Good Friday

John 19:26-27 - Tre Ore — Word Three - April 18, 2014
Jesus Honors His Father & Mother

Certain things can cause a man to shift around his priorities.  When I was a kid, I remember experiencing the conscious epiphany that it was time in my life to put away playing with my favorite childhood toys.  I loved them and the times I had with them.  But it was time.  It was kind of sad, when I think about it.  But we all grow up and put away old things that once made our young hearts happy.  Now, I didn’t stop playing with my toys because of some duty to grow up.  No one urged me or hinted that I should begin acting my age.  It wasn’t that at all.  Other things just became more important to me, and I knew that I wanted to pursue those things instead.  It’s like when a man leaves his mother and father to be joined to his wife.  He doesn’t need to be told.  He isn’t forced out of his parents’ home.  His desire for his bride simply renews and shifts his priorities. 

Such is life.  We go through stages, and we make several adjustments to our priorities as we go.  And such is death.  Our stages eventually end.  And when a man lies dying, a much more severe adjustment often takes place than when he came of age or got married.  Suddenly, what seemed important for decades, even those things that defined him to his friends, such as fishing or some sports team or even something nobler like a good political cause, all these are suddenly set aside like childhood toys that aren’t important anymore.  Because they’re not.  There’s no duty that tells a dying man to stop caring so much about earthly things he once loved.  Just the reality of ever after and his eternal soul’s future take sudden precedence over everything else.  It’s natural. 

Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-15 - Maundy Thursday - April 17, 2014
May I Give Thee Love for Love

Today is Maundy Thursday.  The word Maundy comes from the Latin word for command or mandate.  Jesus commands his disciples to do for each other what he did for them.  He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).  This commandment to love is what Maundy Thursday is named after.  We are to pattern our love for each other on Jesus’ love for us.  And how does Jesus love us?  It is as he says, “Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). 

But on the night when he was betrayed, before these events took place, Jesus gave a picture of this love by washing his disciples’ feet. 

Palm Sunday

Matthew 21:1-9 - Palm Sunday/Confirmation - April 13, 2014
Daughters of Zion

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ and especially you Aubreigh and Caragan; grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

When you were baptized, God became your Father.  Of course, he was always your Father in this sense: inasmuch as he is God the Father almighty who made heaven and earth.  That means that he made you with your eternal well being in mind.  He knit you together in your mothers’ wombs and has cared for you ever since, because he loves you.  Through earthly means he has made sure that you have been fed, clothed, sheltered, disciplined, and otherwise loved by those who make it their joy to do so.  These loved-ones of yours are God’s earthly means.  Your parents, grandparents, and families take care of you because they love you.  And God takes care of you through them because he loves you even more. 

Lent Midweek

Matthew 27:11–26 - Lent I-V Midweek - March 12, 19, 26; April 2, 9, 2014

The King Condemned

The office is greater than the man.  This is true.  We honor the President of the United States, not because he deserves it in his own person, but because it is right to honor his office.  He is God’s instrument for good despite any and all the evil he might do besides.  Likewise, we honor our pastors even if their personal idiosyncrasies annoy us, not simply out of charity, although this alone is enough to treat them well; but we honor them because the Office of the Ministry is worthy of our respect and obedience.  Through it, God accomplishes much good.  It is the Means of Grace Office through which God saves us from our sin.  We honor our secular rulers, because we honor good order — we thus consent to the authority that God has given them.  We honor the pastor because we honor the gospel — we thus consent to the word that God speaks.  The office is greater than the man. 

Lent 4

John 6:1-15 - Laetare Sunday - March 30, 2014
God Tests the People He Loves

Jesus did signs.  We usually call them miracles or wonders.  They are the things that Jesus was able to do because he is God.  He healed the sick, cast out demons, gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.  They are the things that we cannot explain according to natural causes.  But we don’t have to.  Jesus did not exercise his power and authority as the eternal Son of God made flesh in order that we might figure out how he does what he does — no, but rather why he does what he does.  Jesus did miracles for two reasons: 1) to have compassion on the people God loves, and 2) to direct them to where this love of God is constantly accessible to them.  That is why St. John calls them signs. 

A sign points to something.  A sign draws your attention to itself only for long enough to draw your attention away from itself and on to something else.  Take, for instance, the signs on the side of the road. 

Lent 3

Luke 11:14-28 - Oculi Sunday - March 23, 2014
Blessed Jesus, King of Grace

After Jesus had been tempted by the devil in the wilderness for forty days, God sent angels who came and ministered to him (Matthew 4:11).  They strengthened him for his long journey to the cross where he would do even greater battle with the devil.  When Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane that, if it be his Father’s will, the cup might pass from his lips, an angel came and ministered to him and strengthened his resolve to drink it up (Luke 22:43).  So much was his resolve strengthened to fulfill what God wanted that he sweat drops of blood as he prayed, “Thy will be done.” 

His angels served him.  They served him in the weakness of his human flesh by strengthening him with the word of God for the mission he was sent to fulfill.  This mission was for the Son of God to suffer and die on the cross in order to save sinners.  Nothing could stop him.  His angelic servants fought for him by keeping him in all his ways (Psalm 91:11). 

Lent 1

Luke 10:17-20 - Invocavit Sunday - March 9, 2014
Rejoice in This!

This morning we give special attention also to these words from the 10^th chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus had sent out seventy men to the places where he himself was about to go.  We read in Jesus’ name:

Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”  And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” 

These are your words holy Father; sanctify us by the truth; your word is truth.  Amen. 

The reason we are sinners is because the devil is a liar, and because our first parents believed his lie.  Now, we could curse them and complain about the misfortune they have caused us.  But before we do, we need to understand the proper definition of original sin.  We call it original sin not simply because it was the first sin committed by man.  We call it original sin because it is the origin of all the other sins we commit.  Original sin is the sin that all sinners of all time are equally guilty of.  We inherit sin not as a genetic defect that is not our fault.  No, we inherit sin as rebels who conspired with our first parents against God and his word.  Spiritually speaking, we were there with Adam consenting to what the devil was saying, and rejecting what God had spoken.  In other words, if it had been any one of us in the Garden with the devil, the story would be the same.