Exaudi (The Sunday after the Ascension)

 Exaudi (Sunday after the Ascension) – June 1, 2025

Psalm 27; Ezekiel 36:23-28; 1 Peter 4:7b-11

St. John 15:26-16:4a

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ our Lord has much to say about the trials, tribulations, and crosses Christians must bear on this side of glory. We can sort these afflictions into two broad categories. First, there are those afflictions that are the result of sin but are common to all mankind. Disease, financial difficulty, depression, anxiety, emotional instability, uncertainty about the future; these are the result of sin but they are the results of sin that all mankind experiences. Although these afflictions are real and serious, one does not need to be a Christian to suffer them. God may use these afflictions to punish sin, chastise His beloved children, and draw Christians closer to Himself, but they remain forms of suffering related to the sinful nature born into man.

The crosses which Christ has called all Christians to bear are of a different category. These are the result of being a Christian. They are the reaction of sin against faith. This is the unjust suffering of the Christian, patterned after the unjust suffering and death of Christ. To this category belongs all forms of persecution, resentment, abuse, and hatred endured by Christians for the sake of the name we bear.

Being still afflicted by the sin of our flesh, we know just how easy it is to avoid these crosses. Deny the name of Christ and you will be relieved. A little compromise here and a little deception there, and maybe your persecutors won’t even realize you are a Christian. Keep your mouth quiet and they will leave you alone. Each betrayal of the name of Christ makes life a little easier on this side of glory, but I can tell you it will make eternal life that much worse because it would have been better for the betrayer of Christ not to have been born.

Our reading from the Prophet Ezekiel is set in the context of the Babylonian captivity. The people of God had betrayed the Lord by allowing for the worship of false gods in their land and worshiping those false gods themselves. They had profaned the name of the Lord. God punished them by delivering them into the hands of the Babylonians and scattering the people among the nations. Our text includes the Lord’s promise to restore His people by taking them out from the nations and returning them to the land of their fathers.

In the verse just prior to our text, the Lord tells the people that He will deliver them not for their sakes, but for the sake of His holy name. That is, He will deliver them not on account of their righteous deeds or their piety before God, but so that His name would be made known among the nations. He would deliver them so that the nations would know that He is the true God who upholds His word and saves His people.

This promise still holds true for you today. In Adam’s fall, we were all cast out of the land of our promised inheritance, the land of our fathers. We dwell in a foreign land because of our sin and our willingness to profane the name of God, the name of Christ. Yet while we were still in our sin, the Father sent His Son to die for us, to redeem His name among the nations.

And what did God promise, through Ezekiel, to do when He had gathered His people from the foreign nations? Sprinkle them with clean water. It is no accident that in Holy Baptism, the name of God is placed upon you. We do not just invoke the name of the Triune God in Holy Baptism but in fact place that name upon your head. You are sealed with the very name of God in the waters of Holy Baptism. What did God say He was doing when He delivered the people from Babylon? He was sanctifying His great name. Who bears the name of God? The Baptized! Having been delivered from the nations, you now stand with citizenship in the land of your promised inheritance, the land owned by your Father who stands to give it to you. Washed clean from your filthiness and all your idols, a new heart and a new spirit has been placed within you.

And so, as Christ says, ‘You also will bear witness.’ You will bear witness to the name of Christ and the world will hate you for it. The world is at enmity with God and you, baptized children of God, bear the name of Christ.

Now the task of bearing witness to Christ is too much to bear for man alone. Your justification and your sanctification are not for your sakes but for the sake of God’s holy name. That is, neither justification nor sanctification is on account of your merits or piety. They require the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom Christ has promised to pour out on His people. This too, happens in your Holy Baptism. You are not baptized into the name of the Father and the Son only to receive the Holy Spirit 14 years later at your Confirmation. The name of the Triune God is placed upon you in the waters of Holy Baptism that from your very first breath out of the waters, you begin to bear witness of Christ.

And this is a lifelong task. It is the life to which you have received new birth. It is not a burden to bear. In most of our hearts, we imagine ourselves to be sinners striving to become holy through our manner of living. Even as Lutherans, for whom salvation by grace through faith is so important, we tend to think of our life of sanctification as something we are trying to attain. This is utterly backwards. As the baptized, you ought to imagine yourself as a holy saint who is striving to ward off sin. You don’t need new skills, new habits, better time management to achieve a life of holiness. You don’t need better people skills to convert the masses. You already have the Holy Spirit. God is already on your side. Because Christ is yours and you are His, you have everything you could possibly need.

What is left is to ward off the wickedness. How? By being a witness of Christ in thought, word, and deed. Be serious and watchful in your prayers, not as another thing you must do but as making use of what is already yours. Have fervent love for one another not because “it’s the right thing to do” but because you have the love of the Father, more than enough to share with the entire world. You have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, make use of it to minister to those around you, being a good steward of the gifts you’ve been given.

And then, when those within the Church on earth put you out of the church or murder you thinking they are offering service to God, you will not be made to stumble. You can bear your cross because it has already been borne for you. As you are conformed to Christ, the name of Christ you bear will shine ever more brightly. It is not for your sakes, but for the sake of God’s Holy Name.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

Lent Midweek 4

Lent Midweek 4 – April 2, 2025

Psalm 122; Ezekiel 36:23a, 23c-28

St. John 9:1-38

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When the disciples as Jesus, ‘Who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind?” they are asking Him to explain the Law. It is as though they were asking, “Teacher, what does the bible say about this man’s condition? Is it the result of his sin or his parents’ sin?” Their question is understandable. In the 5^th chapter of St. John’s gospel, they saw Christ heal a paralytic who had been lying by the pool of Bethesda. When the miracle was complete, Christ said, “Go and sin no more.”[1] It was a natural conclusion for the disciples that this man’s blindness is also related to sin.

Christ’s response to the disciples tells us that the disciples are on the right track but have made a slight error. The man’s blindness is related to sin, but not to sins committed by this man nor his parents. This blindness is related to original sin, the sinful condition of man, the opposition to faith.

In fact, this miracle stands in the middle of the long-standing debate between Christ and the Pharisees over who Christ is. The miracle then stands as a testament to the work of God, namely, the recreation of man in the image and righteousness of Christ.

The Holy Spirit, working through St. John, has already set this Gospel in the context of creation when the first chapter begins with a summary of creation focused on Christ. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”[2] This Word is the light of the world, something Christ applies to Himself in our text.[3]

The theme of light and darkness, also present at creation, serves for the distinction between the absence and the presence of God. The wicked “do not know, nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness.”[4] “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”[5] “In that day, [the day of the Lord], the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness.”[6] “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”[7]

This light and darkness is manifest in sight and blindness. Those who see rightly, see by the light of Christ. Their eyes are open to the glory of God, manifest in the person of Jesus Christ. This Word of God is the light to our feet and the lamp to our path.[8] Darkness is blindness, a complete lack of sight, not to mention seeing rightly. It is a confusion of vision. Our first parents’ eyes were open to their nakedness and sin at the same time that they were closed to the righteousness of God. In seeing, they became blind. Christ will say the same of the Pharisees who condemn the man born blind when they refuse to acknowledge that He is the Son of God.[9]

As Christ goes to heal the man, there is no discussion of what the blind man desires nor what he would have the Christ do. Our Lord simply spits on the ground, makes clay, anoints the man’s eyes, and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. Our Lord’s conduct in this miracle is very revealing. This man was born blind, born dead in trespass and sin. Being dead in sin, he could not plea for his salvation. He could not make a decision to be relieved from sin. The Lord is the first and only actor in the man’s salvation.

And how does He do it? He mixes water and clay, the very elements of the first creation, then speaks to the man. In the beginning, God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.[10] Our Lord is signifying that He has done much more than heal this man’s malformed body. He has called this man to faith, bestowed faith upon him. He has recreated this man in the righteousness of Christ. The miracle comes to fruition when the man washes himself in the waters of Siloam. This washing signifies Holy Baptism, when the man made of dirt is washed clean of his sins.

The event which follow the miracle are also very instructive for the life of the Christian. We see that the man does not immediately comprehend everything that has happened to him. His faith is not entirely formed. His sins are forgiven but he does not understand the source of that forgiveness, not entirely. We could liken this to the faith of a child but a better comparison would be the faith of the saints of the Old Testament. They looked to God for salvation but until the time of Moses, they did not have His name. Even then, they had a title for God, “I AM,” but they did not know His personal name.

Over time, more was revealed of precisely how God would save them from their sins. They looked forward to the birth of the Christ, the very Son of God, but they did not know His personal name. He would be Immanuel, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.[11] It was not until a lowly virgin gave birth to the Son of God that the world would know the Christ, that we would know Jesus, the name at which every knee in heaven and on earth will bow.[12] This revelation of the name of Christ is the light to lighten all the nations of the earth.[13] In the name of Christ, man is reborn through the waters of Holy Baptism, born from above, born a child of the Heavenly Father.

Just as it took time for this revelation to come to the people of God in the Old Testament, so too it took time for the man born blind to see Who it was that restored his sight. Even then, it is not until Christ reveals Himself to the man that he fully understands what has happened. And immediately, the man confesses “I believe!” and bows before Christ in worship.

The journey of the now seeing man is analogous to the life of the Christian, especially in enduring affliction. From the time of his healing to his confession of Christ, he is bombarded by interrogations, first by his neighbors and then twice by the Pharisees. Each time he speaks, his confession of the miracle he has received becomes clearer, more specific. In the history of the church, it was always times of persecution and controversy that led to a greater understanding of God’s Word. The creeds were written against heretics. The Reformation occurred to correct the errors of the medieval Roman church and under constant threat of death. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

So too, as we face physical pain, sadness at the loss or suffering of loved ones, and persecution in our jobs, communities, and families, we find opportunity for faith to grow. The affliction of this man was so that the works of God would be revealed, made manifest in him.[14] Pain and suffering are real but Christ is the greater reality, the light no darkness can comprehend, let alone overcome.

In Holy Baptism, we are not just made new creations set loose to wander in the world. We are created new in Christ. We are grafted into His Body, the Church, wherein we find our home. We are made new as the Old Adam is drowned and washed away. He is our light and our sight. Being made new in Him, we have new sight to see and receive the mighty blessings of God, even if our eyes of flesh see only the pain and suffering of this world. You have been given the new eyes of faith, that with the man born blind, you might confess, “Lord, I believe.” In that confession, you have more than anything in this world can give you. You have the Christ. You have the mercy, grace, and love of God, who is the light of the world. You have the name of Jesus, who is present with you always, to light even the darkest of places.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] St. John 5:14.

[2] St. John 1:1.

[3] St. John 1:4-5; 9:5.

[4] Psalm 82:5.

[5] Isaiah 5:20.

[6] Isaiah 29:18.

[7] 1 John 1:5.

[8] Psalm 119:105.

[9] St. John 9:41.

[10] Genesis 2:7.

[11] Isaiah 9:6.

[12] Philippians 2:10.

[13] St. Luke 2:32.

[14] St. John 9:3.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

 The Second Sunday after the Epiphany – January 19, 2025

Psalm 66; Amos 9:11-15; Romans 12:6-16a

St. John 2:1-11

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The first of our Lord’s active miracles was enacted at a wedding in Cana. It was no accident that our Lord chose a wedding as the occasion for this first and chief miracle. In the beginning, creation was not deemed ‘very good’ until Eve had been given to Adam in the first Holy Marriage. From that moment on, God has blessed the world through the union of man and woman, the one flesh union through which children are created. Precisely through this one flesh union, the Promised Seed, the Savior, was to be born. The entirety of the Old Testament can be viewed as a genealogy, tracing the lineage of the Promised Seed, and as such, it is a story bound to Holy Marriage.

What’s more, is that God has described His relationship to His people in terms of Holy Marriage. Through the prophet Hosea, He said, “I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.”[1] In the New Testament, we not only have the parables of the wedding feast and the virgins attending the wedding feast of Christ, but such explicit statements as “For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” and “We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.”[2] That is to say, the Church has been betrothed to Christ, presented to Him as a chaste and righteous virgin, in purity and holiness, and we are members of His body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones, united in a one flesh union with Christ.

It is for these reasons that Christ highly values Holy Marriage. Our earthly marriages are a picture, an image, of this marriage between Christ and the Church. From the marriage of Adam and Eve to the last union joined before the Last Day, Holy Marriage is a depiction of Christ and the Church.

Since it is God Himself who has created marriage and has declared, “What God has joined together, let not man separate,”^[3] divorce must be of the devil. Divorce is a rending of the one flesh union, a tearing apart by man of something which has been joined together by God. Divorce must of the devil if it is a tearing apart of that which God has created.

Christ makes no exceptions where divorce is acceptable in the eyes of God. Rather, when He speaks of cases of adultery, the one who has committed adultery has already broken the one flesh union. The divorce has occurred in God’s eyes. The question is not if a signed document makes the divorce but if the spouse who committed adultery will repent and the spouse sinned against is willing to enter once again into the one flesh union with the repentant sinner.

It is also for these reasons that our marriages should be blessed by Christ and conducted in the House of God, the church. A wedding in a courthouse, presided over by a judge is just as valid as a “church wedding” because marriage has been built into creation by God. It is a part of natural law. But we, being sons and daughters of God and citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, ought to seek to have our marriages blessed by Christ, attended by the true Bridegroom. The Church is the most fitting setting for a wedding because it is the setting for the marriage between Christ and His Church.

When the wine at the wedding feast in Cana began to run dry, the Blessed Virgin said to our Lord, “They have no wine.”[4] Built into this statement is the request that He do something about it. St. Mary is motivated by a sincere sympathy for the bridegroom and the guests. If the feast ran out of wine, the bridegroom would be embarrassed and put to shame. It would indicate that he was incapable of providing for the feast to which he had invited all these guests. On behalf of the guests, if there was no wine, the feast would end. The joy and merriment would come to an early end. Wine elevates a meal into a feast. The Blessed Virgin is sincerely concerned for all involved and she looks to her Son to alleviate the potential disaster.

However, she is met with a hard response. “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.” From this response, we learn a few things about Mary’s request. First, she is asking her Son to do something as the Word of God, through whom all creation was made but she is making her request from her position as His mother. That is, she is leveraging her authority as mother to make a request of her Lord. This is a misuse of her maternal authority. She has no right, as His mother, to request the Christ to make divine acts. Certainly, as a Christian, she has every right to make requests of her Lord, but in this case, she is misusing her office as mother to press Christ into acting.

Ask almost any Roman Catholic about praying to Mary and they will say something like, “We don’t pray that she would do anything but that she would ask Jesus to do it. It helps to have His mother on your side.” That is exactly the error that Mary is making in telling Jesus to do something about the wine at Cana. She is truly blessed among all women and full of grace, but she has no special access or sway with God than any other Christian. Calling her, “woman,” is not derogatory in any way, but it is our Lord’s way of reminding His dear mother that in divine matters, she holds no special office to request His actions.

Speaking of His hour holds special significance in the Gospel of St. John. It refers to the hour of His crucifixion. It indicates that the crucifixion is the culminating moment of the work of Christ. There, His work is finished. It is complete. All the miracles, all the words of Christ point forward to the hour in which all things are completed. Our faith rests on the historic event of the crucifixion and resurrection.

At the same time, because of the crucifixion, Christ may speak of His hour being present in all His actions. Here, it indicates that not only was St. Mary requesting that her Son do something about the wine, but that He do it now. The wine was beginning to run dry, and she wanted to spare the hosts and the guests the shame of knowing there was no more wine. She wanted Him to intercede before the problem was made public.

Here we see the Blessed Virgin’s second folly. She put a specific timeframe on a miracle of God. She as much as told Him, “They have no wine. Give them wine and do it now before the problem becomes an embarrassment.” Such temptation is great for all who call on the name of the Lord. We feel the passing of time. We know that yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is coming very soon. Because of that, we want what we want, and we want it now. If this holds true for a party about to run out of wine, it also holds true for what we deem to be emergencies. Your sister is dying of cancer and may not make it to tomorrow. You want God to act now, or it will be too late. Patient though he was, even Job’s patience ran out and he demanded that God act.[5]

“If our prayer to God is to be acceptable and be heard, then of course we are not to prescribe the time and manner for help, especially in bodily needs. Here we hear from Christ that He has a specific hour, that is, He has actually already in His heavenly counsel decreed when and how He will help us. We should patiently wait for that hour.”[6]

Having been reminded of the proper use of her office as mother and Christian, the Blessed Virgin also gives us a glorious example of faith. She turns to the servants and says, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”[7] Hearing the Word of her Lord, she remembers the virtue of patience and trusts that whatever her Son does, it will be for the good of those gathered at the feast. With Job, she says in her heart, ‘Your hands have molded me and made me into everything I am within and without, and even though You hide it in Your heart, I still know that you remember it.”[8] Christ our Lord may not do exactly what she wanted or when she wanted it done, but whatever He does will be better than she could imagine. And “hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”[9]

Hearing a sincere Christian prayer for those gathered at the wedding feast, our Lord performs the first, and chief, of His miracles, for the purpose of manifesting His glory.[10] In the first place, we see by this miracle, and all miracles, that Jesus is truly the Almighty God, Lord and Creator of the universe. Unlike the prophets, He does not need to call upon God to act through Him. He is the God through whom all things are made.

We also see that Christ is revealing Himself as bringing overabundance in joy and grace to those who would receive Him, sympathetic to the needs of man. The stone waterpots formerly held water used to make one ritually clean. Our Lord takes these instruments of the Law and turns them into vessels of joy and gladness, filling them with His Gospel of grace for all in attendance. He makes the understanding of the Law lovely, for that is how the Gospel interprets the Law.

The one who hears and believes the Gospel of Christ, that He has come and delivered you from your sins by means of His death and resurrection, has their heart of stone turned to a heart of flesh.[11] Hearing that the obedience owed to God, that which we cannot perfectly fulfill, has been fulfilled by Christ, our hearts are made glad. “Wine makes glad the heart of man.”[12]

In terms of overabundance of joy and grace, we hear from the master of the feast that the guests had already been well drunk and are now provided with almost 200 gallons of good, strong wine. Our Lord answered St. Mary’s prayer in a greater way than she could’ve imagined.

Not only did this miracle manifest the glory of Christ but “His disciples also believe in Him. They recognized Him as the Son of God and the promised Messiah in whom they placed their heartfelt trust. From this we learn that all miracles of Christ relate to and call for faith; God’s Word and His miracles are the two pillars and the foundation of faith. For from the Word and promises we come to know His gracious will; from the miracles we come to know His divine omnipotence upon which the trusting heart from now on must found and establish itself. May God the Lord sustain and uphold us in such a faith through Christ—the Initiator and the completing Perfector of [our] faith (Hebrews 12:2).”[13]

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] Hosea 2:19-20.

[2] 2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:30.

[3] St. Matthew 19:6.

[4] St. John 2:3.

[5] Job 31.

[6] Johann Gerhard, Postilla, Volume 1, translated by Elmer M. Hohle (Malone, TX: The Center for the Study of Lutheran Orthodoxy, 2001), 161.

[7] St. John 2:5.

[8] Job 10:8, 13; paraphrased.

[9] Romans 5:5.

[10] St. John 2:11.

[11] Ezekiel 36:26.

[12] Psalm 104:15.

[13] Gerhard, Postilla, 163-164.