READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Proverbs 3:1-8
2 Corinthians 4:7-10
- St. Luke 22:24-30
Grace to you all and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Phile 1:3)
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel saying:
“And I bestow on
you a kingdom, just as My Father has bestowed one on Me”
God wants you to hear of His Kingdom in His Word so that you
feel the weight of it. It is a kingdom not of this world and so we should
despair and forsake this one in exchange for it. This points us to more
confidence in living in Jesus, because our hope is in Him and His life, rather
than our own.
How great is it to be saved at the last minute? You’re in
trouble. Things are going downhill fast. There is no end in sight or you are
about to fail completely. Then, at the last minute, someone comes out of
nowhere and helps you. The day is saved, thanks to the Powerpuff Girls.
Or Han Solo saves Luke Skywalker. Athena jumps in to rescue
Odysseus. The eagles swoop in to carry Frodo and Sam away from Mt. Doom. And
Peter Pan flies in to fight Cap’n Hook, just as the Lost Boys are about to walk
the plank.
That last-minute character is called the Deus Ex Machina,
literally, god from outside the machine. That means that whatever was in the
book, in the story, in the machine was not good enough to allow the hero to
win, to succeed. He needed extra, to win. He needed something outside the box
or the story would end with evil winning.
A common story-telling theme we all are programmed to wait
for. However, there was no such character for St. Bartholomew, whom we honor
today. Also known as Nathaniel, in St. John’s Gospel, he is an Israelite in
whom there is no guile. No dolor: pain, anguish, grief, sorrow, suffering,
resentment, indignation. No deceit, treachery, trickery, cunning, or fraud.
This same word describes how Jesus was arrested in the
garden. The English says “by stealth”. And in Acts, St. Paul declares Elymas
the Mage who opposed the Gospel as “dolorous”, same word, and then he was
struck blind. In our own day, this word shows up in condolence, as in “we send
our condolences on your loss”. Meaning to literally “suffer together”. Kind of
like Concordia: with one heart.
This famous and beloved St. Bartholomew was not rescued at
the last minute from his suffering and martyrdom. Maybe you can think of David
versus Goliath. David avoided martyrdom there, because the Lord gave him an
impossible victory over Goliath. But what was traded? A life of sin.
And there is the Christian dilemma. either we lose our
lives, quickly, for the faith in martyrdom or win for a while, but still lose
in death, later. Man was made to live on the earth. We are bound to it. It is
our Ash Wednesday confession to say, “Remember I am dust and to dust I shall
return”. The Lord God formed man from the dust, from the very earth itself, and
caused it to be a realm he can live in.
Bound to it and bound up with it. “Cursed is the ground
because of you”, the Lord says to Adam. Cursed is the ground and through
toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. You will plant wheat, and
will reap thorns. You will sow grapes and will harvest thistles. “By the
sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the
ground—because out of it were you taken” Gen 3:19).
The fate of this ground, Sts. Peter and Isaiah sum up for us
Revelation-style, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then
the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned
up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be
exposed.”
“All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies
roll up like a scroll. All their host shall fall, as leaves fall from the vine,
like leaves falling from the fig tree" (2 Pet 3:10; Isa 34:4)
Bound together to die in our sins, we must watch with all of
groaning creation as everything fades, changes, and diminishes. Material
victory in the world still results in a net-loss.
All of human history in this world is a story of grief. We
build great civilizations, yet they fall. We fight evil, but it rises again in
a new form. Material Progress is temporary and prone to corruption. We struggle
to keep true beauty in the world, but it is a losing battle against time. And
Ultimate Victory is impossible by regular earthly means alone.
What does Jesus say in the Gospel today? “I bestow upon
you a kingdom”. A kingdom?! A kingdom of David true on the outside, but
rotten within? A kingdom of martyrs, death, and more death? Indeed, Jesus says,
if you do not believe that Jesus is the Great I AM, you will die in your sins.
But a kingdom of sin, death, and the world Jesus is not
bestowing. And from David we know that it is a kingdom that is worth risking
one’s eternal salvation for and from St. Bartholomew we learn that it is a
kingdom worth dying for. This is because it is an undying kingdom.
God is not bound up with the ill fate of the earth. He is
outside. He is foreign. He is unattached. That is until Jesus. Jesus is God
binding humanity to Himself. He takes our form, He covers Himself with the dust
of the earth intimately, inextricably. Meaning, in Jesus now God will die as
His creation dies.
Hebrews says, “Therefore, in all things He had to be made
like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in
things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
(2:17).
This God could simply start over. Sick to death of watching
His own creation suffer so, He does not start over but regenerates. He causes a
rebirth and a regeneration which He pours out generously by the Holy Spirit.
This He purchases and wins with His suffering, death, and resurrection.
It is in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ that the long
defeat is defeated. In Him, the decay stops and in His work, it is reversed.
The dead come to life, what is old is made new again, and true beauty lasts for
eternity.
Death has lost and that means David, Bartholomew, and we can
risk this life in the sure and certain hope of achieving that victory
ourselves. Not “achieving” as in “will we win or won’t we”?? But achieving as
in the Lord Jesus has given us His own merit, His own kingdom without any merit
or worthiness in me or in all creation.
In His merit, we stop trying to command the world, to force
it to stop fading, and to rule as a false god and simply let God work and let
God win. "The battle is the Lord's" is the famous Bible verse
from King David himself when facing Goliath (1 Sam 17:47). And in our day, it
is no different.
There are days when we feel as though we have to be the hero
of our own epic lives because no one else seems to be stepping up. In the face
of the Goliath of illness, we step out onto the battlefield ready to fight the
war all on our own. Hearing the cries of those who oppose the Word of God, we
feel we must personally right those wrongs using our own strength. When the
enemy warriors of pain, suffering, loss, and temptation beckon us to fight, we
step out all alone, trusting ourselves. We stand ready to fight for personal
control under our own strength.
But fighting those enemies is a young person’s game. You can
only lose so many of those battles before you feel like the Israelite soldiers
in front of Goliath. You hear the call to fight, but you cower in fear. Who has
the energy to fight against every temptation? Who has the strength to stand up
against enemies that look so fierce?
Taking a stone, David slung it and struck the Philistine
warrior in the one place that could knock him down. Rushing up to him, he took
Goliath’s own sword and cut off his head with it.
It is Jesus Who, after David, will strike down the true
Goliath of sin, death, and the devil, using their own sword against them! Their
own sword by taking on the sin of the world, becoming a devil to sinners, and
dying He rises to new life in victory.
Taking our own Stone that the builders rejected, the
Cornerstone, we are turned towards Confession, forsaking our earthly ambition,
and receiving Absolution, that is the forgiveness of sins from the pastor as if
Christ our Lord spoke to us Himself, granting us entrance into His Kingdom.
We have been given a Faith that lives beyond death. Built on
the Rock, David, St. Bartholomew, and we confess that our earthly defeats are
merely a prelude to a transcendent, supernatural victory. All the saints must
lose their earthly paradise so that they can finally look toward the true,
unchanging Home that lies beyond the kingdoms of this corrupt world.
It is our hope to be saved. And for this salvation we trust
only in our dear Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Son of God Who has
died for me and shed His blood for me on the cross for the forgiveness of my
sins. And to seal this hope, Jesus leaves us His signs of Promise in Word and
Sacrament.
Amen.
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