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.