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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.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Our celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord is not only one Sunday but a season of eight Sundays, for a total of fifty days. On the six middle Sundays of the Easter Season in this third year of our Three‑Year Lectionary Series, the Second Reading is appointed from the book of Revelation, passages that arguably have more than a passing connection to the Resurrection of Our Lord. And, this Church Year, Pastor Adler and I are focusing on those six Second Readings in a special Sunday-morning sermon-series titled, “Resurrection and Revelation”. With today’s Second Reading’s referring to Jesus, among other things, as “the Firstborn of the Dead” (confer Colossians 1:18), Who Himself says both that He is the “Living One” and that He died and, behold, He is alive forevermore, our theme today is “Jesus is the Firstborn of the Dead”.
Pilgrim’s Midweek Bible Study has been considering the Revelation to St. John for more than a year and a half and is in the book’s concluding chapters, but a few preliminary words about the book in general may be helpful for everyone else this morning. Probably written sometime near the end of the first century, Revelation largely consists of three seven‑fold visions of history, from the Son of God’s first coming in the flesh to His final coming in the flesh, with each of those three visions bringing new aspects of the same basic theme, namely, comforting the members of the persecuted Church with the victory that is already ours in the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ. Revelation’s use of highly‑symbolic imagery, imagery often drawn from the Old Testament, sometimes is said both to reveal to us who are in the Church and to conceal from those who are not in the Church. As we heard in the Second Reading today—part of the book’s opening greeting, praise, and commissioning vision—John, the brother of James and son of Zebedee and Salome, also usually thought to be “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, wrote perhaps a circular letter to the pastors and people of what we might think of as a “circuit” of seven actual churches that were in then Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), as well as to those of other churches since, including us at Pilgrim today. Because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus, the Romans apparently exiled John to Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea—an island some 15 miles around and some 60 miles from Ephesus; for example, a bigger island and further out from the mainland than the island prison of Alcatraz. There on Patmos, on a Sunday, every one of which Sundays is itself a celebration of the Resurrection, the Lord commanded John in the Spirit to write the things that were revealed to him.
In the excerpt from Revelation that is today’s Second Reading, St. John with the word “behold” flags two things for our special attention. The first of those two things flagged for our special attention is that Jesus is coming with the clouds and that all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. That wailing or mourning then could be remorse over sin by all people, only some of which people previously had combined their sorrow over sin with trust in God to forgive their sin (Zechariah 12:10-13:1). In today’s Sermon Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 336), however, hymnwriter Charles Wesley describes two different reactions: deep wailing on the part of those responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion and endless exultation by His ransomed worshipers. Of course, by nature we are all sinful and so in some sense responsible for Christ’s crucifixion. Like Isaiah who thought that he was doomed in the presence of the Lord on account of his sin (Isaiah 6:5), St. John in the Second Reading fell before Jesus as though dead, and from Holy Scripture we know that, on our own, we cannot stand in the presence of our Holy God (Psalm 130:3): we confessed it in the opening liturgy (LSB 203). We deserve to be cast out of His presence! But, as Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading (John 20:19‑31) moved skeptical Thomas from unbelief to belief, so the Holy Spirit leads us to repent, and, when we repent, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all of our actual sin for Jesus’s sake.
The second of those two things flagged for our special attention is that, though Jesus died, He is alive forevermore. “Jesus is the Firstborn of the Dead”! In the Second Reading, in what may be a take on the Divine Name that was first given to Moses (Exodus 3:14-15), we hear how at least God the Father was, is, and is to come. The Father is described as “the Alpha and the Omega”, the beginning and ending letters of the Greek alphabet, and so, as God the Son in human flesh similarly says of Himself, “the First and the Last”. The same could be said of God the Holy Spirit, in the Second Reading apparently referred to as “the seven spirits” or “the Seven‑fold Spirit” before the throne (NIV margin; confer Isaiah 11:2 and Zechariah 4:1-10). In a much‑loved hymn of the Holy Trinity, we similarly sing of God “Which wert and art and evermore shalt be” (LSB 507:2), and in the liturgy we sing of glory to the Triune God “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end”, or “will be forever”, depending on the Setting (LSB 186, 105). In the Second Reading, the Son of God essentially is clothed as a high priest, and He is described as the One Who loves us with a self-sacrificial love and Who has freed us from our sins by His blood, blood shed on the cross for all people, without which shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22). He was pierced for our transgressions, and so a fountain was opened to cleanse us from sin (Isaiah 53:5; John 19:34-37, citing Zechariah 12:10; confer Psalm 22:16; The Lutheran Hymnal 157/Lutheran Worship 506). Yet, though Jesus died, He rose and is alive forevermore! The Living One is not a dead idol but a living God Who is able to give eternal life to others, and He gives that eternal life to others through the ministry of His Word and Sacraments.
In the Second Reading, the risen Christ is in the midst of seven golden lampstands and holds seven stars. In a verse that comes after the Second Reading, Jesus Himself explains both that the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches and that the seven stars are the angels—or messengers, or pastors—of the seven churches (Revelation 1:20). Jesus holds the keys of Death and Hades—“Hades” as the realm of the dead, or the grave—but, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading and discussed in this morning’s Catechesis, Jesus entrusts the exercise of those keys to His apostles and their successors, pastors today, all for the benefit of His Church (confer Matthew 16:19; 18:18). Those keys are exercised every time God’s Word is read and preached to groups such as this group and when the Gospel is applied to individuals, as with water in Holy Baptism. However, the forgiveness of sins for those who repent and the retaining of sins for those who are impenitent are perhaps especially seen both in Holy Absolution in contrast to excommunication and in the opening of the Holy Supper of the Body and Blood of Christ to some and its closing to others. Jesus’s teaching and these signs were recorded so that we may believe that He is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing have life in His Name, just as in today’s First Reading signs and wonders were done and believers were added to the Lord (Acts 5:12-32).
In today’s Second Reading, Jesus, the ruler of kings on earth, is said to have made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father (confer Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:9). Like the faithful people of the Old Testament before us, we pray to God, and we praise Him for what He has done, is doing, and will do, if nothing else adding our “Amen”, affirming the truth of praise that is offered. As the Second Reading described Jesus as the faithful witness, and as the First Reading narrated how the apostles spoke the words of life and witnessed with the Holy Spirit, so, as we prayed in the Collect of the Day, we by God’s grace confess in our life and conversation that Jesus is Lord and God. We so obey God even if it means disobeying human authorities and unjustly suffering the consequences of that disobedience. With St. John and all of our brothers and sisters in Christ we are partners not only in the kingdom but also in the tribulation and patient endurance that are in Jesus. No suffering or tribulation goes on forever, however, for, as Jesus once went (Acts 1:9-11), He is coming back with the clouds (Daniel 7:13; for example, Matthew 24:30; 26:64), and every eye will see Him—there will be no secret return with a “rapture” of only some. Those people whom the prophets, Jesus, and His apostles “revivified” in their ministries later died, but “Jesus is the Firstborn of the Dead” Who lives forever, and all will be so resurrected: repentant believers to the resurrection of life, and unrepentant unbelievers to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:29).
Even for us who repent and believe, the content of Revelation, even as excerpted in the Second Readings during this Easter Season, can be scary, but it need not be so. St. John had had a glimpse of Jesus’s Divine glory at Jesus’s transfiguration and fell on his face and was terrified, but Jesus came and touched him and told him to stop being afraid (Matthew 17:1-8). Likewise in today’s Second Reading, Jesus laid His right hand on St. John and told Him to stop being afraid, and, through St. John’s Divinely‑inspired words, God makes possible our not being afraid, as we are greeted by St. John with the Firstborn of the Dead’s grace and peace.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +