READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
St. Matthew 21:1-9
Zechariah 9:9-12
Philippians 2:5-11
- St. Matthew 26 & 27
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 on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
“Peter said to Him, ‘Even if I have to die with You, I
will not deny You!’”
It is not religion, but theology that causes problems in the world. For theology is how you understand and practice your religion. God caused His Passion to be written down that we may learn just what true religion is: receiving what God is giving. This points us to the fact that we are weak according to God’s gifts, which should encourage us to go to them even more.
St. Peter, whom we quoted, is the everyman Christian role model. He is the one we look to when we feel good on Sundays, belting out the Nicene Creed, saying Jesus is the Son of the Most High like nobody’s business.
He is the saintly example of being wrong. Such as when Pastor asks a question in church or Bible Class, we raise our hand immediately, give our answer, and it’s the wrong one. Then having to be sheepish the rest of the session.
He is also the man we turn to when we face our own hypocrisy. This is the fake-Christian Peter. This is the deny-Jesus-three-times, Peter. Why is that a model for us?
Well, why are there times when you feel like a fake Christian, like a fraud? The struggles the Christian faces in life are ones we repeatedly come back to, because we're tempted to think the Christian Life should be better than this or should be easier than that and sometimes it feels like you’re just going through the motions.
This is one of the main criticisms to Christianity from unbelievers. That it is repetitive, especially if you’re a Lutheran. If you are, then the Spirit really stays away from your church for that reason. You just do the same things over and over again without thinking.
Eventually, you become convinced. You feel as if you just do as your told. You believe all the things, you make the confessions, you show up at church. But some part of you raises the red flag. I am just kind of saying the things, but do I really mean it? Do I really believe it? Emotionally you’re not there. Spiritually, you check-out. But you went.
What’s going to hurt is that this describes the normal life of a Christian. We can be rough on ourselves for faking it or being double-minded, but it’s a good thing. We just don’t see how.
It is a good thing, because it always makes us feel like we are in need of something we are missing out on. We join with St. Paul in Romans 7 and conclude that nothing good dwells in me. You have the desire to do what’s right, but not the ability. When you want to do right and not be fake, evil lies close at hand. You are captive to the law of sin in a body of death (v23-24).
This normal Christian Life makes those who love victory nervous. Those who want to see real proof of living faith in the work of your hands cannot bear to believe that they are totally and utterly corrupt. Not on the outside, like dirt to be washed off, but on the inside like cancer to be scraped out.
That doesn't look like winning, that looks like the condemnation of the law. We are living our worst life now. Not opposed to our Best Life Now, trademark, but opposed to our Right Life now. For in truth, our best life, our Right Life comes in glory. Then and only then are we made perfect.
We've got this image that somehow the Christian Church and our lives are supposed to improve increasingly some way. That your behavior will be better, your relationships will improve, your marriage will be better. Things will get easier.
Then we go through our week and we keep finding ourselves struggling with the same sins that haven’t yet gone away. That’s a hard life. Who wants to live that way? I wish it would go away. I don’t want to sin anymore or be surrounded by it.
Religion is for the weak. God is God and we are not. And rather than employing violence to advance His kingdom, Jesus undermines it with self-giving love. Rather than embracing the indomitable human spirit, Jesus fights the kingdom-fight by going to the cross.
“Who is weak and I am not weak”, asks Jesus through St. Paul. Jesus is always more righteous, just, beautiful, compassionate, gracious, and loving than we could ever be. Thus, when we see Him express all this in the choices He makes and the words He uses in holy Scripture, we find them in His weakness. For the glory of this God we worship is only clearly seen in the God-man crowned with thorns and enthroned with nails.
This weakness creates vulnerability. Not only is God, in Jesus, able to be handled physically by hands and history, but is able to suffer and die to reconcile man with God. This weakness is uninterested in power and prestige, but only that new life occur. This weakness does not care about looking good or preserving Himself, but only that Divine Service be done to sinners.
Jesus does not need to lie to empower or glorify Himself. It is the way of the world that seeks success in material things. It is the weak church that finds proof in numbers and statistics. What a great blunder and misunderstanding on our part to think that faith is based on our being rational, dogmatic, or “blessed”.
Jesus is so weak, that He will not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoking wick. Jesus is so weak, no one would recognize Him in a crowd. Jesus is so weak, that He was crucified in weakness, having suffered at the hands of men, and buried.
“For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God”, from 2 Corinthians 13:4. He was weak, and yet He lives even though He died. He Who did not consider equality with God an opportunity to assault heaven, makes Himself lowly, becomes the servant to obey the Father’s Will.
And in this Will was the weakness of being born of a virgin and catering to crowds who sing “Hosanna” on Sunday and “Crucify Him” on Friday. The weakness of the anxiety of sweating blood and the power to serve: “For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves” (St Luke 22:27).
The weakness of God is stronger than men and is the power of salvation. Christ Crucified is the weakness of God and yet it is the point of His greatest work, able to be accomplished by no one, but God Himself. That is to justify sinners by the blood of Jesus Christ. “For in him all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, on earth and in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19–20).
In this weakness, St. Paul proclaims, “He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
We don’t like to be counselled into weakness, but there we are. If you're not feeling like you're victorious in the Christian life, that's just where you should be. Ironically, those who are in an emotional state of feeling like they've got this or they're winning or achieving “the thing” and don't feel that sense of frustration or sadness or why doesn't this stop or they're crushed by the law or all the different things that we could find flavors of, that is the dangerous position of not needing Christ.
For the religious progressive, there is no need for weakness. There is no need for God to break into history, because we are moral and rational and can figure it out on our own. Those who believe that are in darkness. Moving closer to Christ is frustrating and hard. The Law turns its screws into the Christian, so that they need more forgiveness and must return to repent of the same sins again and again.
We sin because we are sinners and repeat that cycle until we die. The Christian life, given by Christ, is also as repetitious, forgiving those sins each time, because He is gracious and merciful. Therefore, take heart, dear Christians. If you are struggling, you are close to Christ. You come in front of God as a beggar, crushed and broken. He stands before you as the broken, Body and Blood of Forgiveness.
The first will be last and the last will be first. The Nicene creed of the thief on the cross is “Remember me”, O Lord. The confession of the Tax Collector is “have mercy on me”. The cry of the blind man is “I believe, help Thou my unbelief”.
Those who are well need no physician, but those who are sick. So, it is we who are sick in our sin who need the Healer, the Ever-living Healer, and we need to hear His words and be relieved of our burden of sin as often as possible. This is the normal, weak Christian Life.
The struggle in the faith that we all seem to have, in one way, shape, or form, and the “feeling like a fraud” is part of the deal. This is what the law does. It makes you feel like a fraud. It makes you feel like you're not worth it, in order to reveal the True God Who is not a fraud, even though He dies, and true worth in the Blood of Jesus.
Dr. Luther struggled with this and saw it as the devil in the room saying “You are a sinner because of this, this, and this and the holy law convicts you!”
Dr. Luther's response was, “what of it? You forgot a few. Let me show you some others you didn't put in there. I’m worse than you made me out to be.”
Because, in the end, it's Christ. It's Christ or nothing. Christ is the solution for all of it. Particularly in his dying and particularly in his suffering.
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