The Message Worth the Danger: A Meditation on Mark 6, for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost

But when Herod heard thereof, he said,

It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.

For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John,

and bound him in prison for Herodias' sake,

his brother Philip's wife: for he had married her.

For John had said unto Herod,

It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife.

 

Bearing witness to the Word of God is, and has always been, a dangerous business.  In Mark 6, after reports of the miracles of Jesus spread throughout Judea, King Herod decided in his anxiety that it was John the Baptist come back from the dead—a prophet whom he had arrested and executed for having spoken the Law to him.  King Herod used his power as king to take his brother’s wife, who seemed all too happy to be taken into the royal palace.  The Law of Moses declared this illicit arrangement adultery, and John told the king so… which immediately made him an enemy of the court.  After a drunken bacchanalia, Herod was constrained by an oath to execute John and give his head to his adulterous wife, at the request of her profligate daughter.  While John the Baptist had no political, economic, or social power to stop Herod and Herodias from their wicked union, the mere declaration of their evil was enough to inspire the adulterers to become murderers, as well.  Such has been the fate of many bearers of the Word of God, from the Old Testament Prophets to the New Testament Apostles, and those who have followed in their train ever since.

 

One might pause to consider why bearing the Word of God should be so hazardous.  Bearing the words of Plato or Aristotle are not generally perceived as dangerous, though Socrates was apparently martyred simply for speaking the truth and asking hard questions of those in power.  Nor are there many martyrs across history who speak the words of Machiavelli, Isaac Newton, or Albert Einstein.  It is true that certain teachers have been persecuted across the centuries at one time or another, while also persecuting others when they could—such as the purveyors of lies, slander, and calumny, when the targets of their mischief respond with violence.  However, there is a peculiarity to the persecution of God’s Word in the world that stretches back well over 4,000 years, and even to the dawn of creation itself.  While the Word of God brought forth the cosmos and all the laws which govern its majestic symphony from the subatomic level to the expanses of the furthest galaxies, the agents of chaos seem always predisposed to rebellion against the Creator’s order.  So it was that the devil tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden, and has wooed the corrupted minds of men toward evil ever since.  Wherever the Word of God met the rebels against His Word and His Will, there conflict emerged, often resulting in bloodshed.

 

It doesn’t take long to test this theory in modern times, when the Ten Commandments are applied to any number of popular sins.  Take idolatry, for example, and God’s command to have no other gods before Him:  does anyone doubt that one standing up in our pluralistic society and declaring that it is a grave sin and fundamental evil to abide the worship of any other god in our society, might be met with violence?  Under the Constitution of the United States, no citizen has the power to stop anyone else from worshiping anything or anyone they please, but the mere affirmation that the worship of Allah, or Vishnu, or any other entity (either fanciful or real) is evil, will garner tremendous anger by those who reject the First Commandment.  So, too, would a person be persecuted if they condemned extramarital sex, or any other sexual aberration outside the union of one man and one woman for life.  Honoring your father and mother is a direct command of God, but a command people often feel free to ignore—and get quite irate when told they are committing a great evil to do so.  So also the keeping of one’s oath before God (taking the Lord’s Name in vain,) keeping the Sabbath Day holy, not bearing false witness against one’s neighbor, not stealing, or murdering children, or coveting what belongs to one’s neighbor.  Those who rebel against the Word of God seem hell bent on silencing such messengers by force if they can, even when those who speak that Word bear only the power of persuasion, with no power or intention to coerce anyone.

 

Yet it is the violence and persecution toward the Gospel which reveal its desperate need in our world, and the worthiness of our sacrifice to bear it.  The world, left to itself under the sway of the evil one, will always be at war with God until they find themselves immersed in the eternal flames of hell, imprisoned forever with every foul and rebellious soul of men and demons.  The only hope of men in such a world is the Word and Spirit of the Living God come to save them:  a Word Incarnate who took their penalties upon Himself, and rising with healing for all in His wings.  The Law of God reveals the holiness we have fallen so far from, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals the depths of God’s love and sacrifice to rescue and restore every soul that will repent and believe in Him.  The hope of every soul who has ever walked upon this globe, and for all who are yet to come, is the good news that everyone who repents and believes will be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.  Such faith must always come by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God:  so the Church sends forth servants of the Word, just as the Eternal Word once sent forth Prophets and Apostles to proclaim the way of life to the people.  Those who have been born from above by Water and Spirit, washed in the Word of God’s Law and Gospel, raised up in the image of their Savior, are sent as witnesses of that saving Word to a world of souls who need that saving Word just as badly as they do.

 

And of course, those who carry the Word of the Savior into a dark world might find themselves persecuted, tortured, or killed for that witness, but we know that our lives are secure forever in the God who saves us.  Regardless of how God determines the time and place of our homecoming, each of His children in this world go forth bearing the Word which gave them life, so that others might hear that same Word, and live forever by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.  Take courage, dear Christian, for Christ as conquered not only the world to which you are sent to bear witness, but the sin, death, hell, and devil which can never touch you again.  You are children of the King, heirs of eternity in His Kingdom, and servants of the Eternal Word which is the Alpha and Omega of all creation.  Go forth in the power and confidence of the King who saves and send you, for you have been given the Word of Eternal Life.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.

Who Is This? A Meditation on Mark 4 and Job 38, for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost

And the same day, when the even was come,

he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.

And when they had sent away the multitude,

 they took him even as he was in the ship.

And there were also with him other little ships.

 And there arose a great storm of wind,

and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.

 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow:

and they awake him, and say unto him,

Master, carest thou not that we perish?

And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still.

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful?

 how is it that ye have no faith?

And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another,

What manner of man is this,

that even the wind and the sea obey him?

 

Mark’s fourth chapter invites the reader to contemplate with Jesus’ disciples one of the central questions of human existence:  who is Jesus?  Not only did Jesus teach His disciples deep and ancient wisdom wrapped up in parables, but He demonstrated His authority over all creation by silencing a boisterous sea with a word of command.  He was not at the mercy of Nature, nor demons or dark powers of any kind, nor the political machinations of the clever and powerful.  Jesus was, is, and always shall be the Eternally Begotten Son of God—the Word of the Father, through Whom all things were made, and to Whom all things shall one day give account.  The great fear of those disciples and others with them in the ship is reminiscent of Job’s encounter with God so many centuries before, where in his fallen humanity, Job finally came to grasp the immense glory and majesty of the King of all Creation, and in knowing God more fully began to understand both himself and his world more fully, as well.  Only in rightly answering the question, “Who is this?” in relation to God, can man eventually answer correctly the questions of, “Who am I?” in relation to himself, and “What is this?” in relation to the world.

 

It is a mark of fallen humanity that our minds are often obsessed with ourselves and what we can get out of the world, rather than be interested in the Creator of both us and the world around us.  The inclination to self-idolatry is strong, and is reflected in selfish ambition, desire, and concern for the self over the neighbor.  Where people strive against each other for personal advantage, they lean into their false conviction that they are the captains of their own ships, serving as their own gods, with their own appetites as the central focus of their lives.  A person who attempts to answer, “Who am I?” without first understanding who God is according to His own Word and revelation, will inevitably come to a wrong conclusion about who they are.  In our own age, this has flowered into various movements that unify a pursuit of hedonistic sexual pleasures with a definition of self identity—a twisting of humanity into a self-serving sexual animal that is defined by the passion being pursued.  But sexual pursuits transformed into personal identity are not the only foibles of modern man, as wrath, envy, pride, greed, and gluttony can result in the same kind of errors.  Man, apart from God, becomes a slave of his passions, so it should not surprise anyone that such willing slaves begin to identify themselves with their captors, and form associations with like-minded delusional deviants.

 

Of course, lies don’t make themselves true by practice, nor by the cacophony of many practitioners.  What lies do tend to accomplish, however, is the destruction of the minds, bodies, and souls of those who embrace them.  Is it any wonder that people consumed by the pursuit of lust, wrath, envy, pride, greed, and gluttony, or any other vice, tend to destroy themselves?  Suicide rates are astronomically high among those who falsely identify themselves with dark passions, as is drug abuse, violence, poverty, and misery.  When the devil leads a soul to define itself according to its passion rather than the Word of God, that soul may believe at first that they have found the ultimate autonomy and freedom, but what they soon find later is the utter debasement of their human dignity.  A soul without purpose or dignity beyond the pursuit of passion is a soul without hope beyond the next pleasurable fix… and those fixes of vice always seem to degrade over time, until the old pleasures lose their flavor.  Deeper and deeper into the vice a soul may plunge, until in darkness and despair, they abandon all hope of recovery.  This is the devil’s ploy rather than the Creator’s intent, but those who follow the devil will eventually find themselves chained and debased in the same darkness to which he is destined.

 

Yet in our confusion, delusion, and self-destruction, Jesus enters in with a Word that dispels evils of every type and kind.  Jesus invites us to know Him as He really is—the Lord God Almighty, full of grace and truth.  In knowing Jesus as our loving Savior we see rightly the Father as our loving Creator, and the Holy Spirit as our loving inspiration to a life of fullness and virtue.  In Jesus we see ourselves restored to the place from which we were fallen, back in communion with the One God who created us to enjoy His good fellowship according to our created order.  Jesus doesn’t just quiet the seas and storms to awe those who see Him, but to teach them that He really is God, the Eternal Word Incarnate, dwelling among men for their good.  In Jesus we see more clearly that God did not create man to torture or destroy him, but that man might have life, and have it abundantly in Him.  The love of God poured out in Jesus as He went to His Cross to save all mankind, rising the third day to declare victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil, is the final answer to, “Who is this?” that gives us also our answers to, “Who am I?” and, “What is this?”  In Jesus we find our hope, our reconciliation, our purpose, and our dignity, all because God has first loved us enough to create, save, and sustain us in His grace.

 

Hear the Word of the Lord as it pierces the darkness of our age with the truth of who God is, who we are, and what this cosmos is made to be.  We were not made for destruction, nor to be slaves of our passions in a false sense of self-worship.  Rather, we were made to be children of God, eternal citizens of His Kingdom which knows no end, enjoying fellowship with our Maker in a love that cannot be exhausted throughout all eternity.  We are who we are, because of who Jesus is, and our lives are given eternal dignity and glory in His service, as we are conformed day by day more in His image.  Let go the false gods and the lies of the evil one, to see the Truth which sets you free, and gives you life everlasting in joy and peace, all for Jesus’ sake.  Soli Deo Gloria—amen.

 

The Word as the Seed of the Kingdom: A Meditation on Mark 4, for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost

And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God?

or with what comparison shall we compare it?

It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth,

 is less than all the seeds that be in the earth:

But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs,

and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air

may lodge under the shadow of it.

 

In Mark’s 4^th chapter, Jesus began teaching His disciples about the nature of God’s Kingdom, using parables that confused both His disciples and the people gathered around Him.  He spoke first of the sower and the different kinds of earth into which the seed may fall, which He then explained to His disciples was regarding Himself as the sower, the seed as the Word of God, and the conditions of earth reflecting the conditions of individual men’s souls.  He then expounded that the Word being sown in the world was for them like a farmer who plants seeds but does not know how or why it sprouts into a harvest, yet reaps from it when it is ready.  Then He continued teaching that the Kingdom of God in the world was like a seed perceived as little and insignificant, but became a mighty tree under which the humblest denizens of the earth could find refuge.  At the heart of His parables was the Word which He brought to them, the work He would do for the salvation of the whole world, and the Kingdom He brought among men even as He called all people into it by faith in Him.  God’s Word continued to be the Means by which He created, saved, and sustained His people in every age, even when people (particularly religious leaders, politicians, and the fashionable cults of celebrity) cast it aside or despised it.

 

There are surprising similarities in our day, to the day in which the disciples walked with Jesus.  Secular society has largely dismissed the Word of God as myth or worse, relegating it to something worthy of scorn, and those who believe in it, to disrepute.  The Enlightenment which followed on the heels of the Reformation and the Renaissance of Europe ushered in a new age of optimism in the mind of man, yet too often elevated human Reason to semi-divine status.  That march of unmoored intellectualism brought us into the 19^th and 20^th century horrors of Marxism, Darwinism, and Nietzscheanism, with variations of atheistic totalitarianism scorching the earth in two world wars while emptying the souls of men below even the animals… a feat of evil which was orders of magnitude greater than any generation of men who had come before.  As man individually and in his societies of family, community, and nation rejected the Word of God, the lush gardens that once sheltered them became wildernesses of peril and bloodshed.  The supposedly insignificant seed of God’s Word, upon which the fundamental knowledge of existence in the universe was based and by which Western Civilization was constructed over the course of millennia, began to crumble as the Word was removed from it.  Where the Word reigned in the hearts of men, the people thrived—and where it was absent, they suffered:  a truth born out repeatedly generation after generation in families, communities, nations, and churches.

 

In our day, as in the day of the Apostles, there is no shortage of other words and ideas on how to alleviate suffering, make the world a better a place, and restore the dignity of man.  Most of those ostensibly academic or revered words begin with the premise that man is essentially good and should be left alone to follow his passions no matter how perverse (an ethic even more depraved than the ancient Epicureans they mimic); or that some expert guild of intelligentsia will fix everything, if only everyone gives to them all their wealth, freedom, and subservience (as if Plato’s Philosopher King might somehow eventually rise as benevolent rather than tyrannical).  One path euphemistically calls people to “follow their hearts” while enslaving them to their passions, reducing them to hopeless animals, and burning down every edifice of civility, while the other makes slaves of all men to those with a Machiavellian twist on Nietsche’s Will to Power.  Both of these paths litter history with hundreds of millions of suffering dead and the carcasses of once great civilizations, no matter the worldly glory given to them in our age.  Such grand designs born of dark human nature and luciferian inspiration win the accolades of the rich, famous, and powerful in our day, and they appear to tower over the seemingly small and insignificant Word which God sends into the world as His Kingdom come.

 

And yet, without ever a break in the testimony of human history, though ages of men may wax and wane in their appreciation of it, the Word of God continues to bring forth the Kingdom in which is the rest and restoration of souls.  In every time, ours included, the Word of God comes to bring us the Truth of who we are, who God is, and the universe in which we find ourselves.  His Word speaks to our Duty and Obligation both before our Maker and our fellow man.  His Word reveals to us that we are rational creatures of body and soul with eternal destinies, made in the image of our Creator, and placed into a rational universe we can explore, study, and comprehend.  Yet of even greater significance, His Word reveals His love for us as individuals and our world as a whole, what He has done to redeem us from our slavery to sin, death, hell, and the devil through His Vicarious Atonement upon His Cross, and what He has given to us by His Holy Spirit to live out our lives in this temporal world so that we do not lose the things eternal in the next.  By His Word He has given us the Means of Grace so that we might repent and believe His lifesaving Gospel, dying to the evils of the world and rising up to a new life reformed in the image of Jesus Christ.  Restored as individual souls to our Savior King, we are sent out to build in the world those good edifices which promote and safeguard the preaching and hearing of the Word of God, from the families we build which propagate the human race, to the fellowships and communities and nations we form under that same Eternal Word.

 

Insignificant as the world may consider it, the Word of God endures forever, as do all those who take refuge under its branches by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.  There is no other means of man’s conception which compares to what the Word of God creates, as the Omnipotent King of the Universe brings His Kingdom among men through His unconquerable Word.  Hear that Word as it comes to transform you by the power of the Holy Spirit working in Law and Gospel, creating in you the heart of love and mercy which flows from the One who first loved and had mercy upon you.  Know now that He is your refuge and your strength, your defender and your champion against every evil and calamity you may face, and that He has done all things necessary to guard and keep you unto eternal life.  Hear Him today, that the Word of God may dwell richly in you, your family, your community, and your nation, and that by grace through faith in the Son of God, days of refreshing and joy may abide with your forever.  Amen.

 

Remember the Sabbath: A Meditation on Deuteronomy 5 for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it,

as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.

Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God:

in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son,

nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,

nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle,

nor thy stranger that is within thy gates;

 that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.

 

And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt,

and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence

through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm:

 therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

 

Moses’ recap of the Ten Commandments near the end of his life in Deuteronomy 5 echoed the first giving of that Law in Exodus 20, and there are minor variations in the two sections, as in the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy.  In Exodus 20, Moses declared the keeping of the Sabbath as a remembrance of God’s work in Creation, having worked 6 days and rested on the 7^th.  In Deuteronomy 5, Moses also noted that since God delivered the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt, they should keep the Sabbath which God commanded them.  The two are not in conflict, but harmony:  keeping the Sabbath is a physical reminder and confession of the truth that there is only One True God, that He is the Creator, and that we are His creation; likewise, we are called to keep the Sabbath because the God who commands it is also the Savior of His people.  Thus the keeping of the Sabbath by the people of God becomes a confession of both Law and Gospel—of God as both Sovereign Lord and gracious Savior.  The Church continues this confession into the present day, though the forms and rituals have changed since Moses’ era.

 

1500 years or so after Moses, when Jesus walked with His disciples, the keeping of the Sabbath had become wrapped in a multitude of additional requirements.  The rabbinical tradition from around the time of the Babylonian captivity and afterward, added measures and tests and refinements to many of the Laws of Moses that would prevent anyone from coming anywhere near breaking the original commandment… or at least look more pious in the keeping of those additional laws.  Instead of the simple Mosaic commandment to keep the day holy (set apart) and to rest (do no labor), the Pharisees made it such that the poor couldn’t even seek their own sustenance on the Sabbath, while the wealthy could freely work to protect their investments in livestock; i.e., the disciples of Jesus were castigated for plucking a few ears of corn to eat when they were hungry on the Sabbath, but everyone agreed it was ok to rescue a distressed sheep who fell into a pit.  The hypocrisy was ridiculous, and Jesus pointed it out in our Gospel reading from Mark 2 and 3:  that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.  Jesus taught that it is not unlawful to do good on the Sabbath, as He often healed the sick and deformed on that day, and that He was in fact the Lord of the Sabbath.  This infuriated the Pharisees, and they added it to their motives to kill Him.

 

There are several errors Christians can fall into regarding the Sabbath.  One is to discard it completely as meaningless in the Christian era, somehow obliviating the Word of God which makes of it an ancient proclamation of God’s Creative and Saving works among mankind.  Another is to force upon the Christian the Talmudic intricacies of human law upon divine Law, seeking to make oneself righteous by the keeping of them.  It’s worth noting that the Apostles did not put the Hebrew Sabbath observances upon the Gentile Christians, but rather seem to affirm that this commandment is refined into the Lord’s Day where they come together in remembrance of His Easter Resurrection on the 1^st day of the week.  With Jesus having fulfilled the Law of Moses in Himself, the Sabbath declaration of Law and Gospel was fulfilled in His Cross and Resurrection from the dead:  that Jesus was the Lord God Almighty, both Judge of all things, and Savior of all who put their trust in Him.  Thus the 1^st Day of the Week, or as some of the old theologians considered it the 8^th Day (the 1^st Day of the New Creation) the saints of God would gather around Jesus in His Word and Sacraments to proclaim and to receive His Law and Gospel.  Thus the Sabbath of Moses was made perfect and full in Jesus Christ, whose Easter victory became His people’s new day of remembrance and celebration.

 

But of course, in the New Testament era, there was not just one day of the week to hallow, for the whole life of the Christian is baptized into Jesus’ death, and raised into His eternal life.  The Law of God to the Christian is not just to hallow the Sabbath Day, but to be holy as God Himself is Holy, without any dalliance into darkness, selfishness, or evil.  The Christiann is not called to give one day in seven back to God, but rather to yield their whole life as a living sacrifice to the Living God who has done all things necessary to save them.  After the inauguration of God’s Kingdom come in Jesus Christ, all days are made holy unto God, and it is God who seeks those who will worship Him in Spirit and Truth.  The Law of the Sabbath is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and the celebration of His Gospel is made with the proclamation of His Word and reception of His Sacraments as He gave them to His disciples, who have handed them down to our very day.  In this way, Christians are not called to abandon the commandment of the Sabbath, but to live into its fullness:  we hallow all our days in the Faith and Repentance which receives Forgiveness and Grace unto eternal life, even as we set the Lord’s Day aside as a Holy of Holies to remember and confess Him as Creator and Savior of the world.

 

Hear the Word of the Lord as it comes to you today, both from the thunderings of Mount Sinai and the marvels of Mount Calvary.  The Lord our God is Creator of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen; it is He alone who shall judge the whole cosmos, and every soul shall stand before Him one day to give account of the life they have lived.  Yet the Lord our God has also dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, to accomplish our salvation by His Cross, and to declare our eternal life by His resurrection.  It is the Lord our God who now moves among His people through His Word and Sacraments, enlivening all to faith and repentance that all might live forever in His mercy and grace.  The Lord our God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has given to us His Sabbath rest that we might be refreshed and nourished in it, even as by it we make confession to the world of His majesty and salvation.  Go forth, therefore, a hallowed soul, that by the power of the Lord God Almighty, you might hallow all your days in Jesus Christ, both in this world and the next, neither forsaking the assembly of the saints, nor seeking justification by your own works of the Law.  For it is the Lord God Almighty who alone is King, and who alone is Savior of us all.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.

 

  

Love and Light: A Meditation on John 3 for Holy Trinity Sunday

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,

 that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;

but that the world through him might be saved.

 

He that believeth on him is not condemned:

but he that believeth not is condemned already,

because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,

and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

 

Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus in John 3 began with a teacher of Israel sneaking under cover of darkness in order to speak with Jesus.  He, and others of his ruling class of religious teachers, knew that Jesus had to have come from God, because they also knew from the testimony of Moses that no man could work the wonders Jesus did without being in fellowship with God.  Jesus didn’t make it easy for Nicodemus, nor did He respond to his flattering platitudes, but rather pointed Nicodemus to the Truth which saves an already condemned human race:  the love of God incarnate.  Jesus was more than one of the great Prophets of antiquity, who struggled against their own sinful desires so as to abide in the Word and Will of God; rather, Jesus was and is the very Word and Will of God made flesh, who would work out the salvation of the world through His life, death, and resurrection.  The saving love of God is as real as God Himself, and that incarnate Love brings the Light of Truth into a dark and dying world.  The only reason the world has to hate or flee from the Light and Love of God, is that they prefer their evil be cloaked in darkness, and thus they repudiate the Love of God to remain condemned in the darkness of their wicked desires.

 

The Truth is something every sane person should be interested in, because Truth corresponds to reality; i.e., what is real is also true, from the subatomic composition of all matter and energy in the universe, to the mystery of our own lives in this present world.  Descartes and other philosophers grappled with variations on the maxim that to perceive one’s existence is to identify the objective reality that they do, in fact, exist—and by extension, there must be a real world out there that we exist within, and that can be at least partially known as we explore it.  Natural Philosophy which gave rise to modern science depends upon the rational connection between Truth and Reality, just as any engineer, practical mathematician, physicist, or chemist must explore the truth of what is real if they hope to build, quantify, test, or compose mixtures that produce useful results.  So, too, does our God, the fountain from which flow both material and spiritual realities, who is Himself the ground of Wisdom and Reason, engage His creatures in the Truth of their existence as well as revealing His own.  There can be only one true God, and it is He who comes to His people to reveal Himself by His Word and Spirit.

 

What God reveals to us may not be comfortable to hear, and hard to embrace.  He comes to a broken world of fallen men, and tells them that their bondage to evil and death is a work of their own hands—of their original repudiation of their created reality, chasing the prideful and deceptive words of the devil, rather than abiding in the Light and Love of His Word.  The curse inherited is as real as the death all people must one day experience, just as is the deeper reality that separation from God by rebellion against the Author of Life is to condemn oneself to eternal death.  Man, though created good and possessing many good attributes from the image of his Maker in which he was formed, is hopelessly twisted in all his powers, with not one remaining that can save him.  Like King David, we must all confess that we were conceived in sin, and with St. Paul conclude that there is none authentically righteous in the world by their own strength or merit.  When the Light and Love of God dawn upon such a dark and dismal landscape as ours, we face once again the reality of our condition stripped bare of its pretenses, and the choice to remain bound in our evil, or to embrace the incarnate, saving Love of God in His only begotten Son.  These are the inescapable realities of man, and the unfathomable mercies of the King of all Creation.

 

Yet if we were to abide in the Light and Love of God, we must return to His Word and Will, rejecting all the deceptions, lies, and insanity of our present darkness.  There is no darkness or rejection of reality in God, just as no lie has any place in the presence of Truth.  He has revealed Himself to the world as our Creator, the very ground of being and existence—an indivisible Unity which can never be added to nor subtracted from.  He is the Almighty, All Knowing, All Present One, from whom all things have their origin and to whom all things shall return.  He is One, and there is no other besides Him, nor does He countenance the delusions of rivals.  And yet, He is revealed as a perfect community of Three:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unconfused and unmixed in their Persons, yet undivided in their divine essence.  Jesus was not just a Prophet, but the very Word of God made Flesh, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.  He was beheld by His Apostles, and accomplished what only God incarnate could do by giving His life as a ransom for the world.  His testimony in the world has continued by the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and sent by the Son, convicting the world of sin and righteousness and truth.  The Word of God proclaimed has its divine power by the Holy Spirit, preached in full as both Law and Gospel, and remaining as the Light of God’s saving Love in the world.  Thus we worship the only True God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, and unto ages of ages without end.

 

The world will have its darkness and deceptions until the Last Day, but the reality of God’s Eternal Word will continue to shine long after this world has faded away.  That Light and Love of God for the salvation of the world, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, will resound in the vaults of heaven and the hearts of men for all time, because our saving God, the Most Holy Trinity, has made it so.  Hear the Light and Love of God come to you this day, calling you out of your slavery to evil under the suffocating cloak of darkness, that you might rise into the liberating Life of His Word and Will forever.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.

 

Thy Word is Truth: A Meditation on John 17 for the 7th Sunday in Easter

Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me,

 that they may be one, as we are.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name:

 those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost,

but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world,

that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them,

because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world,

but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

 

John’s 17^th chapter of his Gospel is a remembrance of what some call Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer:  a solemn proclamation and intercession of our Savior to His Father before His final journey to Calvary, where He would accomplish the Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the world through His death on the His Cross.  Of significant note in this prayer is the plea that His people would be one, just as He and the Father are One, which would be accomplished in and through His Word.  Just as the Father sent the Incarnate Word into the world, so Jesus would send His disciples into the world with His Word, so that all who would believe in Him and His Word would be sanctified by that Word of Truth.  The unity of Christians is made through that Word, bringing together the whole household of faith in this world and the next, with the Eternal Word of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit—that same Word which the Lord says will never return to Him void of the purpose for which it is sent, and will abide forever even as the world and all that is in it, fades away.

 

Much has been made over the centuries about attempts at Christian unity, with appeals from many quarters for submission to one or another ecclesiastical structure.  Many denominations, traditions, and rites of Christians, some more ancient and others more modern, claim to have the totality of Truth abiding in them, and therefore demand fealty and submission from all other erring Christians.  This way of thinking leads to competition between Christian fellowships, usually with some collection of ecclesiastical bureaucrats hoping to run the largest organization, together with all its collected revenues and resources.  But at least two questions are begged by such an approach, particularly in light of Jesus’ teaching on Christian unity:  first, when did Jesus command His disciples to go and make themselves one?  And second, was Jesus’ prayer to the Father not answered in the affirmative?  Or posited another way, did Jesus fail to accomplish the unity of His people by His own work and Word, therefore leaving this plaintive work for His disciples to accomplish in His stead, since His Father had denied His Son that which He prayed for before His brutal march to Golgotha?

 

When considered through the lens of John 17, bureaucratic attempts at creating Christian unity through human works and ambition are as laughable as they are blasphemous.  There is nothing that Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, fully human and fully divine, has not received from the Father and shared with the Holy Spirit.  There is no division in the Most Holy Trinity, as God can neither be divided in His essential unity nor confused in His divine Persons.  When the Eternal Word of God prayed that His people would be One by His Word, He created what He commanded:  the community of faith in His Word, is and always will be, His Church.  That Church must be by definition One, because it is united by faith in the Word of God alone, in which grace is poured out unto eternal life for everyone who repents and believes the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And if everyone who is united to Jesus is so by faith in His Word, and then united to each other through Jesus who saves each one by grace through faith, then that united fellowship of believers must also be Holy as they are sanctified in that Word of Truth.  Further, that saving, uniting, and sanctifying Word must also be Universal to all mankind, and thus such a fellowship is also necessarily Catholic—bound together across all human divisions of culture, language, rite, ritual, and custom, just as it is bound together across all time, geography, and space.  Likewise, as that Word is given by Jesus to His disciples to be declared by His Prophets and Apostles, the fellowship created by His Word must also be Apostolic—known, confessed, and transmitted from one generation to the next in the writings of the Holy Scriptures, penned by those same Prophets and Apostles.

 

As the Creed declares, we believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that no one other than Jesus established and maintains by His Word.  We do not confess a church which is an idol of our own making, as if fallen human hands can accomplish what the Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, alone brings into existence.  The Christian does not create unity between himself and God anymore than he creates unity between himself and his brother—rather the Word of God creates in the Christian faith to believe unto salvation, binding the individual to the Triune God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, and then through Himself by His Word, binds the individual Christian to all other Christians, creating one people and household of faith.  In our fallen nature, our human works often result in the division of people, with one group in power seeking to subjugate and enslave another so that the strong might satisfy their passions through domination of the weak—but this is not God’s way nor His design.  He has not left so crucial a task as Christian unity in the hands of people who could save neither themselves nor their world, but rather created for His people the unity they could not build for themselves by the virtue and power of His Eternal Word.

 

Take comfort, dear Christian, that your unity with God the Father is accomplished by the Son, sealed with the Holy Spirit through the Word of Truth which He has spoken to you.  You are united with God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, His Word and Spirit working in you the faith to receive His grace, and accomplishing your sanctification so that you might be brought into His Kingdom which knows no end.  So, too, is every Christian, and thus every Christian is united to each other by the same saving grace, the same Savior, and the same Word.  The Church does not create her unity, but confesses, declares, and celebrates it as the work of Her Redeemer King—and so sing all the people of God together, to His glory alone, world without end.  Amen.

 

Do Not Fear the Dark: A Good Friday and Triduum Meditation

Like many Good Friday services, the imagery tends to focus on the dying of the Light as the Church remembers our Lord’s tortuous and deadly path to Calvary.  In the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus is rightly identified as the Light and Life of all men, and throughout John’s New Testament testimony, the Light of Christ is a counterpoint to the darkness of the world.  Through the Incarnation, God entered the darkness of this world by taking our human nature upon Himself in the Person of His Son, so that in the Person of His Son, He might vanquish the darkness forever.  It was the people of the world sitting in crippling darkness who saw His great Light, and it is that Light which shall pierce the veil of death by Resurrection on Easter Day.

 

There are many rational reasons that people seem afraid of the dark.  From a physical perspective, the eye cannot see what lurks in the darkness, and both reason and imagination speculate on the motives of what dwells there.  In nature, many predators hunt in the darkness, and people in the wilds build fires to push back the darkness and keep those creatures at bay.  Theologically, it is God who reveals Himself as the Light of the World which no darkness can overcome, and that in God there is no darkness at all.  In this revelation is the acknowledgment that those who dwell in spiritual darkness are enemies of God—either fallen men, or depraved demons—who at the instigation of Satan prowl about the world seeking souls to devour.  In our natural and fallen state, all people have an understandable aversion to the darkness, because somewhere deep down, all people know that unlike the Light which brings life in the fellowship of God, the darkness brings only death and separation from Him.  Deep down, all people know that somewhere in the outer darkness there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth only echoed in this world’s mournful funeral laments, where all hope is lost and the nefarious enemies of mankind wreak hellish havoc upon lost souls forever.

 

There are real enemies in the darkness, and they are greater than the greatest of mortals.  Therefore it is something wonderful and peculiar that our Lord walked resolutely into that darkness, without fear or dread.  Certainly Jesus expressed anguish in His humanity while praying for this awful cup to pass from Him, yet submitted His human will to the Divine Will so that He could accomplish the salvation of the world.  It is Jesus who stepped into the darkness for us, and not timidly as if hoping to avoid its worst denizens—but rather directly into the gaping maw of death and hell itself.  There, beyond the brutal tortures of Romans and the betrayals of Jewish authorities, where the darkness moved in to extinguish the Light of Jesus’ life, His Words echoed into the darkness like a thundering from the heart of Creation:  It is finished!  Jesus’ life poured out upon the Cross, His soul descended to the place of the dead where all fallen men must go, but not as a victim or prisoner.  There, in the deepest, darkest stronghold of Satan, Jesus’ Light penetrated and repudiated every foul and twisted creature, and loosed the bonds which held all those who awaited His coming from the dawn of time.  Jesus entered the darkness where our greatest enemies plotted the demise of mankind, so that He might shatter the darkness and put all evil to flight.

 

What death, hell, and the devil had hoped to achieve by swallowing up the Lord of Life, they lost by being themselves swallowed up in His Vicarious Atonement and Resurrection.  The vanity of Lucifer’s boast to be like the Most High was eviscerated before the all the witnesses of the whole created universe, when his impotent strike upon Jesus amounted to a bruise upon His omnipotent heel, which in turn came down to crushed his infernal head.  No longer were the great enemies of mankind armed with weapons that easily fell human beings who bore the image of God, but now were disarmed and put to flight by the Immortal and Eternal Word.  Jesus not only conquered our enemies who dwelt in the darkness, but after His Resurrection, He gave the Light, Spirit, and Power of His Word to His people, that they might never fear the darkness again.  Once victims without hope before the yawning chasm of death, now all those who abide in Jesus by grace through faith are victors through His Victory, with the crown of eternal life placed upon their brow.  The Light which man had lost in his fall has been restored by Jesus Christ, who has become the Light and Life of all those who put their trust in Him.

 

So now we walk with our Savior as He treads the path of darkness and death, knowing that His victory is eternal and sure.  No more do the saints need fear the darkness of sin, death, hell, and devil, because the Lord of Life has won for us the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation from every evil under heaven.  And not only have we no need to fear the darkness, but we are called and sent into that darkness with the Light of Jesus’ Word, that the straggling denizens of darkness who presume upon the world their dark designs, might be put to flight once more.  This world does not belong to the darkness, for the Lord of Glory has won it back to Himself through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  What man had lost, God has regained and given to us as the riches of His grace, so that no man might fear the darkness ever again, ensconced forever by Baptism in His marvelous Light.  Gird up the loins of your mind and make strong the weak knees, so that we might walk all the more boldly with our Lord into the darkness, and emerge with Him in the incomprehensible Light of that glorious Easter morn.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.