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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.
Each of us may have our own opinions about Lutheran Service Book, the Missouri Synod’s most-recent hymnal published in 2006, which we have been using here at Pilgrim now for just more than four years. One hymn I can point to that I think is definitely improved in LSB—over The Lutheran Hymnal’s version and over Lutheran Worship, which did not include the hymn at all—is tonight’s Office Hymn, “Once He Came in Blessing” (LSB 333). Bohemian hymn-writer Johann Roh (or Johann Horn)’s original German version had nine stanzas, and Lutheran Service Book well translates and includes four, with the first three corresponding to what we can call each the three “comings” of our Lord (see Pollack, 60 and 570). For example, in the first stanza we sang about how Jesus came once:
Once He came in blessing, / All our sins redressing;
Came in likeness lowly, / Son of God most holy;
Bore the cross to save us; / Hope and freedom gave us.
Tonight we especially consider that first of our Lord’s three “comings”, namely, that Jesus came once in our human likeness to bear the cross and so save us from our sins, blessing us with the gifts of hope and freedom. The Psalm that we sang and the First Reading are key passages that contributed to the designation of the long-promised Savior as the One Who would “come”, and the Second Reading describes the benefits of His coming in the flesh and also refers both to how He comes now and to His coming again (on which “comings” we will focus the next two weeks).
How patiently do you and I wait for people to keep their promises to us? Probably too often we do not wait too patiently in our instant-gratification society! Imagine waiting the thousands of years that God’s people waited for the Coming One to come the first time in the flesh! In tonight’s First Reading (Habakkuk 2:2-5), God tells the prophet Habakkuk to make plain the prophetic vision of God’s promise that God had given to him, for its time of fulfillment would come, even if it seemed to come slowly, people should wait for it in faith, for it would surely come and would not delay. Some of Habakkuk’s hearers, especially the Babylonians, were apparently puffed up with pride and stubbornly would not believe that God would keep His prophecies as God had promised. They were likened to those addicted to wine, arrogant and never at rest, unsatisfied, trying to gather up for themselves as their own all nations and all peoples. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther takes the Hebrew more-literally and describes their ears as “stuffed” (TLSB, 1507, referring to AE 19:123). At times perhaps we are no better than they were, with “stuffed” ears and puffed up pride, refusing to believe or otherwise sinfully doubting some or all of God’s promises to us. By nature, of course, we are unable so to believe, and on account of that sinful nature and all of our actual sin we deserve temporal and eternal punishment.
But, God does not want anyone so to perish, but He calls and so enables all to repent. Even in the prophecy spoken through Habakkuk, God contrasts the unrighteous one with the puffed up prideful soul to the righteous one who lives by repentance and faith. That little verse from Habakkuk is at the heart of the Christian Gospel and is quoted, for example, in the preaching of St. Paul (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11). That little verse also calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent and believe, then God forgives our sin—all our sin, whatever it might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
That Son Jesus Christ is at the center of the Psalm we sang tonight (Psalm 118). We heard in Sunday’s Gospel Reading how the Passover pilgrims going before Jesus to Jerusalem and following after Him were singing it back and forth. The Psalm thanks God for delivering His people, itself recalling His delivering them from the Egyptians at the Red Sea (Psalm 118:14) and, as the Passover pilgrims recognize, also pointing forward to His delivering them and us from sin by Jesus’s death on the cross (Psalm 118:26; confer Matthew 21:42-44). The people’s liturgy had taught and served them well, and so they sang it naturally when Jesus entered to die on the cross. More than any others, Jesus is the stone the builders rejected that becomes the cornerstone. Like the Passover pilgrims, we call out to Jesus to save us, and He answers us, for His own sake, for He came to save us. From some of its earliest prophecies (Genesis 49:8-12; Numbers 24:15-19; Zechariah 9:9-10), Jesus’s coming humbly to save sinners has been and remains the heart of the Christian message of salvation! Jesus was aware and certain of His and His Kingdom’s coming for us and spoke often about it (for example, Luke 19:10). So rightly do our liturgy and hymns sing about it often. For example, tonight’s Opening Hymn (LSB 331) had us sing about His putting on a servants form to set us free, and the Opening Hymn also called us to put away our sinful selves and put on new selves, which God does for us, especially through Holy Baptism and our daily contrition and repentance (see Small Catechism IV:12 and its reference to Romans 6:4).
Similarly, tonight’s Second Reading (Hebrews 10:19-39) refers to the confidence we have to enter holy places by the blood of Jesus and to the fact that He is our Great High Priest, and, in the Second Reading, God calls us: to draw near to Him with true hearts, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from evil consciences and our bodies washed with pure water; to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He Who promised is faithful; to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as we see the Day drawing near. We are not to go on sinning deliberately, or to spurn the Son of God, or to profane (treat as an unholy thing) the Blood of the Covenant which makes us holy, but we are to endure reproach and affliction until we receive God’s promised great reward—and we note that in that particular exhortation, the Divinely-inspired author of Hebrews referred back to prophecies God made through Isiaah (Isaiah 26:20) and the one we heard from Habakkuk (Habakkuk 2:3).
Our waiting for that promised great reward may feel like thousands of years, but of course it is not really thousands of years. God has fixed an end to our specific afflictions, whether it be hours or days, as it might be for our member Wayne Miller, or whether it be that we remain and suffer in some sense until He comes His final time (confer John 21:22). Jesus came once. With the psalmist we already gave and continue to give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, particularly His steadfast love (or “mercy”) that endures forever. We call on Him and do not fear what other people might do to us. We shall not die eternally but live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. We pray for His ongoing protection, as we will do in the Closing Hymn (LSB 880), and, in conclusion, we pray now as we did earlier in the final stanza of the Office Hymn:
Come, then, O Lord Jesus, / From our sins release us.
Keep our hearts believing, / That we, grace receiving,
Ever may confess You / Till in heav’n we bless You.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +