Whoever is Ashamed of Jesus and His Word: A Lenten Meditation on Mark 8

After admonishing St. Peter for trying to dissuade Jesus from His Cross, Jesus begins teaching His disciples about the sacrificial nature of life with Him.  Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, giving His life to save His people.  Any delusions His disciples may have nurtured about a life of prosperity, wealth, power or prestige, Jesus dashes against the rocks when He tells them:

“Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

Despite the growing numbers of false teachers whose books dominate Christian book stores and publishing houses, Jesus does not promise anyone a life in this world marked with prosperity, wealth, prestige, or ease.  It is certainly true that some people find themselves with more resources and vocational duties than others, but these are not distinctive marks of the Christian life.  Jesus teaches His disciples, both then and now, that the Christian life is not something wrapped up in the relative affluence or suffering of this life—rather, the Christian life is hidden in the life of Christ.

It is easy for anyone to lose sight of this truth.  In a world that is marked by work and reward, by power and domination, we can quickly forget that the world we live in today is passing away.  This world, with all its clawing for position and fame, the ruthless pursuits of money and power, the abuse and subjugation of the weak by the strong, the presumptuous pomposity of the intellectual over the common man:  all these are fruits of a fallen creation, destined for the fire.  It is a world in which we all live, and a world that calls everyone to believe in themselves.  It is a world that sells endless periodicals as windows into celebrity, and holds them up as the idols of the age.  It is a world that traffics in the sale of children and pornography, putting a price on every vice that titillates the fancies of man.  It is a world where cinema, literature, and theatre promote abandon to carnal desires, where one’s duty is to self gratification.  It is a world that tolerates every form of evil, but cannot stand the piercing light of the good.  It is a dark and fallen world that we live in, as even our own fallen nature harmonizes with the discord all around us, like a symphony of cacophony in endless screeching loop.

But Jesus knows our world, our nature, and our struggle.  It is into this fallen world He has come, giving His life as a ransom for the fallen people within it.  It is into our struggle against death that He comes, giving Himself into death that we might not die forever.  It is into our filth and our mire that He pours His most holy and precious Blood, that we might be washed clean.

But how is it that our Lord has come, even to us?  It is by His Word.  He Himself is the very Word Made Flesh, the will of the Father to save mankind.  He is the Word by which the heavens and the earth were created, and the Word by which it is sustained until its end.  He is the Word of the Law which speaks from the holiness of God’s eternal throne to dead and dying sinners.  He is the Word of the Gospel which speaks from the wretched wood of His Holy Cross, drawing every penitent heart to Himself.  He is the Word of Resurrection and Life that speaks from His open tomb, shattering the bonds and fear of death.  He is the Word of Faith and Repentance which He sent His Apostles out into the world to preach, that all may hear, believe, and live.  He is the Word of the Prophets and the Apostles, who everywhere and always point to Him as the Savior of the World.  He is the Word which shall split the heavens like a thunderous trumpet on the Last Day, judging the living and the dead.  He is the Word of the Lord that abides forever, preserving all those who abide in Him by grace through faith.

And this is why it is so shameful for mankind to abuse, disparage, or discard the Word of God.  Our age is marked by a strange confluence of rationalism that is ashamed of the simplicity of the Word; of mysticism that is ashamed of the external nature of the Word; of post-modernism that is ashamed of the truth of the Word; of paganism that is ashamed of the God to whom the Word bears witness; of politics that are ashamed of the radical polarization of good versus evil in that Word; of hedonists that are ashamed of the restrictions on human depravity found in that Word; of captains of industry that are ashamed of the love and compassion given supremacy in that Word; of churches who are ashamed of the self denial and way of the Cross given by that Word.

But regardless of the shame some have for the Word of God, it is still the only means of salvation for every man, woman, and child who will ever be born upon this sphere.  Jesus, the suffering and dying Servant, is the only hope for dead and dying sinners, mired in the muck of a dead and dying world.  Jesus was not ashamed to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but He will be ashamed of all those dead and dying sheep, who prefer sin, death, hell and the devil over the salvation He offers them by His Word.  In Jesus, by His grace and mercy, there is no shame in being a sinner saved by His Word.  But apart from His Word through which we receive His abundant grace, mercy, and sacrificial love, there is nothing but eternal shame and destitution for those who refuse so great a gift.

May the Word of Life dwell in His people richly, and may we, enlivened unto faith by His Holy Spirit, abide in His saving Word forever.  Amen.

Suffering, Sacrifice, and Temptation: A Meditation on Genesis 22

Our Old Testament reading for the first Sunday in Lent brings us back to the familiar and uncomfortable story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac.  It is clearly God who calls to Abraham, and directs him to take his only and beloved son out into the wilderness, there to slaughter him as a sacrifice.  There’s no getting around it—God is calling Abraham to execute a human sacrifice, and specifically to sacrifice the son he so dearly loved.  Isaac was the son given to Abraham as a covenant promise from God, and the line through whom all the nations would be blessed.  This son of the promise is the son God called Abraham to kill on a lonely mountain, three day’s journey from home.

The story is troubling enough, without the danger of trying to read into the text more than what is written.  We might want to see God as doing this all with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge, since this request sounds much more like the character of the pagan gods than the one true God.  We might want to imagine Abraham having some kind of special insight into the request, so that he never really intended to kill his only beloved son.  None of that seems true.  In the text, we see Abraham preparing for the trip, and there is no record of his even mentioning God’s request to his wife or his son.  Abraham cuts the wood for the burnt offering, loads up his animals, gathers his servants, and heads out for a three day walk.

That three days had to be torture for Abraham, as he alone carried the burden of God’s awful request.  Whatever the great faith of Abraham, we can only imagine what passed through his mind.  How would he explain this to the boy’s mother?  To his servants?  To himself?  How could God ask such a thing that seemed so contrary to His divine nature?  Is this really the same God who called him out of his country and his father’s house, and promised to bless him?  How could God intend to inflict such suffering upon someone He claimed to love?  Does God really love me and my family, or am I in this dark world all alone?  And however many more might come into his mind, as he plodded along for those three days.

But like so much of Sacred Scripture, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense apart from the fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ.  Through Christ, we can see Abraham’s struggle and God’s call, as a foreshadowing of what God Himself would accomplish for the sake of the whole world.  Where God asked of Abraham to sacrifice his only beloved son, and yet stopped Abraham from going through with it, God would go all the way through with sacrificing His Only Beloved Son for the lives of sinful men.  Unlike Abraham and Isaac who both deserved to suffer and die for their sins, God the Father and His Beloved Son would suffer unjustly in their place.  The Father would walk His Only Beloved Son up the hill of Calvary, and there would be no substitute ram caught in the thicket to offer in His place.  There the Father would see His Son bound to the wood of His Cross, and there He would see the horrific multitude of every sin of every man, woman, and child, heaped upon His Son’s Holy flesh.  Every rape, every murder, every abuse of a child, every genocidal massacre, every torture, every tyranny, every intrigue, every plot, every fornication, every heresy, every apostasy… every evil thought, word, and deed, of things done, undone, and yet to be done, mounted upon the blessed shoulders of His Beloved Son.  At such a putrid horror, even the Father must turn away in His holiness, that all His righteous wrath might be poured out upon His Only Beloved Son, and there the Son must die utterly and unimaginably alone, under the weight of every evil ever to be perpetrated upon His good creation.  Where Abraham’s knife was stayed, the nails and spear pierced through the Son of God.

And yet, the suffering, sacrifice, and temptation of the Son of God is not swallowed up by sin and death.  Rather, death and sin are overcome through the suffering, sacrifice, and temptation of the Only Beloved Son.  For death was not able to contain the Author of Life, as His death became life for the whole world.  Every ounce of human sin was placed upon Him, and every ounce of the Father’s justice was poured out upon Him, so that as He rose victorious from the grave on that third day, the curse of sin and death were broken by Him.  In Him there is now no condemnation for those who live by grace through faith in His Vicarious Atonement—for He has become not only our death, but our eternal life.

So what becomes of Christian suffering, sacrifice, and temptation?  Like Abraham, we are often called into the darkness of this world, where pain and loss can be tremendous.  Christians bear the burdens of disease and injury, treachery, anguish and death.  But for us, like for blessed Abraham, the cross we bear makes little or no sense apart from Jesus Christ.  Abraham’s faith was tested, and his suffering pointed forward to the glorious salvation of Jesus Christ.  The Prophets and Apostles often suffered and died, as they bore witness to their Savior, Jesus Christ.  Many generations of Christians into our very day, suffer and die for their witness to our Savior Jesus Christ.  But written in the tears, agony, and blood of every Christian, is a testimony to the Only Beloved Son who has conquered every foe of mankind, giving forgiveness, hope, and everlasting life through His own suffering, sacrifice, and death.  Our temptations endured by faith, point back to our Savior, who endured every temptation, and yet remained without sin.  Our sufferings endured by faith, point to our Savior who suffered an eternity of condemnation in an instant, so that He might bring consolation to all creation.  Our sacrifices endured by faith, point to our Savior who was sacrificed for the sins of the world, so that He might be the salvation of all who would trust in Him.

In this faith, the Christian picks up the cross of suffering, sacrifice, and temptation that has been given to him by his Savior, that he might by grace through faith bear witness to the salvation won for us in our Lord Jesus Christ—just as our father Abraham did, nearly four millennia ago.  For in the salvation of Jesus we suffer with Him, we sacrifice with Him, we are tempted with Him, so that by faith in His grace and mercy, we might live in Him forever.  Amen.

The Fullness of Revelation: A Meditation on Mark 9

Our day and age has no shortage of those who look for secret knowledge, or to peer into things previously unseen.  For those who remember the various fiascos around the turning of the Millenium (Y2K, anyone?), 2012 (the Mayan apocalypse, picked up in ridiculous movies, and by a handful of modern “prophets”), and the most recent fervor around the Four Blood Moons (with some Christian pastors making a lot of money on their published books, which apparently they don’t intend to spend if the world is ending shortly…), we know that there are always people who want to know what God has not given them to know.  While end of the world apocalyptic projections can be disconcerting and sometimes harmful (think of the people who were duped into selling their retirement accounts to fund the proclamation of the 2012 end of the world), there are more dangerous purveyors of this problematic method theologians call “Enthusiasm.”

Many modern church bodies have become enamored with the idea that “God is still speaking.”  These church bodies, most notably the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the United Church of Christ (UCC) have used this concept to find “truths” previous generations could not perceive.  In fact, they have proposed a whole new slate of moral accommodations and mandates which Scripture seems to condemn, but which their scholars seem to find either behind the text, or in new revelations of God that come through Naturalism, Social Science, politics, or popular opinion.  Hence they embrace infanticide through abortion, the deconstruction of the family through easy divorce, the deconstruction of natural male and female vocations through their discard of the Order of Creation, and the debasement of human sexuality through their embrace of sodomy, adultery, and fornication.  As these churches try to peer into things God has not revealed through His Word, they think they find new doctrines and new gospels, even as they leave the authentic doctrine of the Prophets and Apostles behind.  Such churches teach their people to trust in revelations by other spirits, and guide them away from the Holy Spirit who works through His Word to reveal Christ as our Savior.

But they are not alone.  Ostensibly conservative and traditional church bodies struggle with this desire to peer into things not revealed, and come away with new revelations born by unholy spirits.  American Evangelicalism is growing up a new crop of pastors that are choosing to embrace homosexuality, twisting Scripture to their conclusions.  American Catholic universities promote Jesuit theologians who turn the Gospel of Salvation into political liberation, while the Nuns on a Bus ride around promoting new sexual ethics.  Churches like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) protect heretics teaching at major universities on their clergy roster, a movement called FiveTwo that effectively deconstructs the pastoral office into populist enthusiasm, and whole districts that defend syncretistic worship alongside the clergy of other gods (most recently after 9/11/2001, and the Newtown shooting tragedy.)  They are not alone.  Time would fail to recount all the church bodies and well schooled teachers who have peered into the mists of unrevealed knowledge, and pulled out of their ponderings things which conflict with Holy Scripture.  This should not surprise us, even if it scandalizes us—man has always been seeking knowledge apart from God and His Word, only to find the devil with his lying spirits ready to fill our heads with every form of nonsense.

Our sinful inclination to take what is not ours, to deny what is given to us for the lust of something we have not been given, is not God’s fault or design.  This twisted nature of ours is entirely our own fault, as is the Fall of Creation which we brought on by heeding the devil’s voice rather than our Creator’s.  His Word called all things into existence, and continues to sustain all things, even after we corrupted them.  His Word pierces through the darkness of the world we have perverted, shining His glorious light into the lies we choose to believe.  His Word is the reality upon which the whole universe turns, and the reality of our own existence, as well.  His Word is everything to us, despite the derision we have for it.

But thanks be to God, that He does not withdraw His Word from His fallen and lost people!  Rather, He sends His Word to us through His Prophets and Apostles, so that we might hear and know Him.  He sends His messengers of every time and place, to bear witness to His Word, so that every generation might be called by Him into His marvelous light.  He sends His Word to seek and to save the lost and the dying, the abuser and the abused—all those who are enslaved to the sinful lies of the devil, taken captive by peering into things not given while abandoning the clear and constant Word of God.

And so we may ask, what is this Word?  It is Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father.  The Word is certainly that which the Spirit of Christ caused to be written by the Prophets and the Apostles, and which we hold in our hands as the Holy Scriptures.  But the Word of God is more than a book, and more than the words of men.  The Word of God is a Person, who came in the proper time, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that He might be the salvation for all mankind.  The Word of God is Jesus Christ, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried; who rose again victorious over sin, death, hell, and the devil on the third day; who sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus is the fullness of the revelation of God’s Word to mankind, in whom alone is the salvation of the whole human race.  Jesus is all we need to know, since He is the one who made satisfaction for our sins through His Holy Cross, who grafts us into His eternal life by grace through faith in Him, who absolves us of all our sins and empowers us by His Spirit to live lives of faith, repentance, holiness and love.

This is what we learn from Jesus on the mount of Transfiguration.  We see and hear Him, as the Father declares Him to us:  This is My Beloved Son:  hear Him!  He speaks to us and calls us by His Word written and proclaimed, that we might know Him, and in His fellowship abide forever.  Heaven and earth will indeed pass away, but the Word of the Lord— Gospel of our salvation—shall abide forever.  All praise be to Christ our Savior, the living and saving Word of God, now and forevermore!  Amen.

To whom would you compare God? A Meditation on Isaiah 40

Isaiah presents a question to the people of God that bears pondering in every age:  to whom would we compare Him?  In a world awash in every form of paganism and self absorption, it becomes easy for the people of God to forget exactly who He is.  The world will always have its vaunted philosophers and politicians, kings and kingmakers, various priests of various religions and gods.  In our day, the voice of the dominant pagan god of the west we have named Science—her priests proclaim her wonders to the world, and her followers enter her temples to make obeisance.  She claims to have brought the world into existence by blind chance, and to rule the chaos according to her principles.  Her prophets speak in her name many blasphemous things, because she does not value life or mankind.  She is a cold and careless dominatrix, who strips from humanity and all creation not only their dignity, but their purpose of existence.  She brings so great a delusion upon the earth, that she would, if it were possible, deceive even the Elect of God.

It is tempting in an age such as ours, to wonder if our God is really up to the task of combating so great a pagan deity.  Science’s handmaiden Evolution, has already bowed the schools and the government to her will, despite the horrors she will shortly send upon us.  We are quick to forget, that atheistic Science with an Evolutionary view of the human race, brought upon the 20^th century more bloodshed than the entire recorded history of the world.  It took over whole countries, where the value of human life was held in relative esteem to those whom chance had given power.  Millions upon millions of Jews, Russians, Chinese, Europeans, Christians, and many others, died upon the eugenics altar of atheistic Science, while pogrom after pogrom sought to clear the land of people whose lives were meaningless to the regime.  Even now, millions of children have been murdered in the womb, and persecution rises in traditionally free lands, where atheistic Science and Evolution infest the halls of academia and politics.  We have brought in and tolerated this false god among us, and she has now taken tight hold of the pillars of western civilization, so that she might cast it to the ground.  Where will be the nation whose Constitution and Declaration proclaim the foundation of law and society to rest in the inalienable rights of people created equal in their Creator’s image, when atheistic Science and Evolution destroy the dignity of man and replace it with Nietzsche’s Will to Power?

Regardless of the false gods man has created to enslave and debase itself, God Almighty speaks to us through his prophet Isaiah words we must always hear and believe:

To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal?

saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and

behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out

their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the

greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and

speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my

judgment is passed over from my God?

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that

the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of

the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no

searching of his understanding. He giveth power to

the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,

and the young men shall utterly fall:  But they that

wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall

mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be

weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Indeed, every false god, together with all who follow them, will faint and fail.  Science, as it has become divorced from a rightly ordered pursuit to observe and understand the created world in light of its Creator, will be dashed upon the rocks of it atheistic pretensions, and inherit the wind of its morally bankrupt Evolution. They do not have power in themselves to be sustained, because they are not the true God—instead, they are corrupters of that which is already made good, and pretenders to a throne upon which is already seated the King of Kings.

For there is only one true God, and we have known Him by His Word since the world began.  It is He who spoke the world into being, and He who sustains it by His Almighty will.  It is He who has never let the world be without His voice, that the people might always return to Him.  It is He who entered into the fallen mess of the world, to stand face to face with all the false gods of our presumption, and in the Person of Jesus Christ, suffered and died to redeem our lost race.  It is He who has ascended to the Right Hand of the Father, and He who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.  It is His Spirit that ever calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies His People in this world and the next.  It is His Kingdom that shall have no end, and it is His people to whom He will give grace, mercy, forgiveness, and life everlasting.

Through all the cacophony of modern life, with all the lying voices of a thousand false gods ringing in our ears, the Word of the Lord remains.  By it, He calls us to faith and repentance, that we might receive from the only true God and Savior forgiveness, life, redemption, and hope.  Be not dismayed by the voice of devils and lying men—for the Lord our God sits forever upon His throne, and He has worked salvation for His people.  Behold the only true God:  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.