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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.)
Many of us at least might like to think that, if we were in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel Reading that Jesus was (Mark 1:9-15), then we would recognize and resist Satan’s temptation as Jesus did. Of course, we do not know what form Satan took when he was in the wilderness tempting Jesus. In the Garden of Eden, when tempting the first man and woman, Satan apparently took the form of a serpent (Genesis 3:1, 14), and the Bible tells us that Satan can disguise himself even as an angel of light and that his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). Still, almost no matter how many times we hear today’s Gospel Reading or its parallel account (Matthew 16:21-28), Jesus’s calling Peter “Satan” on the way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi seems shocking! Of course, Peter was not Satan, nor was Peter even one of Satan’s servants, but Peter’s rebuking Jesus for teaching the Divine necessity of His cross was a temptation to Jesus that was so opposed to God’s will for the salvation of the world that Jesus essentially called it satanic. And, Peter was not the only one of Jesus’s disciples to be in league with the forces of evil, as it were, for Jesus somewhat similarly one time referred to Judas Iscariot as “a devil” (John 6:70‑71; confer John 13:2, 27; Luke 22:3). The Small Catechism essentially teaches us to expect temptations from the devil, the world, and our sinful nature (Small Catechism III:11, 18), but we might not recognize or want to admit that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature all can and do operate within the Church on earth.
Judas and the rest of Jesus’s disciples presumably also made Peter’s good confession of Jesus as the Christ, the promised Savior or Messiah, the One anointed as Prophet, Priest, and King. But, their understanding of Jesus as the Christ clearly did not include His cross, nor presumably their own crosses! From our fallen-human-nature point-of-view, we sympathetically might imagine why Peter may not have wanted Jesus to suffer many things, to be rejected, and to be killed—whether Peter was really looking out for Jesus or whether Peter was really looking out for himself as a follower of Jesus. Jesus, however, was not so sympathetic! Jesus called the crowd to Him with His disciples and told them—and Jesus tells us—that those who want to come after Him, Who carries His own cross, should deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Him. And, as the Divinely inspired St. Mark uniquely reports, Jesus spoke about those who lose their lives on account of Him and the Gospel, and Jesus spoke about the eternal consequences of not confessing but being ashamed of Him and His words.
As little as Peter apparently wanted Jesus and Peter himself to take up their crosses, so little do you and I, from our fallen-human-nature point-of-view, want the Church on earth or ourselves to take up our crosses, yet that is what Christ calls us to do. So, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther at least one time explained that the suffering that he and those with him were experiencing was on account of Christ and the Gospel, and Luther said that they could not deny Christ and the Gospel or forsake their defense without risking their own eternal salvation (Luther, ad loc Galatians 4:29 [1535], AE 26:451). “Actions speak louder than words”, the saying goes, and we see and hear that principle borne out in today’s Gospel Reading, as Peter’s rebuke of Jesus essentially “shouted down” His confession of Jesus as the Christ. Whether Peter, Luther, our Synod or District, our congregation, or ourselves, we should look at the conduct, the acts, the practice, and when those clash with the confession, then we should judge on the basis of the deeds (confer Lenski, ad loc Mark 8:29, p.335). And, finally, we should act accordingly, risking the loss of members, their offerings, our buildings, or whatever other suffering might result from our faithfully confessing Christ and the Gospel in word and deed, but, of course, we sin by failing in these ways and in countless other ways.
For our all of our sin and for our sinful nature, we deserve both temporal death and eternal punishment, apart from God’s calling and so enabling us to be sorry for our sin and to trust Him to forgive us by grace for Christ’s sake. God’s desire to forgive us made Divinely necessary His Son in human flesh’s suffering many things and being rejected by the Jewish leaders, being killed, and after three days rising again. Jesus’s identity as the Christ and what He would do were a key part of the Jewish leaders’ rejecting Him (Mark 14:61-64). Yet, Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. Jesus died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved, and then, as He had prophesied, after three days, He rose again. To paraphrase the Gospel Reading, He gave His life in return for our souls. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 5:1-11), God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; we are justified by faith; we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And, we receive that peace through God’s Word in all of its forms.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus closely associates Himself with the Gospel, His Word. Truly, the Holy Spirit creates faith in us that believes in Jesus and then also believes His Word, and that sequence seems significant: Jesus and what He does are first the “material” of our faith, as it were, and Holy Scripture is then the “form” of our faith. Of course, we do not just have His Words, but we have His actions, too. Already in the Old Testament, God gave effectual “signs” of His promises, such as the covenant of circumcision that He made with Abraham in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16), a covenant made, according to Jewish tradition, on Mount Betarim, one of the peaks of Mount Dov, which incidentally are not mountains that we will consider in our midweek Lenten sermon series on the Bible’s mountains, however. Circumcision gave way to Holy Baptism as the entrance rite into God’s Church (Colossians 2:11-12), and, once in the Church, the baptized seek out Holy Absolution for the sins that they know and feel in their heart, and then they are admitted to the Holy Supper, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so they give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 22:23-31; antiphon: v.22), the afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek Him shall praise the Lord!
So forgiven, we are transformed. Jesus’s taking up His cross was not first and foremost an example for us to follow or about His enabling us to take up our crosses, though both of those things nevertheless are included. The Christ Who bore His cross shapes our lives so that we confess Him in word and deed, including bearing our crosses, whatever we must suffer as a result of our connection to Christ. More than just giving up something for Lent, we are willing to give up our very lives at any time. He died for us, and we are willing to die for Him. We might suffer as individuals, and we might suffer as a congregation, but no matter. As we heard in the Epistle Reading, we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. As for our Lord, so also for us: suffering is the path to glory, and, St. Paul says later in Romans, the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).
By God’s mercy and grace, we are led to confess Jesus as the Christ Who took up His cross—led to confess Him with both our words and our deeds, including our taking up our crosses. And so, we live in His forgiveness of sins when we fail in any way now, and we will live in His nearer presence glorified for eternity. That the devil, the world, and our sinful nature all can and do operate within the Church on earth should not surprise us, for the Bible tells us that the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist, arises from within the Church (2 Thessalonians 2:4), even as we believe, teach, and confess that the office of the Roman Catholic pope is the “most‑intense” historical manifestation of the antichrist to date (confer Stephenson, CLD XIII:80). Yet, we do not despair, for the strife is over and the battle is won (Lutheran Service Book 464). The gates of hell do not prevail against the Church (Mathew 16:18), but the Church prevails against the gates of hell.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +