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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
For nearly a year our Pilgrim congregation has been thinking through a building project, working with architects and builders to find a reasonably-priced way of using recently-acquired property to better meet our needs, needs such as those for additional Sunday School and Parish Hall space, and to find a way of enhancing our facilities with a view to the future of the congregation. As a result, when we hear Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading say that He will build His Church, we might think first of a physical church structure, even though our congregation’s Sanctuary was recently remodeled and is not likely to be specifically included in our next building project. Separating a church structure from the church people and their primary purpose for that structure can be difficult, but such separation must be done, at least to some extent, as we this day consider the Gospel Reading under the theme “Jesus Builds His Church”.
You may recall that last week’s Gospel Reading told of Jesus’s withdrawing to the district of Tyre and Sidon, where He healed the severely demon-possessed daughter of a Canaanite woman with great faith (Matthew 15:21-28). Next, the divinely-inspired St. Matthew tells of Jesus’s going on from there and, beside the Sea of Galilee, feeding more than four-thousand people (Matthew 15:29-38). Next, apparently on the northern shore of the Sea, Jesus told Pharisees and Sadducees asking for a sign from heaven that they would only get the sign of Jonah, and on the northern shore of the Sea Jesus warned His disciples against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 15:39-6:12). Then, some 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee, comes today’s Gospel Reading, with Jesus’s asking His disciples Who other people and they themselves say that He is, with Peter’s answering on behalf of the Twelve, and with Jesus’s saying that He will build His Church. Incidentally, His statement that He will build His Church is found only in St. Matthew’s account, despite the fact that all four Gospel accounts include at least some sort of confession by Peter (our 3-year series of Readings has us hear St. Mark’s account next Lent).
Certainly there was a need for the Church to be built then, as there is a need for the Church to be built now. Then, the Heavenly Father revealed to Peter and presumably to the other disciples that Jesus is the Christ, but other people apparently thought that He was at best a prophet. Now, the Heavenly Father reveals to all that Jesus is the Christ, but some people think far less of Him. Even we Who confess Jesus do not always fully appreciate, for example, His building His Church. On the one hand, we may think that we have to build His Church for Him, doubting the ways that He promises to build His Church, blaming ourselves when His Church is not built as we expect, or failing to see the building that He is doing. Or, on the other hand, we may think that, since He builds His Church, we have no role to play in His building His Church, acting as if all confessions of Jesus are the same, failing in word and deed to show forth God’s love to those around us, or wanting better material things for ourselves and for our own homes than we want for God’s people and for their church structure in this place.
Such thoughts, words, and deeds are only some of our sins that flow from our sinful natures, passed down with the flesh and blood of our birth parents. Such sins and sinful natures deserve death now and for eternity, but God calls us to repent—to turn in sorrow from our sins, to trust Him to forgive our sins, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning.
That sinful Simon Peter confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God is no small miracle, certainly his confession is a somewhat smaller miracle than the miracle of the Son of Mary’s also being the living God’s Son and so the Christ, the Anointed One above all anointed ones, the One long‑promised in the Old Testament. As we heard two Sundays ago, after Jesus came to them walking on the sea, the disciples worshiped Him and confessed that He was the Son of God (Matthew 14:33), but Simon Peter’s statement in today’s Gospel Reading is the first time in St. Matthew’s account that the disciples confess Jesus to be the Christ. Although, the disciples still had a lot to learn about Jesus as the Christ, such as His need to suffer, die, and rise again, as we will hear in next week’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 16:21-28). Jesus’s identity and His building His Church were very much at issue in His being sentenced to death: in the Gospel Reading, Jesus asks Who the Son of Man is, Simon Peter identifies Him as the Son of God, and Jesus says He will build His Church; before the Sanhedrin, false witnesses testified that Jesus saidHe would destroy the Temple and rebuild it, the high priest adjured Jesus by the living God to tell them if He was the Christ, the Son of God, and Jesus essentially said yes and identified Himself as the Son of Man (Matthew 26:59-66). True God and true man, Jesus for us died the death we deserve, so that we do not have to die eternally. After parts of three days in the tomb as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish, Jesus rose. As the Son of the living God, He overcomes death and gives us life. When we repent of our sin and believe in Him, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sin of thinking that we have to build Jesus’s Church for Him. God forgives our sin of thinking that we have no role to play in Jesus’s building His Church. God forgives all our sin, whatever it might be, and so He gives us life and salvation.
When they consider the positive changes in our Pilgrim congregation over the past three years, people sometimes give me the credit, but I do not want the credit, for the credit is not mine. “Jesus builds His Church.” Jesus Himself is still the One building His Church, even if Jesus builds His Church through the ministry He has entrusted to me and others. What Jesus says in the Gospel Reading is that He builds His Church on the rock of the ministry of the creedal confession that Peter made. In the Gospel Reading Jesus promised to give and then later, after His resurrection, He gave Peter and the other apostles the Holy Spirit to exercise the keys of the Kingdom (John 20:22-23). So, on Pentecost, Peter preached law and Gospel, exhorting His hearers, including their children, to be baptized, and that day the Lord added about three thousand souls to His Church (Acts 2:38-41). At the baptismal font, we are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man (John 1:13), but we are born from above, of water and the Spirit (John 3:3-6). Indeed, Jesus sent the apostles to make disciples of all nations by baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things Jesus had entrusted to their care (Matthew 28:18-20). Those “all things” include private confession and individual absolution, for where even one penitent and one pastor are gathered in Jesus’s Name, He is present among them, binding or loosing the penitent’s sin through the pastor (Matthew 18:20; Smalcald Articles III:iv). And, those “all things” include Holy Communion, where Jesus’s body and blood are present and reveal Him in the breaking of the bread and the giving of the cup (Luke 24:30-31, 35). Through the ministry of the confession of Jesus—through preaching, baptism, absolution, and the Supper—we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation and so Jesus builds His Church. The apostles have a foundational role (Ephesians 2:19‑22; Revelation 21:14), and their successors, pastors today, continue their service as the Lord assigns, so that you can believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His Name (1 Corinthians 3:5; Colossians 1:25; John 20:31).
The author of our Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 645), Nikolai Frederick Severin Grundtvig, is said to be “undoubtedly the most important Scandinavian hymn writer of the 19th century”. Yet, that son of a Lutheran pastor graduated from the University of Copenhagen under the influence of Rationalism and so was “without spirit and without faith”. Later, however, he was convinced of Christianity’s truth and became a fierce opponent of Rationalism, even among the Danish clergy. Our Hymn of the Day is perhaps his “most popular” hymn and, like his others, has “a strong emphasis on the Word of God and the Holy Spirit and an uncompromising forthrightness in doctrine” (Precht, 631-632). The Hymn, as we have it translated, describes how “Built on the Rock the Church shall stand / Even when steeples are falling”. Indeed, over time, spires may crumble in every land, but “Bells still are chiming and calling … the souls distressed, / Longing for rest everlasting.” Jesus’s promise in the Gospel Reading that the gates of hell do not prevail against His Church applies to His Church as a whole, not to any one individual congregation of it. As God wills, our Pilgrim congregation will be built up or torn down: ultimately it is not up to us, though we do have our respective roles to play, as today’s Epistle Reading describes (Romans 11:33-12:8). We trust Jesus to build His Church through the ways that He promises to build it, whether or not it is built as we expect or perceive. We make the true creedal confessions our own; in word and deed we show forth God’s love to those around us; and we want better material things for God’s people and their church structure in this place than we want for ourselves. When we fail, as we will, we live every day with repentance and faith and receive God’s forgiveness through His Word and Sacraments.
Time will tell how our Pilgrim congregation will build its physical facilities to better meet our needs, but Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God, has been building, is building now, and will continue to build His Church, the true people of God, who confess Him and are called out from those who deny Him by asking for signs. The devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh will try to hinder His Church and Her mission, but ultimately She prevails against them. In the words of God through Isaiah that we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 51:1-6), the sky will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die in like manner, but the Lord’s salvation will be forever, and His righteousness will never be dismayed.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +