Doing Angels' Work

In Nomine Iesu
Ps. 103:20-22
September 28, 2017
Eve of St. Michael & All Angels

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

The catechism teaches us to pray—both in the morning when we get up, and in the evening when we go to bed. And both that morning prayer and that evening prayer contain this mysterious sentence: Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power

over me. For most of us that sounds nice. Beginning the day and ending the day accompanied by one of God’s holy angels is certainly a good thing.

But if we’re being honest, it also sounds a bit quaint—a little old-fashioned. Our worldview really doesn’t have a place for angels. Oh, sure, the Catechism, the liturgy, the Bible itself—they’re all replete with angels and archangels. Whereas, our daily lives have been scoured clean of even the remotest thought or trace concerning angels.

And the trouble isn’t merely that we live in a God-forsaking, secular culture; the trouble we have with reckoning and recognizing angels begins with us and our sin. As sinners, we always aim to restrict God’s power and reduce the scope of God’s activity. We fence God in according to our designs. We go to visit God once or twice a week at church, kind of like we go to the zoo to view strange and exotic creatures, all carefully caged-in for our entertainment and viewing pleasure.

If nothing else, Luther’s morning and evening prayers should remind us to repent of our unbelief concerning things we can’t see and our attempts to box God in according to our limited view of reality. Let your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me.

Angels are mysterious—and, most of the time, unseen. Angels aren’t people; they are spirits; neither male nor female. Yet, Scripture speaks of them as persons—unique, individual persons such as St. Michael and St. Gabriel. Those two are the five-star generals of the angel armies. The existence of angels shouldn’t surprise us at all. God delights in creating. He never has enough creatures to love. There’s a dazzling array of creatures that have yet to be discovered, in fact, in the deepest depths of the ocean and in the remotest rain forests. What’s so unbelievable about angels?

The angels do excel in strength. They have powers that we do not. They can do things we can’t even imagine. And in Psalm 103 tonight we are told exactly what the angels do: Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! There you have it. The angels do the Lord’s bidding. They obey His voice. They do His will.

And you are never closer to the angels—you are never nearer to the angels—than when your work is aligned with their work—when you join the angels in what they are doing. When we do the Lord’s bidding—when we obey His voice—when we sync ourselves with the good and gracious will of God—well, right then and there we are working side-by-side with angels.

This happens most often and most naturally when we engage in the work of our God-given vocations—when fathers do the work of fathers and mothers do the work of mothers, and children and neighbors, and students, and citizens do what the angels do: namely, doing the will of God. Luther points out that angels most often appear to people in the Bible when they are engaged in the work of their vocations—doing the routine stuff of life (that’s what gets the angels rejoicing).

The other time when we team-up with the angels is right here in this sacred space. The highest joy of the angels is in their Divine Service—their worship. Tonight we join with them. They join with us. Together we say, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” And in just a few minutes we will join with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven in saying “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabaoth.” This is the song the angels sing in the presence of God. “Sabaoth” means “host,” or “army.” God is the God of the angel armies of heaven. And He is our God too. One of my favorite features of the chapel at Concordia University are the angel figures etched into the marble on both sides of the chancel—a reminder that there are far more worshippers here tonight than you may think there are.

Do you have a guardian angel? An angel assigned specifically to you? The Scriptures don’t give us a definite answer about that. A few minutes ago we heard Jesus say this: See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. It’s not surprising that Jesus should connect the angels with “little ones.” The little ones of Matthew 18 include not just children, but all believers whose faith is weak—struggling Christians whose hope is depleted, and for whom temptations to sin loom large. God’s good and gracious will is that not one of them should be lost. And the angels, too, align themselves with accomplishing that good and gracious will of God.

You are better than the angels—superior to them. The Son of God did not become an angel, but a human being like you. What wondrous love is this that God should become man to die a bloody death for sinful rebels like us? That same wondrous love is at work for us tonight in the Word and in the Sacrament. Here God does for us what He has not done for angels. He gives us His body and blood to cleanse us from our sins, and so draw us into a closer fellowship with the angels—so that our work and their work might become more and more difficult to distinguish.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Not Fair, But Gracious

In Nomine Iesu
St. Matthew 20:1-16
September 24, 2017
Proper 20A

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

An hour’s pay for an hour’s work. You reap what you sow. You get out of it what you put into it. A day’s work equals a day’s wage. Those are the rules. And we expect God to operate by those same rules. We expect God to be fair—to recognize and reward our work.

But today we learn that God is not fair. He’s just. He’s gracious. But God is not fair. And that’s good because grace isn’t fair. Fair is the Law; grace is the Gospel. If it’s fair, that means the first come in first, the last come in last, survival to the fittest, and the kingdom to those who achieve it. But if it’s grace, then the first are last, and the kingdom goes to the least of all. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go to the parable, shall we?

A man had a vineyard and needed laborers to pick his grapes. He went to the union hall at 6AM and negotiated with the union boss

for some laborers at a denarius a day—about $120—and off they went. At 9AM he noticed he was still shorthanded. So he went to Home Depot and found some day laborers looking for work. He told them, “You go work in the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.” (Note that: Whatever is right. Whatever is just. Not whatever is fair.)

He did exactly the same thing at noon and at 3PM—found some idlers hanging around and hired them for some unspecified, just wage. At 5PM the sun was beginning to set and there was still work to do, and he needed more help. So he went to the local tavern where some deadbeat losers had been hanging out all day, quaffing beers, because no one would hire them—understandably. “You go into my vineyard too,” he says, not even promising to pay them a dime. But they’re running low on funds for booze and weed, so off they go to work for one hour. How hard can it be?

Finally, at 6PM it’s Miller Time as they say in Milwaukee. The vineyard workers all head to the foreman to receive their wages. The owner has them line up in reverse order, from last-hired to first-hired, from the eleventh hour losers to the crack of dawn Grape Pickers Local 101. The first girl in line (one of the deadbeats from the tavern) opens her envelope expecting ten dollars at the most. But what’s she find instead? Six crisp twenties. And so it continues.

Pretty soon word filters back to the end of the line—back to the union guys hired first—that those who worked only one hour got $120. So they’re thinking, $120 per hour times 12 hours, that comes to $1,440. Cha-ching! Cha-ching! And so, one by one, they step up to the table, expecting the biggest payday of their grape-picking lives.

But in all their calculations they hadn’t figured on one thing. The payout from the vineyard owner is all based on his goodness and his promises, and not on their work. And in his infinite goodness, this guy gives out six crisp twenties to every single worker, regardless of how much or how little they worked. Each worker gets a denarius. “Not fair,” declare the sweaty, exhausted union guys who worked all day long. But the owner reminds them that he didn’t promise to be fair, but only to pay them a denarius. Promise kept. End of parable.

One of the toughest pills for religious superstars to swallow is the idea that God justifies the ungodly; and that our salvation at the world’s final Miller Time is not based on our works, our achievements and accomplishments, but on the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ who doles out a denarius of salvation to all who believe, whether a lifelong Lutheran or a deathbed convert to Christ. The labor unions of religion howl in protest. It’s unfair to Commandment Keepers Local 101. But then grace wouldn’t be grace, would it? It would be bookkeeping. And if the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses with his commandments, and not by Jesus with His bloody cross.

A day’s wages for a day’s work. That’s fair. And that’s what we expect in this world, and that’s right. This world operates by the rule of law. That’s good and there’s no way around that. But Isaiah reminds us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not ours. He deals with us not according to what’s fair, but according to His grace and His goodness. If you want God to be fair—to deal with you according to your works and your accomplishments—then you will be damned. That’s fair. That’s the Law. Hell is the one place where everybody gets what they deserve.

Many of us, in a sense, are like the workers hired first, or at least earlier in the day. We were baptized as babies. We grew up in the church. There’s never really been a conscious moment in our lives when we didn’t know Jesus as our Savior. We’ve worked in His vineyard our entire lives. We’re not quite sure what to make of those eleventh hour converts who benefit from everyone else’s hard work—those who “got away” with never tithing, never serving on a committee, never attending a long church meeting, never having to get up early on Sunday.

Whatever you make of them, for the love of God, don’t be jealous of them. But see God’s generosity in them and praise Jesus that it really is by grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Jesus Christ alone that sinners are made righteous. Praise be to Jesus, because if there’s room enough in the kingdom for eleventh hour losers and deadbeats—for hookers, and tax collectors, and all manner of notorious sinners—well, then, there is surely enough room in the kingdom for you and me.

Then again, let’s not overstate our position in the kingdom. We really aren’t the first workers hired, are we? Others have believed before us. Others have suffered before us—and much, much more than us. There have been workers in this vineyard for two thousand years: St. Matthew and St. Paul, St. Mary and St. Elizabeth, St. Polycarp and St. Augustine, Luther and Bach. There were countless, nameless believers who bore the heat of persecution, who defended the faith, who suffered and died trusting in Jesus, who have now departed this life to be with Christ (which is far better).

And now, in these last days, at the eleventh hour with the sun setting, with the fields still ripe and waiting for harvest, the Lord of the vineyard has been so kind and gracious to call YOU to work in this same vineyard. We are, really, the last and the least. We come to the scene when much of the work is already done. Yet, you get the same denarius—not six crisp twenties, but the same forgiveness of sins, the same salvation, the same resurrection life in Jesus. It’s not fair at all; but it’s oh, so gracious.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still ungodly, He justified us. Before you so much as lifted a finger to work in His vineyard, He prepared an envelope with your name on it, containing “your” denarius. And even the work you’re doing now—the good you do each and every day out of love for your neighbor—it’s all really God’s doing in you and through you. And all this is what we call the “gospel.” Good news. Grace, not works. Gift given, not wages earned.

It’s outrageous! There’s no denying that. Whether first or last—whether we have worked hard, or little, or barely at all—there’s a generous payday coming. It was won for each of us by the death and resurrection of Jesus. He got the wages we deserve for our sins. We get His free gift of eternal life. That’s not fair . . . because God isn’t fair. But He is good. And He is gracious. Thanks be to God.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Sinners' Hospital

In Nomine Iesu
St. Matthew 9:9-13
September 21, 2017
St. Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

Do you ever dream about the ideal church? Or wish that your church could at least be more ideal? When I dream about the ideal church, I dream that all the members always attend every service—and that those faithful members always bring along with them some unchurched friends and neighbors. In the ideal church the Bible studies would always be well-attended, lively affairs that dig down deep into the Word of God. The people are super-friendly, caring, always praying for one another and serving one another. The services are reverent and meaningful, with music that always touches the heart. And, of course, when you dream of the ideal church, it always has an ideal pastor—a young man, of course, yet with 40 years of ministry experience under his belt. And children, too—lots and lots of children in the ideal church. It’s okay to dream, right?

Well, actually, no, it’s not. It’s wrong. It’s wrong to dream about the ideal church because it leads us to despise the real

church—the actual church—the church that Jesus Christ founded—and the church that St. Matthew wrote about and proclaimed. God hates our dreaming about the ideal church. For such dreaming either makes us despondent and discouraged, or else it makes us proud and pretentious and judgmental—demanding that everybody else get their act together and get in line with my concept of the ideal church.

The Pharisees dreamed about and demanded a perfect religious community—an exclusive community of respectable commandment-keepers. Tax collectors and prostitutes and others who failed to keep the Law in spectacular ways—well, they need not apply.

Tax collectors like Matthew were considered the worst of the worst—notoriously dishonest and greedy. Bribery, extortion, money-laundering, and outright theft were all part of the typical tax collector’s tool box. And there’s no reason to presume that Matthew was any different from all the rest. Matthew was a sinner—the ideal sinner—who had no place in the ideal religious community of the Pharisees.

But as it turns out, Matthew did have a place with Jesus, and in the church Jesus came to build. And this church—to which you yourselves also belong—it isn’t built around some ideal concept of perfection. No, the church of Jesus begins with two little words: “Follow me.” Notice that Matthew didn’t record for us a single one of his own words. If Matthew gave some speech about leaving behind the tax collectors’ booth and pledging his sacred honor to following the Savior, he left us no record of that. Because it doesn’t matter. What mattered was the grace-filled invitation spoken by the Savior: “Follow me.” Those same words were spoken to you—combined with the water of your baptism. Jesus wants you—along with Matthew—to follow Him in faith.

And then—then we learn just what kind of a church the church really is. It happened at a meal at Matthew’s house, where Jesus and his disciples were on the guest list, along with a bunch of other tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees, of course, objected to this less-than-ideal gathering: Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus Himself provides the answer. And in His answer we learn that His church is not some ideal religious community. But rather, it’s a community of sinners, a hospital for those in need of healing for their sin-infected souls. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. . . . I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This means that the church is, properly speaking, a hospital—a hospital for people who are sick with sin—a place where diagnoses are made and where healing is applied. Now, I get to hospitals with some regularity as part of my job. And the kind of people you find in hospitals are—how shall I put this—less-than-ideal. They are hurting. They are scared. They are angry sometimes. They are confused. Their carefully crafted routine has come crashing down around them and they are helpless—utterly helpless to do anything about it—completely dependent on others. It’s not ideal.

Welcome to the church—the real church—the church Jesus Christ came to build and the church about which Matthew wrote. There is no ideal church. There’s just a place for people who recognize their need and their helplessness—for patients (if you will) whose lives are diseased and disordered by sin. In the church of Jesus—in this hospital for sinners—you’ll find people who are hurting, scared, angry and helpless—sinners with messy, conflicted lives who know that the wages of sin is death.

This is the church—a hospital for sinners—and only for sinners. Here we have the physician—the Great Physician, Jesus, who suffered and died so that you might have healing. By His wounds we are healed. And even at a simplified, streamlined service like this, we have the healing medicine that Jesus Christ died to secure for you. Tonight, here in this hospital, you get to receive medicine that money can’t buy—that insurance will not cover—medicine that heals you in body and soul. In fact, in the early church, the Lord’s Supper was known as the medicine of immortality—food and drink for this life, and for the life of the world to come.

Don’t dream about an ideal church; give thanks for the real church—the church into which Jesus has called you—the church that welcomes sinners and provides the healing of Jesus in Word and Sacrament. It’s all here for you. Amen.

Forgiven and Forgiving

In Nomine Iesu
St. Matthew 18:21-35
September 17, 2017
Proper 19A

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

‘Tis the season for sneezing, and some folks have been doing a lot of it lately. Sneezes are the body’s way of expelling things that you’re better off without—things like dust and pollen and mold. Did you know that the air you expel when you sneeze is traveling more than 100 miles per hour? Those are “category 2” hurricane force winds! It may just be an old wives’ tale, but some people believe that holding in your sneezes can be harmful. Why keep in the bad things that your body wants to get out?

Holding in a sneeze may or may not be harmful; but holding in forgiveness—refusing to share forgiveness with those who sin

against you—that will definitely do you more harm than good. Refusing to forgive is like a cancer on the soul. It isolates and eats away at the one who refuses to let it go—to forgive. If hell is the place where no sins are ever forgiven, then refusing to forgive is truly hell on earth. Jesus comes today to rescue us from this hellish prison.

Last week we heard from earlier in Matthew 18 that sin—even among brothers and sisters in Christ—is unavoidable and inevitable. It is to be expected. We also learned that confronting sin is an act of love—that we should go to the one who sins against us with the goal of reconciliation. We should go to every length possible to forgive. We are to set no limits when it comes to forgiveness.

Peter, today, was looking for limits—and loopholes. We all do it. “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?” How about seven times? When is enough enough? The rabbis of Jesus’ day said three times was enough. Peter’s suggestion of lucky number seven had a nice Biblical ring to it.

But just for a minute, imagine if Jesus had said, “Yes, the limit on forgiveness is seven times.” How many of our marriages would have ended long ago if Jesus had set the forgiveness quota at seven? How full would the pews be this morning if in this fellowship of believers we only had to extend forgiveness to one another seven times? Wouldn’t we all eventually be estranged from one another—brother against sister, husband against wife, elders against ushers, choir against organist? I imagine if someone sinned against you six times, you’d almost be hoping for just one more time so that you could be done with forgiving that person.

Forgiveness with limits is not real forgiveness. Forgiveness, the way Jesus defines it, has no limits, no tally sheets, no boundaries. Forgiveness “Jesus’ style” is outlandish and outrageous. “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” says the Savior. Jesus sees Peter’s seven and raises him seventy. And just about the time you start to lose count, you’re beginning to learn what it means to live under the Gospel instead of the Law.

To forgive literally means to “let go” of the sin committed against you; or to “send away” the offense to some other place where it’s no longer on your radar. To forgive means to go on as though the thing hadn’t happened. The sin has no power over you because you’ve let it go. You’ve sent it away—no ifs, ands, or buts, no contingencies and no quid pro quos. To forgive is to step into freedom—the freedom that is yours as a blood-bought child of God.

Forgiveness is so important that Jesus devotes an entire parable to it. A servant owed the king an astronomical amount of money. His house was probably mortgaged three times over, credit cards maxed out, dealing with the neighborhood loan shark, a chapter 13 nightmare. He begs for mercy from the king, tries to cut a deal: “Be patient with me and I will pay back everything.” Yeah, right. The king could have tossed this deadbeat into debtor’s prison—could have liquidated his every possession. But he didn’t. The king did an outrageous, crazy, reckless, insanely gospel thing. He forgave the entire debt. Let it go. Sent it away. Told the accountants to get out their erasers. And the servant walked away free and clear.

That forgiven servant went out in his freedom and found a fellow servant who owed him, basically, pocket change. But instead of forgiving him, he wrung his neck, began to choke him, and demanded payment on the spot. His fellow servant pleaded for leniency with the very same words the first servant had used with the king. But instead of forgiving him, he had the man thrown into prison. When the king heard about it, he threw a fit, called the servant back in and asked, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” In anger the king handed the man over to the jailers to be tortured until he paid back his astronomical debt. There was hell to pay for his refusal to forgive as he had been forgiven.

When we refuse to forgive as we have been forgiven, we put ourselves in prison, we torture ourselves, and the King isn’t happy. Few things anger Him as much as our refusal to forgive as we have been forgiven. How many of us are already living in a kind of self-inflicted torture because we refuse to “let go” of all the slights and all the sins and all the insults and all the pain and abuse that people (and sometimes people we love) have inflicted upon us over the course of a lifetime? And don’t try to tell me that dragging around that load of filth every day is enjoyable or that it gives you pleasure. It’s a kind of torture and it’s killing you.

One thing’s for sure, that’s not the way of Jesus. That’s definitely not the kind of life that Jesus Christ hung on the cross to win for you. He’s the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the whole world. Every sin committed against you is atoned for in His death. Every sinner is reconciled to God by His blood. When you look at that person who sinned against you—see that person as one for whom Jesus died. See that person as someone who is reconciled to God in the death of Jesus. Does he know that? Will he know that from you? He’ll never know it from you if you’ve got your hands wrapped around his neck. He’ll never know it from you if you keep throwing his sins right back in his face. But he may yet come to know it with your hands on his shoulder and with the words, “I forgive you.” When was the last time you said those three little words? I forgive you. Nothing is harder. Nothing is more powerful.

As for you, you leave here this morning debt free. Your sins are as far from you as the east is from the west. The books are closed. The debt is paid in full. The slate is wiped clean. All this thanks to Jesus who paid the debt, “not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death.” You are forgiven. You are free. You are forgiven and forgiving.

That phrase, forgiven and forgiving, appears on the banner that you see pictured on the front of the bulletin today. That banner has hung right out here at the top of the stairs for as long as I can recall. I never paid much attention to it until one day many years ago when the lift was being installed. I was sitting in my office thinking deep thoughts one afternoon when a man who was working on the lift began swearing loudly. And I don’t mean one or two naughty words; he was letting the expletives fly. Now, I could’ve just let it go, but quite frankly I was concerned the man might’ve just severed his arm given the volume of profanity that was still echoing up to my office.

So I walked out of my office to the top of the stairs out here where the man’s blue streak was still continuing. “Are you okay?” I asked. Well, immediately the swearing stopped and the man sheepishly told me how he had removed a ceiling tile that he shouldn’t have removed. And then the man suddenly paused as if struck by an awful realization: “You’re not the pastor, are you?” he asked. Well, a ceaseless stream of profuse apologies began to come out of his mouth. The man truly felt lower than a snake’s belly at that point, and I was trying to comfort him when he spotted something on the wall behind me. It was that banner with a cross and the word “forgiven” in capital letters. Pointing at the banner he said, “I guess that’s me.” “Not just you,” I said. “That’s all of us—forgiven and forgiving.”

We forgive others—not to be forgiven by God—but because we already are forgiven by God in Christ. Whenever you forgive someone you—in a very real sense—become like Jesus. You become like Joseph who forgave his brothers the evil they had done, but with tears in his eyes said, “You meant it for evil, but God intended it for good.” Even when you get shafted by someone, God makes sure that everything works for your eternal good. You’re already ahead of the game. So why not let it go and forgive from the heart? Don’t pooh-pooh the power of forgiveness. It’s nothing to sneeze at. It’s Jesus Christ at work in you and through you. Amen.

The Christ & The Cross

In Nomine Iesu
St. Matt. 16:21-28
September 3, 2017
Proper 17A

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” There you have it. The theme of the day: Cross-bearing and Self-denial. Well, this is going to be a tough sell. We don’t naturally want to go down the road of

cross-bearing and self-denial. Our natural inclination is to do just what our first parents did in the beginning, in the Garden: Adam and Eve denied themselves nothing, seized what wasn’t given to them, and bit down hard on the notion that they knew better than God.

And we are the living proof that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Self-denial isn’t just a tough sell; it’s a foreign concept to most Americans today. Self-denial? You must be joking. Our entire culture revolves around self-indulgence, self-absorption, self-gratification, self-glorification, not to mention selfies and selfie sticks. Narcissism is the name of the game.

But Jesus says, “Deny yourself. Take up your cross.” What Jesus says in this text is a major inconvenience to our aspirations of grandeur. So, naturally, we look for a way around what Jesus says in this text. Maybe all this talk about crosses and self-denial is only figurative or metaphorical or spiritual. Maybe Jesus is just exaggerating; He did that once in a while, you know. Maybe Jesus just has in mind Sunday mornings. You know? Carry on business as usual Monday through Saturday; but just deny yourself a little sleep on Sunday morning, show up for this sweet hour of prayer, then suffer through longs lines at the all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, and call it good. Self-denied; cross carried; boom! If you think that’s what Jesus means then ask yourself this: Where would we be if Jesus Himself had only taken up a figurative cross—a metaphorical cross—or a spiritual cross—instead of a real, wooden cross with nails? We wouldn’t be here—that’s for sure.

Today’s Holy Gospel is a turning point in Matthew. It records the moment when Jesus begins to make His decisive turn toward Jerusalem—and Calvary. Up to this point in our Lord’s earthly ministry, it’s been kind of fun to follow along—watching Him slap those demons around, healing scores of sick people, feeding thousands, stilling storms, walking on water, running circles around the scribes and Pharisees. Who wouldn’t want to follow Jesus? The crowds flocked to Jesus, and we would have been right there with them.

But no sooner had Peter proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God—than Jesus began to take a different tone. From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and rise again. From that time, Jesus explicitly began to tell them just what it meant that He was the Christ—the Son of God in human flesh. In a word: the cross.

Peter objected—immediately, forcefully, predictably. God forbid it, Lord. This shall never happen to you! Oh, Peter. There but for the grace of God go I . . . and you. One minute Peter could confess the divinely revealed truth about Jesus, and in the very next breath try to derail His death and resurrection. One minute Jesus could commend Peter, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon.” But in the next minute Jesus would rebuke Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me. You have in mind the things of man.” One minute Peter spoke divine truth. The next minute he was a spokesman for Satan. And Peter had no idea which was which.

Peter had no idea; and neither do we. So sneaky and slippery is our sinful nature that one minute we’re holding fast to what is good, but the next minute we’ve indulged ourselves in evil. One minute we’re generously donating to help anonymous hurricane victims, but the next minute we’re doing our best sloth impersonations when we ought to be serving and helping the members of our own family. With our lips we say, “I forgive you,” while in our hearts we plot and plan our carefully crafted vengeance. We’re jealous of those who rejoice and make a wide detour around those who weep. It’s a crying shame. With our tongues we bless . . . and we curse; we proclaim the truth . . . and we whisper demonic lies. And, most of the time, we don’t know which is which.

This is why the Christ and the cross go together. This is why Jesus said it was necessary—why Jesus said that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, be killed and on the third day be raised. It wasn’t optional—not if our sin and death were to be definitively dealt with, once and for all. The cross was critical and crucial. The cross would be how God’s self-denying, self-giving, self-sacrificing love would be shown to the whole world.

This is why Satan tried to subvert the cross. The cross is the one thing the devil really fears. The cross is the devil’s downfall. The devil knew that the sacrifice of Jesus’ perfect human life on the cross would satisfy the demands of the Law. He knew that the death of the Son of God would cover the world’s sin completely—that sinners like us would be able to stand before God forgiven, righteous, and holy because Jesus would die and rise as our sacred, sin-bearing substitute. The devil knew that his accusations would be silenced, that sin would be atoned for, that death would be defeated, that his domain would be vanquished.

The Christ and the cross go together. This is why our Jewish neighbors are particularly offended by the cross. It’s why our Muslim neighbors are particularly offended by the cross. This is why, still today, the devil wants to distance you from the cross of Christ. He couldn’t stop Jesus, but maybe he can mess with you a little bit—get you to think that you have to earn your forgiveness—get you to think that your baptism means very little for your messed-up life—cleverly convince you that the Lord’s Supper is nothing more than a sentimental, symbolic reminder of what Jesus did on a hill far away. He’d love to get your eyes off of this crucifix so that you can focus more clearly on your own needs and narcissism.

Separating yourself from the cross is the first step toward gaining the whole world—and losing your own life. That’s dumb. Yet people do it all the time. If you’re doing it right now, stop. Repent! Set your mind on the things of God instead. Deny yourself as you do the work of your vocations with diligence and determination. Follow Jesus right here to where He shares the benefits and blessings of His holy cross with all who gather in faith around His blessed Word and His Holy Supper.

Jesus asked, “What shall a man give in exchange for his life?” The answer is nothing. You have nothing to give. We are all beggars. But here’s the glory of the cross: Jesus gave His life in exchange for your life. In fact, He gave His life in exchange for the life of the world. One holy, perfect, sinless, spotless life—for you, in your place. You are died for. You are loved.

Keep that in mind when the crosses you bear are heavy and painful. Keep that in mind when persecution comes your way. With the eyes of faith we can see right past our present sufferings to the resurrection glory that far outweighs them all. With faith in Jesus you literally have nothing to lose—nothing except your sin, your guilt, and your shame. That’s the way of the cross—the way on which Jesus invites you, simply saying, “Follow me.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.