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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.)
You and I may not be as interested, but I know at least one Pilgrim member in particular who was really looking forward to the July 20th boxing match between YouTuber‑turned‑prizefighter Jake Paul and former‑heavyweight‑champion Mike Tyson, until Tyson had an ulcer flare-up last month on a flight from Miami to Los Angeles that required him to limit his training until his condition improved (ESPN). The undisputed heavyweight champion for three years and the first to hold the titles from three different boxing associations, Tyson is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time (Wikipedia on Tyson), but, while that distinction is impressive in its own right, Tyson is not the World’s Strongest Man, for which there is a whole different competition, and Great Britain’s Tom Stoltman currently holds that title, for the third time (Wikipedia on Strongest Man). In today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus essentially describes Himself as a Stronger‑Man Who enters a strong‑man’s house, binds him, and then plunders his goods. Earlier in St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, John the Baptizer had preached about Jesus as “stronger” than John himself (Mark 1:7), and this morning I am preaching about Jesus as “The Strongest Man”.
For today’s Gospel Reading, our more‑or‑less‑continuous reading of St. Mark’s Gospel account has, from the end of last Sunday’s Gospel Reading, skipped over fifteen verses, which verses tell, among other things, of unclean spirits’ confessing Jesus as the Son of God and of Jesus’s naming twelve apostles that He might send out to preach and have authority to cast out demons (Mark 3:7-21). In today’s Gospel Reading, as St. Mark uniquely reports, first Jesus’s family was saying that Jesus was out of His mind, and then some Jewish leaders who came down from Jerusalem were saying both that Jesus was possessed by a demon and that He cast out demons by the prince of demons. Perhaps in some misguided obedience to Old Testament teaching (Zechariah 13:3), Jesus’s family wanted to seize Him, and the Jewish leaders arguably wanted to seize Jesus, too (for example, Mark 14:46). So, Jesus taught the crowd, in parables: among other things, first the falseness of the Jewish leaders’ claim, and then arguably also the falseness of His family’s claim, especially after they arrived on the scene.
We might relate to a family’s concern for a loved one’s not eating or resting properly, and we might even relate to religious authorities’ concern for right teaching and practice, but, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus essentially makes clear first that the Jewish leaders were blaspheming against the Holy Spirit by attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil and then that His family members were not doing the will of God. Admittedly, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus does not say precisely what the will of God is to which He refers, but other passages of Holy Scripture do say that the will of God in general is that no one perish eternally but that those who look to Jesus and believe in Him should have eternal life and be raised up on the Last Day (for example, Matthew 18:14; John 6:40; confer Acts 22:14; Hebrews 10:10). Neither Jesus’s family at that time nor the Jewish leaders generally were willing to repent and believe in Jesus, as the Holy Spirit called them and calls us to do. Apart from such repentance and faith they were and we are eternally guilty of our sinful nature and of all the actual sin that our sinful nature leads us to commit, and so we deserve to be for eternity, as they were at the time, apart from the Lord’s presence, outside; we deserve to be in the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (for example, Luke 13:28). But, led by the Holy Spirit, as we did in today’s Psalm (Psalm 130; antiphon: v.7), we cry to the Lord out of the depths of our sin, and He hears our voice; we wait for the Lord with trust in Him, and He redeems us from all of our iniquities.
A beaten and bloodied body hanging naked and dead on a cross is hardly a usual picture of strength. A description of a Stronger-Man Who enters a strong‑man’s house, binds him, and then plunders his goods hardly seems fitting for a righteous God. Yet, Jesus is that Stronger‑Man, and He is victorious over the devil in apparent defeat. In the words of the first Gospel promise of a Savior as recorded in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 3:8-15), the Offspring of the woman bruised the serpent’s head, but the serpent bruised the Offspring of the Woman’s heel. In keeping with God’s prophecy through Isaiah, Jesus took the captives of the mighty and rescued the prey of the tyrant and saved us (Isaiah 49:24-25); and, the Lord divided Him a portion because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12). We can get the meaning of both Jesus’s perfect life and His death on the cross for us by picturing Him, during His literal descent into hell, figuratively breaking open hell’s gates and “harrowing” it, first separating out and then bringing out us and all of those righteous by faith of every time and place (for example, Luther’s so-called “Torgau Sermon” given deutero‑confessional status by Formula of Concord IX). Jesus is no ordinary man but “The Strongest Man”: God in human flesh, Who is capable of defeating not only His family and the Jewish leaders who opposed Him but all of the forces of evil, and He defeats all the forces of evil for us. As we repent and believe in Him, all of our sins are forgiven.
The language of today’s Gospel Reading—its mentioning “seizing” and “binding” and “forgiving”—especially brings to mind God’s forgiving our sins through the Office of the Holy Ministry’s either excommunicating those who do not repent and believe or absolving those who do repent and believe, thereby exercising Christ’s Keys to, as appropriate, open or close hell and heaven (John 20:23; Matthew 16:19; 18:18; John 20:22-23; Matthew 18:21, 35). Those who do the will of God by repenting and believing are part of the family of God, born of the will of God (John 1:13) by the water and the Spirit of Holy Baptism (John 3:5). So born, we partake of the family meal: bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and thereby we receive forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation. Regardless of what the ancient proverb says (Wikipedia on Blood and Water), the blood-ties of our divided or fractured‑families do not supersede the ties of Baptismal water and Christ’s Blood!
As many of us were reminded, this past Thursday was the 80th anniversary of “D-Day”, the beginning of the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II, and we may have heard again of the Allied soldiers’ heroic struggles on both the beachhead and the adjacent cliffs. Today’s Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 668) uses the language and imagery of the battlefield to describe our struggle against evil. Truly, as the Hymn describes, prayer and God’s Word have roles in the battles that we wage, but, sadly, the Hymn comes from a time in Church history when a rousing hymn and an active prayer life meant more than the strength and comfort given by Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Holy Supper (Schey, #668, LSB:CttH, 871‑973). We can and do pray, as we did in today’s Collect, that we would be able to stand firm against every assault of Satan and always do God’s will, but we will fail in those and other regards, and so, with daily repentance and faith, we live in the forgiveness of sins that we receive in the since‑recovered Means of Grace!
The Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing match this past week was rescheduled to November 15, still at A-T-and-T Stadium, but I could not find the date and location of the 20‑25 World’s Strongest Man competition. Far more importantly, we especially remember that now and for eternity Christ, “The Strongest Man”, as the Collect put it, has triumphed over the prince of demons and freed us from bondage to sin. In Christ, we in His Church also have already prevailed against the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18). As today’s Epistle Reading described (2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1), our present light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +