We Confess; Jesus Builds

 

Jesu Juva

St. Matthew 16:13-19                                                     

December 7, 2022

Advent Midweek 2                      

Dear saints of our Savior~

          Tonight’s theme is: We Confess.  But there’s not a lot of confessing going on these days.  Have you noticed that?  Oh, there’s a lot of pontificating and bloviating going on.  There’s a lot of soap-boxing and sound-biting going on.  There’s a lot of tweeting and texting taking place.  Ranting and raving are rampant.  The internet is saturated with virtue-signaling.  But there is precious little confessing going on.

          Take a walk around the block with me tonight here in Whitefish Bay and I can show you some failed attempts to confess.  On my December walks, I’m always hoping for mangers, because mangers confess the Christ of Christmas.  Instead, I see a few signs that simply say, “Believe.”  That’s it.  Just . . . believe.  But believe what?  That reindeer really know how to fly?  That a certain snowman might just spring to life if given the proper hat to wear?  “Believe”—by itself—is no confession because a confession must have content.

          As we keep going around the neighborhood, you can also see other signs with a bit more content.  Those signs say:  “We believe that love is love, that science is real, that no human being is illegal, that climate change matters, etc.”  But those signs are less of a confession, and more of an announcement—an announcement that those who dwell there hold all of the pop-culture approved, politically correct, socially responsible opinions.  They are simply going with the flow, wherever the latest trends and slogans take them.  No, there’s precious little confessing going on in these parts these days.      

          To “confess” means, essentially, to say the same thing.  Confessing is what the church of Jesus Christ is called to do.  But before you confess, you must first receive.  You have to be given-to.  The content of your confession must be revealed to you.  It originates outside of you  And then, from what you have received and believed, you then confess.  You say back to God—and to the whole world—what God has revealed to you.  First you receive, then you believe, then you confess. 

          Jesus wants His followers to confess.  In fact, He calls forth our confession.  He asks for it:  “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”  And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  This is known as the “confession of St. Peter.”  What Peter had heard and seen and received from Jesus, he now declared.  And notice how Jesus bestows on this confession a blessing—a beatitude:  “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah!  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”  Jesus was overjoyed to receive Peter’s confession.  It pleased Him beyond measure.  Peter believed what he had received from heaven.  Peter confessed—not the pop-culture opinions about Jesus—that He’s a special rabbi or a good moral teacher—a great example to follow.  Those would have been the “safe” answers to give.  But Peter dared to be different.  He dared to confess a heavenly revelation:  You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

          And as for us here tonight—we have no less to confess!  Jesus Christ delights in your confession.  Blessed are you when you say back to Him what He has revealed to you in His holy Word.  In every Divine Service we confess.  And we confess most clearly in the Creeds.  And when it comes to the creeds, let’s be clear:  We aren’t merely repeating, reciting, reading, or reiterating.  (How boring that would be!)  We are confessing.  We are confessing the faith once delivered to the saints.  We are adding our voices to the time-tested, Spirit-inspired truth of the Triune God.

          And Christmas is the perfect time to confess Christ.  In a very real sense, the church’s creeds are Christmas creeds.  They express the miraculous truths of this

holy season—that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin—that He is begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made . . . who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.  From heaven above to earth He came.  That’s Christmas!  The Creeds contain the heart of our confession—that the One who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.

          By the way, a good trivia question for you:  What two human beings are named in every divine service?  What two mortals get mentioned every Sunday?  The Virgin Mary and Pontius Pilate, of course.  Why do those two characters get confessed in all three Creeds?  Because they anchor our confession in real time, in real history.  Ours isn’t a fairy-tale faith of fables and legends of long, long ago—of slogans and soundbites.  But what we confess is sure and certain—because it didn’t originate with us.  What we confess will one day culminate in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.  And this dying world needs to hear that. 

          So dear Christian, confess!  Keep confessing!  Confessing is what you are called to do. 

          But whatever you do, don’t build.  Building is none of your business.  The business of building the church belongs to Christ alone:  On this rock, Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  We in our sinful pride and half-baked opinions—we wouldn’t know the first thing about building the church. 

          We would surely botch any attempts to build the church.  We could build a cult—a cult of personality based on a dynamic, mesmerizing leader.  We could build a cathedral to the idol of climate change—come up with new commandments about where to set your thermostat, threatening hell and damnation for all who refuse to go green—dishing out sacramental solar panels and wind turbines.  We could build a temple dedicated to the proposition that all people are created and defined by their race.  We could import and build a multitude of idols. 

          We cannot build the church; but, we can confess.  We can confess what God has revealed to us—about Law and Gospel—about sin and grace—about death and resurrection—about Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And using the rock of your confession, Jesus will build.  Jesus will build His church.  He builds in unexpected ways.  His ways of building sometimes appear more like tearing down to us.  But He’s been building His church for some two thousand years now.  He knows what He’s doing. 

          Jesus is building His church.  We’re confessing; He’s busy building.  He is building His church in Belize, where our missionary Micah is busy preaching and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  Jesus is building His church in Leipzig, where our missionary Kim is confessing God’s Word and demonstrating God’s love to Germany’s newest residents—leading them to Baptism, teaching them to confess Christ in Farsi and Arabic.

          Jesus is building His church right here on this block of Whitefish Bay.  Here we confess in Word and deed the praises of Our Savior, who has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.  Beloved in the Lord, keep on believing.  Keep on receiving.  Keep on confessing.  So that one day your ears will hear what Peter heard:  Blessed are you!

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