Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Midweek in Lent 5/Palm Sunday-Sunday of the Passion


Lenten Midweek 5: “Behold the Man! A God Who Thirsts”[1]
April 10, 2019
Text: John 19:28-30

             After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst’” (John 19:28; ESV).  God thirsts.  Because He is a Man.  Nailed to the cross for our sins, His strength is dried up like a potsherd.  His tongue sticks to His jaws as He is laid in the dry dust of death (Ps. 22:15).  He is poured out like water (v. 14).  He knows “It is finished” (John 19:30).  He has drained the cup of God’s wrath to its bitter dregs.  His lips are cracked and bleeding.  His throat is parched and His eyes grow dim waiting for His God (Ps. 69:3).  Having suffered the hell that is our sin’s wages, He longs for even a finger dipped in water to cool His tongue.  And they offer up sour wine to slake His thirst (Ps. 69:21), wine-vinegar, the cheap swill the soldiers drink while they wait for their victims to die.  But also the sop in which the Jews would dip their bread.  Let not that image pass over you.  Jesus is the Living Bread from heaven dipped in the sop, the wine vinegar, that He be our Bread of Life.
            But it’s not water they give Him.  It’s not much help, this sour wine.  And there is great irony in the fact that Jesus, our Lord, now thirsts.  For this Man is the God by whom the waters were created, the oceans, the springs, the rushing rivers.  Christ is the Rock that followed Israel in the wilderness, the rock Moses struck so that water flowed forth for all to drink.  Our Lord made the six stone jars of water into the very best wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-12).  He promised the Samaritan woman at the well that if she knew who it was who asked her for a drink, she would have asked Him and He would have given her Living Water, and she would never have thirsted again (John 4:1-42).  It was at the Feast of Tabernacles, on the last day of the Feast, the great day, that Jesus stood up in the Temple and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38).  But here He thirsts, and the best they will do for Him is a sponge full of vinegar to wet and sting His lips. 
            But what is it Jesus ultimately thirsts after?  You.  He thirsts after you and your salvation.  That is why He came.  To save you, by thirsting and suffering and dying for you.  Jesus thirsts to be poured out like water (Ps. 22:14), that we who thirst, who are parched by sin and death, may come to the waters (Is. 55:1) and drink and be slaked by the Living Water of the Lord.
            We know we are thirsty.  We’re dying of thirst.  But like mirages in the desert, we claw our way to anything and everything that is not Living Water, not Jesus, to quench us and save us.  And it’s all an illusion.  What are some of those mirages?  Money.  Influence.  Popularity.  Success.  Surely if I were rich or powerful I could manufacture a heaven for myself.  Just a little more than I have now and I could be happy.  We even do this with human love.  If I’d only married him or her instead of the spouse I have, or if I only had a spouse, I’d be so much happier.  If I had those parents or those kids I’d be so much better off.  There is a reason St. Paul identifies covetousness as idolatry (Col. 3:5).  We look to the things we covet to give us true joy, lasting happiness, to complete us, to save us.  And when it doesn’t work out?  Then there are the other things we turn to to satisfy our thirst.  We may even become addicted to them.  Alcohol.  Drugs.  Pornography.  Sex.  Gambling.  Whatever we use to mask the pain or induce a moment of ecstasy.  But it all leads to nowhere, and you know it.  It leads to guilt, to self-loathing, and finally, the grave.  It is not the Water of Life.  It is a pining after Egypt, a hearkening back to the Garden where your parents tried to satisfy their craving with what God had not given them.
            Repent.  There is only One who can slake your thirst, and by grace, you know Him as the One poured out for you and for your salvation.  For finally what you are thirsting for is righteousness (Matt. 5:6), and only Jesus can satisfy when He takes your sin and becomes your righteousness.  When Jesus saves you, all your idols topple to the ground.  They are broken to pieces before Him.  It is Jesus who gives you true and abundant joy, a joy that abides even through sadness and suffering.  It is Jesus who gives you eternal happiness, who completes you, who brings you into His heavenly Kingdom.  He doesn’t just mask your pain.  He covers it with His blood.  He sanctifies it, puts your tears in His bottle (Ps. 56:8), and on that Day, God will wipe away every tear from your eyes (Rev. 21:4). To you, Jesus promises, “To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment” (v. 6).  It is the fulfillment of our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 55.  Finally, that thirst you feel, that only Jesus can quench, is a pining after the New Creation, the New Heavens and Earth to come, and the River of Life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1).
            How do you get this Living Water of Jesus Christ?  God answers through the Prophet Isaiah answers in our Old Testament: “Listen diligently to me… Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live” (Is. 55:2, 3).  The Living Water flows through the Word in all its forms: Scripture and preaching, Baptism, Absolution, the Lord’s Supper, what we call the Means of Grace.  Our Lord tells us, as He told Nicodemus, we are born anew by water and the Spirit (John 3).  That is what happens in Holy Baptism.  Our whole life in Christ flows from the Font and is fed from the Pulpit and the Altar.  We come to Jesus to buy and eat without money and without price (Is. 55:1) here where He gives Himself freely in His Word. 
            And our thirst is slaked.  Our sins are forgiven.  Christ gives us His righteousness as a gift.  We have life, and we have it abundantly, with joy and peace and consolation.  Our flesh, with a little help from the devil and the world, is really good at convincing us otherwise.  Our three main enemies are always directing us elsewhere for refreshment and life.  That is why we so often despise the gifts we receive here in the Church and make other choices.  God help us.  And of course, it is true that as long as we are in this fallen flesh, we continue to sin, and live in the fallen world, and so bad things happen, and we feel that thirst in a very real way.  But the Holy Spirit has the last laugh.  Because He uses even that thirst to drive us back here, back to the Church, back to Christ, to drink deeply of His Living Water.  As they say, hunger is the best sauce.  Thirst drives us to the Altar, to the sweet wine that is our Lord’s true Blood, shed of the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. 
            Our Lord drinks the cup of God’s wrath to its very dregs on the cross, and tastes the sour wine offered for His relief.  But what really slakes His thirst is knowing that all is now finished (John 19:28).  That is to say, His offering of Himself to atone for our sins.  And that slakes our thirst, too.  We rest in that accomplished fact, and drink deeply from the wells of salvation (Is. 12:3).  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).


Palm Sunday/ Sunday of the Passion (C)

April 14, 2019
Text: John 12:12-19; Luke 22:1-23:56
            Hosanna is a Hebrew word that means “Save us!”  We use it as an exclamation of praise, and it is certainly that and was used that way in the Scriptures.  But it is first of all a prayer, and it is a prayer for our most basic need.  Salvation.  The word is directly related to the name “Joshua,” our Lord’s Hebrew Name, Yeshua, “YHWH saves.”  Hosanna, we pray.  And when any Christian prays that prayer, God in heaven hears and answers.  He answers with Jesus.  He sends His Son.  God comes down.  In the flesh.  He comes to save.  “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (John 12:13; ESV).  So the people cried, praying Psalm 118, as the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem on a colt, fulfilling the Scripture recorded by the Prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zech. 9:9).  “Hosanna,” the people cry, “save us!”  God responds by sending His salvation in the person of Jesus, whose Name means “The LORD saves.”  Hosanna.  Yeshua.  Prayer and response.  Jesus is always God’s answer to our prayer.
            Hosanna.  Save us.  This is what King Solomon prayed for at the dedication of the Temple.[1]  Solomon prayed that God would always hear the prayers of those who pray toward the place of which God promises, “My name shall be there” (1 Kings 8:29).  In the Old Testament this was the Temple in Jerusalem, the dwelling place of the Ark of the Covenant with its mercy seat (the throne of God!), and the place of Sacrifice.  These things pointed forward to Jesus, the One who “comes in the name of the Lord,” who is Himself the mercy seat and the sacrifice.  Solomon prayed that God would hear all who pray toward the Temple in their many and various afflictions, and that for the sake of His Name He would rescue, release, forgive, save.  That is, after all, the pattern of our God.  He heard the cries of His people in Egyptian bondage.  He sent Moses to speak in His Name, and He Himself led the people out of their slavery, through the Red Sea and the wilderness and into the Promised Land.  He led them with His own presence in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.  He dwelt with His people.  His glory descended on the Tabernacle.  He met with Moses face to face.  Make no mistake.  This is Jesus.  The LORD heard the prayers of His people, Hosanna, save us.  His answer is Jesus. 
            You wouldn’t know this from the English translation, but again and again in the Psalms and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures God’s people pray some form of the word from which we get “Hosanna.”  It is translated “save.”  Save me.  Save us.  Save the king.  Simply: Save.  In other words, again and again the people of God pray the Name “Jesus.”  Isn’t that amazing?  And God answers, finally, and decisively, by sending Jesus.  Hosanna.  Save us.  Jesus.  The LORD saves.  It reminds me of the hymn we’ve been singing the last couple of midweeks, “Jesus, in Your Dying Woes” (LSB 447), every verse ending, “Hear us, holy Jesus.”  Or the very moving closing hymn last Sunday, “Lamb of God, Pure and Holy” (LSB 434), as we cry at the end of each verse, “O Jesus!  O Jesus!”  It was the cry of the 21 Coptic martyrs on the beach in Libya in 2015, as their throats were slit by Islamic terrorists.  Jesus!  The Lord saves!  Lord, save us.  Hosanna. 
            So it is no accident that the people cry “Hosanna,” as our Lord rides into Jerusalem to accomplish His saving work.  In addressing that word, that prayer, to Him, they are confessing Him to be the Messiah!  They are confessing Him to be God’s answer to their prayers.  Now, to be sure, they may not understand just what it entails that Jesus is the answer to their Hosannas.  We know that many were expecting Messiah to claim the Kingship of Israel in such a way as to deliver the nation from the tyranny of the Romans.  Others wanted healing miracles and bread in abundance.  And lest we forget, this crowd has assembled because Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead.  We all want a King who can do that.  But Jesus is not a politician, and even though He can actually deliver on His promises, and does that very thing, His Kingdom is not of this world.  The great mystery of it all is this: God’s answer to our Palm Sunday prayer is the Passion of our Lord.  God’s answer to our Hosanna is God dead on the cross.  That is the relationship between what we did at the beginning of the service with our palms and procession of joyful singing, and what we did shortly after as we solemnly heard the account of our Lord’s suffering and death for us in its entirety from the Gospel according to St. Luke.  Hosanna, we pray.  Save us.  The Lord does it, by suffering and bleeding and dying.  This is not what anyone expected.  But it is how the Lord accomplishes our salvation.  Jesus reigns from the cross.  Jesus saves us on the cross.  Our prayer is answered on the cross.  This is what Holy Week is all about.
            And what of us now?  The cross was nearly 2000 years ago, and still we have reason to cry, “Hosanna!  Save us!”  There are the sins that beset us, the relationships we have broken, the loneliness, the shame, the despair that can set in deep down in our souls.  There is cancer.  There is war.  There are the promises of politicians, mostly broken, and nearly all of them impotent, every one of them, without exception unable to save us.  There is deep anxiety because we know that things are not right.  We need saving.  And if the cross is God’s answer, we need help if we are to see how.  A distant God who died for you two millennia ago, but has no contact with you now, is not a real Savior.  But that is not our God.  Remember that God answers our Hosanna by coming.  He comes downJesus comes.  That is how He delivers the salvation of the cross.  He comes to you, in the flesh, just as surely as He came into the womb of the Virgin Mary, just as surely as His hands and feet were nailed to the tree and His sacred, kingly head crowned with thorns.  He comes to you in water and words and bread and wine, delivering the gifts of His salvation.  It is His voice you hear, forgiving your sins.  It is His Blood with which you are washed in the font.  It is His Body you eat and His Blood you drink, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  This is the medicine that heals you, body and soul.  His flesh is the bread of life in abundance.  He is the King who redeems you from the tyranny of sin, of death, and of the devil.  He is risen from the dead, and He will call you out of the grave on the Last Day, just as He called Lazarus.  And you will never die again.  He promises.  And He delivers.  Hosanna is a prayer for all occasions.  We always need His saving.  And He always saves.  “Hosanna,” we pray.  “Jesus,” God answers. 
            It is right, then, that the prayer, “Hosanna, save us,” has also become an exclamation of praise.  For His saving us is an accomplished fact in Christ crucified and risen from the dead.  You will see it when He comes again in glory.  Oh, how we long for that Day.  Come, Lord Jesus.  Hosanna.  Come, and save us.  He will.  He is coming soon.  In the meantime, He does not leave us on our own.  We sing the song of the Palm Sunday crowd every time we come to the altar.  We sing the Sanctus: “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest… blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (LSB 195).  We pray “Hosanna,” and what does He do?  He comes down and feeds us with His Body and Blood.  He forgives our sins.  He saves us.  “Hosanna,” we pray.  God’s answer is Jesus.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.          
  



[1] He does not use the word “Hosanna,” but here he connects God’s salvation and His Name.

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