The Power of Belief: A Meditation on Mark 16, for the Eastertide Festival of St. Mark

Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week,

he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.

And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept.

And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not.

 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them,

as they walked, and went into the country.

And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them.

Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat,

and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart,

because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.

 

And he said unto them,

Go ye into all the world,

and preach the gospel to every creature.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;

but he that believeth not shall be damned.

And these signs shall follow them that believe;

In my name shall they cast out devils;

they shall speak with new tongues;

 They shall take up serpents;

and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;

they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

 

So then after the Lord had spoken unto them,

he was received up into heaven,

and sat on the right hand of God.

And they went forth, and preached everywhere,

the Lord working with them,

and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

 

The last half of the 16^th chapter of Mark’s Gospel has been pilloried by textual critics for a long time, with accusations that it doesn’t appear in their preferred manuscripts.  Some of the ancient scrolls of Mark’s Gospel have damage near the end of the scroll, where the last of the words would be written, and some appear to have verses added which reflect the words we read above.  Over the centuries, the church accepted this ending of Mark as part of the canon of Scripture, noting its wide use as testimony to its authenticity and accuracy, regardless of damage found on some early manuscripts in Alexandria.  Since Alexandria, Egypt, was a hotbed of early heresy, one should be circumspect in accepting many of their butchered Biblical texts at face value, despite their dry climate which preserved so many early manuscripts.  Regardless of the handwringing and pearl clutching of modern textual critics and liberal theologians, the text we have of St. Mark’s Gospel is fully reliable and worthy of the church’s meditation.

 

A key point of this text is the distinction between belief, and unbelief.  After Jesus’ resurrection, He appeared to several people besides the disciples, and the disciples did not initially believe their testimony.  Mary Magdalene, the other women at the tomb whom we learn of in the other Gospels, two people walking along a road, all came back to tell Jesus’ closest disciples that He had risen from the dead, just as He said He would.  Yet until Jesus came and appeared to the disciples directly, they didn’t believe the witness of others about Him.  It was for this unbelief that Jesus upbraided them—not only had they disbelieved all He had taught them for the three years they followed Him before the Crucifixion, they refused to believe the testimony of those whom Jesus sent to them with the good news that He was risen.  Mary Magdalene, sometimes called the Apostle to the Apostles, bore witness of her first-hand encounter with the risen Jesus, and the rest of the disciples disregarded her.  St. John records in his Gospel account that Jesus spoke peace to them, but somewhere in the midst of that peace, He also clobbered them a bit for their thick headedness and hardness of heart.

 

To make His point resoundingly clear, Jesus then commissioned His disciples to do exactly what He sent Mary and the other women to do for them:  preach the good news.  This preaching, teaching, and making disciples by teaching people everything Jesus had taught them, was to become the primary Means of Grace for the salvation of souls.  Through such preaching would come faith and repentance, as hard hearts like theirs would be broken by the Holy Spirit working through the Gospel of Jesus’ victory over sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  This simple means of preaching would bring people to faith, to a trusting belief in Jesus which would give them a new birth from above by Water and Spirit.  Those who refused to believe would remain in their sins, damned to the consequences of hell they earned by their evil hearts, minds, and actions.  But whoever believed and was baptized would be saved, all for the sake of Jesus’ Vicarious Atonement for the sins of the world, won through His Cross, offered freely to everyone by grace through faith in Him.  The disciples, now made Apostles, were sent to do precisely what they had refused to accept through the Word sent to them by Mary and the other witnesses.  I can only imagine that this lesson was not lost on any of the Apostles as they went forth in heroic faith, most of them to gruesome martyrdom or exile, even as they turned the world upside down with their preaching of Christ crucified for the salvation of sinners.

 

If read wrongly, the following verses can be a stumbling block.  When Jesus told His Apostles that signs and wonders would accompany the preaching of the Gospel, He was absolutely correct:  signs and wonders did accompany their preaching, and they have accompanied it ever since.  In the Book of Acts we read of many such miracles occurring with the Apostles, and with St. Paul, and various others.  Yet even with the Apostles themselves, in whom many of these miracles were manifested and recorded, there is never a sense that all the miracles and wonders would occur with every individual Christian all the time.  Quite to the contrary, St. Paul taught, as he did with the church at Corinth, that there are a multitude of gifts given to the faithful across the entirety of the Body of Christ, and that these gifts make Christians a blessing to each other and the world around them.  Not all spoke in tongues, not all had gifts of healing, not all prophesied, not all taught with authority, not all took up serpents or were unharmed by the ingestion of poison, not all cast out demons—but in the community of the church, all these gifts and a multitude more were manifest in the first century, and are still manifested today.  Where faithful preaching of the Word of God continues, the power of the Holy Spirit still raises dead hearts and souls to eternal life, still accompanies such preaching with signs and wonders, and still enlivens the whole community of the faithful to heroic faith even in the darkest times of oppression.  Time would fail to recount the stories of faithful martyrs and preachers across the globe and down through the ages, who stood before every power of devil and man, rebuking the darkness that others might see the saving power of Jesus Christ.

 

What this doesn’t mean is that we should put our God to the test by playing with snakes, drinking poison, or cavorting with demons.  God works His wonders for the salvation of souls, accompanying the preaching of the Gospel with that which is necessary to bring back lost people from the brink of hell, and reunite them to His mercy and life.  He does not work for the amusement or pride of men, but for their salvation.  The signs and wonders which accompany the faithful preaching of the Word of Christ continue in our time, and will continue until the Lord returns, according to His unsearchable wisdom and immutable power manifested throughout the communion of the saints.

 

During this Easter season, the Word of God recorded by St. Mark is as urgently needed now as it ever has been.  Too long has the Church of God been muddled by poisonous false doctrine and wavering belief in the Word which is their very life.  Too long have Christians allowed apostates, pagans, and atheists to dictate to them what they will believe, how they will live, and how they will preach the Everlasting Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ alone.  Too long have Christians forgotten the power of their omnipotent King of Creation, the Lord of Glory and the Angelic Hosts of Heaven, with their courage drained and their minds a mush of post-modernism and technological idolatry.  Long after every technocrat and bureaucrat and corporate mogul and academic fraud and political tyrant have moldered into dust, the Living God will continue to empower His saints to preach the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation by the finished work of Jesus Christ, saving every person who repents and is baptized, and leaving all who reject Him to the hell they both earned and chose.  Now is the day for the Church of God to rise in the power of His Word, to send the armies of darkness scattering back into their foul crevices, to preach liberty to the captives, and eternal life to the dead and damned.  As we do, we shall see the hand of God at work among us, full of signs and wonders accompanying the preaching of the Eternal Word of Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls.  Amen.

 

The Love of God vs the Hatred of the Devil: An Easter Season Meditation on 1st John 3

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,

that we should be called the sons of God:

therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God,

and it doth not yet appear what we shall be:

but we know that, when he shall appear,

we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

And every man that hath this hope in him

purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law:

for sin is the transgression of the law.

And ye know that he was manifested

to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.

Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not:

whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.

Little children, let no man deceive you:

he that doeth righteousness is righteous,

even as he is righteous.

He that committeth sin is of the devil;

for the devil sinneth from the beginning.

For this purpose the Son of God was manifested,

that he might destroy the works of the devil.

Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;

 for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin,

 because he is born of God.

 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil:

whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God,

 neither he that loveth not his brother.

For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning,

that we should love one another.

Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.

And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil,

and his brother's righteous.

Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.

We know that we have passed from death unto life,

because we love the brethren.

He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer:

and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us:

and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

It should not surprise us that we live in a time of growing hatred.  Sadly, our world has known many such seasons, and in one way or another, hatred always seems to simmer in the background even when it’s not rising to the forefront of civic discourse.  There’s a fault within all mankind that seems to drift inexorably into hatred when left to its own devices, and much of what human beings have developed as culture and society puts boundaries of law around these base impulses.  What may be easily forgotten in our day, though it shines forth before our eyes with increasing clarity, is that the fallen nature of mankind makes hatred our default setting.  Almost as natural as breathing is our collective and individual impulse to define rival camps or rival families, to see enmity between competing forces, to demonize other people, and eventually to work out our hatred in various expressions of abuse murder—we see and assume it in others, because we see and experience it in ourselves.  This is why so much of the antagonistic literature, media, and galvanizing speeches we’ve heard recently result in riotous and murderous mobs who burn, loot, and destroy with gleeful abandon.  Tapping into this base impulse of mankind has always been effective, because it always lingers in the back of human minds, corrupting and inclining our souls toward evil.

 

What has generally kept such rampant evil constrained to greater or lesser degrees, is a civilization’s greater or lesser relationship with God.  A civilization which knows God as their Creator, knows Him also as the divine Law Giver and sovereign Judge.  There’s a sense of accountability such a civilization perceives before their Creator, which extends out into their relations with other people.  Such an understanding emerges in a variety of laws which protect the life, liberty, and property of individual people against unjust aggression, fraud, and theft.  This function of the Law theologians have called a “curb” against rampant evil in general society, where the sword of government (as St. Paul would say) becomes a terror to those who do evil, and a protection for those who do good.  This function of the Law compliments its other key functions (that of a “mirror” to reflect one’s own relative depravity before the goodness of God, and that of a “guide” into more virtuous behavior) and helps tamp down the vicious impulses all people tend toward.  Removing a sense of accountability before God, and thereby removing the Law which prevents evil and encourages good, is a recipe for destruction written across human history, and in various parts of the world today.  The erupting violence born of racial and class hatred in American cities is a reflection of this abandonment of God and the righteousness of His Law, with the unabashed Anarchists and Marxists who promote it doing the bidding of the Devil who inspires all to hatred and murder.  The 20^th century is replete with examples of the hell on earth such surrender to the Devil has brought forth, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and the tyrannical enslavement of billions more.  This is a path whose end we know, and it is one we must stop now, lest we suffer the same fate of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China.

 

And yet, while the Law works as a curb in society against rampant evil, it is not what transforms the heart from one of hatred to one of love.  The gift of God which passes all understanding, is the love which reaches down into our fallen world, into every fallen heart, through Jesus Christ His only begotten Son.  This is the divine love of God which forgives our wickedness and penchant for hatred for the sake of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection on our behalf—not a forgiveness which ignores the enormity of our evil, but one which chooses to take upon Himself our judgement and condemnation, offering mercy in return.  It is a gift we could never earn, but only receive as freely as it is given, and on the terms by which God offers it.  Such selfless, sacrificial love is alien to our fallen nature, and when it comes in contact with us, we cannot help but be changed by it.  Such love sings a more ancient song than the drums of war and malice which infect our souls, harkening back to a love and mercy which brought the universe into being at the dawn of time, before our complicity with the Devil corrupted it through our Fall.  Such love breathes a new life into those who will receive it, a work of the Spirit of Life who moves to restore the Creation of the Father through faith in the Son.  This is a divine love which makes children of God out of slaves of the Devil, redeeming them from a present and future destruction, that they might live fully restored with Him forever.

 

Thus St. John can write that everyone who has received and been transformed by such divine love, works to purify themselves, even as God Himself is pure.  This is not a motivation of the Law, but of the Gospel—a fruit of righteousness which springs forth from the Vine of Jesus into which all His people are grafted by grace through faith.  This impelling of the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of Christ, causes a child of God to seek first the Kingdom and righteousness of God, daily striving to drown the dark impulses of the fallen nature, to return to God through faith and repentance when sin overtakes them, and to look forward to the resurrected life where neither sin nor death nor Devil have any influence ever again.  This love of God brings present into the world a foretaste of the world to come, where the saints work out the love of God in the world around them as a reflection of the love first shown to them in the Cross of Christ.  Only such divine love can change the human heart, and thus change the world.

 

Yet there will always be those who prefer their enslavement to the Devil over the grace of liberty in Christ, as their twisted passions lead them to hate each other, the communion of the saints, and most pointedly God Himself.  Even so, it is not the saints of God who are being transformed by the murderous deceptions of the Devil, but rather the kingdom of darkness which is being invaded by the light and love of the Kingdom of God every time a fallen sinner is born again by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  The Devil’s minions will always hate the Kingdom of God, not least because they cannot stop the Gospel from shining on every human heart, offering redemption and eternal life to all who will turn and accept it.

 

There is a path which leads away from the chasm of destruction yawning before our people, toward which they move with hastening step by the fanned flames of the Devil’s hatred and murderous ambition:  the Law and Gospel of Jesus Christ.  In the Gospel of Jesus’ grace and mercy, hearts are transformed and lives are renewed so that they might reflect the love, compassion, and goodness of God.  In the Law of Christ, all people, saints and sinners alike, are at least outwardly curbed from excesses of evil, given a mirror by which to examine themselves before the holiness of God, and provided a guide toward virtue rather than vice.  Yet what the Law can only accomplish outwardly, the Gospel transforms inwardly, so that the love which the Law commands becomes the love which is poured into the heart by Jesus.  If we are to be saved as a people from the hell on earth which the Devil is driving us toward, it is by the preaching of faith and repentance in Jesus Christ.  Only in Jesus will we see the miraculous resurrection of ourselves and our people, as the Devil is put to flight by the dawning of His saving grace.  Amen.

 

  

As the Father Sent Jesus: An Easter Season Meditation on John 20

Then the same day at evening,

being the first day of the week,

when the doors were shut

where the disciples were assembled

 for fear of the Jews,

came Jesus and stood in the midst,

and saith unto them,

Peace be unto you.

 

And when he had so said,

he shewed unto them his hands and his side.

Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

Then said Jesus to them again,

Peace be unto you:

as my Father hath sent me,

even so send I you.

 

And when he had said this,

he breathed on them,

and saith unto them,

Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them;

and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

 

I think it is easy in our day for churches to forget why they are sent, and what they are sent to do.  To step back for a moment and examine the churches around us in our communities, nation, and world, is to see a profusion of mission statements, doctrinal convictions, political posturing, and merchandizing.  Some fellowships sell their members books and services, including coffee, pastries, and trinkets in the fellowship hall, or perhaps online through a virtual marketplace.  Some offer child care and youth programs for every age and every persuasion, while others might offer a dizzying array of adult programs that focus on whatever categories appeal to various ages and professions of adults.  Some organize marches for social justice, and recently have lent their hands and defense to violent mobs who burned down cities.  Some feed into specific political parties to see their doctrinal ambitions turned into law, and reflexively turn political policy into their doctrine preached from their pulpits.  Some are primarily focused on feeding the poor in Haiti or Ghana or another far flung place, while some are focused on the homeless and hungry on their own city streets.  Some hock get-rich quick schemes (just send the leader a dollar and God will send you two…) which only seem to enrich the people at the top of the pyramid, while the poor keep piously shouting out bumper sticker theology slogans and shelling out their regular contributions.  If these fellowships are even remotely Christian beyond some historical or linguistic tie to Christians who formed them generations ago, they must retain some element of Biblical fidelity and the Gospel of Jesus.  However, many of these fellowships are little more than social clubs of various sizes and demographics, and Scripture takes a distant back seat to any other mission focus that happens to capture the current leadership’s attention.

 

Is it any wonder so many people in our time and place have grown dismissive of the “institutional church”?  When so many church fellowships have adopted mission statements that make them pale shadows of other worldly associations, what interest is that to any thinking person?  If you really want to influence politics, you can join a political group; if you want wealth and prosperity, you can learn a trade, work hard, build a business, and join the chamber of commerce or the Rotary Club; if you want to feed the hungry, you can send your money to a host of charities or government institutions who do that for a living; if you want child care and programs and hobby groups, you can buy them or join them at will.  Civic institutions and associations which gather for all kinds of reasons, some better than others, tend to be a lot better at doing their mission, because they know what their primary mission is.  Your local Elks Club, or biker club, or Good Will, or Habitat for Humanity, or American Legion, or thousands of other variants do their thing, and do it pretty well.  If the Church is trying to compete at being a better civic or social club than what’s out there, it’s going to lose… and in point of fact, fellowships that are trying to do so, have been losing members and general respect of the population for decades.  The brass tacks of the analysis that our generation has awoken to, is that if churches are no more than weak echoes of these secular clubs and associations, they are not worth anyone’s time, effort, or money.

 

Fortunately, Jesus didn’t establish His Church to be a vapid, distracted, self-righteous, ridiculous caricature of worldly associations.  Rather, Jesus sent His disciples just as the Father had sent Him.  That’s a point that needs to sink into our modern church fellowships, and sink in deep.  Jesus didn’t build a single house or sign a single political petition to house and feed the poor… and when He did miraculously feed the poor after preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins to them, often the people forgot the message and just clamored for more food, until Jesus had to leave them behind.  Jesus spent no time trying to influence the political structure of Jerusalem, Israel, or Rome.  Jesus didn’t sell a single trinket or bauble, nor build any pyramid schemes to dupe people out of their money.  Jesus didn’t create an international supply chain to send food and medicine to distant lands, nor promise that if people just gave their money to Him and His ministry, God would bless them in return with more material wealth through some cosmic money printing service.  What He did do, however, is something no earthly association could accomplish:  He sacrificed Himself for the sins of the world, rose again from the dead, and gave to His Church a mission to preach the Gospel, make disciples of Jesus by teaching and baptizing, and declare the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who would repent and believe in Him.  The converse was also true, that the Church would proclaim the Law of condemnation which threatened the eternal destiny of all people apart from faith and repentance in Christ.  These are the Keys of the Kingdom Jesus referred to in Matthew’s Gospel, and which John describes Jesus clearly giving to His disciples on that first Easter Sunday after He won them through His Cross.

 

What the Church has been given, is something that no other human institution on earth can do:  preach with power and authority the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil, all by grace through faith in Jesus.  Sin and death are plainly written in the faces, hearts, and minds of all people, and so all people need this Gospel of grace—all people need Jesus.  All people need to hear the Word of the Lord which endures forever, which tells them where they came from, where they are going, and what God has done for them.  All people need to be born again from above by Water and Spirit, that they might walk in a new life that never ends, and which persists forever beyond the shadows of an earthly grave, destined to rise again in glory on the Last Day, just as Jesus rose again that first Easter.

 

When the church tries to be a day care, a civic club, a public charity, or a political action committee, it trades eternal blessings for worldly vanities, rightly inheriting world derision.  The power and perseverance of the Church resides not in her good works, but in the Word and Spirit which gives her life and mission, which reaches into the darkest recesses of the human soul with the light of God’s love, forgiveness, and mercy, all given freely through Jesus.  There is no parallel to this in all the world, or across all human history, because mankind cannot save itself, no matter how hard it works in delusions of grandeur toward such aims.  Only the love and mercy of God tames human passions twisted toward the destruction of self and neighbor, and empowers those who are born again to love others as they have been loved by Jesus.  And only the Church has been given this awesome power, to proclaim freedom to the captives who sit in darkness, and to speak the saving Word of Jesus to all who will repent and believe in Him.

 

This Easter, may the Christian fellowships gathered everywhere remember the power of what they are given, and the mission they are sent to accomplish.  There is no other effort, regardless of how noble or useful it may seem, which rises to the majesty and imperative of preaching Christ Crucified for the sins of the world, of declaring the forgiveness of sins to all who turn and believe, and warning all of the eternal Judgment which awaits those who refuse God’s grace.  This is a mission cast in Word and Sacrament, where the power comes not from the works of men, but from the Spirit of the Living God who established such means in our world for the salvation of sinners, reconciled to the Father by the Blood of the Son.  Let the Church of Jesus Christ shed her soiled and sodden linens of worldly manufacture, and return to the robes of righteousness and grace which only Jesus can provide.  For as the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus has sent us—and there is no power in heaven, or earth, or under the earth, which can stand against the Word and Spirit of God.  Amen.

Waiting on the Promises of God: A Holy Saturday Meditation on Psalm 22

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

why art thou so far from helping me,

and from the words of my roaring?

O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not;

and in the night season, and am not silent.

But thou art holy,

O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

Our fathers trusted in thee:

they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.

They cried unto thee, and were delivered:

they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

 

The Holy Triduum of Easter begins with Maundy Thursday commemorating when Jesus established His Holy Supper with His disciples during the Passover feast.  It moves quickly into Good Friday, as the Gospels record Jesus’ betrayal in the dark morning hours, His mock trial, brutal scourging, and execution by crucifixion later that afternoon.  On the morning of the third day, He rose again from the dead and showed Himself alive to His disciples, victorious over sin, death, and hell.  Soon the Church shall gather all over the world to celebrate the resurrection of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who gave His gracious gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who would repent and believe in Him.  Easter is the highest, most holy day in Christendom, and for good reason—it is the first day of the New Creation, inaugurated by Jesus as the New Adam by whom all who live in His grace by faith live forever.  It is the reason the Church gathers and worships on Sunday, not to abrogate the ancient Sabbath, but to show it fulfilled in Jesus.  Soon the bells will ring, the songs be lifted up in joyous celebration, and the Gospel be proclaimed to all who will hear it.  For God has so loved the world that He has given His Son to save it, to take our place under His judgement for our wickedness and corruption, and give to us through His Easter Resurrection, eternal life reconciled to God.

 

Yet between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, there is an often forgotten day from which the Church can learn much.  Holy Saturday, the vigil kept by the disciples of Jesus while His body lay in the cold stone tomb, was one of great fear, darkness, and dwindling hope.  They had heard Jesus from His cross utter those mournful words, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” not long before He gave up His spirit.  They knew the Hebrew idiom, that to quote the first line of a Psalm was to quote the whole, and so their minds would be filled with the ancient prophecy of King David who saw forward nearly 1000 years to the Cross of Christ when the Holy Spirit inspired him to write it.  Jesus did not despair upon His Cross, but in His dying breaths, taught His disciples to wait upon the Lord according to His promises, even through the worst agonies of death.  Jesus had already told them this was going to occur, and that He would rise again.  Jesus pointed His disciples, surrounded by the same wickedness and evil that was unjustly taking His life, to the promises of God, so that like all the ancient saints of Israel, they might wait in faith upon the Lord.  From an earthly perspective, death seems final and triumphant over every creature, but it is not so for God, the Creator and Savior of the universe.  For God, death and hell were simply the last of humanity’s foes that He would conquer through the Vicarious Atonement of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world.  While people may have trouble trusting in the Word of the Lord in the face of death, God shows us that His Word rules all things, and cannot be stopped, even by death.  Thus it is that Jesus could reveal to His disciples that Abraham, who lived 2000 years before Him, rejoiced to see His day; that Moses and Elijah could meet with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration centuries after their earthly walk was done; how Lazarus could walk and dine with them after having been dead and buried for four days, raised by the power of His Word.

 

When the celebration of Easter is done, like the Gospel itself, the lesson of Holy Saturday will remain.  In every age of the People of God, there are forces which mount their opposition to all that is holy, who use violence and death to move forward their evil machinations, hoping to intimidate and crush the faithful through fear.  Regardless of our local communities’ relative experience of peace or conflict in any given time, Jesus teaches His disciples to trust in the Word of the Lord, for His Word endures forever.  There is no challenge of man or demon which can unseat His divine promises, nor pluck any of His children from His almighty hand.  Like our Savior, we will all pass through the valley of the shadow of death, but our Lord who has conquered death shall be with us forever.  And when He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead, to make the final separation of all evil from His renewed creation, the resurrected saints shall shine forth from every generation as one holy fellowship like the stars of heaven, in eternal testimony to the wonders of His love and grace.

 

Be of good cheer, for just as our Lord’s resurrection made faith become sight to His disciples, so faith believes the Word which has already been fulfilled, and looks forward in certain hope to the Word yet to be fulfilled.  For what the Word of the Lord has freely given us by His grace through faith—forgiveness, life, and salvation—He will bring to fulfillment not only for us, but for the whole world.  For Christ has come, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.  Let us always hear Him from His Cross as He teaches us to wait in faith upon His Word of promise, even as we hear Him speak His Gospel triumphantly from His empty tomb.  For the Word of the Lord shall endure forever, as will all those who abide in it by faith— thus we wait upon the Lord in a sure hope which enlightens every darkness, quickens every heart, and dispels every fear, no matter our time and place.  Amen.