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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. (Amen.)
As I walked Zylan and his drivers out to their car after his Catechism Class this past Tuesday afternoon, we noticed how there was sunlight later in the day. Reportedly the sun will set 24 minutes later today than it did on the Winter Solstice just one month ago. In the Church Year, the then Christmas entrance into the world of the True Light that gives light to everyone (John 1:9) has now become the Epiphany shining of that Light and so of the glory of God from the human nature of the man Jesus. For example, today’s Gospel Reading—which is sometimes said to tell separately of Jesus’s journey into Galilee, His ministry in Galilee, His calling disciples, His first preaching tour in Galilee, and the occasion for the following Sermon on the Mount (SQE §30, 32, 34, 40, 50)—taken as whole can be said to indicate we what consider this morning, that “The preaching and healing of Jesus shines a great light on our thick darkness”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the Divinely-inspired St. Matthew uniquely describes prophecy that God had inspired through Isaiah, which we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 9:1-4), as explicitly being fulfilled through Jesus’s activities that St. Matthew then goes on to describe: Jesus’s calling people to repent, His preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, and His doing miraculous signs—signs that both attested to Who He is as the Son of God and anticipated the great physical healing and eternal life that come with the forgiveness of sins received in the Kingdom of Heaven.
At the time that God spoke through Isaiah’s prophecy, the country of Israel’s northern territories named for Jacob’s sons Zebulun and Náphtali, but hardly Jacob’s faithful descendants, were regularly overrun by invading forces. The people there then thought that God’s promises were failing (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Matthew 4:12-22, p.17). They would not heed God’s Word spoken through Isaiah, who was calling them to repent of their sins. They did not see that they deserved God’s righteous wrath, and so they did not humbly submit to Him. Instead, they sought out other ways of shining light on their future, and so they remained in their spiritual darkness. They passed through the land greatly distressed and hungry. Hungry, they were enraged and spoke contemptuously against their king and their God. Everywhere they looked they saw distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they were thrust into thick darkness. (Isaiah 8:16-22.)
How like those people then are we today? Everywhere we look, we seemingly may see distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. Our culture has been described as a culture of death, with such things as abortions and assisted suicides. The circumstances of our time—in our world and country, our workplace, our congregation, our families and individual lives—may appear to be equally, if not even more, dire and disastrous. We may think that God’s promises are failing us, and we may look for light elsewhere. By nature, we dwell in spiritual darkness, estranged from God, and, by nature, we dwell in the region and shadow of death—death that, along with eternal torment, we deserve on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sins.
But, as God did through Isaiah, John the Baptizer (Matthew 3:2), Jesus, and His disciples (Matthew 10:7) for the people of Israel, so God does through pastors today for us. God calls and enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. “The preaching and healing of Jesus shines a great light on our thick darkness”.
Some eight centuries after Isaiah prophesied to the people of the once Jewish territories of Zebulun and Náphtali, the Gentiles who lived there at the time of Christ saw the prophecy’s fulfillment. Jesus is the Great Light Who both dawned upon them in their thick darkness and Who dawns upon us in our thick darkness. As God made clear through Isaiah in the verses that follow, to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given, and His Name is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there is no end. (Isaiah 9:6-7.) Jesus took our sins to the cross and there suffered and died for us, in our place, accompanied by a supernatural darkness (Matthew 27:45). But, on the third day He rose from the grave, showing that God had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf, and so we can have peace with Him. Like the blackest of nights followed by the brightest of sunrises without our involvement, we do nothing to save ourselves, but God out of His love and mercy saves us from our thick darkness of sin and death, by grace for the sake of the Great Light, Jesus Christ. We receive Him by God‑given faith, and so we come into His Kingdom of the Church where our sins are forgiven.
John baptized; Jesus’s disciples baptized (John 4:1-2); as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, the apostle Paul and others baptized (1 Corinthians 1:10-18); and, in our time, pastors baptize. The various particular people through whom God baptizes do not matter, but the one baptism matters (Ephesians 4:5): water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word that works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God about baptism (Small Catechism IV:2, 6). The water of Baptism—like the touch of individual Absolution and the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body and Blood of Christ—are God’s miraculous Means of Grace, working the forgiveness of sins, an eternal healing far greater than Jesus’s healing of every affliction among the people of Galilee and those from Syria. Those who were so healed eventually were again afflicted in some way and died, but those who are forgiven on the Last Day are freed from every affliction, and in those glorified bodies they live forever.
In the meantime, we fulfill the various vocations that God gives us, doing the things that God calls us to do for the people to whom He brings us into relationships. One day this past week when I was picking up lunch, a workman picking up his lunch, who apparently recently converted to Christianity and has a friend whom he thinks is possessed by a demon, approached me asking for help. In the course of the conversation, the man said that he wants some day to do the kind of work that I do. I assured him that the work he was doing was also God-pleasing, and I told him that in some ways he could reach unbelievers better as a workman than as a pastor. Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John from their previous vocations as fishermen (confer Matthew 19:27), but Jesus calls most others to confess Him in their existing vocations. Probably more than I am, each one of you is more in regular contact with unbelievers—in your family, school or workplace, and the like. You can and should reflect Christ’s great light into the thick darkness of the people around you’s lives; you can and should give answer to the hope that you have in Him; and you can and should intentionally invite them here, where God creates faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel (Augsburg Confession V:2). As we sang in the Introit (Psalm 22:27-31; antiphon: v.22), the Lord will be proclaimed to a people yet unborn—not only those in the womb now, but also those not yet conceived, whom the Lord already knows and has blessed for life in Christ.
Before the summer solstice comes, we will have considerably more daylight, as sunset will come nearly three hours later then than it does now. No doubt we will appreciate the longer days. Far more importantly, however, “The preaching and healing of Jesus shines a great light on our thick darkness”. As we heard in the Old Testament Reading, the Lord has increased our joy, and we rejoice before Him, both now and forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +