Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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.)
At the Pew Research Center’s latest report last September, Americans’ trust in government had continued to decline, as it generally has for the nearly seventy years that various organizations have asked about it, though, perhaps not surprisingly, trust in government tends to be higher among the members of the party that controls the White House than among the members of the opposing party (Pew Research Center). A similar somewhat‑negative regard for rulers may be found in today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus’s third prophecy of His Passion and Resurrection recorded by the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark is immediately followed by two of His disciples’ request essentially to be in positions where they perhaps could exercise authority and have people serve them, and that request prompts Jesus ultimately to speak of His serving by giving His one life as a ransom for many, which, properly understood, means for all.
After Jesus’s first prophecy of His Passion and Resurrection recorded by St. Mark, Peter rebuked Jesus, and Jesus called Peter “Satan” and spoke of His followers’ need to take up their crosses, too (Mark 8:31-38). After Jesus’s second prophecy of His Passion and Resurrection recorded by St. Mark, the disciples argued about who was the greatest among them, and Jesus said that, if anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all (Mark 9:30-37). And, as we heard, after Jesus’s third prophecy of His Passion and Resurrection recorded by St. Mark, James and John—through their mother Salome, as reported elsewhere (Matthew 20:20) and so pictured on the bulletin cover—asked Jesus to give them positions of honor and authority; the ten other disciples, whom James and John beat out in asking that question, became indignant at James and John; and Jesus again told presumably all of them that whoever would be great among them must be their servant, and whoever would be first among them must be last of all.
At the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, St. Mark seems to say that, as Jesus was walking ahead on the road going up to Jerusalem, the twelve disciples were amazed, and the rest who followed were afraid. In some sense, both amazement and fear are understandable reactions to what Jesus already had said twice was coming and soon said a third time. The twelve disciples, or at least James and John, apparently had some faith, for example, that Jesus would be resurrected, even if they did not yet completely understand the nature either of His service or of His Kingdom. They may have thought that the analogy to secular rulers, or even to religious leaders, of the day was reasonable, but Jesus essentially told them, and tells us, that such an analogy is not reasonable.
We may not ask to sit at Jesus’s right and left in His glory, as James and John did, but we are just as sinful by nature as they were, and we certainly sin in other ways. We may think that we deserve honor and authority that we do not deserve. We may overestimate our abilities to share in Jesus’s suffering. We may not serve others as we should, either our peers or everyone else. Because of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both to die here and now and to be tormented in hell for eternity. But, out of God’s great love and mercy, God calls and so enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and at least 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, our Lord.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s third prophecy of His Passion and Resurrection is the most-detailed of His three prophecies as recorded by St. Mark. Each prophecy alone and all three of them taken together make clear God’s saving will for Jesus to suffer and die for you and for me and then to rise from the dead. Those things did not happen by chance or because things got out of Jesus’s control. Essentially all that Jesus and others before Him prophesied was fulfilled for us. Jesus is the Suffering Servant foretold by Isaiah, Who bears our iniquities and makes us to be accounted righteous by faith in Him (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). Jesus is our High Priest, today’s Epistle Reading said, Who through suffering became our source of eternal salvation (Hebrews 5:1-10). In today’s Gospel Reading, James and John asked Jesus to do something for them, to give them something, and, indeed, Jesus did do something for them, gave them something—not for what they asked but something arguably far better. He gave His one life as a ransom for many, or “all” (confer 1 Timothy 2:6; confer Scaer, CLD VI:72). Jesus ransomed, or “redeemed”, them and us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Jesus died on our behalf, in our place. And, He gives us the benefits of His death for us through His Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus spoke to James and John both about their drinking the cup that He was drinking—as someone sitting at the right and left of the host would do—and about their being baptized with the baptism with which He was being baptized. Jesus described His suffering in sacramental terms (Scaer, CLD XI:40 n.27). And, Jesus’s death is said to give substance to the sacraments, even as the sacraments are said to give form to His death (Scaer, CLD, VIII:124). They are forms that we can and do access! At the Baptismal Font, we are baptized into His death (Romans 6:3), and at this Altar and its Rail, we drink of the one cup of the new covenant, or “testament”, in His blood, poured out for many, or “all” (for example, Luke 22:20; Mark 14:24). Under that new covenant, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 31:31-34), the Lord forgives our iniquity and remembers our sin no more.
So forgiven through God’s Word and Sacraments, we are transformed by Him. We might say that He served us partly in order for us to serve others, and for us to serve others even through our suffering and death. Jesus has served us by freeing us from sin and death, and now we at least want to serve Him in the person of our neighbors. We no longer strive for greatness and rank as the fallen world does, but we try to follow the example of Jesus’s serving us. And, when we fail to so serve others, as we will fail to so serve others, then, with daily contrition and faith, we live in His forgiveness of sins, until our own deaths or until Jesus comes in His glory. And, He will come in His glory, resurrecting all, and giving to those who have repented and believed in Him eternal life, in bodies glorified in His presence and so freed from sin and all that goes with it, the sickness and suffering that we experience in this life. How we look forward to that freedom!
Americans’ trust in government to do what is right is nearly at an historic low, and perhaps with good reason. Of course, even if we all trusted government to do what is right, that trust itself would not mean that the government, made up of sinful people, would always, or even most of the time, do what is right. Our trust in God, of course, is different! God always does what is right, whether or not we recognize what He does as right. So, we can be sure that God will, as we prayed in today’s Collect, by His great goodness mercifully look upon His people, that we may be governed and preserved evermore in body and soul.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +