Lenten Midweek 1:
“Behold the Man! A God Who Prays”[1]
March 13, 2019
Text: John 17
Jesus
prays. As our Great High Priest, a
Priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, the fulfillment of the priesthood
of Aaron and the Levites, Jesus prays.
For us. For His Church. As God, the Son of God, He prays to God our
heavenly Father. As God, who is a man,
He raises His hands and His eyes to heaven in expectation that His Father will
hear and answer in mercy, His lips and His tongue shape the syllables, His lungs
push air through His vocal chords, and words come forth, gracious words of life
and salvation. Behold, the Man! Jesus, our Savior, prays for us. He is our great High Priest.
What
do priests do? They are mediators. They stand between the people, who are
sinners, and a righteous and holy God.
They make sacrifices for sin.
They offer the sin-atoning blood of sheep and bulls to God, and they put
the sin-cleansing blood on the people.
And then they intercede. They
pray. They ask God to have mercy for the
sake of the blood.
Prayer
and blood are connected. The priests
prayed for the people, and the people themselves prayed, through the blood of
the continuous sacrifices. Jesus is our
new and greater Priest. He offers, not
sheep and bulls, the blood of which can never actually take away sin, but that
to which the blood of the sheep and bulls has always pointed: His own
blood! The blood of the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world. Jesus
is both Priest and Sacrifice. And His
blood makes full atonement for our sins, once and for all. And now Jesus, who
is risen from the dead, who has ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand
of the Father, prays through His own blood.
He holds His blood and death before the Father as He pleads for us. And the Father, who has declared the
sacrifice of Jesus sufficient for the atonement of all our sins, hears and
answers Jesus’ prayer for us with forgiveness, grace, and mercy. And life.
Tonight
we get a glimpse into what our risen and ascended Jesus prays for us, for His
Church, for His Christians, in what is known as His High Priestly Prayer. It was the night on which Jesus was
betrayed. He knew what was coming. Satan had already entered the heart of
Judas. It was simply a matter of
time.
It
was the night of the Passover, the night the lambs were to be sacrificed. It was the last night before His own
self-sacrifice that Jesus would spend with His disciples, His friends. He washes their feet. He gives them a new command, that they love one
another. He gives them a gift that will
last them, and us, until the Day of His glorious return, the new and greater
Passover Supper, His true Body, His true Blood, given and shed for you for the
forgiveness of sins. And He prays.
Now,
Jesus has a habit of praying. There is
nothing new here. Often, He would
retreat to a lonely place to pray. He
fulfills the Second Commandment for us, where we so often have failed. He calls upon the Name of God in every
trouble, prays, praises, and gives thanks unceasingly. He taught His disciples to pray, and He
teaches us, that we call upon God as “Our Father, who art in heaven.” But this
prayer that He offers on this night
in the upper room is for the benefit of the Eleven who are about to undergo the
trial of their life in the betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion of their Lord, and
for us who believe on account of their Word and live ever after from our same
Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. In
other words, we get to overhear what Jesus is always praying for His people,
for His Church, for you.
That
He would be glorified with the glory He has had with the Father before the
world existed, from all eternity. In the
Scriptures, and particularly in John’s Gospel, Jesus is glorified by His
crucifixion. It is there that He reigns
as King. It is there that He brings to
completion the divine, saving mission for which He was sent. “Father,
the hour has come,” He says (John 17:1; ESV). This is theological language. What hour?
The hour for His glorification by suffering and death. And because that is the case, and because His
sheep are about to be scattered, He prays for them. And for us.
He
has manifested the Father’s Name to His disciples. In Jesus, we know God to be our gracious
Father who loves us and wills to save us at the ultimate price, the sacrifice
of His own beloved Son. I have kept
them, Jesus says. I have given them Your
Word. And through that Word they have
come to know and believe that You sent Me.
But now Jesus will no longer be in the world. Not in the same sense in which He was in the
world during His earthly ministry. He
will die. He will rise. He will ascend. True, He will be with them, and us, always,
to the very end of the age. But in a
hidden way. They, the disciples, you,
must be in the world. And it will be
hard. There will be crosses to bear,
suffering and the mold and shape you into the cruciform image of Jesus, into
the Christians the Father would have you be, crosses that drive you to Jesus
alone for help and salvation. There will
be persecution. There will be the old
sinful nature. There will be the
slippery serpent, your enemy, the devil, prowling around like a roaring lion
seeking whom he may devour. So Jesus
prays the Father would keep His beloved disciples in His Name, the Name Jesus
manifest, the Name into which you are baptized.
Jesus prays that you be kept in your Baptism over against all your
enemies.
And
He prays that we would be one. Not that
we would pretend doctrine doesn’t matter, or some silly shortcut like we’re
always willing to take for external unity in the Church. But really one. Like the Father and the Son are one, together
with the Holy Spirit. True unity. Unity in doctrine. Unity in confession. Unity in our Christian life together. Love. Forgiveness, from God and for one
another. Patience. Forbearance.
Longsuffering. He prays that we
have joy. Not silly happiness, like so
many Christians think you have to have, plastering a fake smile across your
face to show you have the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in your heart. No, real joy.
Even through the tears. The joy
of salvation in Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, eternal life. The joy of the Holy Spirit. And He prays that we be sanctified in the
truth. That is His Word. That is what gives us the gift of unity. That we believe and confess His Word. All of it.
Unabridged. Popular or unpopular. Politically correct, or not. Even if it means some don’t walk with
us. Even if it means the death of us.
Finally,
to sum it all up, He prays that the love with which the Father loves Jesus may
be in us, and that Jesus Himself would be in us. That is the prayer of our High Priest, Jesus,
who prays through His own blood shed on the cross for us.
Priests
in the Old Testament were ordained by the blood of sacrifice. When Moses ordained Aaron and his sons, he
put the blood of the sacrifice on their right ear, that they hear and obey the
Word of God, their right thumb, that they do the priestly work of offering
sacrifice for themselves and for the people, the big toe of their right foot,
that they enter the holy places to serve as mediators between God and the
people (Cf. Lev. 8).
Our
Lord Jesus is the fulfillment of all of this.
He is the Word of God incarnate who faithfully and perfectly hears and
obeys the Father’s Word always. His are
the hands lifted in intercession for us, praying for our salvation and
perseverance in the faith of Christ. His
are the beautiful feet that bring the good news of salvation by His cross and
death. And, of course, He is the
sacrifice. His is the blood. His hands and feet are nailed to the wood as
He offers the sacrificed of atonement.
His sacred head is crowned with thorns.
His ears go silent in death.
Behold, the Man! Your High
Priest.
And
now the risen Jesus ordains you a priest.
Not a pastor. This is not a
denial of the Holy Ministry Jesus instituted to preach His Word and administer
the Sacraments. There is a lot of
confusion about that in our Synod these days, and it robs both the Holy Ministry
and the Royal Priesthood of all believers of their respective glory. There is a difference between pastor and
priest, and they are both gifts of Jesus who is our Great Pastor and our Great
Priest.
To be
a priest, dear Christian, means you are now a mediator between God and man,
your fellow Christians, and unbelievers.
It means that you sacrifice and you pray. Now, the prayer part is easy, or at least it
appears to be. You make intercession for
those in need. You bring people and
their needs before the throne of God for His mercy in Christ. And you do it through the blood of
Christ. The blood of Christ has washed
you clean. You enter the holy place
through the sacrifice of His flesh. And
you plead the blood of Christ for your neighbor. That is why we offer our prayers in Jesus’
Name, or for Jesus’ sake. We always pray
in Jesus, because of His death for us on the cross.
And
then, as priests, we sacrifice ourselves for our neighbor. We forgive their sins against us. We love them, even when they are unlovable,
on account of Christ who loved us and gave Himself up for us when we were
unlovable. We help them. We serve them. We give generously to them when they are in
need. Even when they abuse it. And if called upon, we die for them. Not because they are worthy, but because
Christ is worthy, and that is what Christ has done for us, and what He would
have us do for others. For that is what
it means to be a Royal Priest of God. It
means to be Jesus to your neighbor. It
means to sacrifice. It means to
pray.
St.
Paul bids us to present our bodies “as a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship”
(Rom. 12:1). That can only be a reality
through Jesus who offered His body as a sacrifice unto death, but who now
lives. And He is still the Priest who
mediates between us and the Father. He
still prays. And His sacrifice, of
course, was once and for all, but He still puts the Blood on His people to
present them before God. He does it at
the altar, and in the font, and in the preaching. You are holy and acceptable to God by the
Blood of Jesus. More than that, you are
loved. And your sins are forgiven. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Based on Jeffrey Hemmer, Behold the Man! (St. Louis: Concordia,
2018).
Second Sunday in
Lent (C)
March 17, 2019
Text: Luke 13:31-35
Rejection
of preachers is nothing new. Prophet after prophet was sent by God to Israel,
preaching repentance, preaching a returning
to God, and prophet after prophet was rejected, exiled, imprisoned, tortured,
executed. Preaching the Word of God demands a high price of the preacher. It
demands self-sacrifice. But it is God who sends the preacher, and God who
places the preaching into the preacher’s mouth. The preacher is to preach
whatever God sends him to preach, and only
what God sends him to preach, no more, and no less. And so a preacher preaches
whether the message falls on deaf ears or finds reception in open hearts. The
preacher preaches whether the seed of the Word falls on rocky ground or good
soil, even at risk of the seed being picked off by birds or growing up only to
be choked by thorns or scorched by sunlight. The preacher preaches the Word of
God, Law and Gospel, bitter and sweet, life and death, because that is what he is called to do. The preacher preaches
repentance and the forgiveness of sins. He preaches Christ. And woe to him if he fails to do it.
Now,
this congregation has shown love to this preacher and his family in many and
various ways. But what I’m getting at here is a very real spiritual danger that has afflicted (and continues to
afflict) many congregations and could at any time afflict ours, a danger that
has troubled the Christian Church throughout her history, and that is a
constant battle in the heart of every sinful saint: Rejection of the preacher and his preaching. We see it in our
Scripture readings this morning. Jeremiah is rejected by the priests and the
prophets, the religious elite of Judah, who want to kill him for his preaching
(Jer. 26:8-15). Paul speaks of many who once walked in his own example, but who
now walk as enemies of Christ (Phil. 3:17-18). And finally, our Lord Jesus is
rejected by Herod, by the Pharisees, by Jerusalem, by the very people for whom He came to die (Luke 13:31-35). Why are
preachers so often rejected? I’m not talking about legitimate reasons for
fleeing a preacher or removing him from office, such as the preaching of false
doctrine, or leading a manifestly sinful life. Why are even faithful preachers rejected, not only by
the world, but by the people of their congregations? There are many superficial
excuses… His personality rubs me the wrong way. I can’t understand him. I don’t
like the way he conducts the liturgy. I don’t like the liturgy. I wish he
preached more “uplifting” sermons. I don’t like how he always talks about sin
and death and crosses and forgiveness. Why does he always harp on me about
attending church and going to confession and absolution and receiving the
Sacrament? I wish he would concentrate less on doctrine and more on what is
relevant to my life (as if the doctrine, the teaching of Jesus, could ever be
anything but relevant to you). I’m sure there are many other reasons given for
rejecting a preacher. And maybe you’ve had some of these thoughts yourself. But
in reality, when a preacher is rejected, it is for the Word He preaches. That
is to say, what is rejected is the preaching of repentance, and the preaching
of Jesus Christ. Jesus said to His disciples: “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me,
and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16; ESV). When
a faithful preacher is rejected for preaching the Word of Christ, it is, in
reality, Christ Himself who is
rejected, and so the Father who sent
Him.
Sometimes
the preaching is rejected outright, as the priests and prophets rejected
Jeremiah, and as Jerusalem rejected our Lord, both seeking to kill the
preacher. We think of so many Christian martyrs throughout the centuries who
were tortured and killed for their faithful proclamation of Christ. Often
pastors are removed from their pulpits because they refuse to scratch the
itching ears of their congregation. More often, the rejection is subtle, a
matter of the heart. I know this because I’ve done it myself: We nod and smile
as the pastor preaches, but in our hearts we reject what he’s saying. Beloved,
repent.
The
problem here is the hardness of the human heart. To the natural man, to the
unconverted person, and even to the believing Christian insofar as every one of
us is still a sinner, the preaching of Christ and His cross is an offense (1 Cor. 1:18; 2:14). For outside
of Christ and His life-giving Spirit, my will, your will, is bound. The bondage
of the will is not a popular article of doctrine, and too-little taught and
preached. Ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin, the human will has been bound
to choose only sin, only death, only that which is opposed to God. This is why
you can never say you made your decision for Jesus. A slave cannot choose which
master to serve. You are born into the service of sin and unbelief, of death,
and ultimately, the devil. That is what it means to be lost. You cannot choose
to serve Jesus when you are bound by the chains of the evil one. And what
really gets us about the idea of this bound will is that there is nothing you
can do about it. If you are to be rescued from this bondage, it must come from
outside of yourself. It must come from God. It can only come from God. All of
this is simply to reaffirm what we confess in the Small Catechism: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or
strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit
has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept
me in the true faith.”[1] The only way that anyone
ever comes to accept and believe Jesus Christ and His Word and His preachers is
by the Holy Spirit working through the divinely appointed means of grace, the
Word and Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. You don’t choose Jesus, He chooses you! It is by grace. Faith is
not your work, it is the gift of God. But that doesn’t mean that faith is easy.
Our Lord Christ has covered our sin with His blood, forgiven us poor sinners,
but we still sin. We are at the same time saints and sinners, and so it is
always a struggle with this sinful flesh to believe the preaching, to hear the
preacher, to allow the Law to do its painful work on us, to look to Christ
alone for help and salvation.
What
great compassion our Lord Jesus has for those who reject the preaching, reject
the prophets, reject Him and the salvation He alone brings. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills
the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have
gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings”
(Luke 13:34). When there is danger, when there is a predator, like a hawk,
seeking to eat the chicks, or when a fire threatens her brood, a hen will
shield the little ones with her own body. She will die for the sake of her
offspring, to save them. In the same way, Jesus suffers the cross for us. He
dies for us. He dies for the sins of the whole world. He suffers our
punishment. His wings are outstretched on the cross, and He would gather all people
under them, gather all people to Himself, under His cross, in His holy Church,
for safety and shelter. Jesus sets His face toward Jerusalem for that very
purpose, that He may die for all humanity, and gather a Church unto Himself: “I must go on my way today and tomorrow and
the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from
Jerusalem” (v. 33). Why can’t Jerusalem see the salvation that comes to her
in Jesus? Why do the people not bow down in homage to the One who would pay so
high a price, His blood and death, for their forgiveness and life? The answer
is here in our text, in the lament of our Lord: “you would not!” (v. 34). It’s the bondage of the will. Jerusalem
“would not,” willed not to be thus gathered to our Lord in faith, because her
will is bound to choose everything and anything other than our Lord. It is not
a lack of love or willingness on God’s part that leads to the eternal death of
the sinner. It is the stubborn human heart that rejects the preaching, rejects
the Gospel, and so rejects Jesus, rejects God, rejects salvation.
Beloved
in the Lord, there is nothing within us that led the Holy Spirit to convert us,
to turn our heart in repentance to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not by
our merit or worthiness or any effort on our part that we came to faith. It is
all by grace. Do not torture yourself with the question why everyone else is
not converted. It is a futile question, a seeking to look into the hidden will
of God, things that are not given us to know. We can only say what Scripture
says, what our Lord says in our Gospel lesson this morning: How God longs for
every sinner to be gathered to Christ and be saved, and how only the stubborn,
hard heart of man, his bound will, is responsible if he is lost. God does not
force anyone to believe. There is no such thing as “irresistible grace.” But
there is unimaginable grace.
What
great grace that God gave His sinless Son into death for us sinners. What great
grace that God has gathered us here, by Baptism, under the wings of His Son’s
cross, into His outstretched arms, into His nail pierced hands. What great
grace that God has gathered us here to His Church, where we receive all the
benefits of the death and resurrection of Christ, including His very body and
blood in the Supper. What great grace that here God has placed a man into the
preaching office, of himself unworthy, flawed, weak, sinful, but called by God
to speak Jesus into your ears and hearts, to forgive your sins, a mere
instrument and mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit. What great grace that we can come
every Sunday, and so many other times during the week, and we will always find
our Savior here in the preaching, and in the Sacrament. For the preacher is
called to preach God’s Word, preach Jesus, and woe to him if he does not do it.
God grant that this preacher, and
every Christian pastor, always proclaims Christ and His Word faithfully, no
matter the consequences, even if it be rejection, even if it be death. But what
great grace that our Lord has not left us orphans. He comes to us (John 14:18),
here, in Word and Sacrament. And even as we gather around His altar to receive
His true body and blood, really present, received in our mouths for our
forgiveness, we sing these words, the words Jerusalem sang as our Lord came
into the city to die for her, for us: “Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 13:35). And so we see Him
in the Supper, just as we hear Him in the preaching. Rejection of the preacher
is nothing new. What is new is you, your heart released from bondage,
forgiven of sin, freed by the Spirit, brought to faith in Christ by the same
Spirit. What is new is the life you have in Christ crucified, the open ears and
hearts that hear and cling to His Word. “Therefore,
my brothers” and sisters, “whom I
love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved”
(Phil. 4:1). Stand firm by hearing Him. In the Name of the Father, and of the
Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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