The Vindication of God

Texts:    Colossians 2:1-15; Matthew 28:1-10

      SEVERAL YEARS AGO, A BOOK of essays was published called God in the Dock.  It's by C. S. Lewis, and the title comes from criminal trials in Great Britain, where the defendant stands the whole time in an elevated open box, exposed to the stares and censures of everyone in the courtroom.  Lewis's argument is that we modern people no longer see ourselves on trial before God the Judge; rather, we put God on trial and act as judge over Him.

    You know how it is.  We put God in the dock for public disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornados; for private suffering like disease, poverty, and murder.  This is the wrong way around, since it's our sin that disrupted creation and causes us to do evil to one another every day.  If God wanted to, He'd have every right to wipe every one of us out all at once, for the wages of sin is death, and all of us are sinners.

    But there was a time when God was really in the dock.  It was a dark Friday afternoon outside the city of Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 years ago.  On that day a Man hung on a cross, being shamefully tortured to death for the crime of claiming to be God.  At the foot of that cross, and in hiding in the city, were women and men who knew that Man had never done an unjust or wicked or sinful thing in His life.  Yet this Man was suffering the most degrading, agonizing, disgusting form of execution practiced by a civilized society, a death designed to show to everyone what a low, despicable being the crucified criminal was.  Was that Man really guilty of what His enemies charged?  Were all His friends and disciples wrong in calling Him the Righteous One?  Or was the holy God actually turning His back on a truly innocent Man? After a few hours the Man was dead and buried-- and the wages of sin is death.    Could this Man ever be vindicated?   Could God?

    We know that that Man dying on the cross outside of Jerusalem that day was Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  For the rest of that Friday, all the Sabbath, and into the eve and morning of the first day of the week, His disciples hid and mourned and simply could not understand.  God was in the dock, and it seemed as if the verdict would come in "Guilty."

    But as the Gospel according to Matthew tells us, early on the first day of the week, just as the sun was beginning to rise, Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" went to Jesus' tomb.  Matthew doesn't tell us whether the women knew that the tomb not only was closed with the customary stone, but also was sealed and guarded.  He only tells us they intended to "look at it," and very likely, to mourn.

    In any event, it didn't matter.  For as the two Marys approached the tomb where Jesus lay, a violent earthquake shook the ground and angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled back the stone, and sat on it.  His appearance so frightened the guards they fainted away  like dead men.  And Jesus' tomb?  It was -- empty.

    Empty before the stone was rolled away.  Empty before the earthquake sent the ground reeling.  Empty before the angel descended and sat and greeted the women as they approached.  "Do not be afraid," he said to them, "for I know you that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said."

    "He is risen, just as He said."  And then, as the women hurried away to tell the Eleven the incredible news, Jesus Himself met them.  As it says in verses 9 and 10, "‘Greetings,' he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.'"

    Jesus the Crucified One was risen!  He was alive!  He was risen, just as He said, risen indeed!

    Brothers and sisters, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ means many things to us, in this world and the next.  But one of the most important and magnificent things it declares is the vindication of God.  God was in the dock in the crucifixion of His Son.  But now, Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, and God the Son, God the Father, and we who believe in Him have been fully justified against any imputation of sin or censure: Divine vindication has come.

    First of all, the Man Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has been vindicated.  Did anyone think He was dying for His own sins on that cross?  No! The resurrection proves He was the Sinless One, dying for the sins of the world.  The resurrection of Christ proved that He, Himself, was totally righteous and innocent.  The grave could not hold Him, death had no power over Him.

    The resurrection vindicates Jesus' claims to be one with God, to be God Himself.  Only God has life in Himself; only God has power over death.  In John chapter 10, Jesus tells His opponents,

    The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.

Jesus had declared that He would rise, that He could rise, for He is the only-begotten Son of God the Father.  In Him all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Col. 2:9).  He is the head over every power and authority, including death.  And by His resurrection, His divine claims are proven true.

    The resurrection vindicates Jesus' word as the word of God: "He is risen, just as he said."  Any human can preach comfort and holiness and beautiful ethics and morality.  But only someone who was God and who spoke the very words of God could promise that He would come back to life after being crucified, and actually do it.

    The vindication of Christ our God assures us that He and His word are to be trusted.  His sinless life and death has the power to save us from death and hell.  His word is to be received as the very word of God, for He was and is God, come to us in human flesh, risen from the grave, and ascended in that same flesh into heaven. When He says He will give eternal life to whomever believes in Him, we can take Him at His word.  Jesus was no criminal blasphemer, suffering on a Roman cross for His own sins:  He was and is the glorious Son of God, and as He hung there dying (as it says in Colossians 2:15), He was [disarming] the powers and authorities, [making] a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."

    The resurrection of our Lord Jesus vindicates God the Father as holy and righteous. The dying thief whom Luke records admits that he and his fellow-thief were suffering the just punishment for their crimes, but this Man Jesus had done nothing wrong.  The disciples on the road to Emmaus, who didn't believe Jesus was already risen, asserted that He had been a godly and true prophet; in fact, they'd thought He was the Messiah sent to redeem Israel.  How could a good and righteous God allow a Man who had kept His Law perfectly to suffer death and decay like any other sinner?

    But, as Peter preached on the first Pentecost, God did not abandon Jesus to the grave, nor did He allow His Holy One to see destruction.  In raising His Son from the dead, God the Father proves that He is righteous and is on the side of the righteous.  God is vindicated against any charge that He is indifferent to evil or blind to what evil men and evil forces do.  No, even on the cross God was defeating evil, and the resurrection of Christ points forward to the Last Days when all righteousness will be vindicated and death, sin, and the devil will be crushed under the feet of our triune God forever.

    The vindication of God the Father in the resurrection of Christ assures us that the prayers of His saints are heard.  We can trust that at the right time He will rescue us from all our troubles.  And in the meantime, we can know that our sufferings have meaning and purpose.  God is our heavenly Father who loves us, and though, as Peter tells us in his first epistle, "for a little while [we] may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials[, t]hese have come so that [our] faith-- of greater worth than gold, though refined by the fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

    The resurrection of Christ is not only the vindication of God, it is also vindication from God, vindication for us sinners whom He has called to belong to Him.  God is too holy to look upon sin; we sinners cannot endure in His presence.  Our sins have earned us the punishment of eternal death.  On the other hand, He has chosen us before the creation of the world (as it says in Ephesians 1) to be adopted as His sons in Jesus Christ.  How can God the Righteous adopt unworthy sinners without violating His holy justice?  How can He maintain His holiness and still fulfill His plan to admit us into His love?
    In Romans 3, Paul writes that God presented Jesus

    . . . as a sacrifice of propitiation, through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice . . . at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

The resurrection of Christ proves that His death was an atoning sacrifice for our sakes.  It demonstrates that His blood totally paid the penalty for our sins, and in Him we can stand fully accepted before the throne of God, as His beloved daughters and sons.  Christ is risen, and we are vindicated before our holy God.

    In our Colossians reading, Paul reminds us that formerly, we were dead in our sins.  We were "uncircumcised in our sinful nature,"  which is to say that we were outside of the saving covenant between God and His faithful people.  But now, God has made us alive with Christ, the One who was dead and is risen again.  Now we "have been given fullness" in Him and share the divine fullness which is His.  We have "been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through [our] faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead."  Colossians 2:14 assures us that in his death, Jesus "canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."

    When Jesus was crucified, our sins and guilt were crucified with Him.  And with them died the punishment we deserved for them under God's righteous Law.  In Christ we are fully vindicated.  All charges against us have been wiped away!  As it is written in Romans 8, who can bring any charge against God's elect?  God Himself justifies and vindicates us!  Who can condemn?  Jesus Christ, who died and was raised to life, sits at the right hand of God interceding for us!  In the resurrection of Christ we can be assured that all our sins are forgiven.  And not only that, but through our risen Saviour we also enjoy all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, knowledge of the deep, deep love of God and wisdom of how He used the shame of the cross to bring us, even us, to the joys of life eternal.

    And so, as Paul urges us in Colossians, let no one deceive us by fine-sounding arguments.  Let no one take us captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, that depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.  God is out of the dock, and in Christ, He has cleared us from all charges as well. 

    So don't allow yourself to be put in the dock again.  The basic principles of this world say that the dead do not rise.  Too bad for the basic principles of this world.  God has come from beyond this world and raised up His Son Jesus Christ and raised us up with Him, as well.  Unbelieving human tradition tries to tell us that Jesus didn't exist, or if He did, He didn't rise and it shouldn't matter to our faith if He didn't.  But Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death, and all our hope in heaven and on earth depend on this truth.  Human tradition says it's up to us to vindicate ourselves in the eyes of God and the world.  We have to do good deeds and keep all the rules.  But Jesus Christ is risen, and we who were dead and helpless in our sins have been raised with Him.  He and He alone has brought us into His everlasting covenant by a circumcision not done by human hands but by Christ Himself in our baptism.

    The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of God.  The women who met Him outside the tomb that morning fell down at His feet and worshipped Him. They did right, for He was their Lord and their God.  And by His blood and rising, He is ours.  Do not be afraid.  Heed the voice of the angel; obey the word of your Lord Himself.  Go quickly and spread the good news: Your full vindication has come, for Christ who died is risen, He is risen indeed!

This Little Word 'In'

Texts: Ephesians 1:1-14; John 14:8-21

I, N-- IN. SUCH A LITTLE WORD, YOU MIGHT overlook it. Insignificant, really.

But ask a junior high girl if it matters what crowd she belongs to, she'll tell you this word ‘in' is a matter of life or social death.

Ask the product designer who has to gauge what people are likely to buy. His game or car or cell phone had better line up with what's in-- or his working life could be in its way out.

Or think of a person who's starving. Is ‘in' a meaningless word to one who more than anything needs food in him? For him, that word ‘in' is a question of life or death.

Our New Testament was written in Greek, and in that language ‘in' in a very little word, too. It's epsilon, nu: en, and even Greek readers might not be blamed if they happened to overlook it in the midst of all the bigger, more important-looking words on the page. But this little Greek word ‘en,' and its English translation ‘in,' means eternal life to sinners like me and you.

Still, we can find this little word ‘in' to be confusing. In our reading from the 14th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, our Lord Jesus is speaking to His closest disciples the night before He will be crucified. We can expect that every word of this farewell address will be especially important. But then we get to verse 13, where it says, "Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." And we have verse 20, where Jesus says, "On that day you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." And the temptation is to say, "Wait, what? Jesus, you're saying that you're in the Father and the Father's in you and we're in you and the Spirit's in us and how can anyone keep this straight?" So we gloss over those parts and jump down to verse 23 where Jesus says, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching." Active obedience, that we can understand. All this about who's in whom and one being in the other, that's too hard.

But if we'll take the time to unravel what our Lord is saying, we'll find that this little word ‘in' invites us to enjoy everything our God is and everything He has for us, in this world and the world to come.

From the very beginning of this fourteenth chapter of John's gospel, Jesus has been teaching His disciples that they should identify Him with God the Father. They should trust Him as they trust God. He is leaving them, He says, but that's so he can prepare them a place in His Father's house. He's told them that He is the only way to the Father. He says that if they really knew Him, they'd know the Father as well. And He has good news for them: "From now on," says Jesus, "you do know him and have seen him."

But the disciples can't imagine how they possibly could have seen the Father. So, Philip speaks up and says, "Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."

Philip thinks Jesus is saying they can see the Father in Him the same way we speak of seeing God in the beauty of a sunset or in the power of a thunderstorm. But if Jesus is going away, Philip and the others want a more direct vision of the Person of God. Like Moses in the book of Exodus, they want actually to lay their eyes on Him, if only for a little while. Moses got a one-time view of God's glory, and that gave him the strength to go on as the leader of Israel. So if only Jesus would bring the disciples that same sort of divine vision, it'd be enough to help them endure after He's gone.

They failed to see who Jesus really was. And how blind we can be today! Even people who claim to be ministers of the Gospel believe and preach that Jesus came to point us to God, but that He wasn't actually God Himself. But Jesus has patience with Philip as I pray He will have mercy on us. He says, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." They'd lost the truth in plain sight! The whole point of Jesus' ministry, the whole object of all His preaching and teaching and miracles, was to demonstrate that He, Jesus, was God in human flesh. Not merely a messenger or a herald, but God Himself. To see Jesus was and is to behold God!

Therefore Jesus asks all His disciples, including us, "Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" To say that they are in one another is to say that this Man Jesus and the eternal God are totally identified with one another. What one is, the other is. What one has, the other has. What one does, the other does. So when Jesus promises you eternal life, He can give it, because He is the God of Life. When He promises that His Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, He can keep that promise, because He is the divine Word of Truth. When He says that anyone who has faith in Him will do even greater things than the miracles He did, He can make that happen, because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, continually working the power of God in this world.

For this purpose He sent us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is our Counselor, our Paraclete-- literally, the One who comes alongside us. But it gets better than that. For as Jesus promises in verse 17, "You know Him, for he lives with you and is in you." There it is again, that little word ‘in'! The Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is God in us, leading us into the life of divine truth and growing us in the truth of divine life.

Jesus a few days later will prove that He has the power of divine life when He rises from the dead. He says, "Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day"-- after He has been raised, after the Spirit has been given-- "you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."

"I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you."

But how can that be? Hasn't Jesus asserted that He and the eternal God are totally identified with one another? What one is, the other is. What one has, the other has. What one does, the other does. How can this be true for us and God? God is eternal and infinite; we are finite and mortal. God is perfectly holy, righteous, and true; we are impure, sinful, and false. God is self-sufficient life, uncreated, in need of nothing; we are dependent on Him for the least operation of the molecules of our cells. How can we be identified with God the Son, so that it can be said that we are in Him and He is in us?

Maybe it's just a subjective thing. Like the way we might identify with a hero in a movie or a novel. That hero inspires us, we try to be like him, and that makes us more heroic and better people. Same with Jesus, right?

Actually, no. It takes more than our emotions and imaginations for us to be in Christ and for Christ to be in us. It took Him a lot more, the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood. St. Paul writes in the seventh verse of the first chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, "In him"-- that is, in Jesus-- "we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." We are in Christ because He has redeemed us on the cross. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. He identified with us in our sin and took the punishment for it in His own body. And having paid the price totally and forever, He identifies us with Him before the Father, and identifies Himself with us in the world. He credits us with His righteousness and holiness and imparts to us His life, wisdom, and joy. So that in Him and through Him, we can participate in the eternal blessed life of God. Verse 3 of our Ephesians passage says the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. How? Where? In Christ! There's that little word ‘in' again, that word that means so much. "For," Paul says, "he"-- that is, God-- "chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." In Christ we were predestined to share the holy and blameless life of God! In love He planned for us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ! Again, in verse 6, God has freely given us His glorious grace, in the One he loves-- that is, in Jesus the Son of God, who is in the Father as the Father is in Him. In, in, in!

And He has made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ. We fret and mourn over the evil and disasters that happen in this world, and it can be a total mystery how God will work it all out, or whether He's working it out at all. But in Christ, we can trust that the day will come when all will reach its fulfillment, and all things in heaven and on earth will be brought together under the one headship of Jesus Christ our Lord. In Him we have also been made heirs of God, so that we ourselves might be to the praise of His glory. The glorious riches that belong to God's eternal Son now are coming to us, too, because when the Father sees Christ, He sees us in Him as well.

So how did this happen? Was it because we were more virtuous or deserving than other people? Not at all. Rather, we were included in Christ when we heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation. The proof and seal of our salvation is the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, commending to us the truth of Jesus Christ and what He did that we might be saved. For as Paul writes, "You were marked in him"-- in Christ-- "with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession, to the praise of his glory."

You are God's possession! The Son of God who is in the Father lives in you and you live in Him! Even in this time of Lent, when we consider soberly what it cost Jesus to redeem us, let us also praise God and give Him glory for the love and grace He lavished on us in His Son, that we might be saved.

It would be wrong of me to conclude without saying something about the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in Japan day before yesterday. You may have seen video footage of the seaside towns being overwhelmed by that raging black wave, that took boats, buildings, vehicles, and people before it. I watched these videos on the Internet, and it was agonizing to see doom flooding in to overtake these poor victims.

But equally chilling and horrifying was reading the comments many people were leaving on these clips. People were making racist jokes. Others were self-righteously opining that the Japanese "deserved" this because they still have a whaling industry. Still others, worst of all, were using this disaster as an excuse to blaspheme God and insult His faithful people.

Are the Japanese worse sinners than any others, that this tsunami overtook them? Were the people of Christchurch, New Zealand, worse than any, or the inhabitants of Chile, or Haiti, or Chicago in this winter's snowstorms, or anyone to whom natural disaster occurs? No, not at all. We are all equally guilty before our holy God. And by some cause or another, physical death will come to all of us someday, and for some of us, as for the people on the coast of Japan, death may come suddenly and soon.

When it does, may we be found in Christ, that we may eternally share every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. May we already be at home with God, as Jesus promises in John's gospel, because by His grace Jesus has made His home in us. But if we refuse to be in Christ, if in our pride and wickedness we insist on remaining outside of Him, there remains no hope for us, only everlasting destruction.

‘In' is such a little word, but it holds a world of meaning when the One we are in is Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen King of heaven and earth. To be outside Him is death and disaster; to be in Him means communion with God and life and blessing forever more. Amen.

His Father's House and Business

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 2:40-52

IMAGINE FOR AWHILE THAT you're Mary of Nazareth. One day the angel Gabriel encounters you with the news that you, yes, you are going to bear the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God. You spend six months with your cousin Elizabeth, who is miraculously pregnant in her old age. Your husband-to-be Joseph is told in a dream that the Baby you're carrying was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Then the Baby is born, and before you have a chance to shake your head over the less-than-ideal circumstances, a band of shepherds appears and tells you a whole host of angels had told them to come and find your little Jesus, because He is the Saviour of the world. Forty days later, you go to the Temple to dedicate Jesus in obedience to the law, and not one, but two prophets come up and announce that your Infant is Israel's promised Redeemer. Then you return to Bethlehem for awhile, and one day, magnificent Magi appear from miles to the east, bow down and worship your Child, and give Him lavish gifts.

I think you'd be convinced that your Child Jesus was unique among children, and not just the way all mothers think their children are unique. You'd understand pretty thoroughly that He had a special relationship with God and that God had given Him a particular mission and purpose in this world. Even when you have to flee to Egypt because King Herod is after Jesus to kill Him, that'd just go to prove that your Son has a prodigious role to play in the history of nations and men.

But eventually you and Joseph return from Egypt and resettle in Nazareth. You get back to your everyday lives. And the other babies start coming: James, then Joses, then Judas and Simon. And two or three sisters for Jesus, too. You don't have time these days to ponder how divinely special your Firstborn is or marvel over His relationship to the Lord Most High. In fact, you get to taking for granted what an obedient, trustworthy, helpful kid He is. "Never a bit of trouble out of Jesus," you say to the neighbors, when you think about it at all. "I wish all the children were like Him." But it's been a long time since you've considered why there's no way they could be. Jesus is just the good kid every mother thinks she has.

Meanwhile, every spring you leave all the kids with their grandparents and you and Joseph go up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. As a woman, you aren't legally obligated to go, but Joseph as a Jewish adult male is. And this year, Jesus has reached His twelfth year and become a bar mitzvah-- a son of the covenant. He's now a man under the Jewish Law, and He comes with you to celebrate the Feast, too. You travel in a great cavalcade of friends and relatives from Nazareth and the surrounding villages, singing the Psalms of Ascents and praising God. At last, you and your husband and your Firstborn stand in the crowd in the Temple courts as the Passover lamb is sacrificed, and you're filled with awe at how God saved His people from slavery in Egypt so long ago.

Do you stay for all for the Passover and for all seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Probably not. Jerusalem is expensive, and work is waiting back home.

So you, Mary, leave the house where you've lodged and start out ahead with the other women and the little children. It's a chance to catch up on all the news, and you're sure Jesus is safe with His father Joseph. They'll be with the men, who bring up the rear.

But that night you make camp, and rendezvous with your husband. You say, "Joseph, where's Jesus? I thought He was with you."

Joseph says, "I thought He was with you!"

You ask friend after friend, relatives after relative, if they've seen Him. No one has. You begin to get worried, and having to spend the night not knowing makes it worse. Jesus has never caused a problem like this! Where can He be?

At first light, you and Joseph head back south to Jerusalem, seeking and inquiring among all the pilgrims who're heading back north. "Have you seen Jesus? Have you seen our Son?"

Your anxiety grows. You reach the capital. Could Jesus be seeing the sights? Maybe He wanted to see the Roman soldiers drill at the Fortress Antonia. Could He have been drawn away by the excitement of the marketplace? In yourself you cry, "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, how could You of all my children do such a thing to me! Where are you? My heart is about to break!"

Finally, the two of you exhaust all the places where you think a smart, curious twelve-year-old boy is likely to be. Then one of you says, "Where haven't we looked yet?"

"We've looked everywhere!"

"What about the Temple?"

Together you hurry up the hill to Mount Zion. But this time you aren't singing psalms, your words are a jumble of panic and hope. You enter the Temple courts, and there on the terrace you see the gathering where members of the Sanhedrin are teaching during these last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The listeners seem very excited. There is a rumble of sage old voices, and then, right out of the midst of those venerable scholars, you hear an adolescent voice raising a question. A familiar voice. The voice of your Son Jesus.

Jesus! You and Joseph simply do not care who those teachers of the law are, Gamaliel or Hillel or Joseph of Arimathea or the high priest Annas himself. You rush right in and there, sitting respectfully among them, is your Son Jesus. All around, you hear the learned men murmuring, "Amazing child! Remarkable young man! Such wisdom, such understanding! Such insightful answers to all the questions put to him! Would scarcely believe it if I weren't hearing it myself. Amazing!"

But that doesn't make you feel any better. You are overcome with astonishment at where your Boy is and what He's done. You look at Him and exclaim, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Look, so anxiously your father and I have been searching for you!"

And that firstborn Son of yours, that Child who never caused you a bit of trouble in His life, replies simply and very respectfully, "Why were you searching for Me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" But it's been a long, long time since the angels and the wise men, and neither you nor Joseph can make head or tail of what Jesus could possibly mean. But He comes along with you obediently, and after this He is again the obedient, dependable, willing Son He always was-- if He had ever been anything else. And you, Mary, store up this incident in your heart, trying to work out what it means. It's only years later, after your Son has died and risen again, that you fully understand why you should have sought Him first in the Temple, His Father's house, and why He was so careful-- and so right-- to remind you and Joseph who His true Father really was.

"Why were you searching for Me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" These are the first words of our Savior that we find recorded in Scripture, and we must consider them spoken in wonder and even disappointment. You do not search, either anxiously or not, for something that is in exactly the right place. You go directly to that place and get it. After twelve years Mary and Joseph should have known that Jesus' place and business was in the house of God. And as much as He was their son in human reckoning, even more He was and is the Son of His Father in heaven. It wasn't Jesus' purpose on this earth that He should live out His life as Jesus bar Joseph, the good and godly carpenter of Nazareth, building houses and mending broken tables and chairs. No, He came to earth to be the Jesus the Christ, to shed His blood to build up the house of His Church and to make sin-destroyed lives whole and new.

If Mary and Joseph could forget Who Jesus was and what He came for, how much more the rest of humanity down through history! You've heard what is made of Him, by unbelievers and by those who claim to be Christians alike. They say, "Jesus is primarily a great moral Teacher." Or, "He died to show us how much God loves us and how we should love one another." Or, "He came to be our Good Example for how we should live."

Friends, these ideas about Jesus seem really attractive and possible. But all of them make Him out to be the same thing Moses and the prophets were. They're about what we have to do to make ourselves acceptable to God, about Jesus somehow helping us keep the Old Testament Law, which is summed up in love to God and our neighbor. We didn't need the death of the incarnate Son of God to teach us that! We've known about morality and the love of God and right living for millennia! A purely human prophet would have done to remind us of all that.

But the Man Jesus was and is no less than the divine Son of God, come in human flesh to save us sinners and reconcile us to God. From His earliest youth He knew who His true Father was, and from His earliest youth He had a hunger and thirst for the word and counsel of God. Heeding God's word and counsel would eventually take Him to the Cross to die for your sins and mine, for that was the predestined goal of the Christ who was to come. Let us never get so used to Jesus that we make Him mundane and comfortable and merely human. To take Him for granted like that is to miss the new life He won for us in His blood, and all the blessings He came to give.

The scholars and teachers those three days at the Temple could well be amazed at Jesus' answers and understanding. If they'd only known it, He was giving the first proofs that He was the Messiah promised by the prophets of old. As Isaiah says,

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of power,

the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

Among the teachers we see the Boy Jesus overflowing with wisdom and understanding; and in His answer to His earthly parents we see how above all He delighted in the fear of the Lord. Later on, the writer to the Hebrews would say that Jesus, "for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." From His earliest awareness He knew who His true Father was, and when the time was right, Jesus grew to understand that He had come to seek and save the lost, and to give up His life as a ransom for many. Jesus' focus on God's will for Him was total, even from His boyhood.

It is God's will for us that we be found in Christ, washed in His blood, clothed in His righteousness, enjoying His peace, focussing on His will, and delighting in the fear of the Lord. As His redeemed people, we now are able to follow Jesus' example as we choose our priorities in life and decide whom we will serve. When we know-- "know," mind you, not merely "feel"-- that any earthly authority is exalting itself above the revealed will of God as recorded in the Scriptures, we must obey God rather than man. And if our love for any human being-- parent, child, sibling, or spouse-- becomes an idol that takes the place of our love for God, that human idol must be dethroned, as much for that person's sake as for our own. God and His will for our lives must come first, as for Jesus they came first.

Jesus' place and business were in His Father's house. In Him, ultimately, our place and business are there, too. Wherever you go, whatever you do, study to be found in Him, living joyfully as a child of His heavenly kingdom. You belong in the salvation, love, and peace of the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ. May anyone who seeks your heart always find you with Him there, filled with His Spirit, expressing His wisdom, walking in His counsel, and delighting in the fear of the Lord. Not through your own works or virtue or strength, but through the finished work, the divine virtue, and the inexpressible power of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus, to whom be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

Distances Spanned, Walls Broken Down

Texts: Matthew 2:1-11; Ephesians 2:11-22

YOU’RE PROBABLY FAMILIAR WITH the Motown song, "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough." How does it go?

Ain’t no mountain high enough,
Ain’t no valley low enough,
Ain’t no river wide enough
To keep me from gettin’ to you, babe.

Maybe you’ve also heard the joke where the lover who’s sworn all this winds up by saying, "And I’ll be over tonight, baby, if there’s no game on TV."

You certainly can’t charge the Wise Men in our Matthew passage with insincerity. They didn’t let any mountain, valley, river, or desert keep them from getting to Bethlehem to worship at the feet of Jesus, the infant King of the Jews. Over a thousand miles over rough terrain they travelled, from the land of Persia which was outside the bounds of the Roman empire. Think of the trials and hardships of such a journey! Even if we assume that the Magi were pretty well off, there would have been great heat by day and frigid cold by night, with road conditions bad or uncertain. They would have been in constant danger from accidents or bandits. Then once they got to Judea, they had to trust themselves to the wicked King Herod to find out where the Christ Child could be found. Their pilgrimage to Bethlehem was no Caribbean cruise, but the Wise Men let nothing stop them from making it.

And think of the psychological barriers! There you are, one of the Magi of the East. You may not be a king yourself, but you certainly are the advisor to royalty. You’re most likely a follower of Zoroaster, you worship Ahura Mazda, the Uncreated Wisdom, and you search the stars for signs of your god’s working in the cosmos. You devote your life to wisdom and scholarship. And life is good. You’re respected, you’re honored, the people look up to you and kings compensate you well. It would take a lot for you to entertain the idea that the Divine Wisdom would speak in the sacred writings of a despised, broken, and exiled people like the Jews. It would be even more of a stretch to believe that the Uncreated One would send a special emissary from heaven to be born as one of that despised, broken, and occupied people and to understand that the new star you’ve seen heralds this very child. And how much bigger a barrier would it be for you to accept that you, yes, you, one of the noble Magi, should and must get together with some of your fellow-Magi friends and travel all those hundreds of miles to kneel and do homage before that newborn King of the Jews.

But the Wise Men did it, even though their god Ahura Mazda was only a smeared and indistinct picture of the God of Israel who alone made heaven and earth. They went, and we see that they were not only willing to go, they were eager to overcome the obstacles and make that journey. When they saw that the star had stopped over the place where Jesus was, Matthew tells us, they were overjoyed!

What the Wise Men accomplished is certainly impressive. They didn’t let anything keep them from getting to Jesus; and as a sign I pass on Route 68 on the way to Industry puts it, "Wise men still seek Him." It’d make sense for me to say, Be like the Wise Men and don’t let anything in this world get in the way of your coming to Jesus Christ and devoting your life to Him forever!

It would make sense, but I’m not going to do that. At least, not yet. I’m not going to cheerlead you into imitating the Wise Men, because it puts the picture totally the wrong way around. Yes, Someone did come a long way when the Wise Men brought their devotion and gifts to the infant Lord of lords, but He came an infinitely longer way and overcame unthinkably more barriers than the Magi did.

That Someone is Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God. You think the Wise Men came a long distance? Jesus Christ came all the way from the bosom of God the Father Almighty! He was the eternal Son of God! He was the uncreated Word of infinite Wisdom! As the Apostle John writes, "The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." As we read in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, "By him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him." Think of how far He had to go, consider everything He had to give up to become flesh for our sakes, what it meant for Him to confine Himself in a human body that got cold and hungry and thirsty, to make Himself become a kicking, mewling, helpless infant totally dependent for His welfare on an inexperienced teenaged mother and a righteous but equally inexperienced young carpenter!

Then, consider the journey of our Lord’s life and ministry. Think of the inconceivable distance He spanned when He died on the Cross to reconcile sinners like you and me to His Father God! Would you make such a journey? Would I? Left to ourselves, we wouldn’t want to. And even if we could want to do it, we couldn’t. Only Jesus Christ the Son of God and Son of Man could span that terrible distance between sinful, rebellious humanity and the holy heart of God. Only He who came down from heaven and became incarnate of the Virgin Mary could overcome the barriers between us and our righteous Creator. And only He who was born to be the King of the Jews could break down the walls between us who were born Gentiles and His chosen people Israel.

And that’s what our Lord did. For long ages of history we non-Jews were, as the Apostle puts it in our Ephesians reading, "separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world." No purely human determination could overcome that hopeless gap. "But now--" says St. Paul-- "But now, in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Brought near! The far distance spanned! Not by human effort or good intentions or "following Jesus as my Good Example," but, "by the blood of Christ"!

And notice that verb "brought." We’d like to think we could get to God ourselves if only someone would show us the way. But no. God Himself had to come to us in Jesus Christ and bring us.

And when He did, He became our Peace.

To make war you need at least two sides coming against each other, and here in Ephesians 2 those two sides are the Jews vs. everyone else. Israel was chosen by God for a special relationship with Him; everyone else was not. Israel had received God’s covenant promises of a victorious redeeming Messiah; everyone else had not. Israel had been privileged to hear the sure word of the Lord in Moses and the Prophets; everyone else had not. No wonder the Jews became proud and hostile against "those Gentile nations." No wonder they put up barriers against Gentile inclusion.

And let’s face it: We read in the Scriptures that sometimes it was God’s own will that the Jews should keep themselves walled off, as it were, from the Gentiles. In fact, when Israel and Judah got too friendly with the nations, that was when the Lord had to punish them with famine, sword, and exile. There certainly was a wall of separation between Jew and Gentile and for a long time it was entirely necessary. The wall that God erected was the Law, by which we mean the Ten Commandments and all the rules and ordinances given to show God’s people how to obey them and what sacrifices to offer when they could not obey. The sign of circumcision was given to the Jews to show that they possessed this great gift and responsibility, that they were distinct from all the other nations who hadn’t received their covenant and their call.

But then Jesus Christ came all that way from heaven and was born as a human being, like one of us yet without sin. Verse 5 says He abolished in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. Not by throwing the law out and declaring that God doesn’t care what we do or what sort of beings we are. No, Jesus abolished the barrier of the law by keeping it perfectly Himself, in unbroken obedience to God. In His supreme act of obedience, our Saviour died on the cross to bridge the gulf of separation between God and man. And when He did, the barrier came down! The Jews had the Law, but couldn’t keep it. We Gentiles didn’t have the Law of Moses, we didn’t have the covenant relationship with God that came with it, but we couldn’t even keep the law God wrote on our hearts as human beings made in His image. But now in Christ God is satisfied, the barrier is down and both groups, Jew and Gentile, are reconciled to God through the cross. Peace, Christ preaches: "Peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near." Peace with one another, yes, but primarily, peace with our formerly-distant God. "For through [Christ]," Paul writes, "we both have access to the Father by one Spirit."

In other words, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit we can come to the One who has first come to us. The Wise Men who traversed field and fountain, moor and mountain could come worship the infant Lord because God Almighty first approached them and brought them to acknowledge the kingship of His Son. They are a kind of first fruits of the Gentiles. They showed the people of their day that the blessings of God were not restricted to Israel, and those blessings aren’t restricted today.

The irony, of course, is that it’s now the Jews who are alienated and outside. Now it’s we Gentile believers who are tempted to be proud and think there’s something special about us that caused God to come to us in Jesus Christ and make us His own. If that’s what we believe, we’re still far off indeed. We are brought near not by anything we merited, but by the blood of Christ alone. Tragically, it is that very blood of His death that builds a wall our Jewish neighbors can’t get over and spread a gap they can’t transcend. It is offensive to them that the Messiah should die.

But remember, until God Almighty spans the distance and tears down the wall, none of us want a suffering Savior. None of us want to accept that it took the blood of the sinless Son of God to pay the terrible debt for our sin and turn aside the wrath of God that we deserved. But in His love and mercy, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ sends His grace to open the way for us to come to Him. He came in His grace to you, Christian man, Christian woman, to shine the light of the Gospel in your heart and bring you the joy of your salvation. He continues to come to you, overcoming your fears, reassuring you of His love, and bringing you more and more to be like His beloved Son Jesus.

This good news is for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. Let us plead the Holy Spirit to come upon all who don’t yet believe, that He might bring them to Jesus Christ. Let us serve Him as ministers of reconciliation, speaking gladly of our Lord who has put to death the hostility between Jew and Gentile and between all of us and God.

On the high mountain of Calvary Jesus demonstrated His love for us; through the lowness of the valley of the shadow of death He passed for our sakes; in the wide river of His blood He plunges us in baptism so we can live. Nothing can keep Christ the Word made flesh from getting to us whom He has chosen. The Wise Men are proof of His power, and here, set before us on this Table, is proof that is more powerful still. By the signs and under the seals of bread and wine, Jesus gives us His body and blood. His holy sacrifice broke down the barriers, bridged the gulp between us and God, and purchased our peace. Come near in faith; take, eat, and receive His blessings, for by His Spirit in this Supper, Jesus Christ has already come near to you.

The Secret Factor

Texts: Ezekiel 36:16-36; Mark 5:21-43

YOU KNOW HOW YOU’LL BE WATCHING a commercial on TV, and it claims that the product is "New and Improved!"? Yeah, right, they say that all the time; there’s probably nothing new about that cleaner or tool or whatever it is, at all. But then you try it, and what do you know? It really is better. It’s got some patented new ingredient or factor in it that makes it more effective than it was before. The manufacturer may give this ingredient a fancy name for advertising purposes, but what it actually is is a secret, and the secret ingredient makes all the difference.

Secret ingredients and secret factors can make all the difference in machines and laundry detergents. So how much more does it matter in God’s plan for our salvation! Nearly two thousand years ago in the land of occupied Israel comes a rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus preaching, teaching, and healing, and at first He struck the crowd as just another preaching, teaching, and healing rabbi-- a lot of them were around in those days. But as people encountered Him and experienced what He did, they came to realize there was something different about Jesus, some secret factor that set Him apart from the rest. The whole gospel according to St. Mark is about that secret factor, about who Jesus really is. It’s so important to Mark that he reveals from the start what it is. Turn if you will to the first verse of Mark’s Gospel, and let’s read what he says there. It says, "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

Wow! Jesus of Nazareth not only is the Christ-- the Anointed One-- the Messiah, He is also the one and only Son of God! Jesus comes proclaiming the kingdom of God, and He’s not just a messenger or herald like John the Baptist, Jesus is the divine King Himself. Where Jesus is, there is God’s Kingdom, and bit by bit, miracle by miracle, Jesus reveals that all the promises of God are totally and gloriously fulfilled in Him.

In our reading from Ezekiel we have an example of some of those promises. The Lord says that the people of Israel and their land would be cleansed of its bloody defilement and healed in spirit and heart. The Lord would put His Spirit on them so they would not defile themselves with idols and disobedience again. These words of cleansing were for the Jewish exiles who would return from Babylon, yes. But they looked forward to an even greater salvation than the physical and political restoration promised then. The land, as it says in verse 35, will be like the Garden of Eden; paradise will be restored and all the nations will honor the name of the Lord.

This is ultimately a picture of the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus not only talks about the Kingdom; He makes it real in all He teaches and does. A few days before the events of our passage in Mark 5, Jesus showed His dominion over nature by calming a ferocious storm with a word. Then He showed His rulership over the demons by casting a legion of them out of a man whom no one could subdue. And now, in our passage, He shows that He is the Lord who cleanses His people from all their impurities.

On this particular day, Jesus and His disciples have barely landed on shore when Jairus, one of the synagogue rulers-- he’d be like an elder in the church, but with more social position and better perks-- comes running up to Jesus and begs Him to come heal his young daughter, who dying right now. But while life remains, there is hope, and if anyone can heal his child, Jesus can.

You can imagine the crowd. People were glad to see Jesus anyway, and now there was the chance to see Him do a spectacular miracle for a very prominent man. After all, people could understand that He might be the Messiah-- an inspired, holy, God-driven, strictly-human Messiah. And come the day King Jesus would free Israel and sit down on His throne in Jerusalem, they could say that they were there to see Him prove He was the Christ. Not an opportunity you’d want to miss.

Meanwhile, one woman in the crowd was making her own opportunity . . . A woman who had suffered for the past twelve years with a pathological flow of blood. The physical and financial toll had been drastic enough. The social and religious suffering she must have endured would have been even worse.

To understand her position, it would help for us to read Leviticus 15:25-31:

"‘When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period. Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period. Whoever touches them will be unclean; he must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean till evening. . . .

"‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.’"

There were similar rules in the Law of Moses for anyone, male or female, who had any sort of running sore or bodily discharge, especially blood. Emissions violated the physical perfection of one’s body. They were signs of sin and disorder. They were incompatible with wholeness and therefore with holiness before God. The blood of the altar brought forth cleansing and acceptance with the Lord, but blood in the wrong place and from the wrong source was polluting. We see that in our Ezekiel passage, where the Lord says that Israel’s wicked conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness before Him. Misplaced, uncontrolled blood and every other bodily discharge made not only the one who had it ritually unclean, but also everyone and everything that person touched.

We mustn’t impose our 21st century ideas on this woman. It’s doubtful she’d gone around the past twelve years resenting this law and feeling the injustice of it all. Even as she suffered, she would have accepted that this was how things were. She wanted to correct her condition; she’d spent every penny she had trying to be cured. She wanted to stand again in the synagogue and the Temple clean and whole before her neighbors and Almighty God. But now she no longer even had anyone she could send to ask Jesus to come to her to heal her. She takes advantage of the facelessness and crush of the crowd and exercises the last hope she has. Jesus was there, in the middle of the scrum, and "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed."

And her faith was rewarded. Free, free at last! Free from the blood, free from the pain, free from the debilitation, free from the impurity! We have read what happens next, how Jesus in His compassion draws the woman out and gives her the time to tell Him the whole truth about why and how she did what she did. Poor Jairus Mark doesn’t mention, but we can imagine what terrible anxiety he must be in. Every second longer that this woman talks is one second closer to its being too late for his little girl! But Jesus has all the time in the world to give to the healed woman, because He is God incarnate, Lord of Eternity. He certifies and declares her healing and her cleansing from her impurity. "Daughter," He says, "your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." Her physical suffering ended the moment she touched His clothes; now, with the blessing of the Son of God, the suffering of her heart and soul and relationships are also at an end. In her the prophecy of Ezekiel is fulfilled; for her in Jesus Christ the Kingdom of God has come.

But the crowd and the messengers from Jairus’ house don’t know that. They’re not in on the secret of who Jesus actually is. "Your daughter is dead," they tell the synagogue ruler. "Why bother the teacher any more?" In other words, "There’s nothing even Jesus can do now. Give it up and come home."

Jesus ignores them. "Jairus," He says, "Don’t be afraid; keep on believing." Jairus, you believed in Me a few minutes ago; you can still rely on Me now.

Jesus forbids the crowd to follow Him any farther, but it’s likely they’d lost interest anyway. Everyone knows the child is dead. She was practically dead when her father set out on his desperate mission. The professional mourners are already there doing their job. What a laugh that Jesus should say, "The child is not dead but asleep"!

Now, some commentators claim that this means Jesus knew she was only in a coma. But how could He know that? He had not seen her yet. And this was a culture that did its dying at home. They knew what death looked like. No, this twelve year old girl slept the sleep of death, the sleep of those who go to the grave awaiting the resurrection. Jesus was a mighty healer, but what could even He do in a case like this?

He went into the death chamber taking only her parents and Peter, James, and John. He reached out and took the hand of that cold corpse and spoke life into it. "Talitha koum!"-- "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" Jesus Christ the Lord of life gave life where there was none, so that she stood up perfectly well and healthy. And as with the woman healed of the flow of blood, Jesus is divinely compassionate and commands that she be fed. This child is not a mere test case, a demonstration of His kingly power. She was a human being, an adolescent girl who’d be hungry and needed something to eat.

Jesus strictly orders everyone present not to let anyone know what He had done for that little girl. For it was not yet time for Him to reveal who and what He was. His Messiahship was not to be founded on the death and resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, but on the death and resurrection of the Son of God.

But here’s something we might overlook. The bleeding woman touched Jesus. The Law said that anyone an unclean person touched would be contaminated, too. But Jesus does not withdraw and undergo the rituals for cleansing. Jesus touched the corpse of the dead girl. Here is what the Law says in the book of Numbers about that:

"Whoever touches the dead body of anyone will be unclean for seven days. He must purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third and seventh days, he will not be clean. Whoever touches the dead body of anyone and fails to purify himself defiles the LORD’s tabernacle. That person must be cut off from Israel. Because the water of cleansing has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean; his uncleanness remains on him."

But Jesus doesn’t observe this ordinance, either. In fact, He goes to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue the very next Sabbath. Is Jesus guilty (as the scribes and Pharisees claimed) of flouting the Law of Moses? Or is the secret factor about Him at work here?

Of course it is. He is the Son of God. He is the Lord of holiness who as it says in Ezekiel 36 sprinkles the water of cleansing on us. He is the Lord of life who makes disease and uncleanness, sin and death as though they had never been. All our impurity can never contaminate Him.

Except . . . except on a dark dirty Friday on a hill called Calvary when He took all our uncleanness and corruption on Himself, that we might stand pure, whole, and acceptable before Almighty God. Your sin and mine was like a twelve-year issue of menstrual blood, but the blood of Jesus shed for us on the cross makes us pure and clean, fit to enter His Kingdom. In our trespasses and sins we were dead and rotting corpses, but faith in the dead body of our Lord Jesus Christ makes us whole and makes us deathless children of God. He purged away all our impurity on that cross and three days later rose again, revealed as our pure and holy Lord and King.

The people in Jesus’ day didn’t realize who He was. But now the secret is revealed and the promises of the Kingdom are for you and for all whom the Lord shall call. What a great miracle that is! In His divine compassion, Jesus put forth His power and did all this for us! The secret factor of Christ the Son of God is a secret no longer; no, Jesus commands us to spread the news throughout the world!

But maybe this means nothing to you as yet. Maybe you’re trying to clean yourself up before you come and fall at His feet. Can you be hygienic wallowing in a cesspool? Give it up. Maybe you’re still kidding yourself about how offensive your sins are to God and you’re hoping to earn your way to eternal life by your good deeds. Can a stinking corpse run a marathon? Give it up. Your situation is worse than you realize and the blood of Jesus Christ is your only hope.

But there is hope in Jesus, overwhelming, abundant hope. He will never fail you, never send you away, never let you down. His heart is moved with compassion for you, for He is your Great Physician. Nothing is impossible for Him, for He is the Son of God the Father Almighty. Like the woman in the crowd, reach out now in faith and Jesus will cleanse you from all your sin. Trust Him like Jairus, and Jesus will give you new life like the life He won when He came forth triumphant from the grave.

No other Messiah. No other healer. No other god. Jesus, in our helplessness, help us, we pray. Look with compassion upon us, cleanse us from all our sins, give us new life in your name, and fill us with Your peace. Amen.

Revelation, Recognition, and Reckoning

Texts: Exodus 1:8-2:10; Romans 10:5-17; Matthew 16:13-20

HOW WELL DO WE KNOW the men who are running for President of the United States this year? One candidate, we know a great deal about his public career, but maybe not so much about his private life. The other candidate, we’re still learning who he is as a policy-maker and as a private citizen. One thing good about the way our American presidential campaigns seem to go on and on, it’s more likely that we’ll find out what we need to know about the candidates before the first Tuesday in November.

How are we going to find that out? I doubt any of us here know Senator McCain or Senator Obama personally.

Well, we can listen to their speeches and interviews, and to how they do in the debates this Fall. But how do we know if they really mean what they say, or if it’s all just political rhetoric?

Maybe we’ll rely on our gut feelings about how each man looks and how he carries himself. But haven’t we all known times when somebody who seemed really impressive at first turned out to be a real disappointment? How are we going to get to the real, honest, behind-the-scenes truth about our presidential candidates?

I guess we’ll have to rely on third party sources. Like the newspapers. And the TV news. And talk radio. And Internet bloggers. These sources have revealed a lot about these two men since they first started running-- when was it, sometime in the Teddy Roosevelt administration?-- and hopefully we’ll get enough reliable information from them before it’s time to vote.

But what do we do when there’s something we absolutely have to know about a certain Person, but there’s no earthly, human way we can find it out? What if it’s desperately important that we get a particular answer concerning this Man, and we don’t even know enough to ask the question? What if our very lives and futures--not just for the next four or eight years, but on into eternity--depend on knowing who this Man is and what He is doing? And what if the truth about Him were so cosmic, so unimaginable, that we’d never think or dream of trying to discover it for ourselves?

We’d really be stuck, wouldn’t we? Our own intellect couldn’t tell us what we needed to know. Our instincts and gut feelings couldn’t lead us to the truth. Human authorities and pundits would be no help to us at all. We’d go to our doom and die and rot in dark ignorance unless something more than human, something beyond the circles of this world comes to us and opens our minds and reveals to us the identity and true character of this most important of men.

There is a Man like that, and for the last two thousand years He has been asking men and women of every race and country, "Who do you say I, the Son of Man, am?" Jesus of Nazareth confronts us with His person and His work and demands that human beings confess and acknowledge who and what we understand Him to be. Our whole fate into eternity depends on getting the answer right, and our of our own human knowledge and initiative we never, ever can.

But, we protest, is it really like that? After all, isn’t Jesus like our presidential candidates? Can’t we just be reasonable about Him, too, if we’re deciding if this Man Jesus really is the Savior and Christ? It’s like, the Press gives us the information about the candidates, we make a choice. Same way, the Bible tells us about the teachings and miracles of Jesus, and we say, "Yes, on that evidence, our reason tells us that He is the Messiah and Lord of all." Isn’t it as simple as that?

Afraid not. In our passage in Matthew 16, Jesus and His disciples are making a retreat in the hills around Caesarea Philippi. As they sit there, Jesus asks the disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" Could they honestly answer that the people recognised Him for who and what He really was? No! All those crowds had heard the glorious teaching from Jesus’ lips. The people has seen the miracles our Lord performed. Countless many of them had benefitted from His wonders themselves. Did the crowds get the answer to Jesus’ question right?

No. The disciples had to answer, "Some say you’re John the Baptist raised from the dead. Other people say you’re Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets, brought back to life." The people had all the evidence about Jesus right in front of them, but their reason and gut feelings and human ability all rolled up together could never bring them to the deep truth of who the Son of Man is.

But then Jesus says to His disciples, "But who do you say the Son of Man is?"
And Simon Peter immediately declares, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!"

No human reasoning could have brought Peter to that conclusion. For one thing, Peter as a good Jew, who knew good and well that the Lord, the living God of Israel, does not have sons and daughters the way the pagan so-called gods were said to. The idea was totally beyond his imagining. But he declared it: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!" and it was the eternal truth. As John Calvin puts it, "Though Peter did not yet understand distinctly in what way Christ was the begotten of God, he was so fully persuaded of the dignity of Christ, that he believed Him to come from God, not like other men, but by the inhabitation of the true and living Godhead in His flesh."

How did Peter know? How was he persuaded? Jesus says this: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven!" God alone, by the power of His Holy Spirit, was able to reveal to Peter and the other disciples who and what Jesus of Nazareth was and is and always will be. Not the opinion of the crowd, not the judgement of the religious leaders, not even the reasoning of Peter’s own mind could have brought him to recognise that truth, only the revelation of the Father in heaven.

Our Lord goes on to say, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it."

The name "Peter" means "a rock," like we might call someone "Rocky." So is our Lord now saying that He will build His salvation community, His church, on the flesh-and-blood man Peter? Some Bible interpreters think so, and they give pretty persuasive answers why. But others point out that everywhere in Scripture only God is described as the Rock of our salvation, and upon Him alone must we ground our faith, for by Him alone we are saved. Jesus has just blessed Peter for recognising what His Father in heaven has revealed to him, and does Christ now undo that and give His glory to a mortal man, however enlightened? Does He say, "You are Peter, Rocky, and on you I will build my church?" No, our Lord says, "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church," that is, upon the Holy Spirit-revealed recognition and declaration that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus says, "The gates of Hades"-- all the powers of death and the grave-- "will not prevail against" His church. How will He effect this? He says to Peter: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

This word "you" is indeed singular. For Peter is the first representative of how God would use His power on earth to open the kingdom of heaven to mankind. Peter was the first in the church to receive God’s revelation of Christ as God and to confess that it is so. Peter was appointed by God to be the first to preach the word of Christ crucified for our sins and risen for our new life, on the day of Pentecost when he commanded the people to repent and be baptised for the remission of sins. Peter was the first to declare to the Jewish authorities that the name of Jesus Christ is the only one given under heaven by which we must be saved. He was the first to enter a Gentile’s home and open up to him and his household the riches of grace that seemed to be reserved for the Jews.

In all these things, Peter uses the power of the keys, which is nothing less than the preaching of the Word of God, calling people to believe and be saved. It is by the preaching of the Word of God that the Holy Spirit opens the minds of sinners and reveals the saving power of Jesus Christ.

Peter was the first to do this, but he was not the last. What does it say in our Romans passage? "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" For "faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ." Through the preaching of the Word the Lord our God goes on revealing to His elect people who and what His Son Jesus Christ is, and what He has accomplished on our behalf. With His Word preached comes the blessing of His Holy Spirit, to bring people from unbelief to belief, from self-righteousness to the righteousness of God.

But with this revelation there comes a reckoning. The Word of God preached can bind as well as loose. For as Paul says in Romans, "Not all have obeyed our good news." When the word of God is preached, not everyone recognises that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. They go on thinking He’s only a human prophet. Or a Great Teacher. Or a Good Moral Example whom they can come up to, if they just try hard enough. Sadly, there are those who keep wanting to pull Christ down out of heaven to their level. Others feel Jesus needs their help, as if they needed to pull Him up from the dead. At the end of days, the Word of God will witness against such people in the judgement.

In the days before Moses was born, the King of Egypt stopped recognising the greatness of Joseph. He was blind to the special blessings the Lord had laid on His chosen people, the Hebrews. In fact, he was jealous of God’s people, and set out to destroy them as a separate nation. He certainly wouldn’t have recognised anything special in the infant Moses. But God was working in the Hebrews and He was working in the life of Moses, preparing him to be the one who would reveal God to His people and to all who would recognise the Lord and believe. At the same time, the word spoken by Moses brought judgement to Pharoah and all Egypt with him.

Even more, now, God calls us to hear Him as He reveals Himself in His Son Jesus Christ through His Word read and preached. By His word He brings us to recognise Jesus Christ for who He really is, and to become like Peter, ready to confess with our mouths that Jesus is the only Lord, risen from the dead for our salvation.

It is on the rock of divine revelation recognised, confessed, and proclaimed that Jesus Christ builds His Church, such that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. God reveals Himself and opens the kingdom of heaven by the means He has established, now and forever. Not by the church’s good works. Not by praise bands or well-rehearsed choirs. Not by meetings and conferences and general assemblies. Not by dressing up or dressing down, not by candles and incense or by the latest sound systems or high-tech extravaganzas. These things can support and promote the Word-- or they can detract from it. Despite all our human devices, the God of power and might still reveals the truth of Christ in the way He always has: in the preaching of His word by fallible, erring human beings like Simon Peter, human beings who have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to confess before the world, "You, Jesus, are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

God gives this message to everyone who believes. We’re not all called to be ordained preachers, or Bible study leaders, or Sunday School teachers. But God instills in every Christian the word that is near us, on our lips and in our hearts, the word of faith that Peter and all the apostles and every faithful preacher has always proclaimed: Jesus Christ is Lord, and all who call upon His name will be saved.

Who do you say the Son of Man is? Believe the good news that your Father in heaven has revealed to you! Recognise your Savior in love and obedience, and may it always be reckoned to you as blessedness, now and in the world to come.

Giving What We Have Received

Texts: Isaiah 55:1-8; Romans 11:25-36; Matthew 14:13-21

THERE’S AN EXPRESSION THAT goes, "You can’t give what you haven’t got." It’s used a lot in business and education. It stands to reason: If, say, you don’t know beans about differential calculus, you can’t teach it. If you have no authority to give orders, you can’t give someone else the authority to give orders.

But there’s another side to it: It’s not just that you can’t give what you haven’t got, you also won’t and don’t and can’t give what you don’t know you have! I imagine a lot of job seekers sell themselves short telling interviewers they can’t do something they’re perfectly capable of, if they only knew they had it in them.

But once you know what you have, and you know there’s a need for it, will you give it? That’s the question that faces us in our Gospel lesson today.

St. Matthew begins by saying, "Now when Jesus heard this." That is, He’d heard that King Herod had cruelly and unjustly put to death John the Baptist. John was Jesus’ own cousin, and Jesus Himself said John was the greatest prophet God had ever sent to His people Israel. Jesus knew He needed to get away and mourn for John, and to think and pray about what John’s death would mean for the next stage in His own ministry.

But the crowds didn’t care about Jesus’ loss or Jesus’ needs. Poor souls! They were eaten up with needs of their own. So they ran around the margin of the lake, and by the time the boat got Jesus there, there were all the people, waiting for Him.

Matthew tells us that Jesus our Savior had compassion on them. If He were merely human, He might have said, "This is too much! I have nothing left to give." But Jesus continually received power from His Father in heaven. The Holy Spirit was One with Him, empowering Him, strengthening Him, giving Him the divine patience He needed. Jesus knew what He had, and He was able to give the crowds what they needed. And so throughout that long day, Jesus healed their sick, and as Mark and Luke tell us, He taught them about the Kingdom of God.

But then it was evening. The hour was late, past time for supper. "We’re done here!" our Lord’s disciples say. "It’s time for the crowds to go away and buy themselves something to eat!"

That wasn’t a breach of hospitality; it was simply facing reality. The crowds weren’t the disciples’ guests; they weren’t even a properly assembled congregation. Each person was there to get his own needs and wants met, not to be part of a unified group. In the ordinary way of things, the disciples had no obligation to these people whatsoever. In fact, the disciples were actually being kind to them, by asking Jesus to dismiss the crowds and let them go.

But Jesus doesn’t do things in the ordinary way. He responds, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."

Whaaaattt??? The disciples are supposed to give all these people supper? How can Jesus ask that? It’s a good chance the disciples had planned to buy food for this retreat in the villages, themselves! How can Jesus tell them to give what they hadn’t got?

They reply, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." That’d be something like small pita breads, and the fish would have been dried and salted and pretty small, too. But what is that among so many? You can’t give what you haven’t got, and when it comes to feeding maybe 15,000 people all told, five little loaves and fishes are like nothing!

The disciples had nothing to give! That was the problem! Or was the real problem that they weren’t giving something they didn’t know they actually had?

Jesus said, "Bring them [that is, the loaves and fish] here to me." And He orders the crowds to sit down on the grass.

Let’s not rush by this. First of all, Jesus is giving the people rest. The custom in that time was that the teacher sat to teach, and the learners stood to hear him. Only if you were crippled or absolutely infirm did you sit down when the rabbi spoke. If you want to get an idea of this, attend a Greek Orthodox service. Even the most elderly will stand for hours, out of respect for the divine Word given them in the liturgy.

So Jesus gives them rest, by ordering them to sit down. But He gives them something else. By commanding them to sit down in His presence, He makes of them a single family, sitting down to table with Jesus Himself as the father of the family presiding over the meal. Before they’d had a single bite to eat, Jesus gave these people something they didn’t have before: Community, oneness, family unity in the presence of God. It’s something He could give, for He has known it from eternity in the communion of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

They sat, and Jesus took the bit of food into His hands. Our translation says "He blessed and broke the loaves." But there really should be a comma after "blessed," because by the original Greek and by the ancient custom of the Jewish father at a family meal, Jesus surely blessed God for the food and for God’s power that was about to be demonstrated in and through this food. We must not visualize our Lord saying some sort of special holy words over this bread and fish, that magically caused them to multiply! No, what Jesus did here He did in the power and communion and fellowship of His Father in heaven.

And once Jesus had broken the bread and the fish, He gave it to His disciples. And now, they had something to give and they knew they had something to give! And they gave, and gave, and gave, until every last man, woman, and child had eaten his or her fill and every disciple was in charge of a full basket of leftovers to take home.

But did the disciples understand then and there what it was they really had to give, there in that deserted place on the other side of the Sea of Galilee? Do we know what we have to give, when Jesus sends us into the world as His church?

After our Lord’s death and resurrection, they knew. They knew they had much more to give than mere physical bread. No, beyond any physical food, the disciples learned they possessed and could give away the most nourishing Food of all: Jesus Christ Himself, the Bread of heaven. This is the Food which if anyone eats of it, he will never hunger again. This is the eternal food that we and all Jesus’ disciples have received to give to the world.

Isn’t that what the Holy Spirit says through the prophet Isaiah? He says,

"Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live."

Jesus Christ is the banquet to which we are called. Jesus Christ is the heavenly Bread sufficient to feed the hungry soul. His blood is the heavenly wine that washes away the thirst of desperation and sin. His body was broken and torn on Calvary’s cross to offer us eternal food that truly satisfies; His blood was poured out to gives us salvation and peace without money and without price.

As Jesus commanded the disciples that evening long ago, so now He commands His Church: "You give them something to eat." And God has given us such an abundance to give away! Jesus Himself is the One we have received, and He is the One we give. Jesus Himself nourishes us through His Word and Sacraments, and with Him we nourish the lost and hungry people of this fallen world.

We don’t have to belong to big churches with money and members and ministries tumbling out the windows in order to satisfy the deepest needs of the crowds at our door! People of God! Every church where Jesus Christ is faithfully preached as crucified for our sins and risen for our life has something to give! Every church where the feast of God is spread in the royal banquet of Holy Communion, every church where sins are shown to be washed away in the waters of Baptism can satisfy the needs of the hungry world! Every church that knows that the living Christ dwells among them, every church that faithfully believes and proclaims Christ and Him crucified-- that church has all it needs to offer the crowds in its time and place. For it is giving what it has received: Jesus Christ, the Bread of heaven.

What is more, that church can offer the sin-sick, heart-hungry crowds community in Christ. That church-- no, this church can offer the lost, hurting, and hungry people of Butler County membership in a family, where Jesus Christ sits at the head of the Table and breaks and gives His own body to satisfy and heal us all.

You don’t have to send people away to be fed elsewhere. And you don’t have to work and labor to buy the bread your soul needs. Jesus Christ has paid for it by His blood. Jesus Christ is the Bread that satisfies the hungry soul. He is here among you, given to you by grace, received by you in faith. Delight in Him, feed on Him, and turn and joyfully give what you have received.

Almighty God: His Own Story

Texts: Isaiah 55:6-11; Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-14; 16:5:15

I KNOW A WOMAN who had a stroke last January and lost her ability to speak. She’s come a long way with therapy, and last month she told me how powerless she felt there in the hospital, not being able to say what she wanted to say. I asked her, "Did you have the words in your head but your tongue just wouldn’t form them?"

"No," she answered me. "I didn’t even have the words in my head. I couldn’t even think. I knew I wanted to, but I didn’t have any words to think with."

Maybe you’ve been through a experience like that. Maybe you remember what it was like as a child when the grownups didn’t listen to you because you didn’t have the words to say what you wanted. Or think of our President. People close to George Bush know he’s a very intelligent man who reads history books for fun and thinks deeply on important subjects. But his style of speech doesn’t match up with that, so many people think he’s stupid and won’t pay attention to him.

We’ve all experienced how having an Idea isn’t the same as having the words to put it into. But we also know we have an Idea only because certain words or a certain image does flash into our heads. If it’s an important Idea about something we have to make or do or tell somebody, we’ll think hard to make the Expression of the Idea match the idea itself. And we’ve known the flash of fulfillment and satisfaction that comes to us when the words or images in our heads match the Idea and we feel their Effect and power.

And like my friend with the stroke, like yourself as a child, like the President of the United States, you want to tell your story, to get your Ideas out into the physical world. You want others to hear what you have to say so they can benefit from its power and Effect, too. Or if your Idea has to do with something you’re making-- a set of bookshelves, a dinner, a painting, whatever-- you want to give your Idea and its Expression physical form. Then other people can experience it and say Yes! that’s just right! too.

But which is the real Idea? Is it the unknowable Whatever you had before you had the words to Express it? Yes. Is your Idea the words or head pictures you came up with to Express it? Yes. Is your Idea the form you gave it when you spoke it or manufactured it in the physical world? Yes. Is your Idea the Effect or power the words or images had on you and other people? Yes.

But is your wordless Idea, its Expression, and its Effect all the same thing? No.

Ideas, their Expression, and their Effect. One process in three aspects. It happens in us every day--it’s as natural to us as breathing. Why should I stand here today and ask you to thinking about thinking? Why do I want you to think about the thinking that results in making?

Because it’s Trinity Sunday. I know preachers who’d rather preach on anything besides the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It seems too distant from everyday life. But I want to suggest that the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t difficult because it’s too far away from us, it’s difficult because it’s too close-- as close as human thought. Every time we think of something that has to be done or made in this world, every time we exercise our creativity, every time, really, we have a thought of any kind at all, we’re acting as little images of Him who is One God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.

We can truly say that the doctrine of the Trinity is God’s own story, told in His own words. Even in the deepest mystery of the godhead, the Lord God is One God in three Persons, expressing Himself eternally with Effect and power, telling His story within Himself with everlasting joy. But in His love and mercy, God also tells us that story about Himself, in the world, to us, for our blessing and salvation.

We can start with our reading from Isaiah. "Seek the Lord while he may be found!" the prophet urges us in God’s name. Listen! God is telling his story!

But how can we seek God? He is high and lifted up! We can’t think His thoughts, we can’t even know them! God can’t be comprehended by us humans, not in His essence! He’s like an Idea with no words, no images to express it.

There are some people who say that. They claim that God is so high and spiritual and unknowable that it’s a waste of time for us to worry about seeking him or learning what he wants. The answer, they say, is for us humans just to do the good we find in our own hearts. Or we can make gods out of forces of nature that we can see and feel and understand.

But that’s not necessary. Actually, it’s rude, because God is Trinity. He makes Himself known and commands us to listen. God is not like an Idea with no Expression or an Expression with no Power; no, He sends His word to express who and what He is. And His word never returns to Him empty; it accomplishes what He desires and achieves the purpose for which He sends it.

As far as Isaiah knew, the "word" in this prophecy meant the spoken and written word that the Lord God had put in his mouth. In paradise, though, I’m sure he rejoiced to see the day when the Word of God would be revealed as so much more.

For as the writer to the Hebrews says,

"In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son."

Or as St. John puts it in the beginning of his gospel,

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John says that Jesus Christ is and always was that Word of God that makes the unknowable God known. He was with God in the beginning, from before time began, before anything was made. The writer to the Hebrews says that the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of God’s being. Even before His incarnation in this world, the only-begotten Son of God was the perfect Word and Image telling God’s own story, for He is and always was God’s own and only true Word.

And even in heaven before anything physical was made, even before the angels and archangels and all the supernatural powers of heaven were brought forth, God the Holy Spirit was proceeding from the Father and the Son, giving glory to the Father through the Son and glory to the Son in the Father.

But was the Triune God satisfied with that? We get a great idea and we want to give it form in the world. How much more does the ever-living, eternal Creator God feel that way! Did you notice how every one of our readings speaks of the Triune God as the Maker and Sustainer of this world? Isaiah speaks of the snow and the rain that water the earth and make it bud and flourish. The writer to the Hebrews says it was through the Son that God made the universe, that all things are sustained through His powerful word. St. John declares that "Through him"-- that is, the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ-- "all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit expresses Himself in His creation. All around us we can see the sort of God He is, a God who doesn’t remain aloof in the heavens, but a God who comes near, a God who tells His own story in what He has made. Especially, He tells His story in us, His human creation, made in His own image, made to be thinkers and creators like him.

But sin has fogged our thoughts and plugged our ears. Fallen humanity doesn’t want to hear God’s story. We want to go around telling our own story, full of the gods and idols we’ve invented as expressions of ourselves. Humans naturally reject the idea of the triune God, and why? Because the Triune God is the only true God that ever was or ever could be. Only a deity who is one God in three Persons could speak and make Himself known. Only a triune God can exercise power and authority in His creation. Only He who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can come near to us to save us. All other so-called gods are our manmade attempts to stay in control. They’re sinful humanity’s attempt to plug our ears and go "La-la-la, God, I can’t hear You!"

But God insists on telling His own story in this world. For our own sakes we have to listen as He Expresses Himself, then submit to His Effect and power in our lives. And so God chose to tell His story in person. God the eternal Word, the second Person of the Trinity, as St. John says, became "flesh and made his dwelling among us." And He did it effectively, with power, for "We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

I wonder: If we had never sinned, would God the eternal Word have become the Word of God Incarnate? I’m daring to say I think so. For how could God create something and not be totally involved in it Himself? In fact, many theologians believe that the Lord God who walked and spoke with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was the pre-incarnate Christ, appearing to them in the likeness of a Man.

We can’t know this for certain, because we did sin. We did reject God and the story He tells us about Himself. One thing is sure: if we had never sinned, God the Word-Made-Flesh would never have had to hang on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins.

But He did! He did! Jesus Christ who was the perfect Expression of the eternal God offered Himself up to suffer and die for our sakes! Almighty God tells His own story in the most perfect way in the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. He is true Man, so He can be our substitute and make propitiation for us. He is true God, so His shed blood can bring us into the very presence of the Father. On the cross Jesus the second Person of the Trinity expresses the love of almighty God for us in a way nothing else in creation ever could. Even when the world did not recognise Him, even when we His human creation rejected Him, by His death and resurrection Christ the second Person of the Trinity called us as His own and gave us the right to become children of God!

How, exactly? By the power of God the Holy Spirit, God the third Person of the Trinity, working in our hearts to change us, to cleanse us, to make us over into the image of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The Holy Spirit is the effective Power of God who proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Spirit of God opens our ears to hear God telling His own story. He convinces us that the truth we see in Jesus Christ is the truth of Almighty God! As Jesus Himself says in John 16, the Spirit shows up the sin and idolatries of this world as the lies they are. He exhibits the righteousness of God among us, His church, now that Jesus the Son has ascended to the Father. And he condemns the Devil, the false prince of this world, as the lying imposter he is.

Jesus Christ perfectly expresses the Father’s reality because He is God, and all that belongs to the Father is His. The Holy Spirit can take from what is Christ’s and make it known to us, because He is God, working powerfully and effectively in this world. When we receive Christ by the Holy Spirit, we’re not getting some secondhand tale, we’re getting God’s own Self bringing us God’s own gifts. God can offer us light and hope and salvation and life forever more, because He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: eternal, expressive, and effective in this world.

God is Trinity in Himself, and praise Him! He is Trinity for us. He is His own story in His own Word. God the Father is the high and holy One, dwelling in unimaginable light. God the Word eternally expresses the glory of the Father’s being, and now incarnate, has dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And, children of God, this Jesus Christ by His crucified flesh has made us part of God’s divine story, too! For He has sent us God the Holy Spirit to give us new birth in Him, to minister Him to us in His written word, to make Him present in the sacraments He has ordained for us. And so, day by day God is making us into true words and images on this earth of Himself, the Triune God who rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into His true light. Hear His story and tell it in His power to everyone you can, for He is the One, the Only, the true and saving God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, ever to be worshipped, honored, glorified, and adored, now and forever, amen.