The True Mark [Ash Wednesday; 2 Peter 1:2-11]

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The Jesus speaks to you this evening, through St. Peter, saying:

“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The mark that we just put on ourselves is a funny thing. Not only does Jesus tell us to not make it so anyone can tell we are fasting, but He also tells us to not mark ourselves in Leviticus 19. So what is a poor, young Christian to do?

We can say that marking ourselves fits under the category of fasting. As our Small Catechism teaches us about receiving the Lord’s Supper worthily, Dr. Luther says: “Fasting and bodily preparation is, indeed, a fine outward training; but he is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: Given, and shed for you, for the remission of sins.”

We must figure this out, because there are plenty of famous markings in the Bible, like Cain. The Lord put a mark on Cain. Was it good? Was it bad? The Bible tells us God gave it to him to protect him from being murdered, but it was still a part of being excommunicated. Good? Bad? A bit of both?

There is also the mark or the sign that is received on the forehead or hand that the Beast gives out in Revelation 13:16. This of course is bad, and even the plagues in Egypt, done by Moses, were also called signs or marks. 

However, St. Paul says that he is also marked, from Gal. 6:17, “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” This is still not helpful yet, as Jesus is not walking around giving any one His marks. Furthermore, the marks of Jesus are the marks of spear, nail, and thorn (Jn. 20:25).

In this light, our “cross of ashes” teaches us two things. The first is that it is a sign of sin. Our Lord says in Deut. 28:46 that “All these curses…shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever.” Jesus also says that whoever practices sin is of the devil (1 Jn. 3:8). What does this also do? It aligns us with the Beast of Revelation, in our sin.

You must remember that this is only an outward sign that reflects inward things. The mark of the Beast is such that only those who worship the Beast will have one. Cain received a mark, not because he was evil, but because he was siding with and believing in evil, rather than God.

So just because the Ash Wednesday cross is not on our foreheads 365/24/7, does not mean that its not there. It also means that it is not something that we get to get rid of simply by washing our face. The only way to get rid of it is to appeal to the One Who gave the sign.

This, then, is our second lesson from the Ash Wednesday cross: that it shows us our savior. Sin may be a sign, but God also sets His own sign. In Isa. 66:18-19 the Lord says, “…the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues. And they shall come and shall see my glory, and I will set a sign among them...And they shall declare my glory among the nations.”

So when Jesus tells Thomas to look at the marks or signs of His crucifixion, He is teaching us to see the signs of sin and death made upon God Himself. That the sign of sin is not a sign of victory but of defeat, because the innocent Son of God bore on His Body our marks. Thus, the scary, evil marks in Scripture have their end, not on us, but on Jesus.

In Jesus’ fatal marks, we see the resurrection, because even though sin means everlasting death, it could not keep Jesus. In Jesus, even the mark of the Beast comes to an end. There is nothing to take. There is nothing to believe in. Any power the mark may have had is sealed away when Jesus was buried and sealed in the tomb.

It is for this reason that Jesus only speaks of one mark, when He says that evil signs and made up signs are for deceiving and killing (Mt. 26:48), for there will only be one sign, the sign of Jonah (Mt. 16:4). This is why any mark we make on ourselves, whether it is a mark of humility, devotion, or otherwise, is superfluous. While we can make marks on ourselves in sin, that does not erase the possibility of forgiveness.

Joel explains this very well in the Old Testament reading heard this evening. “Rend your hearts” he says. Do marks or signs rend hearts? Do scars or tattoos permanently mar or scar our spirits? No. God is not going to have a checkpoint at heaven’s gates for tattoos or ash crosses. He is going to be checking hearts.

Checking hearts for the sign that He alone gives: the cruciform sign. This sign is only received, it can not be made. The Lord says in Revelation 7:3, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” This, of course is the cruciform seal, given at baptism.

So it is that we remember, as we are marked with the cross, our baptism in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, even though we hear the words, “Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.” For in baptism we are taken out of the realm of dust, into the realm of living water. In baptism, the sign of sin and death on our foreheads is changed into the sign of the cross, on which the Son of God died to redeem you.

Moar Church [Quinquagesima; St. Luke 18:31-43]

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Today, Jesus speaks to you from His Gospel saying:

“For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon.”

In our Old testament reading, David is being chosen as king. He is not just the last of his brothers and he is not just the shepherd everyone forgot. He is also the man who is king in place of Saul; instead of Saul; over Saul. Which means that something went wrong, because Saul is still very much alive and must have done something terrible for God to remove His choice of him as king.

So what was this horrible, unforgivable atrocity that Saul committed as king to get himself dethroned by the Lord Himself? The Lord of Hosts commanded Saul:

“[Now I will take vengence for] what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Sam. 15:2-3).

But, Former king Saul did not do that. God said that not only did Saul not carry out His commands, but that Saul turned back from following Him, all because Saul allowed some of the spoil, the sheep, the oxen, and the choicest of things (1 Sam. 15:21) to return to Israel and escape destruction. Saul said he only allowed it, because they were going to sacrifice and offer it to God (15:15), or so he said.

That sounds like a good deal to me. Why waste goods when they can be used for good? At other battles, its people that are saved and brought back, instead of being killed. That’s a good thing right? Former King Saul does not understand his sin here. He does not understand why Samuel is angry with him and yelling at him, in the name of the Lord. 

Saul thinks he is and appears to be in the right, yet he still begs for forgiveness from the Lord and from Samuel, twice, and still continued to worship the Lord. Through all this, he is not given his job back. Isn’t God about forgiveness? Aren’t we supposed to have mercy on all? What kind of example is being set up for us here, by God?

There are three things wrong with Saul’s attempts at repentance. The first is his declaration of his own success. He says that he has done what the Lord commanded, but he is lying. He did MOST of what the Lord commanded. Most is not all. Saul lied, not just to Samuel, but to the Lord.

Second, his excuse betrays his intentions. He calls the things and animals that he brought back as “spoil” and “choicest”. He then says that they will be offered to God as sacrifice and as offerings, but when you bring back the “choicest spoil”, you set those things aside and sacrifice and offer the things you had before you looted and plundered. He’s not fooling anyone, much less God.

Third and finally, when Saul sees that he is not making headway in his self-justification, he deflects and throws his own people under the bus. He goes on to say that HE was the one who obeyed, but it was THE PEOPLE who took this other stuff (1 Sam. 15:21). It was the people who were threatening Saul, if he did not let them take this great stuff (1 Sam 15:24). Saul is not repenting, he is self-justifying.

At this point, Saul still seems like the good guy here; a man of the people, a pragmatist. Indeed, Saul’s charismatic persona blinds the eyes of Israel and blinds the eyes of ourselves, as we side with him and wonder aloud: what was so wrong about all of that?

Here is what is so wrong with what Saul did. The king, just like the prophets and the priests, represent God. If God’s representative does things half-way, then what is to prevent God from doing the same and dealing with us in like manner? 

When Abraham believed God and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6), wouldn’t God still be fulfilling His promise to Abraham if He only credited to him half or a quarter righteousness? Yes! 

When God promised Joshua, that He would be with Israel wherever they went (Josh, 1:9), wouldn’t He still be keeping His promise if He went with them and just did nothing? Yes! We could go on and on listing all the promises of God and showing all their loopholes, that if God wanted to act like Saul, He could get around things as well.

It is one thing, squirreling your way around a law or a promise, but it is quite another trying to squirrel your way around being blind. This is the second real danger of sin. Not only does our sin reflect on God, but it is also dangerous to us. Dangerous as in dangerous to try and think that we can weasel out of it. But disease’s and death’s repetitive and monotonous lessons are not so easily avoided.

What St. Paul describes as “being a man”, in the Epistle today, means that the man is maturing enough to realize that sin is as serious and certain as death and our only recourse is the Word of the Cross.

Unlike Saul, the blind man in today’s Gospel turns to Jesus. He turns to God because somehow he feels that his blindness is his fault and believes that having any form of physical disability (including death) means that you have fallen out of favor with God. So knowing the Messiah is passing by, and knowing that the Son of David is God in the flesh, the man cries out for his sight.

In Jesus’ life, He never proclaims Himself as a king, but His followers and His enemies do. However, His followers want Him as a king to fill their bellies after witnessing the feeding of the 5000, and His enemies want Him to be a king so they can put Him to death for treason. So, where Saul, and every other king of Israel, really went wrong was that they did not sacrifice themselves for the people.

They did not offer themselves in place of their subjects. Earthly kings work backwards from the Heavenly King. They send out subjects in their place. They sit in far off palaces, while followers live in danger. They slough off morals and guidance, while their people look to them for guidance.

The solution is not simply seeing again, as the blind man does. It is hearing, believing, and following Jesus. Because the blind man hears Jesus’ Word, believes, and follows Jesus to His cross.

In the Church that Jesus made, you are hearing Jesus say that His Church preaches nothing but Christ Crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). Believing that the word of the Cross is the power of salvation (1 Cor. 1:18), then following Jesus to that cross, to His tomb, to the Resurrection, and finally to our own resurrection in the flesh.

The answer to all the Church’s earthly problems, then, lies in hearing the Word of God and believing it. So, what the Lord says is to rally around Christ Crucified, which is done by hearing it every chance we get in our yearly Lectionary, which isn’t just on Sundays. In this way, the Lectionary holds God’s Word for us as long as we continue to return to it, unlike Saul.

Second, we are not to make excuses in hearing or believing, saying we’re too busy, or its too hard, or water, word, bread, and wine are not enough! We are not to throw Christ, His Church, or His Divine Service under the bus just because we feel pressure from the world to do so.

Third, when we follow Jesus, we are not to mistakenly replace Christ’s work with our works. We are not to believe that our good works are any sort of manifestation or substitute for the work of Jesus on the cross and in the sacraments, for us.

The Divine Service prevents us from committing the sin of Saul. If Saul had just returned to where his God was working, that is, through Samuel and in the Divine Service, he would not have failed so miserably. Jesus has provided a place in this world where He is working powerfully and definitely, for us. 

This is because Jesus is not like Saul, who turns away. Jesus is not like you in respect to your sinfulness. Jesus is better than Saul. Jesus says He does the Father’s will and does it. He does not lie and say “I just appeared to die on the cross”. He dies and resurrects Himself. No lies from Jesus.

Jesus is better than Saul. He takes the “choicest spoil”, not from man, but from God; that is eternal life, light, and salvation, and offers it, fully and truly, to you. He does not lie to God, but suffers and dies for it. He does not lie to you, but rises again three days later to get it to you through His Spirit.

Jesus is better than Saul. He throws Himself under the bus, taking the fall for your guilt in front of God. In these works, the world changes. In His word, the people change. In His Sacraments, real change is enacted upon the area around us.

We may still side with Saul and think that the Church does not do enough, but that is simply our own sin for which we need absolution. Jesus continues to work the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And the way He works is through His Word. The way we work is in, with, and under His Sacraments. Kings, cities, and countries turning to God? Only with more Church.

Seeding [Sexagesima; St. Luke 8:4-15]

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Jesus speaks to you today, saying,

“A Sower went out to sow His Seed.”

In sowing the seed, the Sower does what is natural to his station in life. Indeed, all three of these words have the same root, so we could read it “the seeder went out to seed his seed”, if we wanted to. It is natural for seeds to be planted. It is natural for seeds to grow. It is natural for someone to plant them. 

In fact, it is natural for us in our sin to do a great disservice to this parable whenever we make the main point about us, instead of the Seed. Because whenever we read about “descendants” or “offspring” in the Old Testament, the word translated is the same in both cases, and that word is “seed”.

It is the seed of Eve that will be the one to crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). It is the seed of all the animals that is the target of preservation when everyone boards and exits the Ark (Gen. 7:3). It is Abram’s seed Who receives the promise of being more numerous than the sand and the stars (Gen. 15:5). We also sing of this seed in our beloved canticle, the Magnificat, in which we declare that the Lord has helped Israel by speaking to our fathers, to Abraham, and to His Seed forever.

So the seed is important because it is the Word of God, Who is a man, as verse 11 from the Gospel tells us. What about the soil and the sowing? Adam and Noah continue to help us out in this respect and it has to do with unfamiliar soil.

After the eden of Eden, what do you think the earth looked like to the fresh sinners, Adam and Eve? Coming from the lush, green, easy-to-care-for Garden of Eden, the thorns, rocks, and desert of the cursed world was like an alien planet to them. Is this still the same world? Will food still grow? Will we even survive?

In the same fashion, Noah and his family exited the Ark after over 150 days of flooded earth. When they entered the Ark, the world was full of people, commerce, and agriculture. Coming out of the Ark, all of that was gone. Who knew if the world was the same or worked in the way we knew it. Will we still be able to have children? Will we still be able to support our family? Will we still be able to find food?

In order to comfort Adam, Eve, and Noah’s family, God gives the Genesis command again; the command to be fruitful and multiply. The command to go out into all the earth. And the promise to be with them and that everything works the same way they as it did before. 

God says: “While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22). The Lord takes the time to assure them over and over again that everything is as it once was and that His wrath lasts only a moment (Ps. 30:5), but His favor is forever.

So what we see in the Parable of the Sower is that 3/4 of the earth are not doing what they were made to do and have fallen completely to the corruption of sin. The soils failing and the seeds being unfruitful should, for us, be a dire warning against sin. Even though Adam was promised a working earth, it still brought him thorns and hardship. Even though Noah was promised “life as usual”, he still got drunk and cursed his own son, as a result.

Our sin has resulted in the fruitlessness and division of our world. It has dried up the soil which should be producing just as much as the good soil. The Church that the Lord Himself planted, should be producing more in her community than a mere fraction of the population. There is something wrong and so Jesus condemns us in our sin saying, “…the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption…” (Gal. 6:8).

And: “whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6). 

The parable is also this: The Sower is the Word of God. Jesus’ promise to Adam, Noah, and us is not just a working earth, but a working God. A God Who Works not for His own benefit, but for the benefit of His baptized believers. A God Who works even when the soil into which He plants His Word produces nothing.

Because His Word will never produce nothing. Our Old Testament teaches that “…my word …that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isa. 55:11)

“Whoever sows sparingly”. The “sparingly” word there, means abstaining from doing something, as in letting the soil go and doing nothing. This is the work of sin, leaving the field fallow so that birds can eat the seeds, sun can scorch, and thorns and weeds can choke. The unnaturalness of sin makes the rest of the world unnatural, as in, not fruitful and not multiplying.

Now the solution, “whoever sows bountifully”, is not what you think. The word for “bountifully” is the word we know as “eulogy”, which literally means “good word”. So it is that in sowing bountifully, in sowing the Good Word, we reap what the Good Word produces, which of course are the fruits of the Spirit.

Jesus, knowing His hour had come, said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn. 12:24). Here, now the only Good Word suffers, dies, and is buried in the ground, in the tomb. In His three day slumber, the Lord of all nourishes the earth, corrupted by sin and death, from the ground up. The only solution to a sinful world is Jesus.

The foot-packed, walking path receives the Good Word of God. The inhospitable, gravel-pit receives the bountiful Word of God. The hostile, brier patch receives the dead Word, which only dies to live again and give life to the most lifeless of places: us.

Indeed, the Lord promises in Psalm 126, “He who sows in tears, will reap in joy” (v.5). Jesus sheds tears, even tears of blood, for us. The work of the Sowing God is now not upon soils, but upon hearts. He says in Ezekiel 36, “But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people Israel, for they will soon come home. ⁹ For behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown. ¹⁰ And I will multiply people on you, the whole house of Israel, all of it. The cities shall be inhabited and the waste places rebuilt. ¹¹ And I will multiply on you man and beast, and they shall multiply and be fruitful. And I will cause you to be inhabited as in your former times, and will do more good to you than ever before. Then you will know that I am the Lord” (v.8-11).

Though our reality we live in is the barren, fruitless soil, the Lord still comes to plant His Word in us, producing faith. Though our path moves us through the season of Lent, where we feel more keenly our own sin of barrenness, the Lord does not leave us. Even though the Baptized of the Lord must go through periods of drought of faith even in the church, the Word doesn’t change and produces the most Good in the Divine Service.

So we repeat the cycle, year in and year out. Constantly moving through the rows of the Word, springing up in the Lord’s Garden; His new Eden, the Church. The parts we see as fallow and barren are actually brimming with God’s Word, ripe for the harvest. Faith only lets us see bounty and fruit in the Gospel and in His Sacraments. 

We present ourselves to the Lord, not in our own merit, but in what His Word has produced in us. We take the time, such a short amount of time, to lament our sins, weep over the world, and the Lord takes eternity to comfort us, tend us, and sow in us that which will never die in order that we will live with Him.

For as we hear from Jesus, “the Will of God is food” (Jn. 4:34) and the “…[food] of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (Jn. 6:33). And Jesus produces this food for us any time and in any place the Gospel is preached in its purity and the Sacraments are administered according to it.

Eyes on the Table [Septuagesima; St. Matthew 20:1-16]

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Disputation of the Sacrament - Raphael

Jesus speaks to you His words saying,

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?”

Quite literally, Jesus says, “Is your eye evil because I am good”. It is, of course, an idiom unique to the Greek that the New Testament is written in, but it is of special importance to us, because we have eyes from God and God has continuously used those eyes to reveal Himself to us, even as we see Him today upon this Altar.

In the first place, however, it was the same eyes we have that deceived our first parents in the Garden. Jesus continually chastises us in that Original sin which we retain, saying things like, “He who has ears to hear and eyes to see” (Mt. 13:15) as in the eye was created to see, but sin has corrupted us so much that we only see dimly, through smoke and mirrors (1 Cor. 13:12).

What our eyes see are the grumblers in the vineyard as opposed to the workers in the vineyard. We want to see those other people get punished for their crimes. We want to see those “others” get what they deserve, because surely we are not like them! Too bad for us that God says we are sinful and that our eyes our sinful. So much so that Ecclesiastes 1:8 says: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”

And Psalm 6;7 and 31:9 says, “My eye wastes away because of grief; my soul and my body also.”

In other places, Jesus uses this same phrasing about the eye being evil.

Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look with evil on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. (Deut. 15:9)

And in 1 Sam. 8:6 “But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord.” The word “displeased” is literally, “evil in his eyes”. Similarly, “doing right in their own sight”, is “doing right in their own eyes”, in the Bible.

How we use our eyes precludes our actions, because actions take planning and our eyes betray those plans. Potiphar’s wife “cast her eyes” upon Joseph to catch him in adultery with her (Gen 39:7). When you “close your eyes” that means you have died (Gen 46:4).

So it is that when we come to the prophet Jeremiah and hear him say, “Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Hananiah the prophet in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the Lord” (28:5), he is literally saying that he is speaking in front of their eyes. Meaning, when we are talking about “seeing” in the Bible, we are talking about presence.

In the Old Testament reading, Moses is doing nothing in secret. All of his divinely charged actions are performed in front of everyone; in everyone’s eyes. And what has happened in everyone’s eyes thus far? The plagues, the pillar of cloud and fire, and the parting of the Red Sea. Much to Moses’ dismay, these Israelite eyes are cast downward in sin and they willfully forget, even when the Lord Himself gives water from the Rock as St. Paul says:

“The Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4).

So far had the eyes of humanity fallen, that not even a rock bleeding out water was enough to prevent further grumbling. Just as all the eyes on the denarius, in today’s Gospel, was not able to convince the grumblers about the true nature of the gift.

Each and every time in the Bible, it is the small and passed over that was the sight to see. It is because, it is the small that suffer. The Rock is scoffed at, the vineyard is mistreated, and the denarius is spat upon. Even the eye itself is taken for granted though it contains over 10 million photoreceptor cells that capture the light pattern formed by the lens and convert it into complex electrical signals, which are then sent to a special area of the brain where they are transformed into the sensation we call vision.

Jesus is passed by and passed over by us in our sin and it began with His birth. There was only a few shepherds and a handful of wise men that showed up, not all of them. Growing up in Nazareth, no one thought anything good came from there, so He had no regular visitors.

Even as He sat on the cross, working out the greatest feat known to heaven and earth, “…those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads” (Mt. 27:39). There God was in front of their eyes, saving them, and they had the chutzpah to declare that He needed saving. Yet, since Jesus had the only eyes that worked properly, the rest fallen far short of God’s glory, He did not pass this opportunity by to die for His enemies: sinners.

And it is no different today. When Jesus continues to present Himself as the Crucified, He is still passed-by by those who consider His gifts beneath them, saying along with the Israelites: “Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at [with our eyes]” (Num. 11:4-6)

In Christ, God lifts up our eyes to see Him. That is the phrase for revelation. Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the ram to be sacrificed and not his son. Moses looked up and saw the Lord in the burning bush. The whole congregation of Israel lifted up their eyes and saw the Glory cloud descend upon the Temple during the Divine Service.

Our church also teaches us this lesson, during the Lord’s Supper. Eyes that are fixed on the Lord see this manna from heaven and declare, with Jesus, “This is my Body ; this is my Blood”. “Eyes on Jesus” means our eyes are lifted away from the “downcast eyes” concerned only with sin, to see and have our vision filled with the Sacrament of Christ.

Christ is the man Who labors in the parable from today’s Gospel. Now we have eyes to see Jesus and ears to hear Jesus and Jesus is creating the Vineyard, planting it, nurturing it, cultivating it, and making it produce a hundred fold.

He digs the well in it, carves out the irrigation, encircles it with a wall and a guard. There is not one thing the laborers in the parable have to bring. I’m not even sure they do any work, though they are called laborers, but they would not be if they had not been hired by the Lord. All the things are Jesus’ to give to them. And He does so, without cost.

Yes, the grumblers find something to claim as their own and Jesus doesn’t even argue with them. But the grumblers have such a small role to play and it is only to point out the Lord’s generosity, for many more workers receive the good things from “…a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant” (Josh. 24:13).

“…do not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes…” (Num. 15:39). Though you see dimly, it is for your good. If you were to see properly, you would not be seeing anything except the Light of the Son Transfigured before you; in other words, not at all.

Jesus goes so far to say in John 9, “If you were blind, you would have no sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” In our sin, we are blind to the generosity of the Lord at His own Table. In Christ our eyes are lifted up to see that the manna, the Bread from Heaven is enough.

We see the heights of heaven opened before us and the Lord sitting on His Throne, high and lifted up. We see the Rock, pouring out water and Blood from His side, onto the Table. We see, with out eyes, God in the flesh, giving us an imperishable wreath, spiritual food, spiritual drink, and a denarius for our labor, which is eternal rest at His side.

Praise towards the Supper [Transfiguration; St. Matthew 17:1-9]

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Jesus speaks to us today saying,

“But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear.’”

Up to this point in the Divine Service, we have been fine. There has been plenty that we have been able to hang on to. Plenty that has made physical sense to us, plenty that we have accomplished with our own faculties. 

Confessing our sins? Easy, human work and normal and natural. We can acknowledge that sin means someone has been wronged, in this case God, and amends must be made. So we say we’re sorry in confession and absolution and, in a very human way, become reconciled.

We’ve processed, moved towards God, in normal human fashion, by walking, standing, and bowing. All the while using feet, legs, and joints we are all accustomed to. We’ve chanted our psalm-prayer with our vocal chords while moving in the Introit, begged for mercy from the Lord, and made our confession with the angels in the Gloria. We’ve acknowledged that the Lord is with us in the Salutation and have heard His Word to us, with ears, in the three readings of the Service.

We have even allowed one of us humans to stand up and expand God’s Word for us, demanding that he preach the Lord’s forgiveness, in our pastor. All of these things being finished thus far in the Divine Service, we dig into our human works bag of tricks that has up to this point not failed us and find it empty. We have come to a point in the Service, after the Offering, in which it appears we have nothing left that we can do to show God we mean business. We have run out of human things to do. We open our hands for the next part of Service and find they are empty.

This produces real fear in us. To this point, the trail of God has been easy to follow as it has been done on earth, with earthly things, and human actions, as Jesus did. The trail has followed the Lord’s path and we have been able to keep our eyes on Him as He moves with us through these human actions of worship. But suddenly, He disappears. Suddenly we lose sight of Him and we are left blinking with a bright light in our eyes and a cliff before our feet.

Moses and the disciples reach a similar place of fear and terror, heard in the Old Testament and Gospel readings today. Moses as you know, has run away from Egypt and his family, having murdered a man. For years he has lived in fear of being found out and now, the God Who sees all and knows all stands before him in the Burning Bush.

Peter, James, and John, have been with Jesus for two years now, but none of the miracles have prepared them for such a sight as the transfiguration. So much so, that St. Peter attempts to make things better than God has, in suggesting that we go back doing things in a physical way, and build tabernacles or portable temples.

As Jesus points out, we and Moses and the disciples are afraid and fear is the one thing that we are not to have, as is said in multiple places throughout the Bible. 

So do not fear, for I am with you” ~ Isaiah 41:10

 Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified” ~ Joshua 1:9

 But Jesus spoke up: “It is I; do not be afraid.” (John 6:20)

 Fear is a tool of the devil and it is how the world controls us. Flip on any television set and you will hear nothing but fear out of the mouths of your betters. The Impeachment trial will have no witnesses! My team might not win the Superbowl. The corona virus is getting closer. Its flu season. Iran has nukes. They’re coming to take my guns. Fossil fuels are running out. Will the groundhog see his shadow?

But, most important of all is the attack fear has on faith. It says that there is nothing after the cliff of the first part of the Divine Service. It says that no thing can exist that we can not see and measure and interact with. It says that God is far away. It says that there is no hope for a bag of flesh like you in the spiritual world of heaven.

So what do we do now? Now that there is no human way beyond the human world?

It turns out, the answer is simple. So simple that it is passed over just as the widow’s mites were passed over by all who were putting their offering into the Temple treasury. So simple, even we take it for granted each and every time God brings us to this point in the Divine Service. 

The bright light shining in our faces at the edge of this cliff is none other than Jesus. It is not the infinite-ness of God alone, but the infinite-ness of God wrapped in human flesh. The Transfiguration, first and foremost, is made known to us to remind us that God’s glory and Jesus are not two separate things. In Jesus, God and man become one Christ.

But it is not as if Jesus came just to be a stepping stone. He did not tip His hand by showing us which stones He stepped on when He walked on water. He does not just give us a little shove and tell us “good luck with the cliff”.

Our answer lies within the Preface, the Sanctus, and the Lord’s Prayer. This is because these are words and songs of angels and heaven itself. When the physical is exhausted, the spiritual takes over. Just as Elijah was whisked away on a fiery chariot, so too do the words and hymns of eternity solidify for us and carry us beyond the face of the cliff of fear and uncertainty towards God.

It is simply the Word of God that declares our arrival into the Kingdom of Light from the Kingdom of darkness. In the Preface we are reminded that the Lord is with us and that up to this point has done amazing things for us. Why would He stop?

In the Sanctus, we hear the Hosanna of “Lord save us”, which the Church has cried out for all time. Jesus has saved others and has saved Himself. Why would He not save us, who have been baptized into His death and resurrection?

In the Lord’s Prayer, the truth is shown that we, the congregation, and the Lord have truly become one. Here, not only do we sing His praises with the angels and archangels, but we are praying with Him at the same time, with the same words. It is God’s own prayer!

This togetherness that the Lord has worked in us through His sacraments, now is shouted out by us to remind God and to remind us that we are the believers who, in Christ, deserve to be brought to the heights of heaven and feast at the Table of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and not be left hanging when human works fail.

Secure in this Faith, we move once more towards God. This time it is towards the place and the things that are the closest to Him, which turn out to be things on earth and not things far away. Our fears are put away by God’s own presence, not because we finally see, but because God was made man as is as close to us as our own flesh.

This is the sacramental view of the world that Christmas gives us. That God is not far, but close, in His Word and Sacrament. That God’s demands are small and normal, because they have been completed in Christ. Now that God works in the world, through physical things, working heavenly truths, there is nothing to be afraid of.

God has arrived. The One we have been waiting for to reassure us, to give us courage, to prove that our faith is true. He has arrived and is on the same battlefield we are and waving His rally flag. His bugler has sounded the call, “Rally round the Lamb!” God’s Word is true. The fight has ended. The Lord hands out victory in Word and Sacrament.

Week after week, then, Jesus comes to us and touches us and tells us to not fear. He speaks these words Himself, in His Word. He sends His called, and ordained servant to touch us with hand-shakes and to live with us, in His pastor. He shines His Transfiguration light upon His Supper and says “Don’t be afraid. It really is God’s Body and Blood and it really is just for you!” And the Divine Service makes it impossible to believe otherwise.

St. John says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn. 4:18). Jesus is the perfect love that is Crucified. He casts out fear. There is no fear in Christ. Since we are in Christ, there is no fear in us either, not because we are never afraid, but because Jesus is fearless. He suffers and dies for us in order to set His Table in the presence of His enemies, not far away from them, and we call Him Immanuel!