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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.
If those of us born and raised Lutheran ourselves have changed congregations, or if we have been in one congregation long enough for the pastor to change, no doubt we have experienced some degree of change in the conduct of services and the like. Those adults who have come to Lutheranism from another or no religious tradition likely have experienced greater change in teaching and practice. Given one or more such experiences of change, maybe we all can relate somewhat to the Jews in today’s Gospel Reading for the Third Sunday in Lent, who, with the coming of Jesus, were, as they saw it, facing impossible “changes” of sacrifice and temple, though the “change” really was only that change of prophetic types to their “antitypes” (or, “fulfillments”), and true faith in God would still bring the needed forgiveness of sins. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading, directing our thoughts to the theme “Jesus is our sacrifice and temple”.
Sin disrupted the perfect relationship that humankind had with its Creator, but God promised a Savior from sin and made the first sacrifice that pointed to what would be His final sacrifice (Genesis 3:15, 21), and, though He drove the man and the woman out of Eden (Genesis 3:25; confer LXX), He continued to be present with them where they were. Their descendants soon found out that the Lord had favorable regard only for sacrifices offered in faith and commended those believers as righteous (Genesis 4:3‑7; Hebrews 11:4). And, God’s laws, such as the Third Commandment that we heard today in the Old Testament Reading (Exodus 20:1‑17), set apart time for all to rest and to let God by His Word make them holy, as at His portable tabernacle where He Himself was present. Later, one of Israel’s kings built a more‑permanent temple where all could come in order to pray and to receive forgiveness (for example, 1 Kings 8:30), though kings and the people’s unfaithfulness eventually resulted in that temple’s destruction, despite at least two kings’ efforts along the way to reform the system, cleanse the temple, and properly celebrate the Passover (2 Chronicles 29:1-31:21; 34:1-35:19). Finally, instructed by God’s Word, the faithful people expected the Messiah to be such a King Who would restore the system, provide a new temple, and fulfill the Passover (for example, Malachi 3:1-4; Zechariah 14:21). (Confer Weinrich, ad loc John 2:12-22, p.351)
We are no better than our ancestors. By nature we do not set apart time as we should for rest and to let God by His Word and Sacraments make us holy. We may listen to God’s Word via some mass medium, but we may not use, and so we effectively despise, His in-person Sacraments. We may not weekly attend the Divine Service, we may not daily be in God’s Word, and we may seldom, if ever, pray. We may not be good stewards of God’s gifts to us so that His Church on earth has sufficient resources to preach His Gospel and administer His Sacraments. We may require things of God before we are willing to come to His House: things such as facemasks, social distancing, one or more shots of vaccine. Or, after weeks, months, or years of staying away, we may be so out of the habit of regularly receiving God’s gifts that we do not want to or cannot get back into that regular habit. These and our other actual sins, like our sinful nature itself, alienate us from God and merit our bodily death here and now and our torment in hell starting on the Last Day, driven out of God’s presence for all eternity.
God knows what is in us, and still He calls and enables us to turn from our sinful nature and all our actual sin, to trust Him to forgive us, and to want to do better. As in today’s Introit (Psalm 69:14-16; antiphon v.9), we call out for deliverance, and He answers us out of His steadfast love and abundant mercy. When we repent, then God forgives us. God forgives us our sinful nature, and He forgives us all our actual sin: our disregard for His Word and Sacraments, or whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, with the Passover of the Jews at hand, Jesus went up to Jerusalem and found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and those who were changing money. Jesus drove and ordered them all out and said, perhaps to Jewish leaders who were standing there, not to make His Father’s house a house of trade. Jesus is usually thought to have been targeting abuses in order to preserve the space for its original purpose (confer Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46; confer Isaiah 56:7-8), but He arguably was totally ending (by fulfilling) their sacrificial system and replacing their temple with that of His own body (Weinrich, ad loc John 2:12-22, pp.344-345). Calling the temple His Father’s house, Jesus claimed to be and was true God in human flesh, tabernacling, as it were, among His people (John 1:14). Jesus was the spotless Passover Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36), His final sacrifice, Who on the cross took away the sin of the world, dying in our place the death that we deserved. Garbling, if not deliberately misrepresenting (Scaer, CLD VI:53), Jesus’s statement (Matthew 26:61; 27:40; Mark 14:58; 15:29), the Jews in essence followed His command and destroyed the temple of His body, but, in three days, He raised it up, as He said He would. Jesus’s so-called “cleansing” of the temple was itself a sign that He was the Messiah and so also had God’s authority, and, when the Jewish leaders failed to understand that sign, He gave them another sign, His death and resurrection, which they also failed to understand. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 1:18-30), Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power and wisdom of God. So, when many others saw the signs that Jesus was doing, they believed in His Name. The sacrificial system may have been fulfilled and the temple may have been changed, but trusting God for the forgiveness of sins still brought then, and still brings now, salvation.
After Jesus was raised from the dead, the Holy Spirit helped Jesus’s disciples remember both the particular Scripture passage about zeal for the Lord’s house consuming Jesus and Jesus’s explanation of that passage, and so they believed both that Scripture passage and the word that Jesus had spoken about it (Weinrich, ad loc John 2:12-22, pp.354-355; confer John 14:26). Likewise, the Holy Spirit works in us both through God’s Word read and preached to groups like this and through God’s Word applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar that are Christ’s Body given for us and His Blood shed for us. These signs are where Jesus is to be found today. These signs manifest Jesus’s glory, and His followers put their faith in Him (John 2:11). We, who are baptized, confess to our pastors the sins we know and feel in our heart, and we are not driven out, but we are admitted to the Altar (confer John 6:37). We do not despise, but we use God’s Word and Sacraments, for we know that they are the means by which we receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
Whatever other changes that might come and go, one thing does not change: “Jesus is our sacrifice and temple”. His sacrifice on the cross restored our relationship with God, and in Him as the temple we find forgiveness. On the Last Day, the way that we experience Him will change one final time, when we see the new Jerusalem come down from heaven with its temple, the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, Who looks as though it had been slain but is standing alive (Revelation 21:10, 22; 5:6; confer Weinrich, ad loc John 2:12-22, p.339). As now, so then, we join in the eternal worship of heaven singing: “To Him Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb / be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13; confer Weinrich, ad loc John 2:12-22, p.339).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +