In the Hymn of the Day, sung today, you hear Jesus speaking
to you saying,
What we will be doing today is
keeping the words of our hymn of the day in the front of our brains as we
ponder the Gospel reading in which the Disciples haul in a great catch of fish.
It is because the words ring very close to what is happening, as it should if
its the Hymn of the Day. In singing, “He whose hopes meet no denial must surely
be of God preferred”, we see these hopes come to pass in the great catch of
fish. Perhaps...
Surely you can agree. The
disciples spent all night hoping to catch fish. This grand hope was not to make
them rich or gain them any fame or notoriety, but simply to care for and feed
their family. It is a hope that Creation will work like it is supposed to and
provide sustenance and product for these business owners, in the form of fish
in water. Or in this case, out of water.
I’m sure St. Peter would have been
singing our Hymn of the Day afterwards, but probably not before. However, I am
absolutely positive that those Jews who were well off, not dependent on fickle
bodies of water and weather, and not living from paycheck to paycheck would be
singing this stanza over and over again. Indeed, we have already heard the cry
from those people, when they said, “Blessed are those who will eat bread in
the kingdom of heaven.” Suggesting that we can know who will be eating in
heaven by what they are eating on earth.
What we don’t like about this part
of God’s Word is that St. Peter did NOT catch anything. He was all out of hope.
He had no doubt that there was no longer any God in Zion watching out for His
people, because St. Peter’s nets, and the rest of his company’s, were empty
after struggling all night. Thus, he and his employees sang a different tune
from their own history during the time of Elijah, “The deeps afford no water
and the rivers are exhausted.” In other words, God has forsaken us.
Fast forward to the time of the
creation of our Hymn of the Day. Mister Georg Neumark, at 20 years old and
fresh from his higher education in Germany , makes a journey of 152
miles only to be completely cleaned out by bandits. Unable to find work, he
goes another 172 miles north, in December, to the city of Kiel , because the friends he had made brushed
him off.
Yet, it was there that he found a
friend in the local Lutheran pastor and, hope against hope, Neumark was given a
top position as family tutor of a rich judge at the recommendation from the
pastor. Upon receiving this appointment, Neumark’s relief was palpable and like
St. Peter, burst out in a new song, praising God instead of cursing Him.
If this seems just about right to
you, I’ve got some bad news. Its not right. There are two things wrong here.
One, that people are cursing God and two, that there is a reason to curse God.
It is sinful to only turn to God when things are going well, as St. Peter and
Mr. Neumark have done. To be sure, you must give thanks to God for all things,
but even evil people receive income to survive, no matter if it comes in the
form of a job or a catch of fish.
Even though Neumark wrote thusly
of his hymn: “Which good fortune coming suddenly, and as if fallen from heaven,
greatly rejoiced me and on the very day I composed to the honor of my beloved
Lord the here and there well known hymn; and had certainly cause enough to
thank the divine compassion for such unlooked for grace shown to me”, like all
good prophets, he did not know the greater importance to his words.
In this case, the line, “he
whose hopes meet no denial must surely be of God preferred” are not simply
pointing to earthly, temporal hopes. For, these we know are just as fickle as
water, weather, and bandits and change with any passing season or fad. St.
Peter and Mr. Neumark had many hopes in their lives lost and destroyed before
one stuck, but what is the one that stuck?
For both, it was the same hope,
but we’ll get to that afterwards. For now, it is St. Peter that teaches us and
in the beginning, he calls Jesus master. And it is only in the Gospel according
to St. Luke that Jesus is ever referred to as such. So we look to the Old
Testament and find that this word is invariably linked to someone who is set
over laborers or slaves to ensure work is accomplished. In Exodus 1:11, the
Egyptians were “masters” set over the Hebrews to afflict them with burdens.
What does this mean? This means
that Jesus is being looked at as one who creates burdens and we would agree.
Life is hard work and there doesn’t seem to be any relief for us in sight
either. So even though St. Peter has heard Jesus call Himself God, he still
thinks that God only gives hard work, especially right after a failed 24-hours
of fishing.
In our sin, God is our master. He
is there to speak and we to obey. He is there to call out and we are there to
follow orders. He is there to make life whatever it will be and we are there to
plod along like good lemmings. This would certainly invoke curses from anybody,
even a true believer.
And yet, Mr. Neumark sings about
hope and we know from Ps. 71:5 that God is our hope. But how can God be our
“master” and our hope. It sounds counter-intuitive and it is, but only as
counter-intuitive as the resurrection.
Because here it is, in Psalm 22,
that we find God praised as the hope of the Psalmist and yet the entire psalm
begins with lambasting God for forsaking him. God is our master, demanding
impossible tasks of us and yet declares to be the easy yoke. But this
contradiction is only possible because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.
You see, our hope is not just
built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness, our hope is Jesus’
blood and righteousness. It is Jesus Himself. St. Peter and Mr. Neumark were
not just hoping for a favorable outcome to the lives they were living. They
were hoping and praying for a Savior to rescue them from such a life that
inflicts such hardships upon people.
He also says in Chapter 8: “For
in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes
for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with
patience.” (v.24-25)
St. Peter rejoices at the catch of
fish, not because he can now keep his doors open for another day, but because a
man, Who is standing in front of him, has just commanded the dried up sea to
produce in abundance. A man that looks like him, smells like him, and talks
like him has spoken but one word and made all the fruitless labor of St.
Peter’s hand an overflowing cup of salvation.
Christians don’t really rejoice in
moments of God’s seeming intervention of joy and comfort in life simply for the
sake of joy and comfort. We rejoice in the fact that there is a God Who was
made man that covers all our sin and gives us the hope of a better eternity by
His side.
A master is not a master because
he does the work of keeping his own law. A preposterous proposition. A master is
a master because he orders others around. The fact that God Himself comes down
as a man, born under the law, in order to fulfill it, is very backwards. Yet in
the case of the one, true God of all things, we see this is true. Jesus has
come not to be served, but to serve and offer His life as a ransom for many.
“Our hope for you is unshaken,” says St. Paul ,
“ for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in
our comfort.” (2 Cor 1:7). Jesus Christ shows that hope is alive on Easter,
because Easter means resurrection for all flesh, not just those who are well
off and well-to-do. The death of Jesus Christ our Lord we celebrate with one
accord; it is our comfort in distress, our heart’s sweet joy and happiness”
which we sing in LSB 634 written by Mr. Spegel, alive around the same time as
our Mr. Neumark.
Thus we find that our hope is the
God-man Jesus Christ, Who suffered and died for us to show us He cares for and
loves us. Now the master who demands perfection, is the same master Who
purchases and wins that perfection for us, on the cross. Now the master who
overloads our workload, is the Master to bare all our burdens, on the
cross.
So that when we return to our Hymn
of the Day, we find a much truer meaning to Mr. Neumark’s words. For instead of
“hope for a good life”, we sing for “hope for an eternal life”. Instead of
“hope for easy street”, we sing for “hope for streets covered by the Blood of
the Lamb”. It is in this Jesus-centered hope to which God will not deny us
anything, even up to His entire Kingdom!
So how do we know we have this
hope and are preferred by God? It is in your baptismal date, engraved in stone,
when Christ entered your life and gave you faith to hear and believe that the
hope He reveals on Easter, is now very much your own hope. And this hope, God
will never deny you.
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