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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.)
We get glimpses of chaos. More than 110 active wildfires covering some 28-hundred square miles reportedly are burning in the United States, and that is not to mention a fast‑moving wildfire in the Canadian Rockies’ Jasper National Park and other fires nearby in the provinces of both Alberta and British Columbia, reportedly more than 170 wildfires in Alberta alone. Less than one hour before President Biden’s Oval Office address Wednesday night, there was a report that fighter jets from the United States and Canada intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers in international airspace off the coast of Alaska. The United States currently may not be in a declared war, but we are in un‑declared proxy wars, as we supply weapons both to Ukraine, which is at war with Russia, and to Israel, which is at war with Hamas and others, arguably backed by Iran, contributing to global volatility and perhaps increasing the likelihood of a third World War. Just more than three months before the U‑S presidential election, one major party’s candidate has been shot, and the other major party’s candidate has withdrawn from the race, while the un‑elected bureaucratic state seemingly continues to govern on its own. Large for‑profit insurance companies decide both when our vehicles are no longer worthy of their coverage and when our bodies are not going to receive what the doctors who know us best have decided are medically‑necessary procedures. The costs of living are continuing to go up, even if the rate that they are rising has come down, and our income is not keeping pace, leaving us more‑pressured economically. And, maybe despite best efforts to diet and exercise, the bodies of our loved ones and ourselves continue to age and decline, progressing inevitably towards death.
We get glimpses of chaos also in today’s Gospel Reading. Immediately after miraculously using five loaves and two fish in order to feed five thousand men (Mark 6:30-44), not to mention women and children (Matthew 14:21), Jesus dismissed the crowd that, apparently as a result of the free food, we are told elsewhere, wanted to take Him by force to make Him king (John 6:15). The disciples whom Jesus made get into the boat and go before Him to the other side were making headway painfully, being tested in their rowing, for the wind was against them. Jesus came to them, walking on the sea, and was wishing to “pass by them”, apparently in order to reveal Himself to them as God, Who similarly had “passed by” Moses (Exodus 33:17‑34:8) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:11-13), but, when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea, they thought that He was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw Him and were terrified. Even after Jesus spoke to them and got into the boat and the wind ceased, they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
Jesus’s disciples to some extent only saw the glimpses of chaos, somewhat like Job, who, in his first reply to his friend Bildad the Shuhite (Job 2:11; 8:1-22), spoke of God alone’s doing such things as stretching out the heavens and trampling on the waves of the sea (Job 9:8), but Job also confessed that God passes by Job—arguably showing Himself to be God (Van Groningen, TWOT II:641-642; Fuhs, TDOT X:420-421)—and yet Job does not see Him, that God moves on, but Job does not perceive Him (Job 9:11). The same is true of us! Like the disciples and Job before them, we do not always recognize our creator and preserver, Who is present and active in the world (confer Beckwith, CLD III:184-186, 189 n.21). Is it a ghost or God? Too often, amid the glimpses of chaos—wildfires, intercepted jets, wars and rumors of war, worries about the election, battles with insurance companies, economic pressures, and declining health and death—amid all the glimpses of chaos, we fail to recognize the glimpses of order. Like Jesus’s disciples, we come to wrong conclusions; we cry out; we are terrified; we are astounded; we do not understand; and we have hardened hearts. We may make jokes about walking on water, but the chaos and judgment that the sea can symbolize are no laughing matters. On account of our sinful nature and our actual sin, we deserve both death and eternal torment in hell, apart from the Holy Spirit’s calling and so enabling us to repent and believe in Jesus Christ.
We get “Glimpses of Chaos and Glimpses of Order”. In the beginning, the Triune God created the heavens and the earth: the Father speaking things into existence by the Word of the Son with the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1-2). God made the expanse of the sky or heaven to separate the waters above from the waters below (Genesis 1:6-8), and God gathered together the waters below to let the dry land of the earth appear (Genesis 1:9-10). When Jesus was alone on the land and the disciples were in the midst of the sea, He miraculously both saw them in need and went to them. As Job said, God alone stretches out the heavens and tramples on the waves of the sea, so, when Jesus walked on the sea, He was showing Himself to be God in human flesh, and His identifying Himself by using the Name of the Lord confirmed it. The Lord God, Who at one time had walked with the first man and woman in the garden in the cool of the day, walked on the sea to reveal Himself as true God to His disciples, and later, because of His great love for even the fallen world, He walked the way of sorrows through Jerusalem to the cross, in order to die there for the sin of the world, including your sin and my sin. He, Who alone stretched out the heavens, is also our Redeemer (Isaiah 44:24)! Jesus died in our place, the death that we deserve, and then He rose from the dead, and then, too, He had to reassure His disciples that He was not a ghost (Luke 24:39). In the boat, Jesus’s disciples may not have believed, but, at Gennesaret, the people recognized Him and were “made well”, or “saved”, apparently as they believed. When we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us; God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, including our sin of not always recognizing Him when He passes by us. Is it a ghost or God? Is it defeat or victory? Even with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can have trouble seeing God when He reveals Himself to us, on the cross and out of the tomb, as in His Word and Sacraments.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 9:8-17), God gave, as a sign of the covenant that He made between Himself and Noah and his family and every living creature, the rainbow, long before the rainbow was perverted by people in our lifetime. The rainbow was a reminder of the covenant, but seeing the rainbow did not bring people into that covenant, as being circumcised later brought people into the covenant that God made with Abraham, or as being baptized now saves people, as Noah and his family were brought safely through water in the ark (1 Peter 3:20-22). Water is not always symbolic of chaos and judgment; water can be also a sign of order and salvation, as when the people of Israel both in the exodus from Egypt crossed the Red Sea on dry ground (Exodus 13:17-14:31) and later in entering the Promised Land crossed the Jordan River on dry ground (Joshua 3:1-17). We who are baptized privately confess to our pastor the sins that we know and feel in our hearts for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself (Small Catechism V). And, then, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, 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 the forgiveness of sins and also life and salvation. As with the disciples and the people in today’s Gospel Reading, the spoken Word of God and the touch of His Sacraments both reveal Him to us and heal us.
God’s Word and Sacraments are the means by which we are both strengthened with power through His Spirt in our inner beings and filled with all the fullness of God, as St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 3:14-21) prayed that the Ephesians—and we—would be strengthened and filled. So, we know the love of Christ that, St. Paul says, surely with some sense of irony, surpasses knowledge. Whatever “Glimpses of Chaos and Glimpses of Order” that we might get, we recognize God’s preserving and forgiving presence with us. As with the antiphon of today’s Psalm (Psalm 136:1-9; antiphon: v.26), we give thanks to the God of heaven, for His “steadfast love”—His “mercy”—endures forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +