By Divine Providence, Faith will be Confirmed in the Faith
on the same Sunday of the Church Year that she was baptized on. That would be
the Sunday of the Passion of our Lord; the Sunday in which we hear the
silencing of the Gloria Patri. The Sunday in which we hear of Jesus being
dishonored in unbelief
And what we believe of Jesus being dishonored is that this
is a part of His humiliation/suffering, or Passion. It is a distinction that is
made in the Creeds and one that is very important to what the Truth is. For,
one part of the Christ’s life was His humiliation and the other, His
exultation.
Let’s hear it from the Creed first: “Who was conceived by
the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose
again from the dead.”
Now, when was Jesus being dishonored? When did His
humiliation begin and when did it end? This may seem like a nit-picky question,
but how you understand the life of Jesus affects the rest of your view, not
just of Scripture, but also of Jesus Himself.
If the humiliation of Jesus begins with His conception, then
man is not man. For if it is humiliating for God to become one of us, then
either we are not God’s creation or God messed up. Both of which are not true.
For our bodies and souls are creations of God. Similar to
Adam, we are created and sin does not un-create us into something different.
Though completely corrupted by sin, Jesus is able to have His own body and soul
and yet be without sin.
If Jesus’ humiliation begins at His suffering and death on
the cross, then what is He suffering for, Himself? If He is simply being
crucified as an accident or tragic turn of events, then He is not atoning for
sin, but showing off His power.
No, Jesus humiliation begins in between and today’s Gospel shows
us.
In this interaction between Jesus and His beloved creation;
His own people whom He loves, Jesus appeals to them and they reject Him. Jesus
tells them, flat out, that He is God. Not just any God, THEIR God; the same one
that appeared to Abraham and the Prophets, whom THEY love.
In fact, they love them so much, that they are completely
willing to give them up for dead in order to prove Jesus wrong. They are ready
to declare God inept and weak by saying that death has taken them and somehow
God’s Word of Life was unable to save them.
Thus, the true humiliation of Jesus comes at the point where
Jesus encounters our sinful flesh. It comes at the point when Jesus is declared
to be both God and man, for the salvation of the world, and is rejected by
those He loves.
And where does that happen? Christmas. Even before Jesus is
born, there is no party. There is no room. There is no celebration even though all
of Judea is waiting for Him and the chief priests and leaders of Israel know to search for Him in Bethlehem .
By divine providence, the very day Christ was made man, was the
beginning of His humiliation. Not when He was conceived. Not when He was born
and not even when He had a body. It was the time when He took on our sin.
Repent. Believing the doctrine of Original Sin means that
the body and soul are simply corrupted beyond repair, not that they are changed
into something else. It pleased God to become a part of His own creation and I
would even go so far as to say that He planned it from the beginning.
Even if the were no Fall into sin, Jesus would still have
been born a man in order to bring about a perfect rest. That is all just
fantasy, because we have the humiliation of Jesus for our sins, beginning with
His being made man and ending with suffering on the cross.
You heard right. Jesus’ humiliation does not include His
death or His decent into hell. Those are victory marches. The life of the world
is bought and paid for in His suffering and dying, not His death. Jesus says
before His death, “It is finished” and then falls asleep.
This is why Lutherans keep a body on the cross, because it
is on the cross, in a body where Christ redeemed the world. In Jesus’ active
Passion, He suffers all, even death on a cross, in order to then be exalted,
rule over all things once again, and freely give forgiveness.
And this is how the world operates today: under Grace. We
find baptism, the Gospel, and Communion on earth, because Christ reigns. We
find peaceful countries, kindness, and beauty because Jesus has been lifted up.
We also find that the wicked prosper, in order that they have time to repent,
because Jesus has died that they may have life.
Under this same grace, Jesus continually gives these gifts
to Faith as He does to all of us. For, the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit is
belief. Belief that even in the midst of our own evil and corruption, Jesus can
work saving faith in His sacraments, so that we may see an infant baptized and
know that this, now, is a child of God.
Jesus is not dishonored by having a body and soul just like
ours. Jesus is not even necessarily dishonored by blatant sin. Jesus is
dishonored by unbelief, for it is there that then He is rejected, scorned, and
crucified.
This is your God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. His Passion
is for you and our response is being baptized, hearing and confessing the faith,
and communing: in other words, when you regularly attend the Divine Service.
It is in the Divine Service that you are immersed in the
life of Jesus. It is there that His Faith, His Grace, and His salvation are
brought front and center. It is here that Jesus is presented most clearly, so
that we may believe Him. It is here where His glory is shown on the cross and
it is here that Jesus’ Word is kept.
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