Reconciled to Your Father in Christ

It has become more common in recent years to focus on the older son of the parable — though whether that is a matter of humility or pride, I do not know.  Maybe it’s just trying to be clever and to keep it fresh.  But there can be no doubt that the older son is an important part of the story, since the Lord Jesus has chosen to include him.  His accusations against his brother and his father echo those of the scribes and pharisees against Jesus Himself, and that is clearly to the point at hand.

Ironically, the older son is far more like his younger brother than he would ever realize or want to admit.  Both of them are recipients of their father’s love and mercy, and yet both have presumed upon His gracious generosity.  They have both suffered from a false sense of entitlement.  And in the course of the narrative, they both harden their hearts against their father and consequently find themselves estranged, on the outside, far removed from the feasting of his household and family.

There are many ways in which you should recognize yourself in the sinful attitudes and actions of that older brother.  But in making that comparison, do not flatter yourself that you have been the dutiful and obedient son who has worked hard and never done anything wrong.  Rather, repent of your self-righteousness, be reconciled to your father and your brother, and please do come inside.

And while you’re at it, let’s not lose sight of the prodigal son, since the Lord has also chosen to tell you his story, that you should learn something of yourself and of your Father in these events.

There is something deeply familiar and all too common in the case of that younger son.  Not so much in the details, which belong to a different cultural setting.  But the underlying pattern of his choices and decisions and the consequences of his actions resonate with your own experiences.

In what ways have you despised your Father and taken His good gifts for granted, as though what you had were yours by rights?  How have you hardened your heart against Him and turned away from His Word and Table?  If not geographically, by running away from His Home and Family, then morally, by your behavior and by the way you have misused and abused the time, treasures, and talents entrusted to your stewardship?  To what far country have you wandered — in heart, mind, or body — restless for adventure and excitement, for something you have not been given?

Consider your place in life according to the Ten Commandments.  How is it between you and the Lord your God?  Or between you and your neighbors?  Are you content and confident with your Father in heaven?  Are you at peace with all people, in so far as it depends on you?  Or have you  burned your bridges, built your walls, shut your ears, and turned your cold shoulder to anyone?  Have you viewed your neighbor as someone to love and serve, or as someone to use and discard?

What you may not yet realize is how your prodigal living is taking you farther and farther away from your Father and what you need the most.  Pray that in His mercy He would not leave you to go your own way forever, but that He would recall you to Himself before it is too late.  For when you have removed yourself from His Home and Family, nothing else will ever be able to satisfy your deepest longing.  Your appetite will not be appeased; it is you that it consumes.  For the world that you have been pursuing is not what you need.  Only the Word of your Father can give you life.

If His tough love and fatherly discipline have brought you to your senses — for that is what it is when He grants you enough rope to hang yourself or to sink yourself up to your neck in the pig slop of your sins — then, enough already!  Repent of your sins.  Stop wallowing in your own filth.  Rise up and return to your Father’s House and Home.  Be reconciled to Him by faith in His mercy.

It is not for you to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  You cannot raise yourself from death and the grave, which is the far country to which your sins and unbelief have taken you.  Nor is your bargaining apology the key to repentance.  Surely it is true that you are not worthy to be called your Father’s son.  But it never was a matter of your worthiness; nor shall it ever be.  Neither is it for the sake of nostalgic paternal emotions that your Father will receive you back and welcome you home.  This parable is not a story of simply letting bygones be bygones!  It is of the Gospel.

To come back to your senses is more than realizing how badly off you are apart from the Lord your God.  It is to remember who you are.  Not by genealogy or pedigree; not by aptitude or effort; but who you are by your Baptism into Christ Jesus.  You are God’s own child because He has adopted you by His grace and called you by His own Name.  Draw water from that well of salvation.  And so return to Him, not with deals or negotiations, but with confidence in His Word and promises.

Remember your Father, who He is and what He is like.  You know His mercy and compassion, His comfort and provision.  You know His Love, because He has loved you, and He loves you still.  Return to Him in heart and mind, in body and soul.  Know that He will gladly receive you back, as surely as He has already done so in the Person of His own dearly-beloved Son, Christ Jesus.

Understand that the Word of Jesus concerning the Prodigal Son is really only one piece of a three-part Parable.  It belongs hand-in-hand to what He says concerning the lost sheep and the lost coin.  And as the Shepherd sought and found His missing sheep, and the Woman searched her house until she found her missing coin, so does the Father seek His missing son in order to bring him home.

Perhaps you have found yourself in such a place as this Father, longing for your wayward son or daughter to come home; longing for your children or your children’s children to return to the life of the family, or, what is even more important, to the life of the Church.  If so, take this to heart, that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ loves you and your children, and He longs for you and them even more than you long for your family.  And while you may feel that you are helpless to do anything — although you can and should confess and pray the Word of God to and for your children from infancy through adulthood — the Lord is not powerless to seek and to save the lost.

Indeed, the Father has gone out to find and recover His prodigal sons and daughters by giving up His one and only righteous Son, the Only-Begotten God in the flesh, even into death upon the Cross.  That incarnate Son, conceived and born of St. Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead and buried for your sins, He is the Father’s open heart of divine compassion.  He is the Father’s open arms of love and welcoming embrace.  In Him, the Father has come to retrieve His children.

That is the certainty and comfort of the Gospel, by which the Father reconciles you to Himself in Christ Jesus.  For He has so identified Himself with you, that He has become the Prodigal Son in His own flesh and blood.  He has taken the Father’s wealth into the far country of sin and death.  He has squandered it, as the scribes and pharisees accuse, on prostitutes, publicans, and sinners of all kinds.  He eats and drinks with them and thereby assumes responsibility for their sins and shares in their uncleanness, as though He were guilty of all the filthy deeds that they have done.

Not only with them and their sins, but with you and yours.  He has descended to the depths of the pig slop that you wallow in, to mire in your mess, to eat and drink with swine like you.  Not that He sins in any way; nor does He condone your sin, as though it were okay.  But what He does is all the more remarkable and astonishing.  For He who is the Holy One takes ownership of all your sins.  He makes them His own.  In fact, He not only bears them in His Body, but He becomes all your sins, in order to offer Himself as your Sin Offering, the Sacrifice of Atonement for your sins.

He has become your adultery and fornication; your gluttony and drunkenness; your rejection of parents and siblings; your laziness and lack of love.  He has become your selfishness and terribly poor stewardship, as though He were the one spending money beyond your means on luxuries and vices, while neglecting to support the Church and Ministry, the household and family of God, and refusing to care for your neighbor in his or her need on the pretense that you can’t afford to help.

He has become all of this and more, and He has suffered and died for all of it; He has sacrificed Himself to atone for all your sins, to put them to death in Himself and put an end to them in you.

He has suffered His Father’s just judgment, all His righteous wrath and anger against your sins.  He has died your death and the death of the whole world.  And by this willing sacrifice of His, all those sins that He bore in His Body to the Cross have been removed.  They cannot be considered or counted against you any longer.  All of your sins are dead and buried with His crucified body.

But now listen carefully: This Son who was dead has risen and, behold, He lives!  The One who died for you, in your place, bearing all your sins and the sins of the whole world, He has risen from the dead and returned to the Right Hand of His Father.  He has come back from the far country.  For He is the Author and Perfecter of the faith, and His Resurrection from the dead is your reconciliation to God.  Your sins are dead and gone, but in His Body you reside with the Father.

Again, this is your certainty and confidence.  This is the comfort of the Gospel.  For this is how the Father recalls you and receives you to Himself: He raises your Savior, Jesus, from the dead.

It is this reconciliation and joyful reception that you have heard described in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  It has already happened for the benefit of all the world, and so also for you, in the Person of the Son of God.  And it has become yours in your Holy Baptism.  There you have died to your sins, and so are you also raised with Christ to live and abide with the Father in peace.

It is right that you should remember and return to the significance of your Baptism by repenting of your sins.  It is good and right that you should confess your sins, according to God’s Word, to seek and receive the Holy Absolution that your Father speaks to you by His Son.  But it is not your apology that paves the way for your return.  It is not your hard work that makes you God’s child or provides you with a place in His Home and Family.  All of that is yours in Christ Jesus.

It is in Christ Jesus that your Father’s eye is upon you, even while you are yet so far away and lost to yourself.  He sees you in love.  His heart is moved with divine compassion for you.  And so it is that He does not wait for you to bring yourself back, but He runs out to meet you and to bring you in.  This is an extraordinary part of the story, that the Father should bear the reproach of His wayward son, and that He should embarrass Himself by hitching up His robes and running out to meet that young man who had so disrespected Him.  But this is the beautiful glory of the Gospel!

Your Father covers your shame with His own honor.  He robes you with His own Righteousness in Christ Jesus.  In Him, you are not filthy and unclean but radiant, holy, and pure.  The Spirit and the Sonship of the Son of God are yours by the grace of the Father.  He puts His signet ring on your finger to testify of your inheritance, as He has signed your forehead and your heart with the Cross of Christ in Holy Baptism.  He girds your feet with the Gospel of Peace, so that all your coming in and going out are preserved in His blessing of forgiveness.  He welcomes you to live by faith.

You need not earn His favor.  It is already yours.  He rejoices over you and with you, because you have died and risen with Christ Jesus, His beloved Son.  So has He sacrificed the Fattened Calf for you, which is to say that He offers a Sacrifice of Thanksgiving for you, in order to celebrate and feast, and not only to eat and drink with you, but to be the One who feeds you and refreshes you unto the life everlasting.  For Christ is not only the Sacrifice of Atonement, but also the Eucharist.  He is not only the Burnt Offering, but also the Peace Offering and the Passover Lamb.  He is your Strength and your Song, as the Scriptures declare, because He has become your Salvation.

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

In Mercy He Opens Your Eyes

In Jesus of Nazareth, all the Words and promises of God are fulfilled.

In Him, the new and greater Joshua has come to bring down the walls of Jericho, and great King David’s greater Son establishes the heavenly Jerusalem from which He reigns in mercy.

The ways and the means by which He goes about accomplishing His great work, however, are incomprehensible to sinful man — even to the Twelve, and so also to you, no less, though by His grace you have been called to follow Him as a disciple, and to fear, love, and trust in Him alone.

His Way of Life is incomprehensible to your fallen flesh and bones, to you sinful heart and mind, because it is the Way of the Cross, and you are blinded by your sin to the theology of His Cross.

Oh, you may now, in retrospect, readily acknowledge, confess, and give thanks for the death of Christ Jesus on the Cross.  Praise God!  But you are not so keen about the Cross in your own life.  It’s meaning is hidden from your human wisdom, from your native reason and strength.

Still, it is by the Cross that is laid upon you that the Lord calls you to repentance — to recognize your own poverty, your sin and death — and to call upon Him for mercy, for grace to help in time of need, and for the hope against all hope to see and believe that He has come to save you.

Thus did that poor blind beggar by the side of the road “see” more clearly than the disciples, and by the grace of God he would not let go the promise of the Gospel, the Word concerning Jesus.

Indeed, the same Lord Jesus Christ has mercy for all who call upon Him, who call upon Him in the Spirit and the Truth of His Word.  He has mercy upon you, and forgiveness of all your sins.

He has drawn near to you, not to condemn you for your unbelief, but to save you from yourself, from your sins, from death, and from the devil who would drag you into doubt and despair.  The Word of the Lord Jesus proclaims that He is here to help and heal you through His Holy Gospel.

It is He, not you, who is handed over to suffering and death for your sins, and for the sins of the whole world.  And it is by His Cross, by His atoning sacrifice, by the shedding of His holy and precious Blood, that He accomplishes your salvation.  So it is that His Resurrection on the Third Day becomes your daily resurrection from your ditch on the side of the road, until He shall raise you at the last from the dust and the dirt unto the life everlasting of your body and your soul.

Take it to heart, and trust that His gracious Word of the Gospel is calling you to Him.  And know that, as He does so, in His tender mercy and divine compassion for you, He also takes care of you and provides for your body and all its needs in this life, here and now and through all your days.

Not only that, but all the more so, He opens your eyes in faith, and He makes of you a disciple, so that you follow Him through death into His own divine Life with His God and Father in heaven.

In sickness and in health, in good times and bad, whether you live or whether you die, you are His own, and He is glorified in His mercy upon you.

So is He glorified even now, as He feeds you here at His Altar in this place with His Body and His Blood.  Taste and see that the Lord is good, and that His steadfast love for you endures forever!

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

The Lord Jesus Teaches You How to Pray

It is in His fatherly divine goodness and mercy toward you — because He knows what you need and daily and richly provides it — that the Lord your God has taught you and invited you to pray and has given you the very words with which to call upon His Name.  Such prayer is not by your own design, nor is it a matter of your ingenuity or cleverness.  It is a good and perfect gift from the Father of Light, who speaks to you by His Son in order to bestow His divine Wisdom upon you in fulfillment of His good and gracious Will for your life and salvation.  So does He teach you to come to Him as your own dear Father, boldly and confidently, through Jesus Christ your Savior.

Sharing His Cross and Resurrection by your Holy Baptism in His Name, your life is hidden with Christ in God.  In His Body and with His Blood you enter the Holy of Holies in the midst of His true Jerusalem, eternal in the heavens, and you stand before the true Ark of the Covenant to pray, praise, and give thanks to your God and Father in the confidence of His Word and promises.  That is where you stand at all times and in all places by faith in His Gospel, as a beloved child of God.

Because you thus pray to the Father in virtue of your Baptism into Christ Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer — like all Christian prayer, properly understood — is never a private prayer.  There is no such thing as a private Christian or private Christianity.  Even when you take it to the Lord in prayer in the solitude of your own home, you do so as a member of the Body of Christ, as a member of His holy catholic Church in heaven and on earth.  It is always our Father, and never simply my Father.

The use of the Our Father, in particular, along with other standard prayers, such as those in the Catechism and in the historic rites of the Liturgy, is a confession of the Church’s catholicity and of your connection to it.  The Our Father is part of our common language as Christians, that is, the special language we all speak as fellow citizens of our Father’s Kingdom.  For the Words we use — even before we begin to “understand” them intellectually — these Words that God has spoken and given for us to pray and confess — are Words that every Christian has received and speaks, a confession of the one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all.

The catholicity of the Our Father is demonstrated in the special importance attached to the Fifth Petition, that we be forgiven, as we forgive those who trespass against us, which Jesus reiterates in His teaching of the Our Father.  Since you pray in communion with the entire Church, in the unity of Christ, your relationship with others, especially with your fellow Christians, is an integral part of your prayer.  And, as a Christian, your relationships are defined chiefly by forgiveness.

You come before the Lord in prayer with repentance and a humble recognition of your sins; for you know that of yourself you are not worthy to stand in His presence, and that you do so only by His tender grace and mercy.  Each and every prayer that you bring to Him, therefore, presupposes and depends upon His forgiveness.

Thus do you fear the Lord your God in the true wisdom of repentant faith.  Which means that you live by listening to His Word, by calling upon His Name, and by relying on His gracious gifts and promises for all that you need.  And in this fear and faith of God, in His forgiveness of all your many sins, you are likewise called to forgive and gladly to do good to those who sin against you.

In much the same way, the Lord teaches you to pray the Our Father as a kind of discipline, as part of your ongoing catechesis and Christian discipleship.  For this prayer lifts your heart and mind above and beyond your own selfish cares and concerns to intercede for the whole Church, for all the baptized children of God, for all your brothers and sisters in Christ, wherever they may be in His vast Kingdom.  Everything you pray for in the Lord’s Prayer, you pray not only for yourself, but for all who call upon God as their Father, and for all whom He would call to be His children.

Indeed, the Our Father is truly an all-encompassing prayer.  Along with the forgiveness of sins, which you need the most, it includes everything you need for this body and life and for the life everlasting.  Nothing is excluded.  There is no situation or circumstance for which the Our Father is not ideally suited, nothing you might face which is not addressed in these seven Petitions.

Whenever you find yourself at a loss for words — and to be sure, you do not know of yourself how to pray as you should — yet, you have divine wisdom in this Prayer that your Lord Himself has given you.  For though your heart and mind are never as pious or as focused as they should be in this life on earth, your lips are here guided by the Word of God Himself.  So does the Holy Spirit also pray with you in this Word of Christ, as He is always praying for you in your sinful weakness.

When you pray and intercede for others, too — for your family and friends, for the Church, for those who are sick — again, the Lord’s Prayer is always most appropriate, a prayer for all seasons.

By no means should you ever suppose that you have nothing to say, nor worry that you aren’t creative or clever enough to pray.  Rather, in the humility of repentance, and in the confidence of faith, pray and speak as the Lord Jesus has taught you:  “Our Father who art in heaven. . . .”

In such wisdom, the Lutheran Church has always included the Our Father in all of her orders of service — whether simple or elaborate, both short and long alike.  And you should know from the Small Catechism that Dr. Luther instructs the head of the house to include the Our Father in the daily prayers of his family — in the morning and at night, and both before and after every meal.

In short, as God’s own child, baptized into Christ, you cry out, “Abba! Father!” to your God and Father in heaven.  Do not take offense at the comparison, but you are thus like an infant or toddler learning how to speak, babbling “Dadda, Dadda, Dadda,” over and over throughout your days with the grateful affection of a little child for the very dear Father who loves and cares for you.

After all, the same Lord has actually called you to become like a little child and, as such, to receive and enter into His Kingdom by His grace alone through faith in His Gospel.

So, too, in praying the Our Father with your own sons and daughters, and by teaching them to pray in this way, you pass on more than just a single prayer.  You actually teach them how to speak the Word of God with the language of faith.  You teach them the most basic pattern of true worship.

In fact, the Our Father encompasses the entire scope of Christian worship.  It is the gracious Word of Christ to you and to His Church on earth.  Hence, it is His good work and gracious gift.  For this precious thing is not of your own fabrication or design, nor is it anything that you could ever have thought up or imagined.  Like all Divine Service, it comes to you from God.  And when you pray in this manner, it does not cease to be His Word and His work in you.  Not that your praying is the Gospel or a means of grace, but the Word itself — with which the Lord Jesus opens your lips to call upon the Father in His Name — it is a gift of His pure Gospel and His grace.  He thus bestows His righteousness upon you from heaven, in order to raise you up in faithfulness from the ground.

Your praying of the Our Father, in turn, is therefore a genuine good work of faith, a sacrifice of repentance and thanksgiving, and an act of worship in Spirit and Truth.  That is to say, you worship God the Father in the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, His Son, by means of His Word of Truth.

You entrust yourself to Him, your body and soul and all that you have, as a whole burnt offering.  You give thanks for all His gifts and benefits in the sure and certain hope of the Gospel.  And you gather up your neighbors in love to share with you in the grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God.

So it is that the Our Father functions as an integral part of the Church’s morning and evening sacrifice, arising before the Lord as the holy incense of faith, which is pleasing to Him.  And in the daily prayers of your home and family, it is likewise the summary and conclusion of all your petitions and intercessions, covering all for which the Lord your God would have you pray.

And in the celebration of the Sacrament of the Altar, it is a sacrifice of thanksgiving for our Lord Jesus Christ, and a petition that our Father in heaven would pour out His Spirit upon His people, His Church; that by His grace we would believe His Word, and recognize the Body and Blood of Christ in the bread and wine, and so receive this Bread of Life and His Cup of Salvation in true faith and to our abundant blessing, and bring forth the fruits thereof in our lives.  Indeed, we pray in this way in the confidence that He does all these things according to His Word and promise.

Bear in mind, in all of this, that Christian prayer is not a button or a cord that you push or pull for service from the Lord, as though He were a household servant instead of your dear Father in heaven, or as though He were not already (even without your prayer) daily and richly providing you with all good things — solely out of His fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in you.  Surely He gives daily bread to all people, even to the wicked, and He causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on both the evil and the good.  But as for you, pray that He would grant you the wisdom of a listening heart to recognize His fatherly hand in all His gifts of body and soul, and to rely on Him alone, trusting not in yourself but in Christ and His mercy.

Pray to your Father in heaven, as the Lord Jesus has taught you to pray, for much the same reason and with the same mind that you go to Church and receive His Holy Sacrament.  Not because you feel like it, but also and especially when you don’t!  Not because you thereby do some great favor for the Lord.  And not as though you were somehow worthy of yourself to stand before Him.

But pray to Him — and pray the Our Father, in particular — because He has commanded you to pray in this way; because He has promised to hear and answer your prayer with a resounding “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ Jesus; and because you need His gracious mercy and forgiveness every day.

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

Repent and Bear the Fruits of Christ

The Lord has planted you in His Vineyard by your Baptism into Christ Jesus.  He has brought you out of Egypt and grafted you into the fellowship of His Church.  And even now, on your journey through the desert, He is with you, caring for you, providing for you, and keeping His Covenant with you.  He is your great God and Savior, and by His grace you are one of His own people.

But what good are you doing in the Vineyard of the Lord?  What fruits are you producing?

Do not look around to compare yourself to your neighbor.  How and what he may be doing and producing is not the standard by which you are measured.  You and he both answer to one Lord, one Master, but you are not your neighbor, and your neighbor is not you.  By the same token, do not presume to weigh your successes against your neighbor’s sufferings, nor vice versa, as though such outward experiences in this body and life were any indication of where you stand with God.

To live by faith in the promises of God, and in loving obedience to His commands, that is the only standard that concerns you.  What you do matters.  But apart from faith it is no righteousness in the sight of God; it is not the fruit that He requires of His Vineyard.  On the other hand, faith in the heart will not remain, nor is it actually faith in the Word of the Lord, if it does not bear the fruits of love.  A so-called faith without works is dead.  But works devoid of faith and love are empty.

Outward appearances are thus deceptive and uncertain, though not to God who knows the heart.

Suffering, too, is no decisive indication of faithfulness or sin, of righteousness or wickedness.  It may be the discipline of the Lord, who in love calls sinners to repentance.  Or it may be the glory of His Cross, borne by His disciples who follow after Him in holy faith and holy love.  The point is not that you should attempt to decipher and discern the why and wherefore of your neighbor’s suffering, but that you must repent of your own sins, lest you perish in your unbelief; and that you should bear the Cross in patience, and hope in the Lord, and care for your neighbor in his need.

There is no arguing the matter.  There can be no legitimate debate, nor any excuse for your lack of love.  The Lord’s own judgment is clear and unequivocal, that all have sinned and fallen short of His glory and His righteousness.  So, if you do perceive your neighbor’s sins, or if you see that he is suffering the consequences of his sins, you should there recognize the evidence of your own shortcomings and predicament.  The Word of Jesus is blunt: Unless you repent, you will perish.

The fact that you do not believe it, that you do not fear God and take His warning seriously, is all the more reason for which you must repent.

But what exactly is repentance?  What does it look like?  And how are you supposed to do it?

Our young catechumens will correctly tell you that repentance is to be turned around away from your sins back to God.  It is to be turned away from the path of death to the Way of Life in Christ.  Which means dying to yourself and living unto God in the righteousness of faith and love.

To repent is more than simply feeling badly, guilty, or ashamed, all of which can stem as much or more from unbelief as from the fear of God, especially if you persist in doing what you know to be wrong.  Deliberately to sin is neither safe nor right, and it is certainly not repentance but the very opposite.  Rather, to repent is to cease doing evil, to resist your temptations and addictions, and to flee for help against them instead of giving yourself over to your weaknesses.  It is to make amends where you are able, to fix what you have broken, to pay back what you have borrowed or taken, and to apologize for whatever harm you have caused, even if you are not able to undo it.

And to repent is not only to keep your nose clean, but to begin doing what is good and right — not according to your own imagination, but according to the Word of the Lord and your station in life.

So, repentance is fairly simple and straightforward.  It is no strange mystery.  And yet, it is the hardest thing for you to do and the most painful experience for you to undergo, because it does involve the death of who you are and of all that you have prized in your heart and in your life.  But such repentance is actually nothing you are able to do or bring about by your own power, precisely because you are the problem.  Your heart and mind, your flesh and spirit are at odds with the Word and will of God.  Despite your extravagant self love, you are your own worst enemy, because you resist and run away from the Way of the Lord, which is the way of righteousness and life.

You cannot turn yourself around.  You are not able to die to yourself, even though you’re already dead in your trespasses and sin.  Neither can you raise yourself from death to life, nor can you heal yourself.  You do not become a fruitful and productive tree by trying harder to do better: Trying and better are not the righteousness that God requires; they only serve to betray your failure.  Of course, that is no reason to give up or do worse, either.  You can and should discipline yourself, your actions and behavior, for God’s sake, and for your neighbor’s sake, if not for your own.  But you cannot break the death grip that sin has on your body and soul from the very depths of you.

Adorning your dead branches with fresh fruits would not address the underlying futility, which comes down to this: Instead of faith and love, you are driven by idolatrous lust and selfish greed.  You not only crave what God has not given, but you indulge yourself in what He has forbidden.  And when you are warned of the danger and called to repentance, you excuse yourself, sometimes on the pretense of the Gospel itself, and you grumble and complain against the Lord’s watchman.  But if you presume to protect your pet sins and to hide your unbelief by redoubling your efforts to do and say everything else just right, to be overly polite, and to obtain approval on every other front, you have only managed to whitewash your tomb.  You are still a dead and useless tree.

Do not blame God, and do not argue that He is unfair.  He has done everything that could be done for you and for His Vineyard.  He feeds you with Manna from heaven.  He quenches your thirst with Water from the Rock.  He clothes you and protects you.  He cares for you in every way.

And yet, for all of that, instead of figs and grapes and the good fruits of faith and love that He has every right to expect from your heart and life, from your words and actions, there are only weeds pretending to be wheat, and thorns and thistles infesting the ground.  You’re taking up space, but you’re wasting the soil, the sun, and the rain that your God and Father in heaven freely provides.

For all of this that is lacking, and for all that is wrong, He calls you to repentance, and to bring forth the fruits worthy of repentance.  But of yourself, you cannot and do not repent.

If you are to be saved and not perish, and if you are to remain in the Lord’s Vineyard and become fruitful, there must be some other remedy than personal rehab or strategies of self-improvement.  For there is no righteousness of your own that will ever be able to rescue or redeem you from the axe and from the fire.  Thanks be to God, His Gospel is a different and far better Word than that.

As the Lord alone is righteous and holy, and as there is no might of man that could save you, He has come down from heaven in love to become your righteousness and holiness by grace alone.  He has produced the fruits of holy faith and perfect love on your behalf and in your stead.  And in the Lord Jesus Christ the entire Vineyard is fruitful to the glory of God, to the praise of His divine mercy, and to the great benefit of His people.  He has lived righteously, in order to give you life.

But that is not all that He has done.  For it remains the case that, unless you repent, you will perish.  There must yet be your death to sin, to yourself and your idolatry, and the new life that is lived in faith and love, in heart and mind, in body and soul.  You must pass through the water, through the cloud and the sea, out of your slavery to sin and death, into the true freedom of the sons of God.

Therefore, Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son, has also suffered your repentance for you, and He has thereby opened the way of repentance to you and to all by His Cross and Resurrection.  It was for this, indeed, that He submitted Himself to St. John’s Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  From those waters of the Jordan to His Cross and Passion, He bore in His Body the sins of the world, including all of your sins, in order to suffer and die the death of sin within Himself, to break its powerful hold on you, to rob it of all claims against you, and to bring you to repentance.

He is the truly righteous Galilean, whose blood was shed under Pontius Pilate, not against His will, but as the Lord’s own voluntary sacrifice of Atonement for all the sons and daughters of Adam. He has thus made satisfaction for your sins and reconciled you to His God and Father in heaven, so you are not removed and cast away from His presence, but you abide in peace in His Vineyard.

The tower of God’s righteous wrath and judgment has fallen upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is quieted.  By the stripes across His back, by the scars upon His hands and feet and in His side, you are spared, you are rescued, and you are raised up from the dust and the dirt.  For He has perished in your stead.  Though He alone was fruitful, He was cut down and thrown into the fire for your failures, so that you should obtain mercy and be given the time and opportunity for repentance.

By the watchmen whom He calls and sends to you in His Name and stead, He calls you to repent, to become His disciple, to take up His Cross and follow Him through death into life everlasting.

This preaching of His Cross, of repentance and forgiveness, of faith and life in Him, accomplishes in you what you could never have done or managed on your own.  His Word puts you to death, to be sure, but so does it also preserve and protect your body and soul, your heart, mind, and spirit in His own crucified and risen Body.  For He who suffered and died on your behalf, bearing all your sins in His holy and innocent flesh, has also risen from the dead and lives and reigns forever.

Because His Bloodshed on the Cross has indeed made Atonement for the sins of the world, His death has not only sufficed as a substitute for yours, but it has actually conquered the power of death over you and all who believe and are baptized into Christ.  His Resurrection from the dead is the Father’s justification of His Son.  It is therefore also your righteousness by faith in Him.

It is into this faith and righteousness of Christ, into His holiness and life, that you are brought by the preaching of His Gospel, and by His Holy Spirit through the Gospel.  Which is to say that you are brought to repentance and to faith in Christ by His Spirit through His Word of forgiveness.

That Word of the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe — and it bestows that very faith which it calls for — because it bears and conveys the power of the Cross of Christ.

It is by His Cross that you are cultivated, and with the Fruits of His Cross that you are fertilized, unto repentance, unto the righteousness of faith and love, and unto the life everlasting with God.  For your sins are not counted against you, but the righteousness and life of Christ are now yours.

Though you journey for now through the wilderness, you are planted in the Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts, and you abide in Him, and you thrive as a fruitful tree after the same kind as the Cross.

Here, too, appearances are deceptive and uncertain, and the wisdom of the world will fall short and fail you.  The Cross is not outwardly impressive.  It does not look like the living and life-giving Tree that it is.  And when you bear and suffer the Cross as a disciple of the Lord Jesus, it seems that God would cut you down and cast you away because of your sins.

But take heart.  At all times and in all places, repent, and believe the Gospel.  For the scandalous Cross of Christ does not damn you but saves you.  The Lord your God does not destroy you but bears the good fruits of faith and love in you.  And so shall you not perish but live for Jesus’ sake.

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

The Shepherd Saves the Sheep

The Lord Jesus calls you to Himself in love to hear His Word and to receive His gifts.  He calls you by His Word and Spirit to draw near to Him.  Not with any righteousness of your own — for you are sinful and unclean — but in repentance: in sorrow and contrition for your sins, but also in the faith and confidence of His mercy.  For He does not condone your sins, but He does forgive you all your sins by His grace alone, by His Word of the Gospel.

So it is that He has sought you out and found you when you were a lost and lonely sheep, far away from God, in danger of death and damnation.  The Lord Jesus is the Man who would do such a thing, who has in fact done so in order to save you from yourself, from sin, death, and the devil.

He has come down from heaven and taken all your sin and guilt upon Himself.  He has borne it in His own Body to the Cross, where He has laid down His life and given Himself for you entirely, shedding His Blood to atone for your sins, to rescue and redeem you from death and the grave.

The Shepherd gives His life and dies for His lost and wandering sheep.  Your Savior dies for you.

And because His innocent suffering and death has made atonement and propitiation for your sins, and He has thereby conquered death and robbed the devil of his power, so has He also risen from the dead and taken up His life again, that you should have abundant life with God in Him.

In His Resurrection and Ascension, He raises you up from the dust of the earth; He lays you upon His own broad shoulders; and He brings you home, rejoicing, to His God and Father in heaven.

All of this He has done, not only for you, but for the life and salvation of all people by His grace.  And as He has called you by the Gospel and brought you into the household and family of His Church, His holy Bride, so do you rejoice with Him over the repentance and forgiveness of your fellow sinners, and you give thanks to God for each and every one of the lost who are thus found.

Not only that, but as a member of His Bride, within your own vocations and stations in life — by the Light of Christ, which is the Word of His Gospel — you also search for the lost in order to bring them into their own place in the household and family of God.  How could you do otherwise?

In particular, if there are those who have been your fellow members of the Body of Christ, who have been baptized and catechized as disciples of the Lord Jesus, who by their sins have drifted or run away and gotten themselves lost, should you not seek them out and call them home again?

With whatever broom is placed into your hands, that is to say, in whatever place the Lord has put you, with whatever skills He has given to you, search out those who are missing and restore them to the life of the Church on earth, that they too might share in the joys and gladness of heaven.

Do not despise your neighbor whom Christ loves.  And do not hold your neighbor’s trespasses against him.  For you also are a sheep who loves to wander.  You also have sinned and drifted into places where you ought not be.  You also would be lost, were it not for the Shepherd’s mercy.

And though He has called you to Himself, you are not immune to temptation and sin even now.  But you abide in the House of God by His Word of the Gospel and by the grace of His Holy Spirit.

So do not be angry, embittered, or harsh with those who are caught by their sins in grave danger.  But first of all, today and every day, repent of your own sins, and by faith give thanks for the grace and mercy of your Good Shepherd.  And rejoicing in His salvation, forgive as you are forgiven.

Draw near to those who are far away, and draw them to Christ by your words and good example.

And as for you, here and now, draw near in this place, at this Altar, to the Man who receives sinners to Himself, including you; who not only eats with them but feeds them with Himself.

For here indeed He gives to you His Body to eat, and He pours out His Blood for you to drink, for the forgiveness of all your sins, unto the life everlasting in Him.

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

Finding Your Place with God in Christ

We cannot remember and rejoice in St. Matthias, the Apostle, without recalling and mourning for Judas, that wretched Apostle whom he replaced, who sold out the Lord for thirty pieces of silver.

Like everyone else, Judas was looking for peace and rest.  But what he found was only despair.  In guilt and shame, anxiety and fear, he ended his own life in a suicide of soul and body.  In doing so, he abandoned his vocation and office and went to his own place of death and destruction.  Hence the sobering Word of Jesus, that it would have been better for that man had he never been born.

How is it with you?  Are you also looking for safety and security but failing to discover it?

Whatever the particulars of your situation, you do carry a heavy load, and you do get tired, surely, because you are crushed by sin and death, and you are tempted constantly to look for life and love in all the wrong places.  Yet, there is no real life or true love, nor any lasting peace and rest, until you rest in God your Creator by faith in Christ Jesus your Lord.  Apart from Him, your homestead and your household are desolate even while they persist, and you will not abide in them for long.

Examine yourself honestly, therefore, and ask yourself: How have you gone about seeking relief and satisfaction?  Is it by your own wisdom, works, and ingenuity?  You won’t find rest that way, because you won’t find God that way.  And it will not work for you to find or make “a place” for God in your life.  But, no, your place and your life must be found entirely and only in Him.

So, for example, with respect to your vocation and your place in the world, it is not the case that your calling and stations are means by which you are to achieve and obtain a life for yourself.  They are rather the way you are given to live the life that is yours by the grace of God, wherever He has put you and positioned you in relation to others.

But do you, then, go about your vocation and stations in life in faith and love, being content and at peace with God and with His good gifts of body and soul?  Or do you actually strive to make a life for yourself, a name and a place for yourself, whether by the manipulation and misuse of your office, or by moving outside of your God-given place in search of that which He has not given?

Are you driven by the pursuit of wealth or by the lusts and passions of your flesh?  By ambitions of fortune and fame?  By recreation and pleasure?  Or simply by a desire to be left alone?  What is your personal Tower of Babel, your stairway to heaven?  For what do you sell out the Lord?

The fact still remains, that you’ll not find what you’re looking for, not really — you’ll not find life and love, nor peace and rest — not apart from the Lord your God.  And you won’t find God by any wisdom, reason, strength, or intelligence of your own.  Indeed, you’ll not find God at all till He finds you and addresses you with His Word, His Law and His Gospel.  You’ll not find Him at all, except as He reveals Himself and gives Himself to you in the flesh and blood of Christ Jesus.

So He has, and so He does.  But how?

The one true God has hidden Himself and His righteousness from the prying eyes of fallen man.  He has hidden Himself and His Kingdom from the wise and intelligent, from the grown-ups and the self-accomplished, from the independent do-it-yourself-ers.

But He reveals and gives Himself to the nursing babies, to infants and toddlers, to the handicapped and simple-minded, who are so small and weak and utterly dependent on others to care for them.

And so does He reveal and give Himself, likewise, to those who are like little children — that is, to those who are reduced to nothing in contrition and repentance, who live by faith alone in the providence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Father makes known the Son, and the Son makes known the Father, to those who by the Holy Spirit recognize their sin, their weakness, and their utter need for everything, and who by grace believe the Word and promises of God, that He will help and save them in His mercy, forgive them all their sins, and give them life with Himself.

That is how the true God is, and that is how He deals with you — for Jesus’ sake.  It is the good pleasure and the gracious good will of God that He makes Himself known in love; that He bestows life and salvation, not to the great and powerful, but to the One who is gentle and humble.

Which means, in the first place — and everything else pertaining to life and godliness depends on this point — that the one true God is both hidden and revealed in Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son, crucified, risen from the dead, and ascended to the Right Hand of the Father in heaven.  For He has come in mercy, in meekness and compassion, to lay down His body and life for your salvation.

This one Lord Jesus Christ, and He alone, reveals the Father to you by His grace.  He does it by His Word and in His own Body of flesh and blood.  He does it by His Means of Grace through the Ministry of His Gospel, wherein your Savior and your God is both hidden from your senses and revealed to faith alone: from the waters of His Baptism to the fruits of His Cross and Resurrection.

Indeed, that is the very point and purpose of the holy office which Judas abandoned and to which St. Matthias was called and ordained by the Lord (as a precursor and prerequisite to Pentecost): That by the apostolic doctrine and fellowship, by the Ministry of the Word, and in the Breaking of the Bread, you should know the Lord Jesus and belong to Him as a member of His Body.

Now, then, are you weak and weary, weighed down, and burdened?  Do not deny that you are — by your sin and its consequences, by your mortality and the perishing of your flesh.  But do not despair or lose heart, either!  Rather, repent of your sins, and come to Jesus.  Take His yoke upon you.  Learn from Him the Way of Life and of Love everlasting.

Sounds good, right?  But where and how do you do this?  What does it even mean, exactly?  And what does it look like in actual practice to believe in Jesus Christ your Lord and come to Him?

It is a passive activity.  An active passivity.  It is not what you accomplish, but what you receive.

Hear and heed the preaching of the Word of Christ.  Listen to Him!  That is the key, as the Father has told you on the Mountain, and as the Father now speaks to you by His Son.

Receive and make use of the good gifts that Christ Jesus freely gives you by the Ministry of His Gospel in His Church.  You won’t save yourself by the good work of going to Church, as those who don’t go often protest.  But it’s a start.  And it’s far more certain that you won’t save yourself by not going.  For it is within the life of the Church in the Means of Grace that the Father reveals the Son and pours out the Spirit upon you in Him, and the Son brings you to the Father in Himself.

So give attention to His preaching and teaching, and follow Him by faith in His Word.  Confess and pray what He has spoken.  Remember your Baptism, and bring your children to be baptized, to be taught, and to practice what the Lord Jesus has commanded.  Live content wherever He has stationed you in this body and life, doing whatever it is He has given you to do there in love for Him and for your neighbors.  Carry out your duties faithfully, in obedience to His Word, trusting that He forgives your failings and raises you daily from death to righteousness and life in Him.

What all of this means, and what it looks like, to say it simply, is received in and with the Cross of Christ.  As He Himself was crucified, dead, and buried, and as St. Matthias and almost all of the Apostles were martyred for their confession of Christ, so are you also put to death in order to live.

You are crucified with Christ by daily contrition and repentance to begin with.  So also do you bear the burdens of your office, and you suffer the sin and sorrows of your neighbors.  And perhaps you will be persecuted in some sense.  In various ways, you share the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But how can He describe that Cross as a light and easy burden?  What kind of rest is that?

Well, dear friend of Jesus, it is peace and rest for your soul, even in the midst of adversity, and it shall be the resurrection of your body, as well, at the last and forevermore.  For in His own gentle humility, even unto death, Christ Jesus has atoned for your sins, conquered death, and reconciled you to the Father in heaven by the way and means of His Cross.

And in His Resurrection and Ascension, He has established a place for you, a home and a family in His Church, in heaven and on earth.  Here and now, under the Cross and from the Cross, He gives to you His good gifts: Apostles and Prophets in His Holy Scriptures, pastors and teachers in His Pulpit and at His Altar, to serve you with the Gospel of His Atonement and His Righteousness, to forgive you all your sins in His Name and stead, and to give you Peace and Rest in His Body.

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

Blessed Is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord

“Life is tough, and then you die.”  That’s a bit cynical, maybe even snarky.  But, apart from Christ, that is all the reality that you would ever know: a tough life, then death.  And as you confess, that is all that you have earned and deserved by your sins — both temporal and eternal punishment.

Christ Jesus really is the one and only solution to that brutal reality.  Remarkably, though, He has brought about the remedy by making the same reality His own.  His Life was tough, and then He died.  In the footsteps of the Prophets He suffered persecution, rejection, and ridicule, and then He laid down His Body and Life in the Holy City of Jerusalem.  He offered Himself up in sacrifice upon the Cross, confident that by His death He would obtain the victory of life with God.  Not for His own benefit, but for you and all people.  His Cross is not the end, but the beginning of a life with no more suffering, no more sorrow, no more sickness, and no more death.

Now, in the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke there are three definitive milestone points on the journey of Christ Jesus from the Father in heaven and back to the Father again: His Baptism in the Jordan River, His Transfiguration on the Mountain, and His Cross and Resurrection in Jerusalem.  Connecting these three points in seamless continuity is the Ministry of Jesus in His preaching and His miracles, in all that He began to do and teach for the salvation of the world.

All of this is really of one piece, a single event comprising the passage of Jesus from heaven to earth, to the Cross and Tomb, and from death into life in His Resurrection and Ascension to the Right Hand of the Father.  It is all summed up already in His Baptism.  As He says to His disciples at one point, refering to His Cross and Passion, He had a “Baptism” that He must undergo.

That “Baptism” was confirmed in His Transfiguration.  And from that point onward Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem.  He came down and made a bee-line, as it were, to His sacrificial death.  It was on that leg of His journey that the Pharisees approached Him to warn Him about Herod.

What they were thinking is rather beside the point.  Regardless of their intentions, on the surface at least the Pharisee’s advice presented yet another temptation to our Lord Jesus Christ.  They were urging Him to avoid suffering and death, to seek protection and safety instead of following the Way that had been set before Him, and to rely upon Himself instead of trusting His Father alone.

Jesus recognized the temptation for what it was, and He rejected it out of hand.  His first concern, in any case, was never His own safety but the salvation of the world.  He knew why He had come, and what He would necessarily do and suffer for the Word and Will of God.  His Ministry would lead inevitably to His death upon the Cross in Jerusalem.  So neither Satan nor Herod, neither the Pharisees nor anyone else would alter His course.  But on the way, as He journeyed to His Cross and Passion, He anticipated in His Life and Ministry the salvation that He had come to bring.

We often speak of “giving things up for Lent” in memory of our Lord, and in repentance, as a kind of self-discipline.  But as for Christ Jesus, on His way to the Cross He was “taking things on.”  He took on the demons who possessed the people He had come to save.  He took on the curse of sin and sin itself.  He took on sickness and disease, suffering and sorrow, and finally death itself.

The Lord Jesus Christ was like a giant sponge sweeping across the land on His Way to Jerusalem, soaking up all the stuff that separated His creatures from their Creator, absorbing it into Himself, into His own flesh, until He should finally wring Himself out and put it all to death in His Body.

And the miracles of Christ testify to the gracious presence of God in the flesh of this Man.  They are the evidence and realization of His Gospel, of forgiveness and life and salvation in Christ.  For He does what He does because of who He is, the Lord your God who has come to be your Savior.

The healings He accomplishes, both then and now, embrace both the healing of physical ailments and illnesses and the spiritual healing of forgiveness.  He restores the creation, both inside and out, in its relationship to the Holy Triune God.  All things are set free and made brand new in Him.

And all of this is made possible by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.  That is the perfection of who He is and what He does.  He assumes the world’s bondage on the Cross, He buries it all with Himself in the tomb, and He releases all of creation into life by His Resurrection on the Third Day.

Ah, yes, there it is: The “Third Day” is when He will reach His goal, when He will be perfected for the sake of the salvation of the world.  Two more days of travel, of healing, and then He will enter Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday,” on the cusp of Holy Week.  He will enter the city as the King of the Jews, the Blessed One who comes in the Name of the Lord to reign from His Tree of death.

And that Third Day becomes an entire week, the work of the New Creation, comprehending His Cross and Tomb, His Exodus through death into life, and His Resurrection from the dead on the following Sunday.  In retrospect, that Day of the Resurrection is the “Third Day” above all others, as you know from the Holy Gospels and as you confess with the Church in the Creeds.  Yet, we dare not separate Easter from Good Friday, nor the Resurrection from the Cross and Passion.

As the Lord’s entire life and ministry was one long Baptism into His own Cross and Resurrection, so all of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday into Easter, is one long Day by which the Lord Jesus Christ reaches His goal and returns to the Father.  From the waters of the Jordan, from the heights of the Mountain, He comes in the Name of the Lord to His Cross and Passion, to death and the grave, into the Resurrection and the life everlasting, in order to bring you with Him into Paradise.  He delivers you from sin, death, and hell, and He brings you into the Holy of Holies in Himself.

Because it was for this purpose that He had come, Jesus could not just go away and conduct His business elsewhere or otherwise.  His entire life was governed and guided entirely by the Word and Will of God.  Just as you are also called to live and die by faith in the Word and promises of God.

Though you are often faithless and unbelieving — cowardly when you ought to be courageous, and bold and belligerent when you ought to be humble and kind — Jesus Christ remains faithful at all times and in all places, even unto death.  And like the Prophets before Him and the Apostles who would follow, His faithfulness brings Him persecution, rejection, suffering, and the Cross.

Take note that it is the Holy City of God, Jerusalem, His Old Testament Church, which rejects and puts to death the Prophets and Apostles.  And be on guard against that same wicked temptation and sinful proclivity within your own heart, mind, and life — church-going Christian though you are.  Do not reject the Lord Jesus Himself as He now comes to you in the Ministry of His Gospel.

It’s easy enough to point fingers at the “world,” at those outside the Church, at those who never come.  And to be sure, they will be held accountable by God for their rejection of His Word, for their false belief and blasphemy.  Nevertheless, it was not the world but the Church that rejected the Lord Jesus and handed Him over to death; that stoned His Prophets and killed His Apostles.

Beginning with the synagogue of His own hometown of Nazareth, and ending with Jerusalem itself, it was those who were called and chosen to be God’s people who rejected Him in the flesh.

Guard yourself, then, again such tragic rejection of your Savior and Lord.  Stop placing your trust and confidence in your own plans and purposes, and submit yourself instead to His Word.  Call upon His Name, as He has taught you how to pray.  Give thanks and confess Him bravely in the face of the Cross.  Remember that you are baptized, and that your Baptism into Christ is also for life, even unto death.  Repent and believe the Gospel.  Every day.  Confess your sins, and seek His Absolution.  Do not make a god out of your belly by working for the food that perishes, by glutting yourself with more than your body needs, or by medicating yourself with alcohol.  Fast in the fear and faith of the Lord.  Discipline yourself.  Let your true Feast be the Body and Blood of Christ.

You will not save yourself, not by any means.  You cannot even receive the Lord Jesus in faith by your own efforts or striving.  Neither will you reach the goal for which you have been created by sinning.  Indeed, all of your sins, from the inside out, are a rejection of the Lord and His gracious gifts of Life.  Your salvation is found, not in yourself, not even in your piety and prayers, but solely in the Ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And that Ministry of His is rooted in this fact, that He has voluntarily taken all of your sins upon Himself and has suffered your death and damnation.

In fulfillment of the entire Old Testament, of all the Law and Prophets, He suffered and died in Jerusalem.  For He is the One who is greater than Moses and Elijah and all who came before Him, as we have already heard from the Voice of the Father on the majestic Mountain.  He is the great High Priest above all others.  His Body and Blood are the Sacrifice that atones for the sins of the world and reconciles man to God.  His crucified and risen Body is the Temple of God among men.

The Word of Jesus this morning thus anticipates what He will soon accomplish in Jerusalem by His innocent suffering and death — and what His Cross will then mean for that once great city.

The crown jewel of Jerusalem was the Temple, and the whole purpose of that Temple of stone was to prepare the people for the coming of Christ, their Savior.  Once He had come in the flesh and accomplished His great Salvation by the Priesthood and Sacrifice of His Cross, the role and reason for the Temple were completed.  The early Jewish Christians still praised God in the Temple while it stood, but they did so with thanks for the Word fulfilled in the flesh of Christ.  For His Sacrifice, His Blood, the Altar of His Cross, the Incense of His prayer and intercession, and the Temple of His Body — these are now the Sacred Things of Yahweh Sabaoth.  His Name and Glory abide wherever in the world Christ is preached and His Supper is celebrated in remembrance of Him.

So it was that, after thirty-something years of transition from the Old Testament to the New, the Lord brought about His divine judgment upon Jerusalem by means of the Roman army.  The city and the temple were destroyed.  And though the city was eventually rebuilt, the temple has not been.  Indeed, to restore the temple and its services would be a further blasphemy against Christ.

Again, the point and purpose of the Temple in the first place, and the point to its destruction, is that Christ alone is the true House of God.  He is the true Priest, the true Sacrifice, and the true Temple, because He is both God and Man, the Word of God made Flesh, who now dwells among us in His Body and Blood.  The old temple was destroyed because the new Temple has been established in the Person of Christ Jesus.  He is the House that is left to all the sons and daughters of Jerusalem, that is to say, to all the people of God, His Holy Church in heaven and on earth, forevermore.

All the more profound and mysterious is that Jesus has become the House of God, for you and for all, by first of all submitting Himself to become the Desolate One upon the Cross.  It is the priestly Sacrifice of Himself in Jerusalem that constitutes His identity as the true Temple.  Indeed, it is only in His desolation that “Jerusalem” is saved and able to dwell in safety under the wings of the Lord.

St. Luke writes that all of this occurred “in that very Hour.”  He thus connects the Word of Jesus on this occasion to what He has just said concerning the heavenly Banquet, to which disciples from all nations will be invited, although many of the biological children of Abraham will tragically exclude themselves in unbelief.  Elsewhere in the Gospel, the “Hour” also refers significantly to the Banquet of the Lord’s Supper, especially in its close connection to the Cross and Resurrection.

Which is to say that, here and now for you, the Ministry of Jesus — His healing and release of your body and soul from sin and death, His Word of forgiveness and life, and the Fruits of His Cross and Passion — all of this is handed over to you, it is perfected for you, in this banqueting Hour of His Holy Communion.  This is the Third Day in which He reaches His goal in giving Himself to you, that you should be forgiven all your sins, rescued from death and the devil, and made brand new in His Body and His Blood.  Here at His Altar He comes into His Holy City, on earth in His Supper as it in heaven at the Right Hand of His Father.  So it truly is meet, right, and salutary that you should thus sing: Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!

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