Thursday, March 28, 2024

Foretaste of the eternal... now

The heavenly banquet feast offers many rich images in Scripture but sometimes we forget the focus is not all to what was.  It is also what will be.  What is the food?  What is it that we will eat now and what will we eat eternally?  As we come to Holy Thursday, the answer is there before us.  We will gather in the Lord's name to recall the Upper Room and the Lord's institution of this Blessed Sacrament.  We will remember the Passover context for this Supper.  And will we do more?  Will we look at the future which is glimpsed already?  Will we consider what it is that we shall eat when the Marriage Feast of the Lamb is eaten in His kingdom without end?  This supper points not only to the past and what was but to the future and what will be.

Today, just as we do when we gather every Sunday, the food which we eat is the mystery of Christ's flesh in bread and Christ's blood in wine.  Though we are tempted to explain it, this mystery simply begs to be believed, adored, eaten and drunk.  We have His Word and Testament.  This is My body.  This is My blood.  The Blood of the new and eternal covenant.  But this meal is also transitional.  It is not the whole meal but the foretaste, the appetizer, of the full and eternal banquet to come.  It is not that the meal changes but its context certainly does. 

What we eat today is food that does not merely look back to the Passover within the context of Calvary but it looks forward to the eternal.  We are caught in that tension of the already but not yet.  Christ sets His table among us in the presence of our enemies and gives Himself to us.  He is priest of the sacrifice and its victim, host of the meal and its food.  But this communion also anticipates and even longs for the fulfillment and finish.  What now we eat as foretaste, we shall in the Lord's time eat as full meal.  But the food is not new or different.  It is His flesh and His blood -- the only food that can deliver to us what it promises, answering the hunger within and satisfying the thirst once and for all.

Come, you blessed of the Heavenly Father, enter into the delight of our God, into the holy place where Christ has set His table, bringing to fulfillment the promise of Passover and giving us the first taste of the eternal to come.  For as often as we eat of this bread and drink of this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.  And then, when He has come as He has promised, the promise of His death will be consummated with the life that death cannot overcome.  But the food will remain the same -- His flesh and His blood given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

O Lord, in this wondrous Sacrament You have left us a remembrance of Your passion. Grant that we may so receive the sacred mystery of Your body and blood that the fruits of Your redemption may continually be manifest in us; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

By all means, work to make sure you are in attendance on Maundy Thursday.  But if you cannot attend, perhaps this prayer may accompany your Holy Thursday devotions:

Heavenly Father, Your Son instituted the most blessed Sacrament for us Christians to eat and to drink, that what is promised in His Testament may be truly received by those He calls friends and heirs through baptism. Have mercy on all who are kept from Your table in these extraordinary circumstances and prevent them from being kept from Your Supper longer than must be. Let the Words of Christ’s Testament echo in their ears and hearts and, in true faith, and strengthen their faith in these Words, trusting that they receive spiritually in faith that which Your Son has both won and declared: the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Stir up in us the longing for Your Table that when we are able to commune with our fellow Christians on Your Son's true Body and Blood we may receive its gift with renewed faith and rejoice with even greater joy in the unity of His altar.  Until that is possible, build within us the anticipation for this blest communion and greater appreciation for the heavenly food of this Eucharist, Christ's flesh in bread and His blood in wine.  Strengthen our faith through our devotional life in Your Word and give to our prayers renewed fervor and blessing; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Spirit, one God, world without end.  Amen.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Silent Wednesday. . .

Holy week... The most important seven days in the history of man... Although the exact sequence of events is not always clear to us, we can discern, even now, the straight lines of divine order... Sunday: The garments in the dust - the Hosannas as the prelude to the "Crucify."... Monday: Sermons with the urgent note of finality - the withered fig tree - Caesar's coin... Tuesday: The terrifying wrath of the Lamb over institutionalized and personal sin among the Scribes and Pharisees - the fire and color of His last sermon to the city and the world - the sureness of justice and the coming of judgment... Night and prayer in the light of the Easter moon on the Mount of Olives...

Wednesday is silent... If anything happened, the holy writers have drawn the veil... Everything that God could say before the Upper Room had been said... It was man's turn now... Perhaps there were quiet words in a corner of the Garden, both to His children who would flee and to His Father who would stay... Wednesday was His... The heart of that mad, crowded Holy Week was quiet... Tomorrow the soliders would come, and Friday there would be God's great signature in the sky... Thursday and Friday would belong to time and eternity, but Wednesday was of heaven alone...

Silent Wednesday... If our Lord needed it, how much more we whose life is the story of the Hosanna and the Crucify... Time for prayer, for adoration... Time to call the soul into the inner court and the Garden... In our crowded world we are lonely because we are never alone... No time to go where prayer is the only sound and God is the only light... We need more silent Wednesdays... In the glory of the Cross above our dust our silence can become purging and peace... God speaks most clearly to the heart that is silent before Him...

 [from the devotional writings of O. P Kretzmann, published in The Pilgrim, pp. 27, 28] 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

No false witness condemned Him. . .

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday in Lent, the Sunday of the Passion (B), also called Palm Sunday, preached on Sunday, March 24, 2024.

The character of Jesus has never been in question.  That is something in our world of wiggle words and common words we cannot even define.  Not Jesus.  From the moment He was with the temple authorities as a 12 year old youth and throughout His public ministry, our Lord’s teaching was clear and straightforward.  He taught with an authority the people had never before encountered.  Our Lord acted with the utmost compassion upon those in need and truth was the nature of His preaching and teaching – albeit the unpleasant truth of sin revealed and sinners called to repentance.

So when Jesus appeared before the High Priest, they could not even find false witnesses who agreed in their attempt to slander our Lord.  This was not a spur of the moment thing for they had long planned for the day when Jesus and His teaching would be on trial.  Mark tells us that many bore false witness but their testimony did not agree.  Even when Jesus had spoken clearly, they got it wrong.  “Destroy this temple made with hands and in three days I will build another not made with hands.”  But of course, this was not a lie.  Jesus had said it.  Even more importantly, Jesus had made this promise.  The people who heard Him thought it was a bold claim to be able to build in stone what it had taken 46 years to build.  But after the resurrection the disciples, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, finally understood that Jesus was speaking of the temple of His body.

Lies would not condemn Jesus, only the truth.  In our age of slanted words, innuendo without fact to bear it up, and words that have no meaning, this is an incredible statement.  Jesus would be condemned not by lies or slander but by the truth.  Jesus spoke clearly about what was to happen to Him – betrayed into the hands of sinners, crucified upon a cross, suffering for sins not His own, dying a death that was not His to die, and rising on the third day.  Jesus did not protest even the injustice of the trials that were designed not to hear the evidence but to condemn Him.  Jesus was crucified just as He said but not simply because He had enemies.  He would suffer and die because He loved sinners, even Peter who denied Him and the nameless soldiers who pounded the nails into His hands and side.  What condemned Jesus was not the lies of those who would lie to make Him die or those who could not agree on what they remembered Him saying.  What condemned Jesus to the cross was His love for you and for me.  The events of our Lord’s suffering and death are no tragic story of lies and liars but of the truth that must prevail so that the lost might be found and the dead raised.

In the end, the truth that could not be found in the mouths of Jesus accusers nor in the mouths of those who presumed to sit in judgement over Him, was said by a centurion: “Truly this man was the Son of Man!”

The world remains filled with lies and liars, especially when it comes to Jesus.  The false witnesses abound and yet they still fail to agree.  Christianity is a muddy water of people’s false opinions, half truths, and lies.  The only truth is the cross, the Savior who hung there in suffering to relieve from suffering those who believe in Him, and who died there that the dead may live.  In the end it does not matter what people say about Jesus but only what Scripture reveals.  We who intend to benefit from His obedient suffering and life-giving death will not be asked what we think about Jesus or to render verdict over Him but simply this: Do you believe that Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and your sin?

The false witnesses feared Jesus had come to tear down a building precious in their sight.  But our Lord had come to do much more than that.  He had come to end the religion of works which presumes we can do enough to earn our salvation and to replace it with pure grace.  He came not to tear down stones but to tear down what had taken place in that building.  The altar that endures is not the one where sacrifices for sin must still be offered but the one where sin’s once for all sacrifice is given as food to the hungry and repentant.  In 70 AD the temple was destroyed but its heart had long ago been stripped away from it.  Christ came as priest to offer the sacrifice for sin and as Lamb to be the sacrifice for sin.  What was once offered on the cross is now the food of life offered to you and to me in this Holy Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.

We make much about the things we feel and think.  But our Lord has built His life and integrity in delivering to us only the truth.  There is salvation in the name of Jesus and in no other.  Peter and the disciples who had been with Jesus from the beginning of His public ministry did not know what to say or do when He was lifted up on that cross.  Instead, a centurion said the truth that they and all of us are called to say: “Truly this was the Son of God.”  May the Lord give us hearts of integrity who will surrender all to the one truth that saves, who will live and abide in that truth all our days, and who die for the sake of that truth.  You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.  Nowhere is that statement made more clear in the cross and the lonely figure of our Savior’s body limp in death for you.

Holy Week or Weak. . .

It is Tuesday in Holy Week, toward the destination of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  Sadly, for most Lutherans, it is just another week.  We have services every evening and a morning and afternoon through this week but the pews will hardly be full.  This year we compete not only against work and school but against school break and the line of cars headed out of town for recreational venues or visits with family.  Perhaps it is foolish to think that people are thinking of the events of this week of weeks or that they should be keeping time with the sacred time of the church year and its calendar of services.  If they would, they would hear the Passion from all the Gospels as well as the familiar events of the Upper Room and Calvary.  But Holy Week has become holy weak, a shadow of its former self.

When I was in public school in a small town in Nebraska, the school teachers shepherded the school children across the street to the Augustana Lutheran Church building and each day during Holy Week one of the pastors in town preached to the students.  Illegal now and probably not necessarily the best of ideas but it showed the devotion in this week that extended past denominational barriers to unite a Christian people in recalling and being renewed in the story of Jesus and His love expressed in the events spanning from Palm Sunday to Easter.

We have a few faithful folks who try to get to as many services as they can but most of our folks tend to pick one or perhaps two services of Holy Week.  I guess that some think I have become rather cranky and sound like an old man trying to recreate his youth.  That is really not it at all.  I wish only that at least once in their lives, Christians might find the time for the full complement of services and experience the riches of the liturgical offerings by which we make our way slowly and deliberately to the cross and empty tomb.

Everywhere I have gone the full schedule of Holy Week services has been added and that includes the Easter Vigil.  In the 44 years I have been a pastor, only a couple of times have there been no baptisms at the Vigil and it has often been the occasion for adult baptisms.  So, if you have not spent much time in church during Holy Week, here is the encouragement to make time, at least once, to be there for all the services and to experience the riches of the church's liturgical offerings as Holy Week makes its way from Hosannas to Alleluias.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Hail, Full of Grace. . .

On this day, the first day of Holy Week to follow our Lord's Palm Sunday entrance, the Church Calendar recalls how the angel came to Mary.  “Hail, full of grace!  The Lord is with you.”  Behind that greeting was the Word of the Lord.  As that Word spoke to the shocked Mary, her womb became home to the Son of God in human flesh and blood.  Quite a lot for a young virgin to take in...  Quite a lot for us, as well!

The Church has called the Blessed Virgin “Theotokos.”  It means birth giver of God or Mother of God.  While we might be tempted to wait until Christmas to think of Mary in this way, that title is true of this day, nine months before she delivered her first born Son and laid Him in swaddling cloths in a manger.

Later, visiting Elizabeth, this was further testified by the baby John in Elizabeth’s womb.  In Greek he “eskiptasin” – yeah, you got it.  He skipped in his mother’s womb, recognizing Jesus in Mary’s own womb.

The Blessed Virgin consented to the Lord's Word.  "Let it be to me as you have said."  The gift was given to be received.  On this day we rejoice in the God who became incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, who was made man, in the womb of the Virgin.  On this day we rejoice in the Virgin who saw this gift and consented to the Lord as an act of faith and trust.  On this day our attention draws nine months forward to Christmas and to the birth forever blessed, when the Virgin full of grace, delivered up the Savior of all mankind.  In Lent.  In Holy Week.  A hint of Christmas.  As it should be. . .  For the child conceived in Mary's womb was not meant for the hopes and dreams of parents for a son but of a world for a Savior and of a Heavenly Father who was not content to lose His creation to sin and its death.  Curiously, the artist has captured this future in the Easter Lily the angel has in his hand.  There is a future for this Son of God enfleshed in Mary's womb. 

As we take a moment to offer to God thanks and praise for Him who did not disdain the Virgin's womb, but, for us and for our salvation, took flesh from her, can we do anything less than commit ourselves to the cause of those whom the Lord gives flesh and blood in wombs still and guard the treasure of this gift for the Lord, as a trust from Him?  I hope not. . .   



Sunday, March 24, 2024

Ride On!

When I grew up Jesus did not ride in on Palm Sunday, the confirmands did.  We did not receive palms or think much of all about the position of this Sunday as the end of Lent and the start of Holy Week.  Back then there was no Passion Reading so in it was a Sunday not necessarily at all about Jesus.  Imagine my surprise when I encountered a Palm Sunday without confirmation.  It was a shock.  Then when people shoved a wiggly palm branch into my hand, I was not at all sure what was up.  In the end, I have come to appreciate Palm Sunday and its balance with Passion Sunday more and more.  Sure, there are still those who long for the old days and who are not big on palms or on the reading of the Passion but I think it is growing on us now (after more than a generation!).

Palm Sunday, as the final Sunday of Lent, brings to a close the Lenten season and delivers us on our journey to the cross right in Jerusalem as Jesus enters to make His way to Calvary.  As the beginning of Holy Week it points us even more profoundly toward the destiny our Lord has chosen.

Although we know it as Palm Sunday because of the distribution of palm fronds (or palm crosses) to the faithful, this is not a reenactment.  We are not doing a religious play.  I admit I am not that much a fan of the reading of the Passion in which parts are doled out to other voices and the faithful speak as the crowd.  This is a commemoration but not a reenactment of the events from our Lord's arrival on the bad of a young donkey, accompanied by the praises of the townspeople, on a pathway of clothes and palm branches, and with shouts of Hosanna. This was a customary practice to show respect for those who entered the city and not an exclusive or unique act for Jesus alone.  Palms symbolize victory and the peace that follows a victory.  The donkey represents humility -- as one who has come to serve not to be served.  But the end of the ride is not a throne but a cross, not to reign in power but from the cross, not to live but to die, not for Himself but for the whole world.

This event is recorded in all four Gospels.  It is not a small detail.  But it is not victory lap taken after a successful run of a three year public ministry.  The victory is not in the palms but in Jesus who comes willingly to suffer as the innocent for the guilty.  It is not about pyrrhic victory but a cost which was exactly that which was needed to secure life for a people marked for death and to reconcile the sinners who were God's enemies that they might be friends again -- even family!  Jesus predicted this several times in the Gospels, to various reactions, but now His death will scatter the disciples until they are reunited by His resurrection.  There is much to this story.

Holy Week came together in the fourth century led by the practices of the church at Jerusalem. There, in the days leading up to Easter, the Palestinian Christians Palestine congregated at the actual sites where the events took place, from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection -- offering prayers, hymns, and Scripture readings at stations along the way.  As pilgrims from other parts of the world visiting Jerusalem at that time carried home the customs they observed, Holy Week gradually became a more universal.  Now we are heirs to this great tradition as it leads and guides our hearts to walk to the cross in reverence and awe and rejoice at the empty tomb -- where Jesus won for us our salvation.  Blessed Palm Sunday!

1    Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Hark! All the tribes hosanna cry.
O Savior meek, pursue Thy road,
With palms and scattered garments strowed.

2    Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, Thy triumphs now begin
O’er captive death and conquered sin.

3    Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
Look down with sad and wond’ring eyes
To see the_approaching sacrifice.

4    Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh.
The Father on His sapphire throne
Awaits His own anointed Son.

5    Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
Bow Thy meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O God, Thy pow’r and reign.