Reformed Evangelical Synod of America

Archive for the ‘Devotions’ Category

Gustav Dore - The Nativity

Here are Christmas Prayers and readings to help you observe the Holiday Season!

Christmas Prayers & Readings

The Incarnate Word

December 18

God most high, your only-begotten Son embraced the weakness of our flesh to give us the power to become your sons and daughters; your Eternal Word chose to dwell among us so that we might live in your presence. Grant us a spirit of wisdom to comprehend the richness of the glory you have offered to us, and how great the hope is to which we are called in Jesus Christ, your Word made flesh, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (ICEL)

Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a or Proverbs 8:1 – 9:12 or Jeremiah 31: 7-14

Psalm 147

1 John 1: 1-10

John 1: 1-18

The Annunciation of Saint John the Forerunner

December 19

Father, according to your plan your prophet John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of your Son, the promised Messiah.  Through your Spirit free us from doubt and despair, and help us to imitate Zechariah and Elizabeth in following your will to the glory of your name.  We make our prayer through your Incarnate Word, Christ Jesus our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Isaiah 52: 7-10

Psalm 85

Revelation 11: 1-14

Luke 1: 5-25

The Annunciation of our Lord

to the Blessed Virgin Mary

December 20

God most high, you extended your gracious mercy to the whole human race through your Son when he took upon himself our flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. You gave him to the world as your servant, whose delight was found in doing your will. Keep the Church, his body, faithful to your purpose, that all the ends of the earth may know your saving power. Amen.

Exodus 40: 1-38 or Isaiah 7: 10-14

Psalm 40 or 45

Hebrews 10: 4-10 or Galatians 4: 4-7

Luke 1: 26-38

The Visitation of the

Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Elizabeth

December 21

Lord God, who are we that you should come to us? Yet you have visited your people and redeemed us through your Son. As we prepare to celebrate his birth, make our hearts leap for joy at the sound of your Word, and move us by your Spirit to bless your wonderful works. We make our prayer through him whose coming is certain, whose day draws near, your Son, our Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (ICEL)

1 Samuel 2: 1-10 or Zephaniah 3:14-18a or Zechariah 2: 10-13

Psalm 113

Romans 12: 9-16b

Luke 1: 39-57

The Nativity of Saint John the Forerunner

December 22

God of wisdom and truth, you raise up prophets in every age. Let your Spirit, who filled John from his mother’s womb, fill us with joy as we commemorate his birth. May the example of his life, the urgency of his preaching, and the power of his prayers make us ready to receive the one he announced. We make our prayer through him whose coming is certain, whose day draws near, your Son, our Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (ICEL)

Isaiah 40: 1-11

Psalm 141

Acts 13: 14b-26

Luke 1: 57-80

The Ancestors of our Lord

December 23

God of glory and mystery, here in our midst you disclose the secret hidden for countless generations. For you we wait; for you we listen. Upon hearing your voice, fill us with a spirit that is willing to follow and to embrace your will so that we may rejoice in your visitation and exalt in our redemption. We make our prayer through him whose coming is certain, whose day draws near, your Son, our Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (ICEL)

Genesis 4: 1-16

Psalm 90

Hebrews 11:1 – 12:2

Matthew 1: 1-17 or Luke 3: 23b-38

The Annunciation of our Lord to Saint Joseph

December 24

Eternal God, in the psalms of David, in the words of the prophets, and in the dream of Joseph your promise is spoken. At last, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, your Word takes flesh. Teach us to welcome Jesus, the promised Emmanuel, and to preach the good news of his coming that every age may know him as the source of salvation, redemption, and grace. We make our prayer through him whose coming is certain, whose day draws near, your Son, our Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (ICEL)

Micah 5: 2-5a

Psalm 89

Romans 4: 13-18

Matthew 1: 18-24

The Nativity of our Lord

December 25

Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon himself, and to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit. We make our prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Or:

God of Abraham and Sarah, of David and his descendants, unwearied is your love for us and steadfast is your covenant; wonderful beyond words is the gift of the Savior, born of the Virgin Mary. Count us among the people in whom you delight, and by this night’s marriage of heaven and earth draw all generations into the embrace of your love. We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, your Word made flesh, who lives and reigns in the splendor of eternal light with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (ICEL)

Genesis 2: 4b-3:24 or Isaiah 9: 2-7

Psalm 96

Hebrews 1: 1-14 or Titus 2: 11-14

Luke 2: 1-15

East Face - Cross of Muiredach

Scripture Texts:

Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10: 11-25
Mark 13:1-13

O Come, O Come Emmanuel!  Ransom – or liberate – captive Israel!  We’ve sung this song for years during Advent.  It is the mournful song of a people needing divine deliverance. But what is the liberation these people seek? What is the “big deal”?

What turns a man so zealous for Judaism that he would kill and imprison anyone who called Jesus the “Messiah” into someone who risks his life time and again and suffers beatings, whippings, starvation, and imprisonment to proclaim this same Messiah Jesus of Nazareth?

What is such Good News that overcomes our own desire to seek our own well being and seek the glory of Jesus Christ? Why do we build our lives and our calendars around the coming of Christ? It pays to know… you and I will face the Day of Judgment together and its outcome will depend on whether we have entrusted ourselves to this same Messiah! It pays to know what it’s all about! Perhaps it will even inspire you and I to give ourselves entirely to Jesus Christ in gratitude for His Mercy! Wouldn’t that be amazing!

But Paul sees Jesus Christ as not just a wandering prophet from Galilee, not just as an enlightened Teacher or even a Prophet as Islam wants to say.

No Paul sees in Jesus God in the flesh, the fullness of God in human form (Col 2:9). Jesus is the One in whom all God’s promises for Israel and the world are coming true as guaranteed by Jesus’ Resurrection (2 Cor 1:20; Rom 1:3,4)

Consider the scriptures  we have read today in this light –

The prophet Daniel foretold a day of resurrection when some will rise to eternal joy and others to eternal shame. This word of prophecy came to a people enslaved… they had fallen under Gods’ Curse and send from their “Promised Land” as Deuteronomy 28 had warned them.

How can a people who were once blessed, people who received the Word of God , and now a people who were condemned to slavery and whose history is one fall from grace after another ever hope to rise to eternal joy?

It seemed as if God had given Israel a second chance – the nation was set free from exile – the Temple had been rebuilt and the sacrifices had returned to the Temple!

But something was missing.

There was still no real hope.

As Jesus walks that land, outwardly the people are blessed, but inwardly they are a people filled with hypocrisy, plagued by demons, and sick with sin.  The never ending stream of blood from the sacrifices may have made people technically “clean” to enter the Temple, but inwardly the pollution of sin remained untouched, uncleansed, not only under bondage to  the Romans, but in a spiritual bondage and slavery.

Jesus tells his disciples in Mark 13, that judgement is coming again. The Temple they consider as eternal as the world itself will be torn down to the ground (John 2:19-22). God’s true Temple – the Resurrected Christ – will become the focus of those who worship the God of the Bible “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). Their hopes will be directed to Jesus not to the Temple.

In Jesus, the liberation that set sinners free, that cast out demons, that forgave sins, is now sealed once and for all by our Lord’s death and resurrection. In that act, Jesus seals the salvation of His people and as the judgment He promises Jerusalem comes – He encourages them to keep trusting, those who persevere to the end shall be saved.

As Hebrews says:

Under the old covenant, the priest stands and ministers before the altar day after day, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins. But our High Priest offered himself to God as a single sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. There he waits until his enemies are humbled and made a footstool under his feet. For by that one offering he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.

And the Holy Spirit also testifies that this is so. For he says,

“This is the new covenant I will make

with my people on that day, says the Lord:

I will put my laws in their hearts,

and I will write them on their minds.”

Then he says,

“I will never again remember

their sins and lawless deeds.”

And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

This is what St. Paul was willing to die for! Because in meeting the Resurrected Jesus on the Damascus Road it was evident God’s promises really were coming true in Jesus.

Suddenly God’s covenant promises in the past from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob had taken on a reality in the Risen Jesus that made all the other promises of God an inevitable certainty because death itself had been conquered in Jesus Resurrection!

Our inability to find peace with God while locked in our own sins and incapable of living by God’s Law in our own strength are finally no longer a threat to you and a threat to me because the One who HAS been faithful to God in all things has become the mercy seat, the location of God’s forgiveness infallibly achieved, for all the world who come to Him in faith!

Yes, Paul saw, Christ was the goal for which those who lived under the Law yearned! He is the One whose saving crucifixion and death defying resurrection now brings every good and perfect gift promised by God and makes it available to all who entrust themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ!

Even more- the power of death is broken and Jesus  in His ascension is reigning and He is delivering His trusting, dependent people safe to the end.

Because the promises of God have been secured, because sin’s power, pollution, and penalty are conquered in Christ for all who entrust themselves to Him, because the alienation caused by sin between Jew and Gentile can finally be healed, because all humankind can, in Christ, be transformed, there is hope for all the world… a hope for peace in Christ before the Inheriting King comes in judgment not only in Jerusalem in AD 70  but in all the world at His Second Coming (Acts 17:30-31).

Because this is true, because it is such Good News, the Apostles and Martyrs declared it without regard for their safety.  On the Celtic Cross of Muiredach,  Christ as standing as He was in Stephen’s vision (Acts 7) because they considered themselves ALL MARTYRS, to the cause of Christ in one way or another, whether the red martyrdom of those who shed their blood, or the white martyrdom of those who daily offered themselves as living sacrifices unto God (Romans 12:1,2).

When we finally understand why the Good News is called the Good News, we are free to risk trusting Jesus Christ with our lives! We can trust Him and give our lives to him because  He is the one who has conquered death and will conquer all our enemies, even death itself! While we fear giving our lives up to His Lordship,  it’s His resurrection, His forgiveness, His promise of eternal salvation that enables us to finally be free to serve Him in joy and gratitude.

What is the least that we can do in light of this Good News? The author of the Book of Hebrews has no problems speaking to people who risked becoming outcasts in their own communities – Jews living in pagan environments whose only economic lifeline is the local synagogue – and tells them this:

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

In light of Jesus’ coming, the people who cried O Come, O Come Emmanuel found the One who finally set them free to hope in God  and free to live as God’s Children by Divine Adoption (John 1:12-13;Gal 4:4-7).

His Coming guaranteed that the covenant keeping God had drawn near in His grace…but not just for His ancient people Israel but for all who would draw near to God through Him!

What does the coming of Christ into the world mean to you? Why was it important?

Most importantly, how is the Christ who fulfilled the Law of God and who fulfills all the promises of God the answer to your deepest longings?

Homily for the Lord’s Day
The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity – October 18, 2009

BCP Proper 26b
Numbers 11: 16, 24-29 – Psalm 51b – (Philippians 1: 12-18) – Mark 9: 38-50

(Note: The epistle from Philippians is used as the Evening Prayer reading this week in the local congregation in which the following homily is being preached, and thus is not figured in to the following text.)

Jealousy is, undoubtedly, one of the oldest negative human emotions. We only need to open our Bibles a few pages – page 12, in my principal study Bible for example – to encounter the story of Cain and Abel. The sense of jealousy, self-superiority, and ultimately self-justification that led to the first murder has remained a rampant ‘inspiration’ among our frail and fallen race ever since. Today, in our readings from Sacred Scripture, we are once again reminded of the impact of jealousy – even on the greatest of God’s followers. At the same time, God’s gracious sovereignty is demonstrated in both our reading from Numbers and our Gospel passage from Mark.

In our Old Testament reading, God instructs Moses to gather ‘seventy men who are recognized as elders and leaders of Israel’ and to bring them to the Tabernacle so that they may be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Lord knew that Moses was being overwhelmed by the constant battle to oversee the Hebrew masses… their ongoing petty disputes, arguments, and their ever-present complaints against God must have been horribly trying for him. He needed aid, and the Lord graciously provided. He promised that he would fill those selected with the power of the Spirit so that their wisdom and discernment might be made more and more perfect as it was manifest among the people.

On the following day, when Moses brought the seventy to the Tabernacle, two of them stayed back and did not come with the other elders. They are identified in our text as Eldad and Medad. Why did they stay back in the camp? There are several theories, but the most common among Christian commentators is that they recognized their unworthiness for such a great honor and chose to remain behind. Regardless of the reason, however, for their absence, God had other plans.

In truth, none of the seventy was truly ‘worthy’ of the honor, just as none of us are ‘worthy’ of God’s grace when left to our own devices. No matter how ‘worthy’ we feel that we are, our true, base nature remains a fallen one that is redeemed not by our own thoughts, but by the washing and the Word of our Lord. Perhaps the elders who went to the tabernacle with Moses recognized that it was God who was making them worthy. Perhaps they had witnessed enough during the time of the Plagues, the Passover, and the Exodus itself that they learned to place their reliance on God’s power as opposed to their own. Perhaps Eldad and Medad were so self-conscious that they knew they were unworthy, and that nothing they could do could make them worthy of God’s great gift. It didn’t matter. In the moment when the Spirit came to rest upon the others, the Spirit also entered into the minds and hearts of Eldad and Medad, and began moving them to speak the wisdom, love, judgment, and mercy of God among the people of Israel in the camp.

Perhaps in that moment, Eldad and Medad had an experience not unlike John Wesley described in his journals. By 1738, Wesley was a man on the brink of defeat. He had engaged in a highly unsuccessful mission in Colonial Georgia, and had returned to England under a deep cloud of suspicion. His experiences prompted him to pen in his journal:

I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.

In the months leading up to the defining experience of his life, Wesley began meeting with Moravians in England. He had observed their quiet confidence in the midst of a storm at sea during his journey to America, and as a result became somewhat enamored with their inner strength. In early March, Wesley met with Peter Bohler. Concerning this meeting, he wrote:

…by [Peter Bohler], in the hand of the great God, I was, on Sunday, the fifth, clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved. Immediately it struck into my mind, ‘Leave off preaching. How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?’ I asked Bohler whether he thought I should leave it off or not. He answered, ‘By no means.’ I asked, ‘But what can I preach?’ He said, ‘Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.’ Accordingly, Monday the sixth, I began preaching this new doctrine, though my soul started back from the work.

For weeks he tried preaching this ‘new doctrine’, but for whatever reason Wesley still found himself unsatisfied. In places he seemed to be successful, but in Churches he was having a harder time of it. Congregation after congregation forbade him to preach. In the week leading up to his experience at Aldersgate, he wrote that he had ‘continual sorrow and heaviness’ in his heart.

On Wednesday, May 24th, however, something changed.

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Here was a man, steeped in the Scriptures, filled with a great desire to proclaim the Gospel to the unsaved, who himself had trouble believing what he had heard and preached. For whatever reason, John Wesley had held himself back, just as Eldad and Medad did in the wilderness. And yet, even in the midst of Wesley’s unwillingness, the Holy Spirit began a new, transforming work in him that would change the Church of England, and ultimately the face of Christianity in the New World. He began to find strength and certainty – not in himself, but in the Holy Spirit. Just as Eldad and Medad stepped out into the Camp of the Israelites with boldness, Wesley now embarked on a new journey of faith, a deeper one; one that had the power not only to transform the self, but others, through the compassionate mercy of God.

Of course, Eldad and Medad had their detractors. In fact, they had a very powerful detractor, namely Joshua, Moses’ assistant. Joshua, who would later go on to lead the Israelites, viewed himself as more than just an aide – he was Moses’ chief defender. Here were two usurpers to Moses’ authority; men of questionable faithfulness who had not come as directed to the assembly in the Tabernacle. Joshua, being a man of great stature as a warrior, perhaps places too much stock in human strength, and not enough in the concept of Divine Strength.

Moses reaction mirrors Jesus’ in our Gospel reading today when the apostles forbade a man to minister in Christ’s name. In this instance, the Apostles – whose jealousy serves as a fiery undercurrent to their report – fare far worse than Joshua; at least Joshua asked Moses about the situation before taking matters into his own hands! The Apostles had no such qualms, and found themselves harshly rebuked by Christ: “Don’t stop him!” was the reply they received. It was, in essence, the reply that Joshua received too.

The core lesson we need to take from our readings today is that God, not man, determines who his servants are. We may recognize them, ordain them, send them out… but it is God who places the Spirit within his people to accomplish great things. The same God who does this, gives to his people guidelines for recognizing who will be rightly filled with the Spirit for mission and ministry – he did in the Old Testament, and he does in the New.

For two thousand years, the Church has called and sent ministers of Word and Sacrament to meet the needs of the faithful. Sadly, the Church has not always done the best job of living by the Biblical guidelines for calling and sending people forth. At times, this has necessitated some rather unconventional ministries in the Church – ministries like John Wesley’s, or Martin Luther’s. These men, whose hearts were filled with the Gospel message proclaimed by Paul and the Church Fathers, often found themselves shut out of pulpits. Each resorted to different means to ensure that the Gospel of Grace was proclaimed among the people. Luther’s solution was, undoubtedly, the more institutional of the two, but Wesley’s was perhaps more dramatic. Though he never ceased to be a priest of the Church of England, Wesley often found himself and his evangelistic meetings to be in direct competition with the ‘accepted’ worship of the English state in the fields on the outskirts of the villages and towns he visited. He was considered – variously – wacky, novel, disobedient, and undoubtedly a whole host of other negative attributes were held by his detractors. And yet, in the midst of a cold, barren, and at times faithless Church of England, God had chose the voice of this humble, broken man to be a great vehicle for revival and faith in his homeland and beyond.

Had the apostles found that their competitor was preaching a doctrine that did not focus on Jesus Christ; had Moses discovered that Eldad and Medad were attempting to prophesy in a manner inconsistent with God’s revelation to the Hebrew people; had Wesley’s bishop determined that he was preaching a doctrine not in accord with the faith of the Scriptures, then all of them would have been fully within their rights to stand against the teachers, preachers, and prophets that sprung up in their respective day. More often than not, however, jealousy – as Moses cites to Joshua – is the reason to run ‘competitors’ out of town, not fidelity to the truth.

As believers, and as members of our own local congregation and our own Synodical fellowship, we must be sure and certain of what we believe, but at the same time we must be careful not to ‘un-church’ others who are preaching the sufficiency of Jesus Christ for salvation. We may have differing ways of approaching the message, but if the message is, at its root, the same, then we are called to lift our hearts and hands to God in thanksgiving for his providential provision of preachers of the truth, not to decry them as usurpers or threats to the kingdom in a sense of jealousy or envy when we consider their accomplishments.

Does this mean we should ‘give up’ our own distinctive and directions? No… on matters which are not essential to salvation, we are free to select practices that seem best and right, provided they are not directly opposed to the Word of God. Our liturgy and ritual, or others lack thereof, may be an important matter to us – but the most important matter must be the answer that is given when we give an account of our faith. Do we attempt to conform the Christian message to ourselves, or do we embrace the Christian message and allow it to conform us to Christ?

If the answer is the former, then God help us… but if it is the latter, God has already helped us as he helped Eldad and Medad, as he helped the Apostles, and as he has helped countless believers throughout the ages. To our good and gracious God –who ever stands ready to warm the heart and inspire the mind– be glory and honor, now and forever. Amen.

From Delusion To Discipleship

18th Lord’s Day after Trinity, Proper 25b

Numbers 12:1-15
Psalm 31
James 3:1-18
Mark 9:30-37

The call was unexpected. It was from an area code I did not recognize. I answered it to find a dear friend and mentor had suffered a massive heart attack and was not expected to survive. Later in the day, we learned that sometime today (10/11/2009) they will decide if he is brain dead and let his body die. When death greets us… will we be deluded or be a disciple?

Today, we read the second incident in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus predicts His death and resurrection. We have three incidents in Mark’s record of Jesus training His disciples and each time  – they just don’t get it!  Each time they are puzzled – even unbelieving – about what Jesus says. First Peter basically says “Jesus, you’re nuts!” This time they don’t want to risk a reprimand, but you can see what they’re doing – they’re arguing about who is going to be the top dog when Jesus’ kingdom comes. They seem to still expect Jesus to ascend quickly to an earthly throne and use the powers He has displayed in healing people and casting out demons to bring Israel’s enemies immediately to hell!

So when Jesus rebukes Peter for likely saying something just like that, now the disciples don’t say a word. Mark tells us that when Jesus talks about His death and resurrection, the disciples don’t understand what’s going on and are afraid. Those jobs they had lined up in their own minds as “Messiah’s Assistants”  suddenly seem jeopardized. After all, they figured that when Jesus whooped up, they were going to be exalted leaders like Daniel in Babylon or Joseph in Egypt. They figured they’d finally gotten in on something good and here’s Jesus messing up those dreams!

But this time, just like the last time, and just like the next time ( Mk 10:32-45), Jesus takes their confusion and tells them that they must move from their delusion to discipleship.

In a 12 Step Group you’ll say the “Serenity Prayer” that asks God to “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” That’s a prayer for people who can’t tell fantasy from reality because their sins and delusions have warped their ability to know what’s real.

Jesus’ disciples – just like us – are deluded about what’s going to happen because they have their lives already mapped out in their own heads. They are following Jesus but in their minds they are using Jesus because they have it all mapped out about what Jesus is going to do for them!

That’s why they’re fighting. They have competing ideas about which one of them Jesus is going to make the head man!

But it doesn’t work that way!

Jesus doesn’t call us because He’s putting Himself at our disposal! That’s a delusion! Instead He calls us to find our lives by following Him as He gives Himself. That’s discipleship!

As our Lord takes the disciples aside on this march to Jerusalem and to His death to tell them about God’s plan, these men cannot forget for one moment about what’s “in it for them” about being with Jesus!

As they are in their dream world expecting quick riches and power to come their way for their brief fling with following Jesus, Jesus again in Mark 9 tells them about His coming death instead. Before Jesus can be the “Son of Man” in victory in Dan 7, He must be the prophetic “Son of Man” portrayed in Ezekiel’s ministry who speaks to Israel’s sin and rebellion, who wanders and teaches like an exile to people who are still in exile though they think they are free (Ez 12:3). He’s speaking prophetic truth to people who are inventing their own prophecies and living in delusion (Ez 13:2). Jesus confronts those who erect idols in their hearts and teach their lies instead of God’s Word (Ez 14:3). Jesus will tell them what it means to be connected to God’s vine (John 15/Ezek 15). He speaks in parables and riddles (Ezek 17). He lets Jerusalem know their abominations (Ez 16) and groaned with anguish over their sin (Ezek 21/Luke 13:34). Jesus will be this “Son of Man” and He will be killed in God’s plan and in God’s plan rise to life!

Die? Rise? The prophet Daniel talked in terms of many rising (Dan 12) on the Last Day. But one man rise? It was confusing. Jesus was sounding increasingly like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53…but surely the time of suffering was past and the time of victory is at hand!
Jesus says “No”! Wake up! Stop serving yourselves, stop thinking your brief flings of obedience and devotion suffice. When you can realize that Jesus does not exist to prop up your delusion and you exist to find your life in Him, you can escape your delusion and learn to delight in discipleship!

The salvation that Jesus gives us in this world and the next is a salvation that sets us free from ourselves! The first time Jesus brought up this topic last week in our studies, Jesus told them He would set them free if they would turn from themselves and turn to Him, if they would stop grasping for the elusive promises of this life and trust Him for joy in following Him where He was going!

Now we learn the second crucial lesson about what it means to escape our delusion and become His disciples… It is the principle and practice of servant leadership.

Here’s the principle: To people like us who need to get over the delusion that Jesus exists to serve us and our agenda, we need to learn this lesson from Him – If you want to be the first among God’s people, be the servant of God’s people!

*Everybody wants to be known as a hero, but nobody wants to get shot at.

*Everybody wants to be known as a “Reformer” but nobody wants to get up to their neck in the manure that comes when you work with people.

*Everybody wants to be the one everybody looks up to, but nobody wants to do the work required of being a person people can rely on.

To people who wonder why God isn’t using them, why Jesus isn’t blessing them, why people aren’t taking them seriously in their Christian profession – Jesus says (and I say it in the most reverent way possible) “For Christ’s sake DO SOMETHING and get off your rear end!” Stop playing your mind games and cultivating your day dreams and DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING FOR SOMEONE IN CHRIST’S NAME!

My friend Edwin Elliott said that when they ordain leaders in their church, they give them a broom. The last time I talked to him he was taking out the trash at the church.  Get out of your head and get into the world to do something for someone else in Jesus’ name.

Here’s the practice: So how does this work out in practice? We want it to mean that we are called to do something glamorous and well paid. If we are pastors we want it to mean that we are called to minister to stadiums full of adoring crowds. If we are church leaders we may want to consider our church “the best in town”.  We may find ourselves wanting to be noticed by people – to have our picture in the paper every week – to win a Nobel Prize for doing nothing.

But Jesus took a child and a set the child in their midst.  In that day, children were considered, weak, inferior, and a liability – the way pro abortionists talk about them when arguing for abortion as a way to cut the cost of the schools and the cost of government.

Jesus promised that if we welcomed weak, inferior, insignificant people and served them, THEN we would know what it means to serve as disciples and break free from our delusions and become disciples!

Here’s the promise: It’s hard to follow Jesus at times. We so desperately want – at times – to BE ANYWHERE ELSE but where God has put us. We so desperately want to be doing ANYTHING BUT the menial task God seems to have assigned us.

But Jesus has a promise for us in our misery.  He promises that when we serve and welcome the insignificant in His Name – in union with Jesus, empowered by Jesus, driven by the love of Jesus, trusting in Jesus to use us in our insignificance, when our following becomes the oneness with Jesus of repentance faith and eating His flesh and drinking His blood described in John 6 – then in that service Jesus will find their union with Christ and the Father deepened.

No it doesn’t mean that if you help someone in Jesus’ Name then suddenly that person becomes Jesus or is a Christian somehow because you helped them. But as we move out of our deluded self interest into the discipleship Jesus calls us too, we will know what it means to live as one with Jesus and the Father and the blessing of their nearness and what it means to rejoice in being the Father’s child.

Jesus promises that as we move out of our delusion into discipleship we shall find the joy of knowing Him and thereby enjoy all the blessings of the Father’s adoption (Gal 4:4-7) and come to  experience in and through our serving the nearness of the life of heaven (John 17:3).

If death should come and greet you today – and you should leave this world for your eternal reward – will you be found to be deluded, someone who played games with their life and played around with knowing Jesus, or will you be found to be a disciple who for the joy of Jesus’ promised nearness, had learned to be the one who lead by serving?

Audio version of this sermon preached at St. Andrews’ Church

For the 17th Lord’s Day after Trinity (Proper 24b) the readings are:

Isaiah 50:4-10
Psalm 116:1-9
1 Peter 4:12-19
Mark 8:27-38

In our Gospel reading today, we’re confronted with the very real danger that we may claim to follow Jesus Christ, but in reality be His adversary, His Satan. Why? Because despite our profession of faith – it’s quite possible that, like the Apostle Peter, our plans for our life, our understanding of our mission is at odds with what Jesus is about. I’m not talking about demon possession, but I am talking about wasting our lives by living them without regard to Jesus’ priorities. Have you ever thought about confronting “The Satan in Me?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As Jesus is marching towards Jerusalem He first stops to clarify for His disciples just who He is and what His mission is about! Some say He’s doing this in Casesarea Phillipi because that Herod is less of a danger to Him than the Herod (Antipas) who ruled over Jerusalem. Perhaps so. That makes sense – John 6:15 reminds us that people would gladly have made him just the kind of King the Romans would put to death instantly.

Whatever else was going on behind the scenes, Caesarea Phillipi was a hot bed of idolatry and also Emperor worship. There in one of the most pagan places that could be near the Holy Land, where the ugliness of paganism was so apparent, where the power of darkness was unquestioned, Jesus asks “who do people say that I am?”

Whatever their answer, it would stand in direct contrast to the statement made by the region itself: that Caesar is Lord. So who is Jesus?

The first answers they gave – who the people said Jesus might be were predictable and safe: “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say You are one of the other prophets.”

These answers required no commitment on the part of those giving them. They are piously repeating what they’ve heard  but not sticking their own necks out.

So Jesus asks them emphatically – so who do YOU say that I am?

This answer will change the course of their lives. They have seen Him heal and do the works only the Messiah can do. The backdrop behind them is a city dedicated to Caesar as Lord.  Their answer could get them killed by the Romans. Their answer could make them hated by their own people even more than they despised those hayseed Galileans anyway.  The way they answer might also mean that, in addition to the cost they’d paid to follow Jesus already, there might be more they had to do.

So it was a costly answer they were being asked to make.

In the early church, Christians could be spared a painful death if they would only tell their Roman Captors that “Caesar is Lord”. But saying “Jesus is Lord” could get them tortured, killed or killed by being thrown to wild animals.

What do you say if you’re trapped in Nazi Germany and you’re a stone’s throw from the headquarters of the Secret Police and you’re walking with an “enemy of the state” who asks you if what you believe about what they’re doing?

What do you say? Jesus asked them and Jesus looks us in the eye and asks us – “Who do YOU say that I am?” And the question remains – are you willing to risk your life on the answer?

When the silence broke, Peter opened his mouth and spoke up: “You are the Messiah!”

That answer changes everything.

In that very place where the Roman Emperor was worshipped Peter says that this Jesus who’s standing there with them is the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, the one that all the Jewish nation had been looking forward to – the One who would bring all God’s promises to a climax!

You knew that was the right answer because Jesus told them not to tell anyone – it wasn’t God’s Time.

Now he begins to explain to them what He  meant when he said there’d be a time for fasting when the bridegroom had been taken from them (Mk. 2:19-20).

He explained to them that as the “Son of Man”, he must first become a prophetic parable like Ezekiel who was called the “Son of Man”, he must become the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 if he is to fulfill God’s call. But he must be a prophetic riddle and become the sacrifice who dies to take away the sins of God’s people before he can be the “Son of Man” of Daniel 7:13-14  and receive dominion over the nations and rule as God’s appointed King (Psalm 2; 1 Cor 15:25-28).

For Peter, it was too much to believe that in order for the Messiah to reign triumphantly he must first suffer terribly and then die redemptively.  Rise victoriously? Who’d ever heard of that?

So Peter decided to talk some sense into Jesus. What Jesus had just said wasn’t part of Peter’s agenda for the Messiah.

Think of it.

If the Real Live Messiah gets killed…what’s going to happen to his sidekicks? It can’t be good. Remember Bonnie and Clyde we’d say. Remember Ahab and Jezebel Peter might have said. The sidekicks always died too.

So Peter gives Jesus a piece of his mind only to have Jesus set him straight. Peter’s ideas are so out of touch with God’s plans, that if Peter insists on having his way, Peter will be an adversary, a “Satan”. And like Satan, Peter’s words invite Jesus to succumb to the temptations He has already defeated once (Mt 4:8-10).

You can understand Peter’s situation. We too are a people who are bent on a mission. Whether we have a “mission statement” or not, we are all people on a mission – either one bent on serving ourselves or one bent on serving Jesus Christ.

Peter’s mission became evident. Unfortunately, his mission for his life – fame, riches, and glory perhaps – were diametrically opposed to Jesus’ mission.

That’s what makes Peter’s blunder so horrendous. Like the demons who could confess Israel’s creed or Shema all day (Deut 6:4; James 2:19), Peter offers the correct confession but he is in danger, unless he repents, of putting himself at odds with the true Mission of Jesus.

How do your (our) confession and mission stack up? The most dangerous thing for orthodox believers is to congratulate ourselves on our good confession only to deceive ourselves when it comes to grasping the implications of what Jesus came to do for our own lives.

So that Peter would no longer be confused about the costliness of following Jesus the Messiah, and so we might not be, Jesus makes know the requirements of being a disciple. Jesus tells us how to align our MISSION with our CONFESSION.

Jesus offers us the Way, along with a Warning:

In a world where people follow others for what they can get, like scavengers, or hyenas tracking a herd to see what will drop away for them to pick up, some follow Jesus for what they can gain.

Jesus says – If anyone wants to be my follower, it’s time to recognize that life as you knew it – a life that you lived for yourself and for your own pleasure is over.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it like this: “When Jesus calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

To begin to follow we must want to follow Jesus more than we wish to follow our own hopes and dreams. We must die is to turn from our selfish ways – that means stop telling Jesus what He’s going to do! (That didn’t work for Peter. It’s never worked for me. It’s called submission to God’s plan and providence. It hurts!)

The extent to which we must follow Jesus means that, like Him, we must carry our cross.  For St. Paul in Galatians 6:14, carrying the cross had come to mean that his life had no meaning for himself or the world as he used to know it apart from what each day meant for the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We don’t want to go there – someone might call us fanatical! It might mean that our interest in Jesus Christ took the fun out of the things we used to love. People might – gasp – think we were trying to be fundamentalist fuddy-duddies! They might think we weren’t cool!

Our worst fear these days is that someone might think we’re not “relevant”! But Jesus fear is that we’ll be so relevant we’ll go to Hell. So he offers this warning.

Following Jesus IS  about no longer hanging on to our lives lived on our terms. Following Jesus means we stop trying to hold on to people, places, things and even relationships that keep us from serving Christ the Lord.   And it means that even the good things in our lives that begin to approach the status of “Lord” in our lives have to be put back in their proper place.

That’s because of Jesus’ love for us – you see, He tells us – if we are ashamed of Him now, and our lives are continually shaped and our actions governed by the fear that someone will call us a “Jesus Freak”… then when the Son of Man does return as the full inheritor of all the nations, He will be ashamed of us and we will be as doomed as those who shake their fist in His face this day.

That’s why we must ever fear the presence of the “Satan in Me.” The Satan in Me will delight in telling Jesus what to do while never listening to what Jesus requires US to do. The Satan in Me will offer a good confession of faith while doing whatever he pleases… and whatever mocks what Jesus really wants us to do.

The Satan in Me will confess that Jesus is the Messiah, and then seek his own life instead of losing his life for Jesus Christ.

How are you dealing with the Satan in You?

Jesus Heals A Deaf Mute

A sermon from Mark 7:31-37.

It’s easy to come to one of the miracle stories of our Lord’s life and be jaded. If we’ve gone to church for a while, we’ve probably heard these stories a million times. So what? We’ve heard these miracle stories before you know. We’ve probably even prayed for miracles ourselves but nothing quite like what Jesus did has ever happened to us has it.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and unless we pay attention, familiarity with the stories of Jesus’ miracles can let us miss God’s message for us this morning. May God help us NOT to be so bored with His Word!

Jesus is travelling far from Jerusalem – you know the place where the “experts” were sent from to trap Him and where He would be ultimately crucified. He’s travelling in a land who knew they were under God’s judgment.  They’d sided with the enemies of God’s people after they had been blessed by the Lord through Solomon. What betrayal! What traitors! Hear what the prophet says in Jeremiah 47:4 – “The time has come for the Philistines to be destroyed, along with their allies from Tyre and Sidon. Yes, the LORD is destroying the remnant of the Philistines, those colonists from the island of Crete.” NLT

So where is Jesus? He is not where the those who felt they were sure of God’s blessing lived, that is, in Jerusalem. Jesus was performing His miracles amongst those who knew themselves to be cursed. He’s walking among the Ten Towns (Decapolis) where the Gentiles are so thick the Jews of that region were considered “second class” because they lived some place defiled.

Have you ever felt you were some place which was so bad that, for whatever reason, Jesus could not reach you there? Some place so hopeless that Jesus would never visit where you find yourself stuck? Our Jesus walks today in the hopeless places – and however much they seem “God forsaken” –those who will receive Him may be surprised just how frequently He visits there just as He visited Tyre and Sidon.

While there were many in Jerusalem who did not notice His visitation – and were thankful whenever the news of Jesus died down – there were people who were eager for Him to arrive and when they knew Jesus came to supposedly “God Forsaken” places, they cried out for Him to visit their friend, perhaps a family member, who was a deaf-mute.  They begged for a miracle!

“Draw near Jesus!” they asked. Communicate your blessing and healing power. Touch our friend in his brokenness and weakness. Remove his humiliation! Heal him!

Who is the person who healed this man that day?

He is the one who touched a man whom many others would look at and ask “Who sinned? This man or his parents?” (cf.  John 9:2) He’s the one who dares to touch you and I in our squalor and weakness.

Jesus is the one who looks to heaven and beseeches the Heavenly Father to pour out blessing and healing in a land considered by the nice religious people as pagan to say the least. He is the one who at the Father’s right hand prays for us in our plight as well. That is why scripture tells us to consider this one who looks to heaven and intercedes for the broken and urges us to realize that He prays for us too: “Therefore [Hebrews says] He is able, once and forever, to save those who come to God through Him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf.” Heb 7:25 NLT

Jesus is the one who sighed as he draws near this pitiful man. Jesus groaned with the groaning all creation cries out with until the curse is removed (Rom 8:23; 2 Cor 5:2,4). He sighs for this man just as he wept for his friend Lazarus (John 11:35).

This one who weeps over sinners will weep over your plight, your struggles, your heart break when you cry out to Him.

Jesus commanded “Be Opened” and this man’s ears were open. A miracle happened at Jesus’ word.

And today when people cry out to this Jesus who said “Be opened” and the Deaf-Mute could hear and speak – this Jesus comes to shattered places and shattered lives and does amazing things for people who know they have no other option and they turn to Him!

Note the response of the people – when others will crucify Him, these people

They can’t stay quiet!

They acclaim Him as the one who fulfills Isaiah’s messianic promise:

Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. Isa 35:4-5 ESV

And guess what – It’s no fluke! In Acts 3:1-10 we read about a man who saw the Apostles and thought “money”.  Instead this lame man was healed.

That healing shows the messianic promise fulfilled in Jesus, persists wherever, whenever, and however Jesus wishes it to in order to spread His kingdom.

It’s no fluke, the One who drew near to hopeless people in a hopeless “God-forsaken” place did not die, nor did His power. He rose again and lives at the Father’s right hand interceding, praying and caring for all those who come to God through Him.

It’s no fluke, the One who drew near a hopeless man draws near to all the hopeless who cry out to Him!

He sighs over our tears and our plight.

He is waiting for us to stop seeking silver and gold as that lame man learned and He is waiting for us to seek His Name!

How do we pray in light of this truth?

How do we praise in light of this truth?

How do we witness in light of this truth?

There are some people who never get healed in this life. There are martyrs – like most of the Apostles – who died for their Christian Faith. And there are those who struggle in many different ways.

But just because these things are true, we must never forget who Jesus is and the mercy and love He delights to show those who will put their trust in Him.

Our problem, for the most part, is not that we trust Jesus too much. Overwhelmingly our problem is that we trust Jesus too little. We have preconceived notions about our lives and we have a view of Jesus that demands He conform to our will.

The mercy of Jesus though is no fluke. The greatest need in our lives each day – and the greatest need of those we encounter – is to learn to entrust ourselves expectantly, in childlike trust, to the One who touches the despairing in their squalor and restores them by to power of God  so that we become part of eternity’ s chorus of souls who will give Him praise!

Will you praise Him? Will you bow? His mercy is no fluke. Why do we daily treat is as such?

Here’s an audio version of this sermon preached at St. Andrew’s Church.

Scripture Readings for the Lord’s Day from the Provisional Book of Common Prayer RESA:

Deuteronomy 4:1-9
Psalm 119:97-104
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-23

In our Gospel reading today, our Lord ignores a trivial complaint, unfolds the self-deceptions of our legalism and man-made “spirituality”, and identifies our ultimate problem – our sinful hearts. In our last three Lord’s Days, John 6 has reminded us of the absolute necessity of our union with Christ to translate us from death to life, from ‘in Adam’ to ‘in Christ’, from darkness to light, and from death to life itself because He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As Jesus’ ministry threatens the power of the establishment leaders and they cannot dispute that true miracles have been done, experts from Jerusalem are seemingly brought in to consult how best to halt our Lord’s progress and make clear how He and His ministry cannot be of God. So they attack the disciples for failing at the point of failing to comply with one of a myriad of traditions that had been created to help the people of God obey God’s law but which had become a law unto themselves… and a system, Jesus shows, that helped corrupt hearts evade the intent of God’s Law.

The real issue is their pseudo-spirituality and pretense of godliness when their hearts are wicked. They want to appear pious. Jesus condemns them because they rejoice in practices like the practice of “Corban” which let them evade God’s will while deluding themselves and others about their hearts’ true condition. Corban was the practice of giving something to God to be held in trust. Resources that might have been used to obey the command to help frail parents were enjoyed by children instead under the pretense of Corban.

The problem is not ultimately the food from outside. In light of Christ, we realize that all food is “clean” in the sense that it cannot truly defile the soul. These “traditions” are but a symptom of our true problem – that our hearts, to paraphrase Calvin, into factories which ceaselessly generate idols. We are corrupted from the inside out and straining at gnats while swallowing camels is our favorite method for denying our corruption and seeking to look good. The world’s greatest modern thief, Bernie Madoff, was known before his arrest as a “generous philanthropist”. Like him we are thieves with smiles pretending our good will before God. Our only hope is to be incorporated into Christ as Question & Answer 20 of the Heidelberg Catechism remind us: Our need is not for a change of opinion or for new mental furniture. Our need is to be grafted into Christ and to receive his benefits! Jesus Christ is the only cure for the sickness of our sick hearts. We must be delivered by the One whom God has appointed to be for us our wisdom, righteousness (justification), sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1:30). Luther’s Small Catechism makes the same point in its discussion of the sacrament of initiation into Christ, baptism, when it says: What does such baptizing with water signify?–Answer. It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

This amazing transformation is beyond our power. It comes only from the One who has died for sinners, risen to the Father’s right hand, and poured out His Holy Spirit to fit a people for eternal life. When confronted with the corruption of our hearts, when our deceitful legalisms are exposed for what they are, and when all human hope is lost – we are, by the grace of God, finally ready to receive Him who is all mercy and grace, the One able to transform us and give us eternal life, Jesus the Christ.

Here’s an audio version of this sermon as preached at St. Andrew’s Church

One question our Synod has fielded in the past is “Why the Heidelberg Catechism?”.

As our Synodical work progresses, we will be issuing a revision of the Heidelberg Catechism adapted for our own use. But why not begin de novo?

Hopefully our introduction we provide to a work on the Heidelberg helps answer that question.

The Heidelberg Catechism reflects the fruit not only of that generation but represents a crystallization of thought within the Western Christian tradition itself. It stands as witness to the “Catholicity” of the doctrine of Justification by Faith available to all those who find their hope in Jesus Christ alone through faith alone. In our day of increasingly “churchless” Christianity, the Catechism also bears witness to a paradigm for the Christian life that emerges from the Baptismal Covenant.

With Baptism as the starting point, our faith resides in the objective promise of God through the Church (the Body of Christ in its witness). The other alternative is that we are left disastrously to the subjective experience of the autonomous individual who considers himself free to interpret the Bible however he may will and yet claim to be a “Christian”. In other words, the Heidelberg stands as document that connects the primitive catholic tradition with the challenges of our own day.

For these reasons, our Synod builds upon this classic symbol of the faithful and hopes with it to forge a new Reformed and Evangelical consensus. We pray that such a consensus results in a vibrant contemporary mission and ministry for this day and age.

Scripture Readings for this Lord’s Day:

Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18
Psalm 71
Hebrews 11:24-28
John 6:60-69

Our readings from God’s Word today have been about how we answer the question – where will we go to find LIFE?

As Joshua talked to the people who entered the Promised Land, he called them not to serve the false gods their fathers served in Egypt. Find life in the One who has delivered you, Joshua said.

Moses, the Book of Hebrews reminds us, “chose to be mistreated with the people of God rather than enjoy the temporary blessings of sin”. By faith he turned his back on comfort and security and took God at His Word and was delivered from the judgement brought by the Angel of Death.

Jesus’ disciples this day in the Synagogue had plenty of examples throughout Scripture of taking God at His Word…trusting God to do the impossible and bearing the shame of following the Lord when the supposedly “smart bet” was on the power of the forces of this world.

Jesus has been looking them in the eye and telling them that unless they were fed by Jesus Himself becoming united with them in that mystery St. Paul calls “Christ in you the hope of glory” (Col 1: 27), then there was no hope for them.

Now, even Jesus’ own disciples are grumbling just like the unbelieving Jewish leaders were!

It’s important to remember what has gone on earlier in Chapter 6 – Jesus has fed the 5000 in the Wilderness with a miraculous display of God’s Power… then Jesus has walked on the water.

They loved Jesus for doing these things!

In other words, they loved the things Jesus could do for them. They loved it when Jesus put on a good show. They loved having a Messiah at their disposal! They loved it when Jesus would pour out God’s blessing on them but when it came to being united with the one who is Truly God and Truly Man – they rebelled at that and were repelled by that.

And Jesus doesn’t water His words down to keep them around. He wants them to know that eternal life only comes to those who eat Jesus’ flesh and drink Jesus’ blood. “Eating His flesh” and “Drinking His blood” which we do sacramentally in the Lord’s Supper means to become one with Jesus and it refers to what happens when Jesus in His Ascension pours out the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit that Jesus’ glorified Body becomes the source and wellspring of eternal life for everyone who is united to Jesus. Through the indwelling life of the glorified Christ applied to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we become people who are alive in Christ instead of remaining those who will die in Adam.

We have a perspective these disciples didn’t have. We have the entire New Testament and what I consider Paul the Apostle’s reflection on this topic in Colossians 1 to help us understand… but Jesus didn’t let them off the hook. He let them know He wasn’t talking about “cannibalism” or something earthly and carnal. He was talking about a new world coming where, to enter it, these disciples would have to be transformed by Jesus. But evidently even His disciples weren’t ready to hear about that.

They wanted blessings, but they didn’t want anything that would require them to become something they weren’t already. It goes back to thinking they were already fitted for heaven. Jesus says no, you’re not! You can only be fitted for eternal life if you are drawn by the Father and united with Jesus Christ’s lifegiving existence in ways they couldn’t – and didn’t care to – comprehend.

Jesus notes their unbelief – He essentially says “If that offends you, what’s going to happen when you see me ascend back to heaven?”

Jesus as the Son of Man is the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel 7:1-13. Jesus is the Son of Man whose kingdom will overcome every other kingdom of the world and before whom the nations will bow! But Jesus tells us that His invincible kingdom will not come without Him, the Son of Man, first being lifted up on the Cross through His suffering and agonies on the cross. There will be an ascension – and incomprehensibly to the Jews – a shameful death along the way. (see John 3:14)

If there’s one thing they didn’t want more than to have to be transformed to be fitted for eternal life, they didn’t want to risk their eternal destiny on a Messiah who says He is going to ultimately conquer – but after a Cross. Nor do they want to be reminded that to benefit from our Lord’s Ascension, they must consider themselves sick and dying like those sinful Israelites in the Wilderness! After all, for Jesus to be lifted up like the Serpent in the Wilderness, those looking to Him must consider themselves as weakened, sick, vulnerable, and sinful as those dying Israelites who were healed there! And so they reject Him just like His enemies.

Jesus explains that this unbelief has resulted because these people have not been given the gift of believing in Jesus from the Father (v. 64). When Jesus told the people that they must not have been chosen by the Father to follow Jesus because of their unbelief, that was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”! Jesus’ words strike at their own concept of themselves as the elect People of God by virtue of their lineage. St. Paul discusses this topic at length in Romans 9-11. Here Jesus simply states that trusting in Him is the Gift of God, of grace and not of works (cf. John 6:29)

Our Lord then asks the Twelve whether they will leave too…

St. Peter asks “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life! You are the Holy One of God!”

By calling Jesus the “Holy One”, Peter echoes today’s Psalter selection – Psalm 71 – and ascribes to Jesus the faithfulness and blessing Israel ascribed to Yahweh, the Lord:

Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again. You will increase my greatness and comfort me again. I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. Psalm 71:19-22

Just who ARE we saying Jesus is when we call Him “Lord”? If Jesus is truly “Lord” in the fullness of the language of scripture, He is truly the one in whom the fullness of Yahweh dwells bodily (see Col. 2:9). Only in that way can He be the “Holy One of God” who is the “Holy One of Israel”. As such, He is the One who exists for His own purposes and not for ours. In His grace, His own purposes effect our salvation and blessing, but those mercies flow from His purpose to bless. They are not ours to command as we will.

Many who call themselves disciples, pastors, ministers today are like those who abandoned our Lord. They love the idea of Jesus for what they can receive. There are ministers who are “in it” for the money no matter what part of their soul must be for sale. There are many disciples who will follow Jesus because they hope He is a Messiah who’ll fill their belly, fatten their wallet, and build their (our!) little empires.

But tell them that everything must change about us, that even our ability to believe is the gift of God, that before the eternal glory is revealed, the agony, humiliation, and pain of a cross must be carried. Tell someone they must be born again and repent more profoundly than they have ever known before… and they will find another pastor who will massage their ears to avoid hard words.

Suddenly we reveal that, to us, Jesus Christ is not the Holy one of God. For us, if we will not repent, we show that we considered Jesus to be a Messiah at our disposal and the heavenly gifts at our command. We deny by our lack of repentance that our Lord has come for His own purposes and we are called to humble ourselves before Him!

Blessed are those who can hear these hard words of Jesus and not turn away!

Blessed are those who realize – there’s no place else to go to find eternal life!

Blessed are those who are willing to have their sins and shortcomings removed and to be filled with all the fullness of God!

Bishop Huckaby’s sermon on this topic is available here: To Whom Shall We Go?

Also available:

M. F. Sadler The Gospel According To Saint John

Are you satisfied with who you are?

Are you happy with the way your life is?

If you aren’t would you say your life just needs a “mild tweak” to nudge it forward into “perfection”?

If it needs “something more” – how radical a change are you willing to admit you need?

As the Lord’s Day lections for Proper 19 in Year B continue the Church’s readings through John 6 (John 6:41-51), we find our Lord’s encounter with the Jewish leaders who despise His assertion “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” In our Lord’s response we find some of His most open assertions of His own diety and exclusive claims as the unique Savior of not only God’s ancient covenant people, but also, all nations of the world.

In dismissing their arguments against Him as the fountain of salvation because they recognize him outwardly as truly man but not as He who is truly Immanuel, God with us, He equates the logic they find so convincing to mere whining – the opposite of the blessing they should pronounce upon the manifestation of God’s true heavenly bread.

Jesus’ hearers are not condemned for their failure to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Trinity – instead they are criticized for their spiritual presumption. In a practical sense, they denied their need for a Messiah who offered more than a superficial restructuring of the failed Old Covenant economy. The failure of that economy becomes the focus of passages such as Galatians 3:10-12 and the extended argument of the Book of Hebrews.

To the holy nation which is so clearly suffering the effects of God’s curse for their sin (Deut. 28:16ff) and even in Jesus’ Day only experiencing the preliminary blessings of the restoration promised by the prophets and yet to be fully revealed in the New Covenant (Ezek. 36:24ff), Jesus the Messiah offers more than they are willing to hope for! To those whose wedding day joy is about be stifled by the absence of wine, Jesus turns the water into wine (John 2). He offers the life that characterizes the love, joy, peace and transfiguring power of heaven itself to those who believe Yahweh only offers them some pale extension of the life known through Adam (John 3).

Their sin is in underestimating the grace of God and the power of God. They presume that they as an accursed people already have the fullness of light (John 1) and that they are not blind but are able to discern what the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ requires of them and has planned for them (John 9). Therefore Jesus says in John 6:49 “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they died.”

Our Old Testament  lection from 1 Kings 19:3-9 is one of the many lessons from Scripture demonstrating our Lord’s point. When Israel was on  the verge of a complete apostasy under King Ahab, God’s prophet Elijah is raised up. Though empowered by the living God to defeat the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), in the hour of his need and human fear and weakness even the prophet who was taken up directly into heaven must be fed by bread from heaven. That manna which fed a generation in the wilderness did not suffice and God’s gracious sustenance from the Angel of the Lord’s own hand must be given for a new day.

Presumption on God’s grace from the past had become an obstacle to entering into the blessing Jesus comes into the world to establish. Presumption on past grace, then, means that they had established a new idolatry that trusted their present status quo as sufficient, as is, to inherit God’s blessing without the Angel of the Lord coming to not only give bread from heaven but to be the bread of heaven.

The One who becomes for us the bread of heaven unto eternal life gives Himself to those who trust not in the nourishment present in themselves or available to them by any natural means. He is the bread of eternal life to all those who feast upon His flesh through faith (6:47). Unlike the former bread given in the wilderness, this bread does not spoil by nightfall – nor do those who partake of this bread ever die (6:50). Like the bush through which God Almighty revealed His covenant name (Exodus 3:1ff) was not consumed, He who is heaven’s bread is likewise never consumed because He is the living bread ever pulsating with life in and of Himself and renewing  with heaven’s life all those who commune with Him.

Presumption on past blessing prevents present grace. It is true for us as well as these self-satisfied grumblers. We are in constant danger of embracing an idolatrous view of our own strength, our own spiritual capacities, and the status of our relationship with God and deny the radical transformation yet required in us. We too are an accursed people without hope except that which comes from feeding upon Jesus Christ.

This day there are those who trust in a distant baptism or a prior religious experience they equate with the operations of God’s Spirit.  Yet they walk in the way of sin and darkness. They declare themselves Christians and yet reveal by their lives they have not been known by God or been taught by Him. They – as much as Jesus’ hearers then – are in danger or worshipping an illusion of spiritual security. Instead all people are called to examine themselves and feed by faith upon Jesus Christ the Risen Lord and the bread of Heaven come down.

Will you give yourself to the One who can transform you radically? Will you lay down your life for Him?

A sermon with study notes is available here: Presumption On Past Blessing Prevents Present Grace