An Incorruptible Seed: Meditations on 1st Peter 1

St. Peter, in his first epistle, makes a fundamental call to the Christians who receive his letter, to remember both the price and the terms of their redemption.  As we walk through the celebration of the Easter season, it is important to hear St. Peter’s admonition, both for its humbling and encouraging effects.  Losing sight of how we are saved from sin, death, and hell will leave us forgetting what Easter is all about.

For example, we must never forget the price of our salvation, which is the very Blood of Christ.  We can sometimes, in our sinful shortsightedness, forget that there is nothing more precious or valuable in all creation, than the Blood of Christ.  Working and playing in this world, we are often bedazzled by gold and silver, or the toys they can buy.  I don’t know about you, but I am particularly susceptible to the coolest and shiniest new cars and motorcycles… or the coolest and shiniest new vehicles of yesteryear.  To see a fully restored 1967 Stingray roll by on a sunny afternoon is mesmerizing to me, just as hearing the rumble of a tricked out Harley Davidson fixates me against all else.  They are works of art crafted in steel and chrome, and some of them are ridiculously expensive because they are one of a kind or very rare.  Perhaps your eye is caught by other things to which you assign great value, but in the end, it is the same distraction.  Our fallen nature is quick to assess the wrong value to things, elevating the mundane over the eternal.  Just as every Corvette and chopper will eventually fade away in a heap of rust, so too will all the wealth of the world be one day consumed by fire.  When we see them rightly, they are only trinkets and baubles, to which we have clung in disordered passion.

But it was not with such petty things that God has secured your salvation.  On the contrary, His Only Begotten Son, eternal God and sovereign Lord through whom the whole universe was made, died to give you life.  No person has such merit—indeed, the whole of creation has no such merit as the Creator who breathed it into being.  But Jesus our Savior has poured out His Blood for us, that we might be saved from the wrath justly owed to our sin and evil.  The price of your salvation, is the suffering and death of your Savior.

And how does such a great ransom paid, become applied to you?  Those terms are through faith in His Word.  If we were tempted to hold the Blood of Christ in lesser esteem than the riches of the world, we are certainly also tempted to hold His Word in even lesser esteem.  But St. Peter reminds us, since Jesus actually is Himself, the Very Word of God made flesh, His spoken Word to us is of the same value as His shed Blood.  For Jesus, who poured out His Blood to save you, has sent you His Gospel, that you might believe and trust in Him alone for your salvation.  By this Eternal Word of the Gospel, you are given faith, and your faith receives the grace earned by the shedding of His Most Precious Blood.  The incorruptible seed of Jesus’ Word causes you to be born again, not of the deadly and dying seed of wicked men, but of the Eternal Seed of the Father.  By His Word, you become the children of God, living by grace through faith in Christ alone.  Jesus the Word has paid the price of your salvation through His suffering and death, and Jesus the Word has enlivened you through this Gospel unto eternal life and salvation by grace through faith.

And likewise, it is this Eternal Word that shall bless you and keep you, as you also pursue what St. Peter calls you to do—to pass the time of your sojourning here in this world, in humble and righteous fear.  You have done nothing to earn your salvation, nor have you done anything to bring such a great gift to yourself.  You cannot set the price, nor can you set the terms.  Only Jesus can do this, and has done this, so that you live only by His Word.  We dare not depart from His Holy Word, for there alone is the resurrection glory of Easter made present for us.  For the Word made Flesh is fully present in His Word written in Holy Scripture, given through His holy Prophets and Apostles.  There the Christian must remain, surrendering all his sinful and disordered passions, receiving what the world holds in contempt, but what is in all reality the most precious of all gifts:  Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for you.  Amen.

Giving us the Keys: Meditations on John 20

When Jesus appears to His disciples after His resurrection, He does a number of exceptional things.  First, He doesn’t pummel them about the head and shoulders for being weak, stupid, and cowardly during His Passion.  He doesn’t upbraid them, cajole them, or guilt-trip them.  He doesn’t appear in all His heavenly glory, and shock them into shivering masses on the floor.  He doesn’t regale them with vivid images of the hell He has just endured and conquered.  All of which would have been appropriate and just, since the disciples proved themselves absolutely useless, while Jesus proved Himself Lord of Heaven and Earth.

Instead, He gives His disciples a word of peace and consolation, that they do not in any way deserve or expect.  Having suffered for their sins, dying and rising again, He owed the disciples nothing—in fact, they owed Him everything.  While He was at His most pain filled moments, they abandoned Him, renounced Him, and tried to blend in with the vicious crowd that murdered Him.  Jesus did not owe them anything but judgment, and instead, He gave them forgiveness, peace, and reconciliation.  Having suffered the greatest injustice and mistreatment in the history of the universe, Jesus emerged on the other side of that suffering, giving the gift of His grace and mercy.

What an alien concept to fallen humanity!  How quick we are, to demand justice when we are wronged.  How fast our tongue flicks out words of condemnation, judgment, and derision against others.  How much we enjoy causing another person to feel guilty for their faults against us, twisting the knife of grief until we think they’ve paid sufficient penance.  And all the while, as sinful, broken, guilty people, it is we who deserve far greater condemnation from our just God, who has suffered all things at our hands.  We, who are guilty, constantly seek to throw stones at our neighbor, in our pathological delusion that asks for justice while hiding from it.

Yet it is to us that Jesus not only first shows love, mercy, and forgiveness, but also gives us the authority to give these gifts to others.  Knowing what sniveling wretches the disciples were, He first shows them divine love, and then gives them His own hard won authority to show His love to the world.  While Jesus is Lord of All, His authority to forgive sins came through the Cross, where the penalty of our sins was paid.  God could not forgive sins without just payment, lest His divine Justice be violated.  And so, Jesus bore the penalty, and emerged with the gift—the forgiveness of sins by the shedding of His Blood, which satisfies the wrath of our Holy God.

And so He says to His disciples, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you…”  Sent to do what?  To preach the Gospel of forgiveness through the Cross of Christ, which cures the deadly curse of the Law; to freely give what no one deserves, just as those who first received it, received it freely and without merit.  Jesus gives freely to His disciples forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation by the eternal authority of His Sacrifice for the sins of the world, and then hands them the Keys of the Kingdom so that they may do the same for their neighbors in His Name. Jesus delivers His great victory over sin, death, the devil and hell, to His disciples, that they might give it freely to all who will repent and believe in Him.

That’s the gift of the Keys, which the under-shepherds of the Chief Shepherd administer on His behalf and in His Name, for the good of His people.  It is a gift freely received and freely given, earned by no lesser price than the most precious Blood of Christ.  Hear the Word of the Savior as it comes to you, bringing you peace and mercy and grace, through faith in Him.  Amen.

The Passion before the Passion: A Maundy Thursday Meditation on Luke 22

When we speak of the Passion of Jesus, we speak of His suffering and agony.  The term is used in its older and more proper sense, identifying the pain that pierces not just the body but the mind, also.  Jesus’ Passion is something that not only causes Him pain in His flesh, but it pierces Him down to His deepest level—into His very mind and soul.  Since the Incarnation by the power of the Holy Spirit in the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus’ Person has united His Divine Nature with our human nature, so that we may say truly God has suffered with us.  Not just in some kind of philosophical or sophistic manner, but in the very Person of Jesus Christ.

Our Gospel reading tonight points us to something easily overlooked, as our minds press past the horrors of Holy Week to arrive safely at Easter.  Tonight, we see Jesus’ Passion in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Here He retreats with His disciples after the Passover Meal has been celebrated, and here He pleads with His disciples to pray.  Oddly enough, He does not ask His disciples to pray for Him, but rather, He tells them to pray that they might not fall into temptation.  Leaving them to pray, He goes a little way off, and prays to His Father with such fervor, that His sweat is as blood.

And what does He pray?  He asks His Father for any other path… any other cup… than the path He is about to walk, and the cup He is about to drink.  Does that make you uncomfortable?  Jesus has resolutely marched through all of human history to this garden, and here, the very night in which He will be betrayed, He begs the Father to let this cup pass from Him.  That cup, is your salvation, by the way.  Or, to be more precise, that cup is the wrath of God upon your sins—the eternal hell you are due for all your wickedness and evil.  And that cup isn’t yours alone, it is the eternal suffering of every man, woman, and child ever to be born, from the beginning of the world to its end.  Hundreds of billions of souls, each with an eternal debt of hell’s worst torments, poured into one cup.  This is the cup Jesus prays, that if there be any other way to save mankind, let it pass from Him.  But He ends His prayer, in submission to the Father, that His will be done.

Here is the Passion before the Passion.  Christ holds in His hands the salvation of mankind, and with His dual natures sees the depth of the price that must be paid.  How does someone suffer for one person’s eternal debt, let alone the eternal debts of countless billions of others?  For us, it is impossible, but for God it is not.  For God is not bound by time or space—He is the infinite and the absolute, the One who is before and after all things.  Only God could enter into the suffering of an eternity of eternities, and emerge triumphant.  Jesus’ human nature could not accomplish this, but united with His divinity, He could do what no one else could do.  He could suffer and die, bearing the eternity of eternities in hell for you, and for me.  If your eyes could behold such a cup, and see it to its very dregs, I should think you would sweat blood, too… if you didn’t die of fright at the very first glimpse.

But Jesus endures this Passion before the Passion, preparing for His journey to the Cross.  And before He goes into that eternity of eternities in hell, He leaves a sign of both His coming Passion and His Victory.  He leaves a meal, but not just any meal.  He leaves us the Passover Meal, that celebrated the Exodus of His people out of the slavery of Egypt.  Only this time, He refines the message of the Meal, showing that He is not saving us just from some temporal tyrant, but from the eternity in hell with the devil we deserve.  In this Meal, He gives us His very Body and Blood, which shall be broken and poured out upon Calvary, for you and for me.  Before He enters hell’s dark veil in our place, He leaves the sign of His Victory.

And so He goes to Golgotha, to take our place.  He lifts this unspeakably wretched cup to His immaculate and holy lips, that you might lift this blessed Eucharistic cup to yours.  Tonight, you receive the price of your salvation, the price of your grace.  Here you receive the Body and Blood of Christ, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.  It is a work you cannot do, but that He has already done.  He has born the Father’s righteous wrath for you, and His life He pours into you, that you might live in Him forever, forgiven and free.

Behold the Lamb of God, who goes forth to take away the sins of the world, who drinks the cup of suffering on our behalf, and endures an eternity of eternities of hell’s most vicious horrors.  Behold your salvation, believe, and live.  Amen.

Heaven breaking through: An Easter Meditation on Matthew 28

 

Christians live under constant scrutiny of their beliefs by outsiders who ridicule or dismiss the central tenets of their faith.  And no Christian belief is more attacked and ridiculed, than the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  From the time of the Apostles down to our own day, from the Pharisees of Jerusalem, to the Roman Pagans, to the various atheistic philosophers, the evolutionists, and the secular humanists, the resurrection of Jesus presents the greatest opportunity for derision.  Who, after all, has ever seen anyone raised from the dead?  Who has ever beaten death, and managed to live forever?  It’s just ridiculous from the outsider’s perspective, that anyone can be dead for three days, and of their own power and authority, rise again.

But what does such ridicule reveal?  Hearts of unbelief, anger, and pride.  The heart that ridicules the resurrection of Jesus refuses to believe the eye-witness testimony of hundreds of contemporary people with nothing to gain and everything to lose—not least of which were the Apostles, who wrote down their testimony, suffering and dying for it.  The resurrection of Jesus is one of the most well attested events of antiquity, with more witnesses and documentation, than we have of most of the Roman Ceasars (whose persons and acts few debate.)  And if all the contemporary witnesses with nothing to gain were not enough, the preceding 1500 years of recorded history from Moses through the Prophets, predicted Jesus’ advent, suffering, death, and resurrection.  God had been telling the world what He was going to do, and when He did it, He left no room for debate.  To deny the resurrection of Christ, is to irrationally deny the witness of history, with a willful unbelief that simply doesn’t want to believe God.

As for anger and pride, they are rooted deep in the human experience.  We hold ourselves sovereign, captain of our own ship, with all our “inalienable rights.”  We delude ourselves into thinking we created ourselves, and control our own destiny.  But the reality behind our pride, is that we know we didn’t create ourselves, and we were given life through our parents without ever having been consulted about it.  And when we die, and our soul is ripped from our flesh with our last haggard breath, we will not be consulted or given a vote on how that shall proceed, either.  We may pretend that we’re in control from our birth to our death, but even that fairly tale doesn’t withstand much scrutiny, as the older we get, the more we see the hands and influence of many others upon our supposedly sovereign lives.  And so, under our self-deluded pride, lies an anger against God.  We want to be sovereign, and we are not.  We want to be our own gods, and we cannot even control our birth and death, let alone the moments in between.  We know that we do not have the power to keep up our delusion, and Jesus’ demonstration of laying down His life only to take it back up again, shows us for the weaklings we are.  Jesus’ resurrection shows us that He really is God, and we really aren’t.

Jesus’ resurrection cuts us to our quick, because it reveals our own failures and weakness, our slavery to sin, death, the devil, and our ultimate well deserved end in hell.  Jesus’ resurrection shows us that He is the Author of Life, the Creator, the Beginning and the End… and that we are none of these things.  Jesus’ resurrection pierces our pride, assaults our unbelief, and forces us to stand exposed before God our Maker.  Here we see who we really are, and who God really is.

But for all the terror of this revelation, of God breaking through our delusions and our evil, He brings something else with Him that we so desperately need.  We cannot save ourselves from death and hell, but He can.  We cannot bring about peace on earth, but He can.  We cannot govern our beginning, middle, and end, but He can.  All the things we secretly fear because we are too weak, corrupt, and delusional, He has shown He can conquer.  As Jesus’ rises from the grave, He declares to all of heaven and earth that nothing is beyond His power.  Every enemy of mankind He has conquered—even for a mankind that ridicules and derides Him.

And for you and I, this is very good news.  For as He rises from death to life by His own omnipotent power, He speaks a Word of peace and reconciliation to us.  To us, who struggle with unbelief, pride, anger, and all the host of evil vice, He gives a Word of forgiveness written in His own most precious Blood.  To us, who deserve nothing but death and hell, He gives a Word of salvation and life.  To us, enslaved by the devil and our own sinful passions, He gives a Word of freedom and victory.  Jesus Christ, the Eternal King of Glory, Victor Supreme over every wicked enemy, extends to every man, woman, and child His gracious reconciliation, mercy, grace, peace, and love.  Not only has our Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His power over sin, death, the devil and hell, but in His victory He brings us the gift of His Everlasting Gospel.

So even now, in these latter days, when the world ridicules and mocks the resurrection of Jesus, the Church stands forth as witness.  For we live in His resurrection life, and by grace through faith in Him and His Vicarious Atonement, we stand in His victory over death and the grave.  Let the devil howl as he will—he is defeated.  Let death and hell quake and rattle all they will—they are broken.  Let the world mock and ridicule in all its delusional fervor—it is overcome.  For we know that the means of our salvation, Jesus’ death and resurrection, are written in the Eternal Word of the Father, vouchsafed to us by the power of His Holy Spirit.  To we sinners who live by His grace, the resurrection of Jesus stands for all time and eternity as the promise and the sign of our own victory over sin and death—and it is the Gospel we shall show forth to the whole world, that all might believe and live in Jesus.  Amen.