John 2:1-11; Ephesians 5:22-32
Epiphany 2

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    God’s good gift of marriage has always been under assault.  Right from the beginning Satan subverted the marital order of husband and wife by luring Eve to turn away from the Word of God which Adam had preached to her.  Division and self-orientation tainted marital unions from then on.  The assault on marriage can even happen under the guise of religion.  In medieval times those who rejected married life and the one flesh sexual union were honored–monks and priests and nuns were held up as leading a higher and holier life than those who embraced ordinary, earthy things like marriage.  Today, our problem tends to be falling into the ditch on the other side of the road, where people take pride in their supposed freedom of sexual expression and doing what they want with their bodies.  But it’s still the same root issue: marriage is thought of as non-essential.  Maybe it’s a nice cultural practice if you want to, celebrate the couple and have a big reception, but in the end just a piece of paper for legal purposes.  (And of course, if getting married means legally losing financial benefits, well then, skip the wedding.  Money trumps matrimony.)

    Whether you’re on the prudish side of things where you think celibacy gives you some supposedly higher state of holiness before God, or whether you’re on the libertine side of things where you just follow your heart and sleep with someone you’re not married to, in the end it’s two sides of the same coin.  In both cases, it’s the same sin: degrading and casting aside God’s gift of marriage.  “No thanks, God, I’ve got a better way.”  

    However, in today’s Gospel we see that Jesus approves of marriage and blesses it and the sexual relationship within it as good.  Marriage is not just a human arrangement.  It’s a divine joining together of a man and a woman, an act of God making two people one flesh.  That’s why it’s called holy matrimony.  Don’t ever forget that God created marriage and joined Adam and Eve together before the fall into sin.  He’s the One who created us male and female.  God instituted this for the mutual delight and companionship of husbands and wives, and for the creation of new human life when He grants it.  So whether you’re married or single, God teaches you in His Word to honor marriage highly, especially in how you talk about it with friends and family and co-workers.  Raunchy joking about sex does not honor marriage.  Belittling your spouse does not honor marriage.  Talking about marriage as if it’s this burdensome prison that limits your freedom doesn’t honor marriage.  Rather, we should remember and emphasize the great good that God works through this holy estate.

    First of all, in marriage (as in all our vocations) God works to protect us from selfishness.  He places a flesh and blood spouse directly before our eyes, with specific and real needs.  God calls us out of a self-absorbed life that invents its own good works into a devoted life that takes care of the spouse He has given.  A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed Himself for her.  That’s why if a husband is complaining that his wife is hard to deal with or that she’s not “meeting his needs,” he needs to quit whining and man up.  Your job is not primarily to be a receiver but a giver, sacrificing yourself for her.  It’s time to focus on how to draw her to yourself again.  And likewise, if a wife is lamenting that her husband is not turning out to be the man she hoped he would be, she should remember that God’s call to respect her husband is not dependent on how romantic or patient or communicative he’s been lately.  Honor him as your head as the church honors Christ.  With a gentle spirit, don’t give up looking for him to be the man God has called him and declared him to be.  It is God’s intent that through this mutual self-giving, His people would be built up and that self-orientation would be put down.  

    Secondly, in marriage God works to protect us from lust.  The book of Proverbs consistently refers to sexual enticements, pornographic enticements, as one of the chief ways in which people are led into ruin.  In marriage God seeks to protect us from the destructiveness of lust.  St. Paul counsels all who suffer from lust to marry, for this is God’s good and gracious provision for rendering proper affection one to the other.  This is also one of the reasons why Paul counsels spouses not to withhold themselves from each other for lengthy periods of time.  One of God’s blessings in marriage is the dampening and controlling of lust.

    Thirdly, through marriage God works to rescue us from doubt.  How can we be certain that we have chosen the right partner?  Through marriage God guards against such doubt by giving you the certainty that He is the One who married you to your spouse; that person is the one the Lord Himself has given you to love and to be committed to, even if they’re less than perfect.  And what the Lord has done stands far above any feelings you may or may not have or any later wondering whether you should have chosen differently.  Reject the pagan notion of a soul mate!  A man and woman may in freedom choose to marry each other, but what really and finally counts is that it is the Lord who unites them, working through the authorities that He has established.  In this way God protects marriage from doubt with the certainty that He is the One who has made the union.

    Fourthly, in marriage God seeks to protect us from loneliness.  Through the working of the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh, we can easily become isolated and cut off, waiting for that perfect person, living in a world of books and screens rather than flesh and blood.  In marriage God is at work to protect us from that.  When it is His will, He gives us a companion for comfort and camaraderie in life.  In the Garden of Eden, God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”  Adam received Eve as the God-given companion that brought them both completeness.  Such is God’s intention for marriage also today.

    Fifthly, in marriage God seeks to protect us from the delusion of self-sufficiency.  We tend to think that we can do just fine on our own apart from God.  Without the calling of serving a spouse in marriage (or serving our neighbor in any of our vocations), sinners would perceive even less need for God.  When husband and wife fail each other, as is bound to happen, God puts His law to work.  He confronts their spiritual self-reliance; He afflicts their consciences.  In this way God drives them back to Himself, to find forgiveness, strength, and hope in Christ.  Confession and Absolution, the preaching of the Gospel, and the Body and Blood of Christ become their lifeblood, making them right with God and able to serve each other again.

    Finally, through marriage God is at work to create and preserve families and good order in society.  When God established and blessed marriage He said, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.”  Through that creative word, God blesses the union of husband and wife so that children are conceived and born.  There is no such thing as a Christian marriage that is purposely childless.  This is also why same-sex marriage simply does not exist in God’s sight.  The complementarity of male and female is essential to what marriage is.  Every child has a father and a mother–and needs a father and a mother who are joined and committed to each other.  God’s purpose in marriage is for husband and wife to serve not only each other but also to have children whom they provide for and protect and nurture in the training and instruction of the Lord.  Founded upon God’s gift of the family, human society can be more peaceably ordered.  And this, in turn, gives a good setting for the saving Word of Christ to be proclaimed and taught both in the church and in the home.

    All of this is God’s good gift.  And all of this is meant to drive us to the greater reality that marriage points to.  The fact of the matter is, to one degree or another, all marriages are broken marriages; for it is two sinners who are united, whose only hope is in the forgiveness of sins that comes from Jesus.  And whether a Christian is single or married, divorced, widowed, young or old, as members of the Church we all are in a marital relationship that rescues and saves us.  For the Church has been united with her holy Groom, Jesus. She is the betrothed of Christ.  In the Epistle today Paul spent a lot of time talking about husbands and wives and marriage.  And then he concludes his comments by saying, “What I’m really talking about though is Christ and the Church.”  Earthly marriage is a sign of the greater perfect love that God has for His people and the heavenly union that exists between them.

    From all eternity, before marriage was instituted, it was planned that Christ would lay down His life for His woman, sacrifice Himself for the church, to give her life.  Adam was put into a deep sleep, and Eve was created from his side.  Jesus was put into the sleep of death on the cross, so that a new Eve might be created from the sacramental blood and water that flowed from His side.  St. John calls the church “the elect Lady,” chosen and redeemed by Christ.  For Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having any spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.  For all of you whom sin has contaminated, or whose marriages and families are broken, Jesus shed His blood to cleanse you of every sin; He sanctified you and made you holy for Himself by the water and the Word of Baptism.  You stand before God spotless and perfect in the family of His Church, His holy bride.

    Just as husband and wife are given in marriage to become one flesh, so you now you as the church are the body of Christ, one flesh with Him through baptism.  So if He is the Son of God, then you are called sons of God.  If He holds in His hand the riches and treasures of heaven, those treasures are also yours to hold and take to heart.  If He is the Righteous One, then you are declared righteous before God.  If the death He dies no longer holds Him in the grave, then neither can death hold you in the grave.  The Bride shares in everything that belongs to the Groom.  That’s how marriage works with Jesus.  What is His is now yours, too.

    This is the joy of the eternal wedding feast that we are given a glimpse of in the Gospel.  The ritual washing water of the Law is turned into the joyous wedding wine of the Gospel.  The best is saved for last, and that best is Jesus–His forgiveness and mercy and life–which are all for you, flowing like sweet wine from the mountains.  Even now in Divine Service the heavenly Groom, our Lord Christ, comes to His bride to comfort her.  He speaks to you His words of love.  He remembers the commitment He made to you at Baptism. He gives Himself to you in Holy Communion that you may share fully in His life.

    So set aside your doubts and fears and sorrows.  For it is written, “As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”  He has saved the best for you.  Come in faith to His table, that you may share in the joy of the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom that has no end.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Matthew 3:13-17
The Baptism of our Lord

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Jesus grew up like any other faithful Jewish boy, going to the synagogue weekly, and to the temple for the various feasts, as we heard last week.  And so praying and singing the psalms would have been a regular part of His life.  All the way to the end, He even prayed the Psalms on the cross.  “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” from Psalm 22.  “Into your hands I commit My Spirit” from Psalm 31.  But that raises an interesting question: Would Jesus also have also prayed the penitential psalms during His life, those Psalms that ask for God’s mercy and forgiveness?  Could the sinless Son of God pray Psalm 51, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out My transgressions”?  We can picture Jesus praying parts of Psalm 69 to His Father like this, “Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. . . Because for Your sake I have borne reproach . . . Zeal for Your house has consumed me.”  The New Testament even says that those words apply to Jesus.  But what about verse five of that same Psalm, “O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hidden from You”?

    It would be easy to think that Jesus could not possibly have prayed those words.  But one of the things the baptism of our Lord teaches us is that Jesus must have prayed those psalms–not because He had any sins of His own to confess, but because He humbly bears our sins in His flesh and makes them His responsibility and confesses them as if He were guilty of every single one of them.

    It was a strange sight for John the Baptizer, to see the Messiah, the One he had been preparing the way for, stepping down into the water to be baptized.  The people were coming out to John in response to his preaching of repentance, confessing their sins.  John’s baptism was for the forgiveness of sins.  And yet here is Jesus with His feet in the murky Jordan waters asking John to baptize Him.  You can understand why at first John tried to prevent Him and didn’t want to do it.

    We probably would have done just as John did.  For the truth is, we don’t necessarily want Jesus getting down into the mess and the muck of our actual everyday life in this world.  Better to keep Him at a distance all shiny and clean; better to keep Him here at church unstained and separate from our lives out in the “real” world.  We, too, try to prevent Him, keep Him away from the coarseness of our workplace or the imperfections of our home life.  It bothers us and unsettles us a bit when Jesus gets down into the daily realities of our existence.  For then there’s no more hiding the way things are with us.  Jesus’ entry into the water means things are going to be stirred up and changed, everything out in the open.  And that means repentance for us, which is never easy.

    But it is good.  For Jesus enters the water to take our place.  Jesus said to John, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”  In doing this Jesus was fulfilling the Father’s righteous plan to save sinners by trading places with us–the holy for the unholy.  Jesus receives this baptism for sinners in order that He might become the Sinner, the only sinner.  Like a great sponge He absorbs the whole’s world’s sin into Himself, and counts Himself guilty of it all, so that we would be counted righteous in God’s sight.  It is written in 2 Corinthians, “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus takes our curse of death so that through Him we might have the blessing of His divine life.  Here in the water is where it all starts.  Jesus begins His ministry here by accepting and taking this burden on Himself, as John would later say, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away, who carries away the sin of the world.”

    You might say that Jesus stole your sins from you in the water; He took them away.  The only way they can damn you now is if you steal them back and insist on continuing in them and keeping them away from Jesus.  Either your sins are on Him or they’re on you.  And Jesus says today, “They’re all on me.  I took them.  Believe that; deal with it. You don’t get to hold on to them any more; you don’t get to keep beating yourself up over them.  I became your pride, your greed, your lust, your immorality, your jealousy, your impatience, your laziness and weakness.  And in turn you have become My righteousness, My holiness, My glory.  Today I begin My sacred journey toward Calvary, bearing and carrying the sin of the world, so that I may destroy it there by My death and the shedding of My blood.”  

    It’s interesting to note that after Jesus persuaded John to baptize Him, it says that John “consented” or permitted Him.  It’s the same word that Jesus Himself later uses when He says, “Let the little children, permit, allow the little children to come to Me.”  That word in Greek is closely related to the word meaning to be forgiven, released, let go of our sins.  The point for us is this: Because Jesus was permitted to be baptized, there is now forgiveness and release for us in the water of baptism.  By the power of His Word and Spirit, all our sins washed away.  They have been taken up by Christ and carried to the cross where they were paid for and destroyed forever.  You are forgiven, pure and holy in Jesus’ name.

    Proof of what Jesus’ began to accomplish in His baptism is shown by the signs that appeared that day.  As soon as Jesus was baptized, the Gospel says “behold”–pay attention to this–the heavens were opened to Him.  That’s what Jesus accomplishes: He opens the heavens by His taking on and taking away the sin of the world.  Heaven was closed to us fallen creatures.  There was no entrance permitted for us by our own efforts or striving.  But now the heavens are opened to Him, the righteous One, and to all who are baptized into Him and who share in His righteousness by faith.

    Then it is written that “the Spirit of God descended like a dove and alighted upon Him.”  That imagery of the dove is important, particularly as it connects this event to Old Testament events involving water and new life.  In the very beginning we hear that the Holy Spirit was hovering, like a bird gliding over the face of the waters.  The Holy Spirit was there with His creative power to bring life to the world that was being made.  And then we hear of Noah sending out a dove from the ark, hovering over the waters, and then bringing back a freshly plucked olive branch, as a sign of the new creation that Noah and his family would enter after the flood.  The Holy Spirit coming in the form of a dove points to Christ as the bringer of the new creation.  It’s all there in Him.  Through our baptism into Christ we receive the same Holy Spirit which He was anointed with.  The Holy Spirit alights upon us to bring us new life, to make us new creatures, and to give us entrance into the new creation.

    Finally, it is written that a voice came from heaven, the Father’s voice declaring, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  God the Father was greatly pleased to see His Son obediently humbling Himself in love like this to save us, beginning His journey to the cross.  Because of what Jesus has done, all the baptized now hear this very same voice of our heavenly Father saying, “You are My beloved Child; in you I am well pleased.  I see no fault, no blemish in you–only my perfect and holy son or daughter.  I am with you in the messiness of your day to day to life to sanctify you and sustain you.  You may feel worn down, but I will never cast you aside or forsake you; find your rest in My Son.  I have called you by name; you are Mine.  Nothing in all creation can separate you from My love.”  

    All three persons of the Trinity are present here at Jesus’ baptism, the very ones whose name you are baptized into–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And so you have been drawn into that divine fellowship.  Since Jesus has put Himself in the water for you, your baptism gives you His life.  All your sins are washed away.  You have a place in the Father’s house forever.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Luke 2:41-52

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    The Gospel of Luke gives us more detail about Jesus’ childhood than any other Gospel.  Luke begins his Gospel by telling us that his account is an orderly and careful narrative based on eyewitness testimony.  We get a strong hint as to who one of those eyewitnesses is in today’s reading.  Luke points out that “His mother kept all these things in her heart”–just as earlier we heard at Jesus’ birth when the shepherds came that “Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.”  Luke is able to give us these details because Mary was there for it all, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit Luke recounts her true story.  

    This story has the ring of truth to it all the more since Mary doesn’t make herself look particularly good.  She, along with Joseph, lost track of Jesus for an entire day before they even noticed that He wasn’t there!  Think about that.  Mary and Joseph were faithful parents, but also parents of a sinless child–one who did what He was supposed to do, who honored and obeyed and never rebelled against His mother or father.  So perhaps they became a bit lax and neglected Him here.  You can understand how it would have been easy for them to take for granted that Jesus was where He was supposed to be on that journey home–in the large caravan of family and friends that they were traveling in for safety’s sake.

    Have you ever done that–taken Jesus for granted and not paid attention to Him like you should?  It can be easy to get lax and lazy about looking to Christ, meditating on His Word, praying in His name. You figure you know enough about Jesus; you don’t really need Bible class, you went to Sunday School!  It’ll be fine if you don’t have daily devotions or give attention to Jesus’ Word for a while.  As you travel through life and go along with the crowd, you turn your attention elsewhere and leave Jesus behind.  Next thing you know, you’ve journeyed a long way from your Lord.  Perhaps the fear has even struck you, “What if there’s no way back and I’m cut off from Him?  What if I’m the one who’s lost because I lost Him?”  You can understand Mary’s panic that she had lost track of the Savior Himself.  Perhaps the anxiety we often feel in our own life comes from the distance we’ve built up between ourselves and Jesus.

    And then Mary does something that we also do in the midst of our worry and anxiety and stress; she says to Jesus, “Why have you done this to us?”  Even though it’s our own neglect or failings, we still want to blame the Lord for what we endure, as if the sinless One has somehow not done the right thing by us.  When we go through hard or stressful times, we can be tempted to say, “Lord, why did you do this to me?” as if the consequences of our fall into sin were His fault.  Of course, you can also hear the good motherly tone in Mary’s voice, which is not simply expressing anger but relief at finding Him, and wonder at what He was doing there.

    Jesus’ response to His mother indicates that they should’ve known all along that He would’ve been in His Father’s house.  “Why did you seek Me?” He said.  This was an easy one.  And yet it clearly illustrates how we fallen human beings tend to search for God and seek His presence in the wrong places.  We think we can get closer to Him simply by going out into nature.  And it is true that getting away from the digitized artificiality of contemporary life and back to creation is helpful in orienting us toward the Creator.  But without the Word of God, such experiences of nature will tend toward paganism.  We think we can get closer to Him through inwardly focused self-help philosophies, in emotional experiences, in superstitious spirituality.  But that’s not where God has promised to be with His grace.  We may wonder why Joseph and Mary didn’t look right away in the temple.  But then again, when we’re panicked or troubled, how often are we busy running around everywhere but the house of God.

    Jesus begins to reveal to us here that the temple, the true and abiding dwelling place of God is not a building but His own eternal flesh.  The temple is Jesus Himself.  For it is written that in Christ all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.  Therefore, if you wish to seek God, you must seek Christ and nothing else.  And if you are seeking Christ, you must look for Him according to His human nature, in those physical, audible, concrete places where He is present for you.  Seek Him in His Word and preaching.  Listen for His help in confession and absolution.  Find Him in the supper of His body and blood, given for your forgiveness and healing.  Jesus is still about His Father’s business, teaching us and comforting us and giving out His gifts of life and deliverance and hope.

    The human nature of Jesus here is the key thing.  You may be wondering, if Jesus is God–and He is–why would He be asking the teachers questions, as the Gospel says.  How could He grow in wisdom if He already knows all things? Well, remember that prior to His resurrection, Jesus was in what we call the state of humiliation.  In other words, He didn’t make full use of His divine knowledge; He had emptied Himself of His powers as God.  So when Jesus amazes the teachers, it wasn’t as if He was cheating and using His divine omniscience.  Rather, right there before the teachers is perfect humanity, a boy who loves His heavenly Father and who is absolutely enthralled with pondering the Scriptures, who has no sin to cloud His understanding and insight.  Jesus had been hearing and learning the Scriptures all His life and was growing up with a perfect, sinless grasp of them as a true human being.  Jesus was living that perfect and holy life for us so that He might give us His holiness as a gift and make us perfectly human again.  In Jesus, we learn to love the Word of God and to ponder it and meditate on it just as He did.

    All of this happens when Jesus is at the age of twelve.  At this age, Jewish boys would begin to leave the society of women and enter the society of men. The rabbis instructed Jewish fathers to be gentle with their boys until age twelve, and then begin to teach them the way of manly living, including strict discipline if necessary. Probably at this point, Joseph would have begun serious teaching of his carpentry trade to Jesus. The twelve-year old Jesus was now being treated as a man, and that is why He went up with Joseph to Jerusalem for the Passover.

    The point is, a Jewish boy begins to do his work at age 12; and at twelve, we see Jesus already apply Himself to His proper work – not only the things of His guardian-father, Joseph, but especially the things of His heavenly Father.  For He says to Mary His mother, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Conceived without the aid of a man in the womb of the blessed virgin Mary, God the Father is Jesus’ Father–in a way that is different than God is our Father. Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, of one substance with the Father.  Jesus is the Son of God by nature; we are children of God by grace through faith in Him.

    So now Jesus begins to apply Himself to the work that the Father has given Him to do, and He will keep on working until that work is perfected.  In Jerusalem 21 years later, He will say, “It is finished.”  Remember that Jesus is in the temple, where sacrifices would occur.  It was the time of the Passover, when the lamb would be offered up in remembrance of how death passed over God’s people in Egypt.  The shed blood of Christ the Lamb of God causes eternal death to pass over you; His holy cross takes away the sins of the world.  

    So twice Mary would have to feel the loss of her Son, when He had to be about His Father’s business.  Mary surely recalled this day in the temple as she stood at the foot of her Son’s cross, and lost Him again, this time to death and the grave, only to receive Him back again on the third day, risen from the dead.  Here Jesus said, “Why did you seek me?”  Later angels would announce to the women at the tomb, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  The cross and resurrection were etched into Jesus’ entire life.  Jesus had to be about His Father’s business, dying and rising, to rescue Mary and you and me and the world from sin and death.  He is alive to lift you out of emptiness and despair and to give you His mercy and His life.

    You may sometimes lose track of Jesus, but He never loses track of you.  He grows in wisdom and stature to perfectly restore your humanity and to bring you back again into the Father’s good graces.  Jesus lived your whole life for you, even the challenging years of young adulthood, in order to give you new life with God.  Your hold on Him may grow weak; but His baptismal hold on you is strong and sure.  He put His saving name on you, and He’s not going to go back on His Word.  You can count on this Jesus, true God in the flesh, who already as a Boy is applying Himself to His work on your behalf.

    So then, since you truly are brothers and sisters of Christ, resolve to be about the heavenly Father’s business in this new year.  Do not be conformed to this world and drift with the crowd away from Christ Jesus.  But rather be transformed by His words and sacraments, treasuring them up in your hearts, growing up into Him who is your Head.  By the mercies of God, offer up your bodies as living sacrifices in love for one another, holy and acceptable to God in Christ.  Seek the Lord in His holy house, until we all finally come to the stature of the fullness of Christ on the Last Day.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Luke 2:21
Circumcision and Naming of our Lord

    ✠ In the name of Jesus ✠

    Somebody randomly walking in off the street tonight might wonder why in the world we’re remembering and focusing on Jesus’ circumcision, especially on a New Year’s Eve.  It seems a little bit indiscreet.  But in the Biblical way of marking time, now after sundown, this is the 8th day of Christmas, the day of Jesus’ life on which He was both named and circumcised.  We observe this event because it is the beginning of the obedience of Christ by which we are saved.  As our substitute, a true human being, Christ actively obeyed all of the demands of God’s Law in our place in order to save us.  He didn’t just hang around for thirty-some years waiting to die and rise again for us.  Right from the very beginning He was diligently carrying out the Father’s plan to rescue us by keeping the entire Old Testament Law for us, of which circumcision was a part.

    We heard this command to circumcise given to Abraham in the Old Testament reading.  Circumcision was a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants.  Circumcision showed that they were set apart from the other nations, that they belonged to God as His own special people.  And circumcision also showed very tangibly that it would be through the literal Seed of Abraham that the Savior would come, his true descendant and offspring.

    So when Jesus is circumcised, He is showing Himself to be one of those descendants, born under the Law in order to fulfill the old covenant.  He is the true Seed, the Promised One God had said would come out of Israel to rescue and redeem His people.  Through Jesus God the Father truly made Abraham to be the father of many nations.  For we heard in the Epistle that if we belong to Christ through faith, then we are Abraham’s seed, his true offspring in Jesus, as numerous as the stars in the sky.  By being circumcised, then, Jesus was beginning His mission to save you.  For He was placing Himself into the old covenant, so that He could truly keep the entire Law and fulfill it all for you, establishing a new covenant between God and His people.  Jesus’ circumcision is an important part of the way in which we are saved.

    The fact that we tend to overlook these active ways in which Christ saved us, focusing rather almost exclusively on the passive ones like His suffering, is a reminder that we sometimes misunderstand what our own Christian life is all about.  We tend to think of God-pleasing living not so much as what we do but as what we don’t do.  Many think of Christianity as a series of prohibitions: “Don't do this!  Don't do that!”  Just keep your nose clean and God will be happy.

    But the fact of the matter is that the Christian life is as much about what you actively do as it is about what you passively refrain from doing.  That’s why Luther’s explanations of the Ten Commandments are so helpful.  In them he shows us both sides, not only the passive restrictions, but also the active commands, not only what we shouldn’t do but also what we should do.  It’s not only that you shouldn’t curse and swear by God’s name, but that you should use His name rightly to pray and to give Him thanks.  It’s not only that you shouldn’t murder but that you should help your neighbor in every bodily need.  It’s not only that you shouldn’t commit adultery but that you should love and honor your spouse.  It’s not only that you shouldn’t steal but that you should work hard and help your neighbor improve and protect his possessions and income.  It’s not only that you shouldn’t give false testimony against your neighbor but that you should defend his reputation and put the best construction on everything.  Above all, it’s not only that you shouldn’t have any false gods, but that you should love and trust in the true God above all things and worship Him and gladly hear the preaching of His Word.  By this we can see how far short we have fallen in truly keeping His commands.  As the confession says, we have sinned both “by what we have done and by what we have left undone.”  Let us repent of where we have fallen short in the past year and return to the Lord.

    The good news for us today is that Christ didn’t leave anything undone.  He not only refrained from all sinful thoughts, words, or deeds, but He also actively carried out every single requirement and commandment of the Law in our behalf:  honoring His parents, remembering the Sabbath day, serving His neighbor in need, loving His heavenly Father and everyone around Him with all that He had.  When we trust in Christ, God credits His perfect, sinless life as our own.  We are holy and righteous in God’s sight through Christ.  We need Jesus’ fulfilling of the Law to rescue and save us.  And it all began on the day He was circumcised.

    Some of you may be wondering if circumcision is still commanded by God.  The answer is “No.”  Neither, of course, are animal sacrifices or the various Old Testament meals.  All of those ceremonial aspects of the Law were types and foreshadowings of the fulfillment of the covenant which Christ came to bring about.  With His holy life, He brought that part of the Law to its completion and culmination.  The moral Law, as summarized in the Ten Commandments, certainly still applies to us.  But the ceremonial Law has been made obsolete by Christ.  For He has established a new covenant, a covenant based on faith in His blood, which was shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, blood first shed at His circumcision.

    What counts now according to Romans 3 is not circumcision of the flesh but circumcision of the heart, in which the sinful flesh, the sinful nature is cut off and slain in repentance, so that through faith, Christ may live in us before God in righteousness and purity forever.  Now we are made to be God’s holy and chosen people by being baptized into the sinless Christ and believing in Him.  As Colossians 2 says, “In Christ you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.”

    That’s why circumcision occurred on the 8th day.  The 8th day signifies a reaching beyond the seven days of the old creation into the everlasting day of the new creation, which would commence on the day of Christ’s resurrection.  Jesus Himself was cut off for us on the cross in the flesh and then bodily raised again on Sunday, the 8th day, so that through baptism we ourselves would be a new creation in Him.  Just as there were eight people on the ark who entered into a new world through the waters of the flood, so we have entered a new world with Christ by our baptismal union with Him.  We live in the unending 8th day of His resurrection life, in which the ravages of time can no longer do us any harm.  

    During this past year we have felt those ravages in both small and big ways, in the deterioration of our possessions or resources or health, even in the loss of our loved ones.  We pray God’s mercy on us to help us endure in the year ahead, even as we thank him for all the many blessings of the year now past.  But let us especially give thanks to God tonight that He has taught us to number our days, to not set our hearts on this passing world, and that He has given us a sure hope in Christ, who is the Lord of time and creation.  When the fullness of time had come God sent forth His Son born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, that we would receive the adoption as His sons, heirs of His eternal kingdom.  Focusing on Christ’s active obedience, let us resolve in year to come to be diligent and active in doing good works, not in order to earn God’s favor, but precisely because He has already given us His favor fully and freely in Christ.  The Law stands fulfilled in Jesus, down to the smallest detail. All of it He has kept for you.  His perfect obedience is yours. And you are His.  God bless and keep each of you throughout the upcoming new year.

    ✠ In the name of Jesus ✠

Holy Innocents
Matthew 2:13-18

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    The church’s paraments are red today–not to match the remaining poinsettias, but because today we observe a martyr’s day, a day on which blood was shed for the sake of the newborn Christ-child.  These were the first martyrs of our Lord, the ones we call the Holy Innocents, those infant boys of Bethlehem slaughtered by the wicked King Herod.

    The first thing to say about the Holy Innocents is that they were not innocent by nature but by grace.  They, like all of us, were natural born sinners.  Psalm 51 says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”  However, all of those little boys, two years of age and under, had been circumcised on the eighth day of their lives as God had directed, marking them as ones redeemed through the promise given to Abraham, identifying them as God’s chosen people.  The Lord had told Abraham, “In your Seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”  That Seed of Abraham was none other than Jesus Christ.  Like Abraham’s son, Isaac, Jesus would be offered up as a sacrifice on the mountain.  Unlike Isaac, Jesus would go through with it all the way to atone for the sins of the whole world.  That Gospel promise is why those little boys of Bethlehem were both holy and innocent.  That is why we rightly call them martyrs. They had been connected to the gracious promise of God that was being fulfilled in their young Bethlehem neighbor, Jesus.  Even though they had been conceived and born as sinners, they were declared to be holy ones before God in Christ.

    We might be tempted to look on all of this simply as a terrible tragedy and to pity those little ones whose lives were cut short.  But in truth we should in many ways envy them!  Somewhere, Martin Luther once said that the best thing that could happen to us after being baptized is that we should die immediately.  Then, our Baptism, which is the drowning of the Old Adam, our fallen nature, would be completed right away.  Then, the New Man, which is Christ in us, would ascend to the Father to await the resurrection.  Listen to what Luther says in his own sermon of 1541 concerning the slaughter of the Holy Innocents:

"This is how the life of our Lord Jesus commenced, with the devil appearing soon on the scene to foment suffering and grief.  But he must have soon realized what he actually gained by it.  For the children were taken out of this world into heaven.  If Caesar Augustus of Rome himself had wanted to present them with his whole empire, he would not have served them so well as Herod did by his butchery.  He tore the little children from their mothers’ bosoms, and sent them to heaven, making nothing less than martyrs of them, whose blood is precious in the sight of God! For the parents it was a terrible thing, but it happened for the eventual good of the children; they felt no anguish in their souls.  So the Lord took them away at the time of His own advent into the world, as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to Himself.  Thus much good would yet come from Herod’s murdering."

    And for those of us who might shrug this off as just so much talk, it is good to recall what Luther said when he buried his own 14-year old daughter: “Beloved little Lena, you will rise and shine like the stars and the sun.  How strange it is to know that she is at peace and all is well, and yet to be so sorrowful!”  Scripture says it very clearly, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”

    The question for us to ask today is, do we believe that?  Can we find it within us to view our own death as something to be welcomed and embraced?  Do we hold to what Philippians 1 says, that for us to live is Christ, and to die is gain, and that to depart and be with Christ is far better than to linger on in this present evil age?  If you are anything like me, you don’t think that way very much of the time.  The Old Adam in us, no matter how old we may be, always whimpers that he is still too young to die!  To believe that God works all things together for our good–even in premature death–is sometimes just too much.  To trust that even the evil that Satan deals out to us, God nonetheless intends and works for our good, is a pretty big pill for us to swallow, especially during these days of pursuing Christmas cheer.

    God strengthens our weak faith, though, with the good news that we, too, are counted as Holy Innocents before God.  This is not because we are innocent by nature, but rather because we are pronounced innocent through God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ, the truly innocent Son of God.  In baptism we have received a sign greater than circumcision, the sign of the holy cross, to mark us as ones redeemed by Christ the crucified.  It is written in Colossians 2, “ In Jesus you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, . . . having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”  Like the boys of Bethlehem, you too have been connected to the saving promises of God in Jesus.  

    This connection with Jesus means that there is a battle to be fought yet in this world.  The collect we prayed earlier asked the Lord, “Put to death in us all that is in conflict with Your will, that our lives may bear witness to the faith we profess with our lips.”  That prayer is a reminder that there is a Herod still lurking within each one of us.  And he will stop at nothing to ensure that he survives and keeps on flourishing.  The Herod within me and you is always trying to get rid of Christ, because his own little kingdom can only have one king.  Either Jesus will be in charge of our lives or we will.  And the Herod within demands that, if there’s a conflict, Jesus has got to go.  “It’s my life, and I’ll do what I want!”

    Our natural desire to be on the throne of our own lives can even lead us to claim–as Herod did with the Wise Men–that we desire to worship the Christ Child at the very same time that we are plotting His elimination!  How do we do that?  When we say that we believe in Jesus but then reject His Word if we don’t like what it says,  when we think of ourselves as good people by our own merits, when we imagine that the words of approval heard from others this holiday season mean as much as the words of Holy Absolution, when we desire the food and drink of our own festive tables more than the food and drink of Christ’s table–that is when we fight against the Christ child who loved us and gave Himself for us.

    And of course I must mention how our culture is Herod-like when it comes to children.  Herod had two of his own sons put to death along with their mother out of fear for his throne.  When Caesar Augustus learned of this, he remarked that he would rather be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.  The prevalence of abortion in our culture in many ways makes Herod like a rookie as a child butcher.  There were probably a couple dozen children killed in the small village of Bethlehem–horrifying enough.  In this country it’s more than a million babies in the womb killed each year–often simply so that life plans and lifestyles don’t have to be altered–we need to hold on to that throne!  In a strange way, this is also how in vitro fertilization works.  Herod was willing to kill many in an attempt to get the one.  IVF causes many to die in an attempt to get the one.  It creates many human lives, fully human embryos, that are willfully and purposely discarded, dissected, or endlessly frozen, just to get the desired child.  All of this is the spirit of King Herod.

    Herod, though, whether he be the wicked king of Gospel history or the Old Adam in you and me, is unable to stop the work of the Savior.  The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness is not able to overcome it.  The angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream to warn him: “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him” (Matthew 2:13).  Like his namesake in the Old Testament, this Joseph goes down to Egypt to guarantee that there will be the bread of life for a world starved for the righteousness of God.  

    Herod, like Pharaoh in the days of Moses, seeks to wipe out every man-child who might be the Redeemer of God’s people—but to no avail.  The infant Savior is Himself saved by the providence of God.  The little Lord Jesus is rescued by God the Father for another day, that Good Friday prefigured and foreshadowed in the slaughter of the Holy Innocents.  On that day, the Holy and Innocent One would be set upon by another Herod, by Pontius Pilate, by high priests, by Jews and Gentiles, in order to save us from our sin.  On that day came about the true slaughter of the Holy Innocent, the Lord Christ slain so that we guilty ones would be declared righteous.  And on the third day afterward, God fulfilled His Word by raising His Son from the grave, for “out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:15).  In Jesus you also are raised up with Him as His new Israel.

    Ponder what a marvelous thing it is that the Almighty Son of God made Himself to be all-vulnerable for you.  He endured suffering and violence and sadness to redeem you from all the things that you must endure in this life.  He can truly sympathize with you and help you in your weakness, in the frequent chaos and seeming disorder of this life.  For in the midst of the mess and the heartache, He is ordering all things for your eternal good; there is nothing in all creation that can separate you from His love.

    Brothers and sisters of Christ, you too have been brought out of the Egypt of sin and death with Jesus through your baptism into His death and resurrection.  Rejoice, then, to the extent that you partake in Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.  Commit your souls to Him as to a faithful Creator.  For He is coming again to turn the voice of weeping to laughter and the sound of grieving to dancing.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the departed Rev. Fr. Stephen Wiest for some of the above)

Luke 21:25-36
Advent 2

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

    It’s interesting the way Jesus talks about signs in Scripture.  On the one hand, He says that it is an evil and adulterous generation that seeks a sign.  People that need signs to prove God’s existence or to verify the truth of His Word are only exhibiting their unbelief.  If you insist upon a sign or some special experience, if God has to jump through your hoops before you’ll trust Him or follow Him, that only reveals an absence of faith.  Faith is believing without seeing, knowing that you have a trustworthy Source who is speaking to you.  Sign-seeking is adulterous, going after what fulfills your spiritual lusts and desires.  To those who were seeking a sign, Jesus said that the only one they would be given was the sign of Jonah, a man “buried” in the watery depths but who comes forth to a new life on the third day.  Jonah points us to Jesus, whose death and resurrection is our true and ultimate sign, the sign that our sins have been fully paid for, that He has conquered the power of the grave and brings us resurrection and life immortal.  We need nothing more than that Word of good news, the Gospel, to bring us to faith and save us.

    However, to Jesus’ disciples, to those who believe and don’t demand signs, Jesus still actually gives many signs.  Not only did He perform a multitude of miracles in His ministry, signs that proved He truly was the Messiah, not only do we presently see many signs of His loving kindness toward us even in the midst of this fallen and broken world, but He also gives us an abundance of signs of His second coming and the end of this world.

    In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks in particular about signs in creation, in the sun, moon, and stars, and even climate and weather-related signs.  After mentioning the fig tree and all the trees budding, Jesus speaks of the sea and the waves roaring, nations in distress, and people in perplexity as the powers of creation are shaken.  In other words, nature itself will give us signs that the return of Jesus is almost upon us.

    The problem is that unbelief misreads the signs.  This happens all the time; people see the signs in creation, like earthquakes, like variations in climate and weather, like floods and fires and storms and droughts, and instead of reading these things as a call to repentance and to faithful watching for the Lord of creation to return, they see it as a call to political action regarding climate change and to worship creation itself as their lord.  And so the signs don’t help them.  Signs only help the faithful.

    The world misreads the signs, and so they have the wrong diagnosis of the situation.  They know that there’s a problem; they know that things aren’t quite right.  Even unbelievers sense that things are messed up in the world and need to be fixed.  But they misidentify the enemy and the source of the problem, and so they also misidentify the solution.  Virtually every political cause that is out there does this.  For environmentalists, the enemy is fossil fuels and overpopulation.  For feminists, it’s men and the patriarchy.  For socialists, it’s capitalism (and vice versa), for conservatives, it’s progressives (and vice versa), for those feeling oppressed, it’s racial privilege or gender conformity or big corporations or big government.  And the list goes on.  We have this intrinsic spiritual need to set up a system of good and evil that explains why reality is the way it is.  But when we do that apart from God’s Word, we end up with a system that is comprised of half truths (at best), and people end up embracing delusions and lies.  Scripture tells us that the real issue, the real enemies are the devil, the unbelieving world, and our own sinful nature.  But we don’t like that diagnosis.  Because it means that the problem is not just some neatly defined system or group of people that we can blame.  It’s a deeper, spiritual matter, and it involves a sickness that is actually inside every one of us.  Worldly groups and causes only address symptoms and not the disease.  Only Jesus, our coming Lord, gets to the heart of the matter.

    Jesus once commented on people misinterpreting the signs of the times in Luke 12.  He said, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming.’ And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

    Christians know that when creation seems to be coming apart, that’s because it’s a fallen creation, in bondage to decay under the curse of sin.  It’s certainly our responsibility to be good stewards and caretakers of creation, especially for the sake of the generations to come.  But Christians aren’t surprised by the upheavals of creation because they know that this creation is passing away, no matter what we do, as Jesus said, “The heavens and the earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.”  Just like us, creation is wearing down and wearing out.  It has to die in order to rise again as the new heavens and the new earth, which God is preparing to be our eternal dwelling with Him.  Romans 8 says, “the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. . .  All creation groans.”  Creation itself trembles with anticipation of Christ’s return, when the hidden things of our salvation will finally be uncovered and brought to fulfillment, and all things will be made new.  Until that day we cling to Jesus’ words, which endure forever, and which will surely deliver what they say.

    So when we see the signs of the end, our reaction as Christians is different from the unbelieving world.  To the faithless, these signs bring pessimism and panic.  Jesus says here that men’s hearts will fail them from fear.  There will be a sense of retreat, that things are spiraling downward.  Our pop culture reflects this with the incredible number of movies and shows that focus on a dystopian future world, after some apocalypse occurs because of disease or war or climate catastrophe.  Creating these scenarios is almost like therapy to deal with this dread of what’s coming.

    Of course, Jesus also warns against another way that people deal try to with this.  He says, “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.”  Some people think to themselves, “Hey, everything’s going downhill; I might as well have some fun while I can.  Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”  Indulging in food and drink and pleasure, throwing yourself into your work or your hobby helps you to forget about this looming future.

    But our reaction as believers is quite different.  For these signs are not just pointing to the end but to a new beginning.  And above all they are pointing to the return of our Savior.  Whereas the world is weighed down with anxiety as things come apart, Jesus tells you that when you see these signs, “straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  These signs are actually good news in that they point us to Him.  We can have peace even in the midst of the chaos, because we know what this is all leading to.  We can deny ourselves the sinful pleasures of this world, because we know there is much greater joy and holy delight to come in the presence of our gracious Lord.  Your future is assured in Jesus.  Your merciful Lord is coming.  Your redemption is drawing near.

    That’s really how we should think of the Last Day, not as doomsday, not only as Judgment day, but as Redemption Day.  It’s a good day that is coming, “the great and dreadful day of the Lord” as Malachi puts it–great for those who are in Christ, dreadful for those who aren’t.  Judgment day has already taken place for us.  For we are baptized into Christ, and He bore all of the judgment against our sin on the cross, on that great and dreadful day, Good Friday.  Remember that there were great signs in creation on that day: the sun was darkened for three hours, and the earth quaked at the death of the Son of God.  For the curse on this old creation was broken, and a new creation was dawning in Christ.  As a result of that, Romans 8 says that we are  “eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”  So the punishment and the condemnation is all done for you now.  It’s all taken care of.  You’re redeemed by the blood of Christ.  It’s just a matter of time before your Redeemer returns to reveal that truth before the world, so that you may enjoy it in all its fullness.

    Jesus urges you today in the Gospel, “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”  Lift up your heads in watchfulness and prayer, keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.  For it is only through Him that you are worthy; it is only through Him that you can stand in the final Judgment without fear.  Psalm 130 prays, “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?”  Not a single one of us could.  However, the psalm continues, “But with you, Lord, there is forgiveness.  Therefore you are revered.”  Jesus Himself makes you worthy to stand tall in His presence, not in pride because of your merits but because of His cleansing forgiveness, poured out upon you in your baptism.

    So raise your heads, then, and lift up your hearts to see the tremendous sign that the Lord is giving to you today: the holy Sacrament of the Altar.  To the unbeliever it doesn’t seem like anything all that important.  But to you who believe and are baptized, it is a marvelous sign.  For it assures you that the One who comes to you now hiddenly with His body and blood for your forgiveness will come again visibly on the clouds with power and great glory to deliver you.  It is written, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”  He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming quickly.”  Amen.  Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

Luke 19:28-40
Advent 1

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

    Psalm 24 says, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?  Or who may stand in His holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”  Well that doesn’t sound like very good news, does it?  That description excludes us all.  Whose hands haven’t been stained by selfish actions?  Whose heart hasn’t been polluted by covetous desires?  God’s Word is clear in Romans 3, “None is righteous, no, not one. . . All have turned aside; together they have become corrupt.. .  They use their tongues to deceive.”  You have no righteousness of yourself, in spite of your best efforts.  Isaiah 64 says that even all of our own supposedly “righteous” deeds are like filthy rags before God.  

   How, then, can any of us ever expect to enter into God’s presence?  The answer and the solution to that problem is revealed in today’s OT reading, where Jeremiah prophesies that the coming Messiah, Jesus, will be called “The Lord Our Righteousness.”  That’s where your righteousness is to be found, in Jesus alone.  Only He has clean hands and a pure heart.  Only He has the right to ascend the hill of the Lord and to stand in His holy place.  So it is that in today’s Gospel we see Jesus going up to Jerusalem–where He would cleanse the temple, where He would redeem us by His holy cross on Calvary’s hill.  His clean hands and His pure heart were pierced for us to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  Trusting in Christ, His righteousness becomes our own.  Romans 4 says that to the one who believes in Him, “his faith is counted as righteousness.”  So, we are able to ascend the hill of the Lord and to stand in His holy place solely by Jesus’ merit.  That’s why we begin nearly every service with confession and absolution.  Holding to Jesus and His mercy, we are purified and accepted into the Father’s presence to worship Him.  For Christ the Lord is our righteousness.

    Today, at the beginning of a new church year, we celebrate again this holy, Christ-centered truth.  We begin once more to recount the true story of salvation in Jesus.  Rehearsing His life and His teaching is the heartbeat of our life.  It’s the way we grow up into His righteousness and get ready for the life of the world to come.  

    Still, it might seem strange that we start out the Advent season by picking up the salvation story so far into it, at the beginning of Holy Week!  You might expect that we’d start at the beginning of Jesus’ life, with more Christmas-y type readings.  But you actually get very little of that in Advent.  For the way the church recounts this story is not purely chronological.  Advent is a season of penitent preparation for Christ’s coming.  Advent begins the same way Holy Week begins to remind us that you can’t disconnect Jesus’ birth from Jesus’ cross.  His coming into the world is inseparably linked to His dying for the world.  Today’s Gospel reading shows us that our Lord comes in lowliness and humility, whether it’s in a manger or on a beast of burden.  As it is written, “Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey.”  

    Notice how your King doesn’t merely do an obligatory gesture from on high as He passes by, waving and keeping a safe distance from you.  Rather it says that He comes to you, right to where you’re at, past all the facades to the way things really are with you.  He comes to you humbly, on your level, even to the point of sharing in your flesh and blood, to give you mercy, to rescue you and deliver you, to be your life and your help.  Since He comes in this lowly way, you are called to do as the people did here and lay your garments on the road before Him, which means to cast off the works of darkness in your life.  Let your sins be cast aside; lay them down so that He may trample them underfoot.  Humble yourself through repentance, and then through faith in Christ put on His armor of light, walking properly as in the day.

    We see in Luke’s Palm Sunday narrative that there is, actually, a very nice connection here to Christmas.  Perhaps you noticed it when the Gospel was being read.  At Jesus’ birth the angels praised God and said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!”   And here, the multitude of the disciples praise God saying, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!”  The song of heaven becomes the song of earth.  Angels sing of peace on earth; humans sing of peace in heaven.  But that’s really just two sides of the same coin.  For in Jesus heaven and earth are brought together, since He is God and man together Himself.  By becoming man our Lord Jesus brings peace on earth.  Then Christ reconciles us to the Father by offering Himself up as the sacrifice for our sins.  There is literally peace in heaven as the crucified and risen Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father, and God and man are reunited eternally through the power of His blood.  This is what brings glory in the highest; this is the glory of God the Father, to give His Son for us that we might live with Him in gladness and peace forever.

    One of the things that stands out in this Gospel reading is the detailed information Jesus gives about getting this donkey colt.  Here our Lord demonstrates not just that He knows all things, but that He has carefully planned for this day.  Scripture says that the kingdom of God has been prepared for you even from the foundation of the world, and here we see the Lord carrying out His mission to save you in precise detail.  

    And in particular, we see how important this specific donkey colt is.  It is a colt on which no one has ever sat.  For not just anyone can accomplish this mission; only Jesus can redeem us.  Only He is worthy to be seated on this beast of burden and to bear the burden of our brokenness all the way to the cross.  This colt is to be unloosed and released and brought to Jesus; for our Lord has come to unloose and release us stubborn donkeys from our bondage to death and the devil, so that we may serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

    What happens in today’s Gospel is in fulfillment of a prophecy that goes all the way back to Genesis 49.  There it says that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah.”  In other words, the Messiah King, Jesus, will come from the tribe of Judah.  And then it says of the Messiah, “Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes.”  This means that the One who rides this colt does so in order to pour out His blood to atone for the sins of the world.  It is this very blood that is poured out in wine for us in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar.  The King is still coming to us humbly in the Lord’s Supper to save us.  And we are still carrying on the hymn of the people outside of Jerusalem as we sing in the communion liturgy, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna in the highest!

    Jesus rides this new colt on which no one has ever sat, and then He is buried in a new tomb hewn out of the rock in which no one had ever lain before.  For there also He will do what no one else can do and conquer the power of the grave for us by His bodily resurrection.  And it all will begin with Jesus being laid in a manger which had never been used as a cradle before.  For who would put their baby in a cattle feeder?  Only the humble and lowly Jesus would do these things for us and for our salvation.  There is none other like Him.  There is no other Savior.

    Of course, some will not believe this.  Some are looking for a more glorious Lord, one who brings success and prosperity and worldly honor.  The Pharisees here actually tell Jesus to rebuke His disciples who are praising Him.  For these Pharisees simply cannot accept that one so common as Him could be the promised King, and they are afraid of shaking up the Roman order and their place in it.  Do not be led astray and deceived by those who think this way, who are scandalized by suffering, who want the crown of gold without the crown of thorns.  Rather, embrace Him who embraced your humanity fully to redeem you, who is at work even in the midst of your lowliness and your suffering to bring you to share in His resurrection glory.

    And finally, remember what Jesus says here, that if the people would have kept silent, the very stones would have cried out in praise of Him!  John the Baptist also had preached that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.  That is a reminder that all praise truly belongs to the Lord for our salvation.  For we could do nothing to come to Him.  Until He came to us, we were like stones, cold and lifeless under the curse.  But then by His advent, He brought us to life and built us into His own special dwelling, His holy church.  Because Jerusalem rejected the Messiah, they would be destroyed by the Romans, and not one stone would be left upon another, Jesus said.  But for us who believe and are baptized, it is written in 1 Peter 2, “Coming to (Jesus) as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  All of you together are the Lord’s holy temple.  You are those who proclaim the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.  

    So we enter into this new church year, then, let us continually join in with those who praised Jesus as He entered into Jerusalem.  For your King is coming to you.  He is righteous and having salvation.  “‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit