Lenten Midweek III
March 22, 2017
“Dear Christians,
One and All Rejoice: Jesus: God’s Son and Your Servant”[1]
Text: John 13:1-20; LSB 556:5-6
“His
royal pow’r disguised he bore; A servant’s form, like mine, He wore To lead the
devil captive” (LSB 556:6). No one
expected it. No one expected that when
God’s Messiah came to rescue His people from sin and death, He would come in
lowly form, born of a poor girl from Nazareth of all places, the supposed son
of a carpenter. No one expected Him to
be born in backwater Bethlehem, in a cattle stall, no crib for a bed, but laid
in a manger, the feeding trough for the barnyard animals. And certainly no one expected He would win
His victory over Satan and the yawning jaws of hell by submitting Himself to
their power, to the condemnation of sinners and the accursed death of the
cross. God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. So when our Lord stoops down to wash His disciples’
feet, the proper work of a slave, the disciples, and Peter in particular, are
greatly offended. “Lord, do you wash my feet? … You shall never wash my feet” (John
13:6, 8; ESV). “Lord, this is not the
way Messiah is supposed to behave. No
stooping. No serving. Be served!
Sit back and relax! Let us do the
work. There have to be some perks to this Savior gig. Let’s enjoy a nice Passover meal and then go
blast those Romans to Kingdom Come by Your sheer glory!” Yes, that’s what we expect. Not a Savior who stoops, but a Savior who
stupefies.
But
that’s not Jesus. The Son of God would
not have needed to become man to do that.
That’s what a mostly hands-off god would do, a selfish and self-involved
god, like the gods of the pagans and the false gods that reign in our
hearts. But not a God of love. Not a
God sincerely and intimately concerned with the plight of sinners. A man got us into this mess… “Therefore, just as sin
came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread
to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12, emphasis added)… So death and sin must be undone by a man, and
that man is the eternally-begotten Son of the Father, Jesus Christ. “For
if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and
the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many”
(v. 15). “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of
woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we
might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). Jesus puts it this way: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give
his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This is the God who loves you in such a way
that He cannot leave you in sheer despair, death as your share, the pangs of
hell to suffer, as we sang a couple weeks ago in Luther’s marvelous hymn. He cannot and He will not forsake you. Instead, He becomes one with you, bone of
your bone and flesh of your flesh. And
He takes your sin upon Himself and suffers your death and your hell, that you
be free and live forever as children of God.
“God
said to His beloved Son: ‘It’s time to have compassion’” (LSB 556:5). “When
the fullness of time had come…” At
just the right time, God sent His
Son. “Then go, bright jewel of My crown
And bring to all salvation.” Set them
free from sin and sorrow. Slay bitter
death by dying. Punch a hole through
death’s stomach, that it may never hold my children again, that they may live
with You forever. And that is what He
does, our merciful Lord Jesus. He obeys
His Father’s will. He is born of a
virgin. He puts on our birthday suit,
our flesh. And He does what we cannot
do… fulfills God’s Law, perfectly, without error, without sin. This is His active righteousness. And He
does what otherwise we would have to do.
He suffers under Pontius Pilate, is crucified, dead and buried. This is His passive righteousness, His taking our punishment, thus atoning for
our sins. He has to be one of us to do
this. He has to be a man to be our
substitute. And God cannot die. Unless God is a man. And He is.
His Name is Jesus.
Yes,
our God is a man. How humiliating. No wonder it was a stumbling block to Jews
and utter foolishness to Greeks, and remains so for all the world to this very
day. We call this our Lord’s state of humiliation, from His
conception in the womb of Mary to His death and burial, when He does not always
or fully use His divine powers. St. Paul
puts it this way, probably quoting an early hymn: “though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not count equality with
God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a
servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in
human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). And
so, “having loved his own who were in
the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1), to the end of His life,
to the end of Himself, to His utter humiliation, condemnation, and death. That’s a God who loves you. That is how your Savior wins the victory.
And, of course, the hymn continues with the story of Easter and the
Ascension: “Therefore God has highly
exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the
earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). That
last part, by the way, “Jesus Christ is
Lord,” is the earliest Christian Creed.
In Greek, it reads more like “Jesus Christ is Caesar,” words that will
get you killed in the Roman Empire. This
is what we call our Lord’s state of
exaltation, from His bodily resurrection from the dead and into eternity,
when He now always and fully uses His divine powers. The Father
exalted Him. Because He submitted
Himself to death and hell for you, to save you, thus accomplishing the Father’s
will, His reward is resurrection from the dead… Not just His own on Easter
morn, but yours on the Last Day. His
reward is to reign at the right hand of the Father, not only as God (as He has
from all eternity), but as man, in your flesh.
And He is bringing you with Him!
He wants you to reign with Him forever.
So
now we live in the Great Meantime between our Lord’s saving work and that
glorious Day when we will see Him as He is and reign with Him in our Father’s
Kingdom. What are we to do? Jesus demonstrates it for us. We are to be servants of one another. We’re to do the work of slaves. Jesus was not commanding His Church to do
foot washing from here on out, though that is certainly fine and good if you
want to do it. The point is, humiliate
yourself before your brothers and sisters.
Serve them. Which is to say, love
them. And at the proper time, God will
exalt you. And them. And now, you do this as one who knows that
your salvation is already completely accomplished by the Lord Jesus, apart from
works, apart from service, apart from your love. You’re freed up to just go do it, in joy and
thanksgiving, because that’s what Jesus does for you.
He
came to be your Brother. In fact, wonder
of wonders, He became your Servant.
Think about that one. Almighty God stoops down to serve you. He washes you head to toe in Holy Baptism,
washes all your sin and guilt away forever.
That is why He tells Peter, “The
one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet” (John
13:10). We might say, Jesus washes your
feet in Holy Absolution, which is always a return to your Baptism. You’re already clean. You’ve already bathed. Now Jesus washes the dust and grime of daily
life in this fallen world from your feet by forgiving your sins. He did it again tonight. He’ll do it your whole life long until you walk
the streets of gold where there is no filth, no sin, no death. Jesus still washes your feet. He still serves you. He is still one with you. He loves you.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and structure of
this sermon are from John T. Pless, “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice,”
Lenten Preaching Seminar 2010, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN.
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