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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.)
The author of the Hymn of the Day that we just sang, Nikolai Fredrik Severin Grundtvig, was perhaps inspired to emphasize “living stones” instead of “crumbled … spires” by the old cathedral Church of Our Lady that still lay in ruins in Copenhagen several decades after the DanishNorwegian forces bombed it during the Napoleonic Wars (LSB:CttH #645, p.807). Other than perhaps in Ukraine, in our time not the inflicted bombs of war or the points of communist weapons but the voluntary decommissioning of church buildings sees them turned not to rubble but to apartments, restaurants, or worse. If not Grundtvig then his later English translator Carl Døving seems to have drawn the hymn’s opening line from Jesus’s contrast in His so-called “Sermon on the Mount” between a foolish man’s house built on sand and a wise man’s house built on the rock (Matthew 7:24-25). Generally in Holy Scripture, the Rock is our Lord Jesus Christ or things very closely associated with Him (for example, 1 Corinthians 10:4), such as the ministry of, or the office making, the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, in today’s Gospel Reading (confer Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, 25). Upon that “rock”, Jesus, with a play on words, says that He will build His Church. Thus, considering primarily the Gospel Reading this morning, we direct our thoughts to the theme, “Built on the Rock”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the Divinelyinspired St. Matthew uniquely reports our Lord Jesus Christ’s promise to build His Church on that “rock”, His promise to give to Peter, as a representative of the other apostles and their successors, pastors today, the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (confer Matthew 18:18; John 20:23). That promise came in the context of Peter’s confessing, on behalf of the group of apostles, Jesus’s identity and work, after Jesus had essentially begun to interrogate His disciples about what people said about Him, the Son of Man. As other evangelists also report (Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20; confer John 6:68-69), the true confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, contrasts with false confessions of Jesus, as if He were just a prophet, even if a prophet that might have had to have been raised from the dead.
The recently-released 2022 Lutheran Religious Life Survey concludes that, “If current trends continue, the [Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod] will never again see growth, and [that] membership could easily fall by 75% from its current levels within the lifetimes of current LCMS members” (Stone, What is our life together?, p.5). However, the Survey theorizes that, if, in the next 15 years, the Synod would simultaneously double the rate of conversions, have one additional child born per woman, and double its rate of retaining youth from 40% to 80%, as before the 1960s, then the Synod would grow again by the year 2070 (Stone, What is our life together?, p.5). If not directly, then at least indirectly, all of us could play a role in those areas of conversions, births, and youth retention. But, sadly, too often we might wrongly think that we do not have to do anything at all, that God will work apart from what anyone does. Too often we might wrongly be indifferent to false confessions of faith, as if, as long someone says that they believe in Jesus, what they believe about Jesus, Who Jesus is and what Jesus does, does not matter, whether the Reformed error of not believing that Jesus is truly God, or the Roman Catholic error of not believing that Jesus did enough to save people. Too often we might doubt Jesus’s promise to build His Church and for it to withstand the gates of hell. Too often we might not stomach the right use of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, whether their binding sin in excommunication, in part for the sake of leading someone to repent of their sin, or their loosing sin in absolution, after one has privately confessed their sin. Too often, we sin in these and countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature, and so we deserve nothing but both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, unless we repent as God calls and so enables us to do.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading two Sundays ago (Matthew 14:22-33), after Jesus walked on the sea and the wind ceased, His disciples worshiped Him saying, “Truly You are the Son of God”, so what is new about Peter’s confession in today’s Gospel Reading is that Jesus is confessed to be not merely a prophet but the Christ, the Messiah, the long-promised Savior. Jesus is confessed not as one of many such “anointed ones” but as the definitive “Anointed One”. Jesus’s identity as the Son of the Living God in human flesh is necessary for His work of saving all people from their sins. Jesus Himself made the good confession of His identity and work before the High Priest and Pontius Pilate and then was crucified for it (Matthew 26:63-64; 1 Timothy 6:13), but, out of God’s great love and mercy, Jesus died on the cross for you and for me, dying in our place, dying the death that we deserved. Raised from the dead, Jesus is, as it were, a living sacrifice, a Lamb Who was slain but now stands again (for example, Revelation 5:6). When we are sorry for our sins and trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive our sins—God forgives our sins of not doing anything for God to bless and build the Church, our sins of being indifferent to false confessions of faith, our sins of doubting Jesus’s promise to build His Church and for it to withstand the gates of hell, our sins of not stomaching the right use of the Keys, or whatever our sin might be. God forgives us all our sins through the ministry of, or the office making, the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, through the exercise of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (confer Isaiah 22:20-22; Revelation 1:18; 3:7).
In today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 51:1-6), the Lord called the people of Israel to look to the rock from which they were hewn, to the quarry from which they were dug, to Abraham their father and Sarah their mother, who were unable to conceive apart from God’s miraculous intervention. In some sense our physical conceptions are no less miraculous than Isaac’s and his descendants, but especially our spiritual births are miraculous. Not human flesh and blood reveal to us Jesus’s identity and work, but the Father reveals the Son to us as we, in Holy Baptism, are born from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 67; confer John 1:13; Matthew 11:25-27). After we privately confess to our pastor the sins that particularly trouble us, our pastor, in individual Absolution, looses those sins on earth, and so those sins are loosed also in heaven. Heaven is the “place” where the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit dwell, but Their dwelling there does not keep Them from being present and active also on earth, as Jesus is in the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is His Body given for us and wine is His Blood shed for us, and so they give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
In all of these ways, Jesus builds us as living stones into His Church (1 Peter 2:5), with Her foundation the apostles and prophets and with Christ Jesus Himself Her Cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20; Revelation 21:14). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 11:3312:8), we also present our bodies as living sacrifices, dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11), each using the faith and gifts that God has given us as different members of the Body but still together as one Body. As we prayed in today’s Collect, we boldly confess Jesus to be the Christ and steadfastly walk in the way that leads to life eternal. The charge reported in the Gospel Reading, not to tell anyone that Jesus is the Christ, ended at the resurrection and does not apply to us. We do what we can to increase conversions, births, and youth retention. We do all that, and more! Knowing both that building Christ’s Church does not ultimately depend on us and that God works through means such as us: our faithfully confessing in our own lives, our supporting the Ministry of the Keys, and the like. As Peter failed to be “rock-like” and denied His Lord (for example, Matthew 26:69-75) but repented and was forgiven, so also, when we fail and repent, we are forgiven. And, the Lord adds to His Church day by day those who are being saved (for example, Acts 2:47). In Christ, His Church conquers all, and, like Peter, we are blessed with the joy of sharing in His salvation.
Church buildings and the organizations in them may come and go, but Christ’s Church “Built on the Rock” remains. Numbers as we see them may rise and fall, but, in the end, a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, stands before the throne and before the Lamb, worshipping by ascribing blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might to our God forever and ever (Revelation 7:9-12)!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +