READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 50:15-21
Romans 8:18-23
- St. Luke 6:36-42
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you all from God the
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love. (2 Jn 1)
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“Can a blind man
lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?”
God allows sin to remain in our lives in order that we never
forget our Savior. For if we would be sinners no longer, we would have no need
of Jesus. One of these sins is our remaining paganism. We call our 5th day of
the week Thursday, but linguistically and historically it is Thor’s Day. And,
as Christian history tells us, Thor’s religious symbols were lightning and a
hammer.
But before the hammer, was the ax. Though the Vikings are
known for many things, the axe is the unmistakable symbol. Thus it was in
Frisia, NW Germany, as St. Boniface found it in the 8th century. A land devoid
of Christ and full of murder, malice, and human sacrifice, with no order except
that the strong live and the weak die.
St. Boniface, the Apostle to the Germans, at one point in
his service, took that symbol of false-god authority, the axe, and laid it at
the root of another symbol of false-god authority: Thor’s oak tree, the center
of their worship. He chopped it down and used the wood to build a church there.
Seeing their god defeated, with no repercussions from them, many Frisians
converted.
When you face a world, filled with unbelief, evil, and chaos
Jesus wants His Words in front of you, that you may believe He has also used
the world’s greatest weapons against it to defeat it.
Our Gradual has already proclaimed to us this lament: “Help
us, O God…why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’” Especially
when we must face things like floods, hurricanes, and heat. Confronting people
is one thing, they can talk, reason, and be predictable when in battle.
However, facing nature is God’s realm, over which we have no control.
Regardless, the words of Jesus in front of you are saying
that the mercy won’t stop. Not your mercy. It does not say you are merciful. It
is the Father Who Is Merciful. His mercy won’t stop. This is needful because
the world doesn’t stop and it will never stop being empty of mercy.
Be merciful, because there is never enough. Forgive and
give, because there is never enough.
“You will always have the poor with you”, says Jesus
(Mt 26:11). You show mercy to one and there is another waiting. You give and
give and give and give and it is never enough.
Repent. The order between faith and good works must remain
and be maintained, just as the order between justification and sanctification
must be maintained” (SD III:40). First comes faith, then comes works. This
means that from the depths of sin, you cannot dig yourself out. As deep as the
grave is, so is the death grip sin has on us. Mercy. Forgiveness. Gifts. There
are none of those things down there.
Go to our Old Testament reading. What was it that Joseph’s
brothers did to him to which he called evil? Do you remember? Yes, they laughed
at his dreams. Yes, they mistreated him, judged him, and condemned him. But
what specifically was the last?
Genesis 37:23-24, “When Joseph came up to his brothers,
they ripped off his long robe with full sleeves. And they took him, and cast
him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.”
No water, no life. No life, no mercy. Joseph’s brothers
killed Joseph, buried him. Yes, they only faked his death and later sold him
off, but Joseph is just a shadow. Joseph needed mercy, forgiveness, and gifts
from God to get out of that grave, as he said in our Old Testament reading, “God
meant it for good to save many lives.”
Save lives that are dead? A life is lost, we say, if they
have died. There is no rational way we can say that about Camp Mystic in Texas,
or North Carolina, or Palestine. The teacher teaches you to value life, because
there is death. The One, True Teacher teaches you to value life, because there
is life after death.
Water, mercy, and forgiveness is brought into the pit by
God. The God Who suffers and dies, is thrown into the pit, and rises again.
Jesus finds Joseph in His pit and kicks him out. “The grave only has room
enough for the Son of God, not you”, He says, and Joseph lives again. Joseph
lives and yet must go through years of struggle to get to Genesis chapter 50,
from Genesis 37.
Jesus, both God and man, has descended into the pit of
despair, establishing hope. Jesus dives into prison, willingly, preaching
freedom to those held as slaves. The groaning of creation, from our Epistle, is
the groaning of slavery. Slavery to sin, death, and the power of the
devil.
Verse 35 of Luke’s Gospel, says this, “But love your
enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will
be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the
unthankful and evil.”
The Most High is kind to the unthankful and evil. “While
we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:8). Jesus does not
wait for you to show mercy, before He decides to bring mercy down from heaven.
Jesus does not wait for ill-begotten judgment and condemnation to improve on
earth, before presenting Himself to the world.
And though the world judged, condemned, and rejected Him,
preferring their sacred idols and their symbols, He was happy to comply and
simply used their weapons against them. Just as St. Boniface toppled false
belief with the ax, the symbol of the pagan’s might, so Jesus unsheathes sin to
defeat sin, death to defeat death, and His divinity to defeat the devil.
In His Greatest Accomplishment, that is setting sinners free
from sin and sorrow, Jesus throws Himself into our pit. He gives the gift of
Himself in order to adopt us as sons of the Most High. Because God is merciful
and because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, judgement and condemnation has
fallen upon Him, but forgiveness and gifts upon us.
And the primary gift is Faith. Faith that plucks the log out
of our eye in order that we may see the truth of this world. That there is
groaning, corruption, and death, but that all of that has been judged and
condemned, in Christ. Faith that unveils death’s pit and that it has been
conquered in the fight. Faith that is good, that has been pressed down in
scourging, shaken on the cross, and now runneth over into the whole world as
the Sacrament of the Altar.
Thus we are presented with His trophies, His weapons of
faith that neither death nor hell can overcome: the preaching of the pure
Gospel, the washing of regeneration and rebirth, and the Eucharist. Here He
leaves to us His signs and Gifts of Victory.
Victory over death. Victory over evil. In His Church, Jesus
secures those very things from heaven’s armory for us. He gives us His prayer
to hurl at the darkness, to sustain and strengthen faith. For He will not show
mercy to those who hate Him and persecute His beloved. They will be swept away
in judgement for ever.
Those who believe in His mercy, His forgiveness, and His
gifts, though they be swept away by the world, they will find rest in the One
Who stills the wind and the waves, the One Who splits the Red Sea, the One Who
gathers the waters of the Jordan in a heap, so that dry ground appears in the
middle.
Corrupted creation groans in its death throes and the devil
knows his time is short. But Jesus is leading through death. Open-eyed my grave
is staring, even there I’ll rest secure. Though my flesh awaits its raising,
still my soul continues praising: I am baptized into Christ, I’m a child of
paradise!
The sinful ax laid at the Root Of Jesse finds an immortal
foundation, not to be destroyed even in death. The dreadful flood waters that
have gone over our heads are rebuked at His Word.
From Psalm 93:
“The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
The floods have lifted up their voice;
The floods lift up their waves.
The Lord on [the cross] is mightier
Than the noise of many waters,
Than the mighty waves of the sea.” (v.3-4)
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