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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.
Pilgrim’s not buying pre-printed bulletin inserts of each Sunday’s appointed Readings the last few years has given us greater freedom to exercise occasional options to expand those Readings, and today’s Gospel Reading is a good example. The initial three verses that we heard this morning are an optional expansion of the Gospel Reading that the bulletin inserts the last three times through this year of the three-year cycle did not choose to include. Yet, those three verses, in which Jesus for a third time privately tells His twelve disciples about His death and resurrection, are critical context for the eleven verses that follow, in which James and John ask Jesus to grant them to sit at His right and left in His glory, and so Jesus tells at least the ten, if not all twelve disciples, about being great and first by being a servant and slave of all, as Jesus Himself was doing by giving His own one life as a ransom for all.
This third so-called “prediction” (or, maybe better, “prophecy”) by Jesus about His imminent death and resurrection is the most-detailed of the three, but like the first two (Mark 8:31; 9:30-32), as the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark reports them, this third prophecy also is immediately followed by somewhat-shocking displays of the disciples’ self-centeredness, all the more striking because of the “other-centered” nature of Jesus’s work on earth for them and for all of us. After the first prophecy, as we heard three weeks ago, Peter rebuked Jesus and Jesus rebuked Peter, calling him “Satan” and speaking about those coming after Him’s denying themselves, taking up their crosses, and following Him (Mark 8:32-38). After the second prophecy, which we will hear in September, the disciples argued with one another about who was the greatest, and Jesus told them that, if anyone wanted to be first, he must be last of all and servant of all, illustrating His point by taking a child in His arms (Mark 9:33-37). Yet, that something similar happened a third time (confer Mark 10:31) is reason to conclude, as one commentator says, that Jesus’s instruction seems to have had “remarkably little positive effect” (Voelz, ad loc Mark 10:37, p.791).
Of course, we look back on these events with hindsight, hindsight enhanced not only by the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy of His passion and resurrection but also by the coming of the Holy Spirit with His special gifts at Pentecost. At the time that the events of today’s Gospel Reading took place, James and John’s request perhaps seems more understandable, as Jesus had just spoken about the age to come (Mark 10:30), and later, as St. Mark records it, Jesus would tell the disciples to believe that they have received whatever they ask for in prayer (Mark 11:24). And, the twelve already were at least amazed about both their going up to Jerusalem with Jesus’s leading the way and presumably what would be accomplished there and, given James and John’s question, apparently the Twelve believed something about Jesus’s resurrection, while the others who were following were said simply to be afraid.
That we have the benefit of enhanced hindsight makes all the more-shocking our sometimes misunderstanding amazement and confidence or wrongful fear and lack of confidence in reaction to Jesus’s prophecy of our suffering and resurrection. Or, maybe, like the disciples, we wish for things without knowing what they mean for us, or we over-estimate our abilities. Or, maybe we are indignant of others when they simply asked first for the things that we might wrongly have also wanted for ourselves. Or, maybe we mistakenly think that we are being servant and slave of all by doing nothing more than staying away from our neighbors or wearing facemasks if we go anywhere near them. No matter how we sin, our lives are a far cry from what they should be, having been bought back, by the life of the Son of Man, from the temporal death and eternal torment that we and all people deserve on account of all of our sin and our sinful natures.
Yet, when we, called and so enabled by God, repent, then God continuously forgives us both our sin and our sinful natures, for the sake of the Son of Man. Regardless of how we react to His repeated prophecies of His Passion and Resurrection, together those prophecies show that they are God’s will set down in the Old Testament, and God fulfilled them the New Testament, not by chance or by God’s general providence but by a special act of God’s will in history (Scaer, CLD VI:68), all for us and for our salvation. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 5:1-10), by His suffering Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for all who repent and believe. The Son of God in human flesh, Jesus’s life had infinite value to be a ransom and to atone for the sins of all (confer Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII:44-45). And, despite what other religious traditions may say, Jesus did die for “all”: His word “many”, in today’s Gospel Reading contrasts with His one life and means “all”, as understood correctly by other clear passages of Holy Scripture (for example, 1 Timothy 2:6). Out of His great love for us, not with James and John, but with insurrectionists on His right and left, Jesus died on the cross in our place, as our substitute. As the Small Catechism has us say, drawing on Holy Scripture (1 Peter 1:18-19), Jesus redeemed us not with gold or silver but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death (Small Catechism, II:4).
In today’s Gospel Reading, being “baptized” and drinking “the cup” are figures of speech that refer to Jesus’s suffering and death, but Jesus’s suffering and death give substance to the sacrament of Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar, even as those sacraments give us the benefits of Jesus’s suffering and death for us (confer Scaer, CLD, VIII:124). At the Baptismal Font, water and the Word unite us with Christ and His death and resurrection (Romans 6:1-5). At the Altar Rail, bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us—that Blood is the blood of the “new covenant” referred to in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 31:31-34), blood that elsewhere Jesus says is poured out for “many” (again, “all”) for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28).
As we are sacramentally united with Jesus and what He has done for us, we are transformed, and so we at least try to live the lives that we should live. Jesus’s serving all people by giving His life as our ransom is much more than an example of how we should serve one another, for His giving His life as our ransom saves us! But, that His giving His life as our ransom is much more than an example does not mean that His giving His life as our ransom is not at all an example. In Christ we are freed from our bondage to sin, death, and the power of the devil in order to serve God in the persons of our neighbors, being servant and slave of all, even, if necessary, to the point of our deaths (confer 1 Corinthians 9:19). James and John not only sacramentally were united with Jesus, but in their being servant and slave of all they in another sense also drank of His cup and were baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized. For example, James was put to death early in the history of the New Testament Church (Acts 12:3). Our portions or allotments from the Lord similarly may be to be martyred. No matter! For, we not only die with Him, but we also are raised with Him. Whether we are alive on earth or in heaven, in Him, we have peace and joy!
Exercising our option for an expanded Gospel Reading this morning, we have considered “Passion and Resurrection Prophecy and Reaction”. Despite what Jesus has already done and will yet do for us, we are not always rightly amazed and unafraid, but, as we live in daily repentance and faith, God forgives us. In the words of today’s Introit (Psalm 116:1-4, 8; antiphon: Psalm 43:1), we love Him, because He has heard our pleas for mercy, and, because He has so inclined His ear to us, we will call on Him as long as we live.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +