Whether a person knows God or not, everyone desires love. They may not know what love is, and they may be looking for love in all the wrong places, but you and all have been created for Love — for the sake of Love — to be loved by God in Christ, and to love both Him and your neighbor.
As I mentioned last week in speaking of Agape, real Love is more than a feeling. It is a passion, to be sure, but not the passion of selfish lust; it is the passion of self-sacrifice, which is willing to suffer and die for the sake of another. That is the sort of Love for which you have been created; for that is the Love with which the Lord has created you and loved you and given Himself for you.
As a human being, a man or a woman, you are created in the Image and Likeness of God to love and care for one another as the Lord your God loves and cares for you in Christ Jesus. Indeed, you are called and commanded to love your neighbor as Christ Jesus loves you in His tender mercy and with His free forgiveness; and not only that, but, as we heard last Sunday, you are to love even your enemies, to pray for those who persecute you, and to forgive those who trespass against you.
As a Christian, insofar as it depends on you, you are to be at peace with all people; to forgive, as you are forgiven, and to do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household and family of God. And of course, that begins with your own household and family — with your father and mother, with your brothers and sisters, with your own husband or wife, and with your children. And if you are left without a family of your own, your love begins here within your congregation, and it extends from here to your immediate neighbors, to your classroom or your workplace.
Everyone longs to be loved, as I have said, whether they can put a name to it or not. Everyone is created to receive the Love of God, and to love the Lord and their neighbors in turn. Our hearts and minds, bodies and souls are restless and uneasy, aimless and out of sorts, until they settle into that life of Love, which is from God and found in Him alone, in the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus.
To live and abide in love is to be at peace with others, to rest in your own place in communion with those the Lord has stationed around you, graciously giving and receiving without keeping score or counting the cost. It is to build a house and make a home and to share it with your neighbors.
But would you build a house of love that will last? Would you build such a house that will abide and remain, not only for this lifetime, but beyond death and the grave? No, your home and family are not forever. Even holy marriage is only until death. Children grow up and move away to make homes and families of their own. Friends and neighbors come and go with the passing years.
An abiding House and Home — a dwelling place of perfect Peace and Sabbath Rest and never-ending Love — is found only in the Lord your God. But would you build such a House for Him?
The Law of God is good and glorious, it really is. And it seems to offer the obvious answer and solution: Love God, and love your neighbor. Fear, love, and trust in God with all your heart and soul, mind and strength, and do no hurt nor harm to your neighbor. Do not take, but give and help and serve your neighbors. Do not be selfish or greedy or lustful or jealous, but be content with what you have. Be happy with your lot in life, trust the Lord your God, and do your job faithfully.
Such is the way of the Law, and it is indeed the way of Love. It is holy and righteous and good, and it is right to live accordingly. So it seems very promising. If you would only do these things, then you would live, and God would be very pleased, and you would be at peace with everyone.
Yet, for all of that, it is a false and misleading dream to suppose that the Law will save you in that way and provide you with the House of Love that you desire from the very depths of your being.
The Law cannot bring you into the Land of Promise, however great its promises may be. The Law of love lets you see it with your eyes, so that you know what it looks like; but the Law will not let you enter. The Law is a faithful servant in God’s House, but the Law cannot build the House. The Law can crush and destroy your enemies; it can defeat Pharaoh and all his hosts. But it cannot give you Life. The Law accuses you and would destroy you. It does not bring you into the Good Land.
It is not for Moses but for Joshua to bring you through the waters of the Jordan into Canaan. Neither is it the great Prophet Elijah, but the One who comes after Elijah — the One to whom that Prophet also points — the Christ of God, the One anointed by the Holy Spirit at His Baptism in the Jordan River for that great and final Exodus which He accomplishes at Jerusalem. He is the One who loves you and saves you, who brings you out of Egypt into the Promised Land of God.
Your own wisdom, reason, and strength will not get you there; nor will your own beauty, charisma, or wealth get you the Love that you need. Your own works of love will not build a permanent House and Home with God. No matter how hard you work, no matter how skilled, intelligent, or crafty you may be, your own efforts will not do it. All your glory fades, and all your works fail.
But the beautiful Glory of Christ Jesus, which is the Love of God, that is what saves you. And that is what builds the House of God for you, in which you abide with Him, and He with you, forever.
So, that sounds good. That is the Gospel, and it’s simple enough, albeit profound and marvelous. You know and believe that it is true, that God loves you and saves you in Christ Jesus. But what is so staggering is the nature and content of His beautiful Love and Salvation in this body and life.
God does not look at the outward appearance, nor does He appear as you would imagine Him. He looks rather at the heart; and He opens His own great Heart of Love to you in the Person of His incarnate Son, in His Body of flesh and blood like yours, transfigured in radiant Glory on the High Mountain this morning, but so also crucified, put to death, and buried in the dark valley below. He is the Chosen One, the Lord’s Anointed — the Christ or Messiah — who is your Savior.
He goes up that Mountain to pray — not in desperation for Himself, but in His great Love for you and all people, all those He has come to save. He goes up the Mountain to God, in anticipation of His being lifted up and drawing all men to Himself and bringing them to His Father in heaven.
And as He prays and intercedes for you, so does He live for you, and so does He die for you. For you and your salvation He sets Himself on the Way of Love, which is the Way of His Cross and Passion; and that is what transfigures His Body. The appearance of His face is changed, as He now sets His face toward Jerusalem, taking up the Cup and fulfilling the Baptism His Father has given.
Recall that, in the Garden — as He takes these same three men, Peter, James, and John, along with Him — and as He goes apart to pray — the appearance of His face is changed again, and the sweat falls from His brow like great drops of blood, in order to cleanse the soil cursed by Adam’s Fall.
It is in Love for His Father and for you and all that He comes down from heaven and comes down from the High Mountain to the Cross in Jerusalem. And it is there in His suffering and death that His Body is transfigured by the sins of the whole world, as the once-and-final Sacrifice, in order to redeem you and all the children of Adam from captivity. Thus does He fulfill His Exodus as the Passover Lamb of God, that He might bring you out of death into life, through the wilderness and into Canaan, as the One who is baptized in the Cloud and in the Sea, in the Water and the Blood.
With that in view, St. Peter is not completely off base when he suggests making tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles followed shortly after the Day of Atonement. At that time the people would take leafy branches with the fruit still hanging on them and make little tents for themselves, little tabernacles. And for a full week they would live in those tents, remembering that God had brought them out of Egypt, preserved them through the wilderness, and brought them into a Good Land.
And St. Peter knows that the Lord made His dwelling among the sons of Israel by giving Moses, that great and faithful servant, careful instructions for a Tabernacle that went with the people in the wilderness; and upon that Tabernacle the Cloud of God’s Glory rested and remained among them — the Pillar of Cloud by day, the Pillar of Fire by night. So was God the Lord with them.
St. Peter understands that much. Yet, he would have the Christ and hold onto Him in Glory apart from His Cross and Passion; as the week before St. Peter rightly confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, but then rebuked his Savior when He would go to the Cross and die.
Hard as it is to comprehend — for you no less than Simon Peter — there is no Christ without the Cross; for His divine Glory is manifested precisely in His Passion. It is with the very Flesh of Christ Jesus that God, the Builder of all things, constructs His new and better Tabernacle; not with the skin of animals, but with the skin of His beloved Son. And it is by the Cross of Christ Jesus that God pitches His Tent in the midst of His people; not as though He needed a dwelling place for Himself, but that He might be your Dwelling Place. For the Body of Christ Jesus, crucified and risen, is the Temple of God, His House and Home wherein you live and abide with Him forever.
This is the Glory of God, that He saves you by His grace at great cost to Himself. The Father gives His own dear Son, and the Son lays down His own Body and Life for you, to rescue you from sin and death, to wake you up from your sleepy stupor, to raise you up from the dust of the ground, and to bring you in and with Himself up the High Mountain to His God and Father in Paradise.
By and from His Holy Cross and Passion, in and with His Resurrection from the dead, He adorns you in the glorious white garments of Holy Baptism, cleansed and sanctified in body and soul, without any spot or wrinkle or blemish, adorned as a Bride made beautiful for the Bridegroom. So shall you appear with Christ Jesus in His Glory, as did Moses and Elijah on that Mountain.
The two men in white are His witnesses of these things, that Christ has died, that Christ is risen, and that Christ will come again, as even now the Cloud of His Glory rests upon His Body in the Tabernacle of His Church on earth. It is right here in this place, from this Pulpit and at this Altar.
That is what the crucifix signifies, confesses, and declares: That here is the Glory of God in the crucified Body and shed Blood of Jesus, the Christ. That here at His Altar, He is the Tabernacle of the Lord your God. This is where He opens His great Heart of Love to you. He withholds nothing but gives you Himself; and by the Fruits of His Cross you are glorified in and with Him.
It is in divine and holy Love that God has built His Tabernacle for you here. And in turn, He also builds you as a living stone into His House and Home; so that, by His grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, your body and life become the dwelling place of God among your neighbors here on earth.
Men, when you love and serve your own wife, there’s nothing she can’t do, and there’s no woman on earth more beautiful or glorious; your love makes her bold, courageous, and strong, so that her own unique gifts and graces are able to shine the more brightly and clearly. Likewise, when you love and care for your children, they are strong and free and able to do great things to the glory of God; they learn from you to love others, and they grow to build houses that are strong and good.
All of you, then, rejoice that you are children of God in Christ Jesus, and you have such a Father who loves you and cares you; for you are members of the Bride of Christ by your Baptism in His Name, and you have such a Bridegroom who loves you, serves you, and gives Himself for you. He shelters and protects you in the House that He has built. He feeds you with Good Things and clothes you with His own Righteousness. He delights in you, and He glorifies Himself in you, and you in Him, so that you are beautiful and radiant with the Glory of His Cross and Resurrection.
The Lord is your Sun and your Shield, your Strength and your Song, because He has become your Salvation. Crucified and risen from the dead, He is your Pillar of Cloud by day and your Pillar of Fire by night. And in the preaching of His Gospel, in the waters of your Baptism, in His own holy Body and precious Blood, He is your Tabernacle throughout all generations, even forevermore.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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