered him at home, and I understand that he had enjoyed a good day on Wednesday, the day before.  But from what I’ve been told, he was putting himself to bed for the night when the number of his days in this life on earth were completed and he fell asleep in Jesus.  So, by my reckoning, it was on the evening of the 21st, the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, when Walter laid down his labors for the last time and entered his Sabbath Rest in Christ.

How appropriate that he should pass from this fallen world of darkness, death, and doubt, into the marvelous Light of Christ on the night of the Winter Solstice.  For the darkest days are now behind us, and the Light of the Revelation of the Glory of God now shines upon us in the Gospel of Christ Jesus, our Savior.  As Walter knew that Light by faith under the Cross here on earth, so does he now live and abide in that Light within the neverending Eighth Day of the Lord’s Resurrection.

That’s another thing about this St. Thomas Day Gospel: Not only is it heard just a few days before Christmas, but then again, every year, throughout the whole Church, on the Second Sunday of Easter.  And it really ties together so beautifully the Incarnation and the Resurrection of the Son of God, conceived and born of St. Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead and buried for three days, but risen from the dead in His own glorified Body of flesh and blood, never to die again, but living and reigning forever at the Right Hand of His Father.

It is surely in that hope, in the crucified and risen Body of Christ Jesus, that Walter lived and died, and that we remember and give thanks for him today in the confidence and confession of the Resurrection.  For the Word became Flesh, true God became true Man, that He might gather up the children of men into Himself as members of His Body, and bring them with Himself through death into life, into the Glory of His God and Father.

Not that we yet see it.  For now we live by faith under the Cross in the midst of sin and death.  And even Walter’s eyes await the final Resurrection of all flesh, when he shall behold his Lord and his God face to face.  But by the grace of God, by His Word and Holy Spirit, Walter believed and confessed, as we also believe and confess, that our Redeemer lives.  Against all the apparent evidence of this fallen and perishing world, and despite the frailty of our own dying bodies of flesh and blood, we trust and rejoice in the promise of the Lord’s Resurrection.

Which is no doubt why Walter requested the Old Testament Reading from Job 19 that we have heard this morning, and the glorious Easter hymn based on that Holy Scripture: “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.”  For at the last, it is written — as though in rock by an iron stylus — He shall stand upon the earth, and from our own risen flesh, with our own eyes, we shall see Him as He is.  The very thing that St. Thomas desired, which he and the other Apostles of the Lamb were granted, that we who have not yet seen might believe by the Word of their eye-witness testimony; and that we, believing that Holy Gospel, might have life in Christ, in both body and soul.

So that is why our hearts and minds are turned to the testimony and example of St. Thomas on this day.  That we should find and receive the blessed comfort, peace, and rest that both St. Thomas and our dear brother Walter were granted in the flesh and blood of Christ Jesus.  That in the face of doubt and fear we should be not faithless but believing; and, in the face of death and the grave, we should have the glorious life for which the Lord our God created us in His own divine Image.

Not that any of this is easy for this little while that we spend on earth.  Let’s not kid ourselves.  It was not easy for St. Thomas, who, like all but one of the Holy Apostles, was martyred for the Name of Christ.  And it was not easy for Walter, either, though you might not have guessed it from his positive attitude and generally cheerful outlook.  He was always doing “pretty good for an older man,” moving forward and persevering in the faith and confession of Christ.  But he had his hurts and suffered some painful losses on his sojourn.

If there was one thing in particular that troubled Walter and weighed so heavily upon him, it was estrangement within families.  I gather that went back to his own father leaving his family, when Walter was just a little boy, too young to understand the whys and wherefores, but only that his Dad was gone and his Mom was left to deal with things on her own.  But there were similar such departures and losses in Walter’s adult life, as well, and even this past year.  He simply could not understand how anyone could turn his back on his own family.  But I expect that he had regrets of his own, too, for the fact is that we are fallen and fallible creatures.

The question is whether those sins and uncertainties of life will drive you away from Christ and His Church, or closer to the Lord in the Ministry of His Gospel.  For Thomas, who was at first absent from the gathering of disciples, he found peace when he returned to the place where Christ is present.  And for Walter, too, his peace was found in the faith and life of the Body of Christ.

It was the Body of Christ that sustained him when he was hit with the double loss of his son David and his daughter Linda within months of each other five years ago.

It is a terrible thing for any parent to bury his own children, and the seemingly insurmountable finality of death could hardly be more stark.  So Walter grieved, to be sure, and he carried the burden of that sorrow for the remainder of his own life.  But not as though without hope, for his hope remained in Christ, in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.  For that One is the Son whom God the Father gave to save us, handing Him over to death and the grave.  He is the Child born of Mary, whom she saw crucified, dead, and buried.  And He is the One who has conquered death and risen from the dead for the righteousness and salvation of all the sons and daughters of men.

You, then, be where that Lord Jesus Christ is found.  Not as though to earn or merit anything, but to receive everything by the grace of God in the Body of His Son.  If you have wandered away, as Thomas did for awhile, then come back as he did on that Eighth Day of Easter.  Follow the good and faithful example that Walter has set for all these past many years in coming to church.  For it is in the congregation of His Church on earth, in the gathering of His disciples in His Name, that Christ Jesus is Immanuel, God With Us, even to the close of the age.

That is particularly clear in this Holy Gospel, in which the Liturgy and Ministry of Christ are set before you in His Word and works of grace, mercy, and peace.  Not because those first disciples and Apostles were so courageous and strong, but despite the fact that they were not.  Beset by fear and sadness, hiding away from the world in a locked room, nevertheless, the Lord comes to them, and takes His stand in their midst, and grants to them His Peace.

His Word to them is a liturgical greeting, such as you hear in the Divine Service when the Lord Jesus has consecrated bread and wine to be His Body and His Blood, given and poured out for His Christians to eat and to drink.  Thus taking His stand in the midst of His disciples, He declares that His Peace is with you always.  That is the true and lasting Peace of forgiveness, of rescue from death and the devil, of reconciliation with God, and of righteousness, life, and salvation.  It is such a Peace which the world can neither give nor take away, because it is yours in Christ alone.

His Peace is given to you, first of all, as it was given to the disciples then, and as it has been given to Walter for these past 92 years, by the Word and Spirit of Christ, especially His Word of Holy Absolution, that is, the forgiveness of sins in His Name.  For when the called Ministers of Christ deal with you by His divine command, it is valid and certain, in heaven also, as the way and the means by which Christ your dear Lord deals with you Himself.  And by that Word of forgiveness, He breathes His Spirit upon you, into your ears, your heart and mind, your body and soul.

So it is that you, a child of Adam, mortal and returning to the dirt, are raised again from the dust of the earth to be and remain a living, breathing son of God in Christ Jesus.  As surely as Walter has received that same Word and Spirt of forgiveness and life, and even though he has died, yet shall he rise and live forevermore.

I have no doubt that it was for the sake of that Ministry of the Gospel, in loving gratitude to Christ Jesus, that Walter was always so respectful and supportive of his pastors.  He put his trust, not in the flesh and blood of mortal men, but in the Word and Spirit of the Living God, who has chosen in His mercy to speak and act through men.

And as the same Lord God did for St. Thomas, so He has done for Walter, and so He does for you.  From His wounded side He has poured out the cleansing and refreshing water of Holy Baptism, so that you are forgiven all your sins, grafted into the Body of Christ, anointed by His Holy Spirit, and named by God the Father with His own Name.  Here, then, is a Father who will never abandon His children or His family.  Here, too, is a Bridegroom who will never leave you nor forsake you.

As He took Walter to be His own dear child by the washing of the water with His Word and Spirit on the same day he was born, on the 23rd of May in 1924, so did He remain faithful to this dear son of God, our brother in Christ, until the day of his death last week.  And by His faithfulness, He preserved and strengthened Walter in the one true faith, even unto the life everlasting.

From His wounded hands and side, Christ Jesus has also poured out His holy and precious Blood to fill His Chalice of Salvation, so that Walter was able to receive this great mercy, no less than St. Thomas.  Forgiveness and Life and Salvation in both body and soul.  From his confirmation at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Frazee, Minnesota, in May of 1938, until his final Sunday on earth, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Walter was given to eat and to drink the Body and Blood of Mary’s little Lamb, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

From the Manger of Bethlehem to the Cross and Resurrection, to the Breaking of the Bread at Emmaus, Walter was fed and cared for by the Lamb who is also the great Good Shepherd of the sheep.  Though he could not yet see it with his eyes, he shared the faith of Job in the Resurrection and the Life of his Redeemer, Jesus Christ.  And because St. Thomas and the other Apostles have seen the crucified and risen Lord, so by their Word of the Gospel did Walter receive and trust, believe and confess the same Lord, the Son of God and of St. Mary.

In the Sacrament of the Altar, the Body of Christ was given to Walter, and the Blood of Christ was poured out for Walter, that he should thus recognize and worship his own dear Savior by receiving His Salvation.  The Church on earth, from Frazee to South Bend, was Walter’s Bethlehem.  And the Altar of his Lord was the Manger from which he fed upon the Christ, even when that Altar had to come to his own home, to his hospital room, or to a rehabilitation center.  That was Walter’s Paradise, even in the face of sadness, sickness, sin, and death.

And even now, though Walter’s body begins returning to the dust from which it was taken, yet shall he be raised and glorified in his body, like unto the glorious Body of Christ.  And in that final Resurrection of all flesh — for which we and all the faithful wait, and watch, and pray — then shall Walter see with his own two eyes, from his own flesh, the great Redeemer who loves him, in whom he lives forever and ever.

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

The Peace of the Lord in the Body of Christ

As a disciple, Thomas should have believed the testimony of the other disciples who had seen the Lord.  And, as a disciple, he should have been there with them in the first place when Jesus came.  It is fundamental to the Christian faith and life to be gathered together with the other members of His Body, the Church, on the Lord’s Day.  For it is in the gathering of His disciples in His Name that the crucified and risen Lord Jesus comes and takes His stand, and speaks His Word, and grants His Peace, and bestows His Spirit, and gives Himself to you and to all His Christians.  It is in His Body that you find Him and have your Peace and Sabbath Rest.

Thomas should have been there with the disciples when Jesus came; and, having been absent, he should have believed their testimony.  But for his failure to believe the Word of the Gospel, he was called to repentance and brought to repentance, in order to receive the Lord Jesus, to be forgiven, and to be at peace, no longer faithless but believing.  The fruits of his repentance are found, even in the midst of his cynical doubts and skepticism, in the fact that he was with the disciples on the Eighth Day.  He was back in church.  He was where he belonged, where he needed to be.

We may certainly suppose that the other disciples were instrumental in re-gathering their brother Thomas to their fellowship.  He doubted their word — and he basically called into question either their integrity or their sanity — but they did not shun him, shut him out, or spurn his presence.  Evidently, they encouraged him to be there with them, and they supported him with their company.  Precisely that kind of encouragement and support is part of what it means to be a congregation of the Church, to be members of one Body in Christ, to belong to the household and family of God.

You would notice and do something about it, if one of your children or siblings were absent from the gathering of your family at home.  You should be no less aware when your fellow disciples, your brothers and sisters in Christ, are absent from His Body; and then, seek them out in love and call them home by the confession of His Cross and Resurrection, by the testimony of His Gospel.

Whatever words and gestures the other disciples may have used, they had Thomas together with them again on the Eighth Day of Easter.  And there they were, that rag-tag group of guys, tossed about and torn by mixed emotions, anxieties and hurts, weariness and expectations.  One of their number, Judas, was already lost and gone, having hanged himself in despair.  Simon Peter was yet to be restored, after having denied Jesus on the eve of His Passion.  And despite the Resurrection appearances of the previous Sunday and several eyewitness reports, the disciples still struggled with doubt.  Their faith waxed and waned, and they were often more skeptical than confident.

That gathering of disciples was not unlike our own congregation with all its ups and downs, with all its strengths and weaknesses, all its doubts and fears and hopes and dreams, and all its hurts both new and old.  You bring all that with you into this gathering, and your neighbors do, too.

How is it that such fractured and fragmented people become whole?  How is it that disagreements and division are healed and give way to community?  Is it just that misery loves company, and so we get together to commiserate?  Is it a case of circling the wagons against the big bad world out there?  Or, what is it that brings you from being so afraid, so angry, so bitter and cynical, and so depressed, to being at peace — with God, with your neighbor, and with yourself?  How is it that you come to believe in Christ Jesus — that He was crucified for the forgiveness of all your sins, and that God the Father raised Him from the dead to be your righteousness, life, and salvation?

You have heard the answer in this Holy Gospel.  The Lord Jesus comes and stands in your midst, and He speaks, “Peace be with you!”  He calls you to repentance and thereby calls you to Himself.  For He has risen from the dead, and in His Resurrection He forgives you, He gives you life.  His Absolution raises you from the dead, as surely as He Himself has been raised.  That is what the preaching of His Gospel does, for His Word does and gives what it says: the forgiveness of sins.

That Word is preached to you now from the testimony of the Holy Apostles, including Thomas.  In this respect they differ from you, and from all other Christians.  They surpass the Prophets who came before them, and the pastors and teachers who follow after them.  Blessed are their eyes, Jesus says elsewhere, because they have seen what the righteous men of old longed to see.

It is what the Holy Apostles have seen with their eyes, what they heard with their ears, and what they touched and handled, which they in turn have spoken and written, testified and professed for the whole Church on earth, even to the end of the age.  What they believe, because they have seen, they give to you, who do not see, that you might believe by their proclamation of the Word.

In this regard, as an Apostle, as one of the Twelve, Thomas is exactly right to insist upon seeing.  It is necessary that he also be an eyewitness of the crucified and risen Jesus.  His apostolic office and vocation require it, just as a replacement for Judas will need to be an eyewitness of the Resurrection; just as Saul of Tarsus will behold the risen Lord Jesus on the Road to Damascus.

That same Lord Jesus has given His Apostles to His Church, as the first of all His gifts, that by their preaching and teaching, by their confession and their doctrine, you and others should believe in Him, and have life in Him, and share in the fellowship of the Holy Apostles — which is, in fact, to participate in the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

So, too, what St. Thomas the Apostle saw and touched and handled — the Body of the crucified and risen Christ Jesus — he has also handed over to the Church; and the Church has handed over the same Lord Jesus through all the generations ever since, even to this time and place.  For along with the confession of the Cross and Resurrection, there is also the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, given first of all to the Twelve who ate and drank with Him both before and after His Passion; and what they received from Him, they delivered to His Church.  It is that apostolic tradition which continues to this day, and to this gathering of the disciples of Jesus in His Name.

In this Supper, Jesus does for you what He did for Thomas and the other disciples.  He opens Himself to you.  He entrusts Himself to you.  In a sense, He humbles Himself, and makes Himself weak and vulnerable, subjecting Himself to being handled, investigated, and scrutinized, as it were.  Not in the same way that He did for Thomas, obviously.  You cannot put the Sacrament under a microscope and see the wounded hands and feet and side of Jesus.  But your ears hear the Word of the same Lord, who says: “Take, eat; this is My Body. Drink of it, all of you; this is My Blood.”

With this Word of Christ, He gives to you the fruits of His Cross and Passion, in which His almighty power has been made perfect in His weakness.  It is with such strength that He entrusts Himself to you, and suffers Himself to be grasped and consumed; that He might lay hold of you in love, and heal you, and grant you peace, and feed and sustain you, and give you His own life.

Here then is the flesh of Christ which was nailed and pierced for you, the Body that was crucified for you.  Here is the holy and precious Blood which poured from His wounds on the Cross, which is now poured out from His Chalice for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of all your sins.

He comes to you in this way, and He shares Himself with you in this way, in voluntary weakness and humility, so that you, even in great weakness, may receive Him and hold Him and rest yourself in Him without fear.  He knows your hurts, your wounds and scars of heart, mind, body, and soul.  He is your faithful and merciful High Priest, who has suffered and been tempted in every way that you are.  In compassion He has borne your hurts, and He still bears your wounds and scars in His Body.  He is forever the Lamb who has been slain, who died for you, and yet, behold, He lives.

It is remarkable and significant that St. Thomas recognizes Jesus by the marks of His Passion, by His hands and side.   Those wounds identify Him as the Crucified One.  But that is not all.  What St. Thomas recognizes in the wounded Body of Jesus is the Lord, his God.  That is not a case of logic or reason or scientific proof.  That is the theology of the Cross.  That is the true greatness and glory of God, the grace of His Self-giving for the salvation of sinners.  That is divine compassion, which does not simply comfort, console, and commiserate, but comes down to relieve suffering, to rescue from all harm and danger, from hurt and pain, from doubt and fear, from sin and death.

How ironic is that?  Your Lord and your God is this Man of flesh and blood like your own, with evidently open wounds in His hands and feet and side.  That is what God’s Body is like.  For He has made Himself like you.  Not only flesh and blood, but wounded, as you are, by your sins and by your death.  As Thomas was, and as all your neighbors are, some of them in ways you can see, and others in ways that you may never know, or that you will only perceive by listening carefully.

Consider what that means!  In your wounded, weak, and weary neighbors, you are given to see your dear Lord Jesus Christ.  And, yes, you are given to care for His Body by caring for your neighbors.  So closely has He identified Himself with fallen man and joined Himself to fallen man.  So closely has He identified Himself with you and joined Himself to you.  No sooner should you be ashamed or afraid to reach out your hand to your wounded neighbor, to your hurting brother or sister, to your friend or foe in need, than to reach out your hand for the Holy Sacrament.

For all of that, you are not the Savior of His Body.  Neither was St. Thomas, nor were any of the Holy Apostles.  It is rather His Body that saves you and all of His disciples.  It is to His disciples that He gives His Body; and, as you eat, so you are.  As you drink His Blood, so do you have His Life and His Spirit in you, and the power of His Resurrection.  The wounds that He received upon His Cross have enabled you to enter into His Body by way of Holy Baptism, even as they now enable you to receive and to rest in His Body here at His Altar.  So it is that you are a member of His Body, the Church.  You belong to Him, and to one another in Him, and He belongs to you.

His Crucifixion embraces the wounded — all of them, everywhere, whatever their own wounds might be.  So His Crucifixion also fully embraces your woundedness, whatever it is.  He stretches forth His arms and He reaches out His hands to gather to Himself all the fractured and fragmented children of men, and by His grace He brings them into the fellowship of His own wounded Body.

He retains His wounds, even in His glorious Resurrection from the dead, in order to gather such disciples to Himself from all the nations, even to the close of the age.  So does He remain with you, a merciful and great High Priest, all the while you bear the Cross in this life, even unto death.

Yet, it is this wounded Lord who has been raised from the dead, never to die again.  This Lamb who has been slain is alive forevermore.  In His Body of flesh and blood, the curse of sin has been undone, death has been defeated, and Satan has been crushed along with all of his accusations.

Which is why the gathering of the disciples of Jesus is far more than a pity party or misery loving company.  It is a holy communion of men and women, boys and girls, united to one another within the one Body of Christ Jesus.  You are knitted and joined together by Him who is your Head.  Therefore, you share His life, and you live in Him, and together you are growing and maturing into the fullness of the stature that belongs to Christ.  You serve and support one another in and with His Love, and the whole Body is built up through mutual repentance and forgiveness.  Not by your own reason or strength, but by the apostolic ministry of the Gospel, by the apostolic doctrine of the Word of Christ, and by the apostolic fellowship of the Lord’s Altar.

Within this Body of Christ you share both His Cross and His Resurrection, and you are preserved by the power of His indestructible Life.  The wounded Body of Christ is risen from the dead, alive and glorified forever, and that is also true of you and your body and life in Him.  For as surely as the Body and Blood of Christ are given and poured out for you to eat and to drink, so surely shall your own body of flesh and blood be raised from the dead to life everlasting with the Holy Trinity.

Therefore, do not be afraid.  This Altar of the Lord is your Peace and Sabbath Rest, and here His Peace is with you, as He Himself is with you in body and soul.  So does He abide with you, and so shall you abide with Him forevermore in the never ending Eighth Day of His Resurrection.

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

Wounded for the Weary, Weak, and Wounded

The first mistake that St. Thomas made was in not being gathered together with the other disciples — whatever his reasons may have been for not being there.  His sinful doubts and fears and unbelief are not relieved but fostered and exacerbated by his absence from that fellowship of the Church.  He does not see the Body of Christ on the First Day of the week, because he is not gathered with the Body of Christ in the company of his brothers.

He is there on the Eighth Day, however, on the Octave of the Resurrection, the Second Sunday of Easter, because of the confession and witness of the other disciples who have seen the Lord.  In this, they begin to serve their office and vocation as holy Apostles of Christ Jesus.

So also should you seek out your brothers and sisters in Christ when they have been missing from the Divine Service.  Search them out, and confess and testify to them what He says and does for you here in the fellowship of His Body, the Church.  Encourage them to come with you, to be here with the disciples of the Lord Jesus — even (or especially) if they are struggling with doubts and fears and uncertainty, and even though they may be weary, weak, and wounded in heart and mind, in body, soul, and spirit.  Invite them and encourage them to come, and bring them along with you.

The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is precisely the place for the weary, the weak, and the wounded, for those who are hurting, doubtful, and afraid.

It is the place for you, no matter what your wounds may be that will not heal in this life on earth, and no matter the scars that you bear on the inside or on the surface.  The Body of Christ is where you belong, regardless of your personality, and notwithstanding your pain and skeptical sadness.

The wounded Body of Christ is the place for you.  Reach here, then, with your finger and your hand, to see and touch and feel and handle His holy wounds, to trace His sacred scars.  For He has been wounded in His love for you and for all, in order to love the weary, the weak, and the wounded with His sacrificial flesh and blood.

St. Thomas had that part right, even in the depths of his doubts, depression, and despair.  He looked for the Lamb who was slain.  He understood that the real Lord Jesus is the Crucified One — and that remains so, even in His Resurrection.  His glorified Body bears the scars of His Cross, because His Body has been glorified by the wounds He has suffered in love for us poor sinners.

He is recognized, rightly, not “in spite of” His wounds, but especially by His wounds.  Indeed, He is recognized in His wounds, not only as Jesus of Nazareth, but as the Lord your God, and as your Savior and Redeemer.

He is recognized in His wounds, and His disciples are brought to faith in His wounds.

So where do you see and touch those wounds of Christ in His Body?

First of all, you reach out and lay hold of them in His means of grace.  He approaches you by the preaching of His Gospel, which is the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection, the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of all your sins in His Name.  That preaching breathes into your body, through your ears, the Spirit of Christ — from His Cross into your body — unto the resurrection of your body from the dust of the earth to the life everlasting.

His preaching of the Cross also brings you to His Baptism, whether to be baptized in the first place, if you have not been, or to return you to the significance of your one Holy Baptism by way of contrition for your sins, repentance, confession, and faith in His Absolution or forgiveness.

By that ongoing significance of your Baptism, you are daily united with the crucified and risen Lord Jesus in His Cross and Resurrection.  You die and rise with Him, as you are baptized into His riven side, and you are washed and cleansed in the water and the blood that are poured out from the wounds of His Body upon your body and soul.

He has drowned your old Adam in that death-dealing and life-giving flood of Holy Baptism.  He has brought you through those waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan River, out of Egypt into the safety, peace, and rest of His Church.  Thus are you a member of His Body, and a sheep of His green pastures.  By your Baptism into Him, and by the Catechesis of His Word, He has made you His disciple, and so it is that you belong in this place where His disciples are gathered.

Here in His House, at His Table, He who is both your Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God, who has laid down His own life for the sheep and shed His blood for their Atonement and Redemption, feeds you from His wounded hands with His holy Body and precious Blood.

Not only have you entered His wounds through Holy Baptism, but you feast upon His wounded Body here in the Holy Communion.  And with His own flesh and blood, the fruits of His sacrifice, He enters into your wounded body to dwell with you and abide with you in peace, unto life eternal.

As He deals with you so kindly and so graciously, so do you also behold His wounds and reach out to them in His other disciples, your brothers and sisters within the one Body of His Church.

Do not be afraid to care for those who are so weary, so weak, and so wounded, for whom Christ Jesus Himself, your Lord and your God, has been so wounded and sorely scarred in love.

Rather, love your neighbor, as Christ Jesus loves you in both body and soul.  Tend your neighbor’s wounds, care for her scars, feed his hunger, quench his thirst, and soothe her doubts.

Love your brothers and sisters in Christ — whether with or without emotion, that is neither here nor there — but love them most surely with your words and works of mercy and of service.

Use your body to care for your neighbor’s body, as you care for the wounds in your own flesh.

And in so doing, behold the Lord Jesus, the wounded God, who has been slain for you and for your neighbor.  Recognize that He now lives in you and with you and through you.  If you are wounded for the sake of His love; if you are beaten and bruised, mocked and ridiculed and spit upon; if you are crowned with thorns, crucified, and pierced, well then, so do you live and become like Jesus.

But how can you possibly believe this?  And how on earth can you ever hope to live like this, as Jesus lives, in such love for your neighbors, even for those who hate you and hurt you?

How shall you survive even your own wounds, and how then shall you help to heal the wounds of others?  After all, such wounds are not pleasant or pretty.  The instincts of your sinful heart and of selfish self-preservation would have you turn away in fear and loathing.  So how shall you ever become otherwise?  How shall you believe and love?

It is by the apostolic ministry of the Gospel of Christ, carried out by those who are called and sent in His Name with His Word, His works, and His wounds.

It is by the witness and testimony of St. Thomas and his fellow Apostles, by the proclamation of the Prophets and Evangelists, and by the preaching and catechesis of the pastors and teachers whom Christ Jesus freely and graciously gives to His Church on earth.

You do not yet see Him, but His Apostles have seen Him, and have eye-witnessed His Baptism, His Life and Ministry, His preaching and miracles, His Cross and Resurrection and Ascension.  And as they have seen and heard and touched and handled the Word-made-Flesh, so by their confession of His Word are you blessed by His grace, and you believe in Him and love Him, sight unseen, hidden under His Cross, and revealed not yet in power but in His wounds.

Here within His Church, as a member of His Body, whether you be a joint or ligament, an arm or leg, a hand or foot, a mouth or an ear, an internal organ or a weaker member, you taste and see by faith the Glory of the Lord in His flesh and blood.  You see the bread and wine, which by His Word are His Body given and His Blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of all your sins. You hear, too, His Gospel of forgiveness.  You touch and handle, and eat and drink His wounded Body, conceived and born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen from the dead and glorified — who is here with you and for you, that you should also be with Him where He is.

By this apostolic ministry of the Gospel, your fellowship is with Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son, and with His Father and His Holy Spirit, and with all those who are His, with St. Thomas and all of the Apostles, and with all the saints in heaven and on earth, both now and forever.

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