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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Romans 5:1-21
- St. John 13:1-20
May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of
God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Pet 1)
Who speaks to you this evening, from His letter to the
Romans, saying:
“Therefore, having
been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”
The main idea in the next two stanzas of our hymn, Dear
Christians One And All Rejoice, is “God’s Son, your Servant”. The important
thing here, is, not that we make God our servant or fabricate a groveling God,
pining for our attention and command. Instead that we realize righteousness is
received, not achieved.
Jesus presents Himself as the Servant of servant and the
Gospel reading reminded us of this, in the washing of feet, and as we hear Him
say in St. Matthew 20:28:“the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to
serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
The 5th and 6th stanza, for our contemplation:
5 God said to His beloved Son:
6 The Son obeyed His Father's
will,
"It's time to have compassion.
Was born of virgin mother;
Then go, bright jewel of My crown,
And God's good
pleasure to fulfill,
And bring to all salvation.
He came to be my brother.
From sin and sorrow set them free;
His royal pow'r
disguised He bore;
Slay bitter death for them that they
A servant's form, like
mine, He wore
May live with You forever."
To lead the devil captive.
Now regarding the Gospel reading, we have talked about this
before and how we don’t have a sacrament of foot washing. Not just because feet
are gross, but because Jesus makes this sweeping statement about what He is
doing, saying, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” (Jn 13:8)
That is, you can scrub all the feet you want, in your
lifetime, yet those actions will not clean you. Contrarywise, you can have your
feet scrubbed as many times as you want in your lifetime, the sinful dirt is
still not going to wash off. Like Lady MacBeth, the spot won’t get out.
Jesus must wash, because He alone knows how to wash. Who
better to know than God? Do you know what water washes to get that “heavenly
clean”? Does God use soap? Animal fat or soy? God is the only One Who knows
what kind of clean He demands, so best let Him sort it out.
Second, when we get to our Epistle we find that we heard the
“faith alone” chapter of Romans. For there, we hear that it is a necessity that
faith alone saves, because it is only the work of one man that accomplishes
anything. Righteousness is received, not achieved.
We have justification through Jesus only. We have peace,
access to faith, and are saved by Jesus alone. “Therefore,” Romans says,
“just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and
thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… so also
by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” (Rom 5:12, 19)
The first 4 stanzas of our hymn have confessed our human
plight: fast bound in Satan’s chains. The freedom of the will is worse than
powerless, because it is in bondage. It fights against God’s judgment. Free
will even yielded to sin, in Eden. Christ is the bright jewel of God’s crown,
from heaven to earth He comes.
The religious imagine they build ladders to God: moralism,
rationalism, mysticism. However, God gives us His Son on the cross, not on ladders.
Jacob’s ladder, I would argue, was cross shaped. God comes to us when we could
not climb to Him. In fact, if we could bore our way into heaven with our heads
and look around, we would find no one, because Christ lies in a crib and in a
woman’s lap. So let us fall back down again, says Dr. Luther. (Luther, quoted
by Bayer, 46).
The real wonderful part of this hymn is right here in stanza
6, the very first line: the Son obeyed the Father’s Will. That means that what
follows next is what the Father Wills. What He wants done, how He wants it
done, and by Whom He wants it done.
This is amazing, because it is just laid out there, for
everyone to see. No secrets. No pay walls. No pyramid schemes. Born of a
virgin, clothed in flesh. More than that, a true man, with a rational body and
soul. No fakes. No substitutions. All man. All God. All to be humiliated for
you.
All in order to die a sinner’s death. He became sin, Who
knew no sin, to make you sinless. Conception, birth, growth, Baptism,
Temptation, cross, and precious death and burial. His glorious resurrection and
ascension and the coming of the Holy Ghost the Comforter. All part of the plan.
He is God’s Beloved with the Father’s own delight and
Spirit. In weakness, He accomplishes the Almighty feat of redeeming sinners,
while they yet actively rebelled. From sin and sorrow we are set free and the
devil is captive. For as his jaws closed around Jesus in death, he broke his
teeth on heaven’s Creator.
Jesus’s orders are to bring to all salvation. His earthly
purpose, in the flesh, is to set us free from sin and sorrow. He is sent with
explicit instructions to slay bitter death, that we may be His own and live
under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence,
and blessedness.
As we sing this hymn during Lent, pray it, we are made to
focus where we should. In the midst of our sufferings, hope is being able to
look out and ponder the wounds of Christ, that hide our shame and the stripes
of Christ that bring us healing.
Jesus came not to be served but to serve us His Word and
Sacraments, giving His life as a ransom (st Mark 10:45). The old Adam is ever
the activist, always devising some scheme for serving God and making it look
holy and righteous. Jesus puts an end to it all as He comes to give what we
could never achieve.
Righteousness is received not achieved. Behold God’s and
your Servant; He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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