Misericordias Domini (Easter 2)

 Misericordias Domini – May 4, 2025

Psalm 33; Ezekiel 34:11-16; 1 Peter 2:21b-25

St. John 10:7-18

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

In St. Peter’s first letter to the Church, the Holy Spirit admonishes us this morning to follow Christ. He then explains in what respects we should follow Him and concludes with why it is that we should follow Christ.

The admonition to follow Christ is quite simple and direct: “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.”[1] We might be accustomed to thinking of Christ’s perfect life as an example for the Christian life, but the Holy Spirit would have us here consider His perfect suffering and death as an example, too. Christ declared, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”[2] The cross of which He speaks is often taken to be the daily burden of sin or any of the various types of suffering endured each day by man. While that may or may not be the intention of Christ’s own words, the Holy Spirit calls these words to mind in the context of greater suffering: suffering the sins of others, persecution, and death.

Our Lord’s suffering could be said to begin with the knowledge that one of His beloved disciples would betray Him. A man who had been with Christ from the beginning would betray Him with a kiss, and for what? Thirty pieces of silver and the approval of man. Then, the events of that night really begin when Christ speaks of His betrayal. He knows what Judas plans to do and is pleading for Judas’s soul. But the son of perdition had already given his soul to satan that the Christ would be betrayed into the hands of the priests and Romans. Imagine the sorrow of Christ as His heart breaks that one of His beloved would betray Him, sorrow that is redoubled as the betrayal is completed with a kiss, a sign of affection poisoned by sin.

Christ says to Judas, “Friend, why have you come?”[3] Then, to the murderous crowd, He says, “I have told you that I am [the One whom you seek]. Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way.”[4] He said this to spare those whom He loved from the fate He was about to endure. Yes, they would one day meet similar deaths, but their time had not yet come. He must first show them the way into the grave, that they would also see His victory over it. They needed to see both the way into the grave and the way out of it, that they would follow Him.

So then, in what respects are we called to follow Christ? Our text outlines five ways in which we are to follow Christ. First, He committed no sin. If only we could follow Christ completely and perfectly in this way! Yet the frailty of our flesh does not excuse us from following in His footsteps. A child might try to follow his father’s footsteps in the snow, but his short legs won’t allow him to perfectly conform to his father’s gait. His little feet will make a mess of his father’s tracks.

Yet in the same way, we too should follow Christ in being disgusted by sin and fleeing from it with all we have. We should look to His steps and set our wills to following in them. When we stumble and fall, for the footsteps are too great for us, we cry to our heavenly Father to forgive our sin, lift us back onto our feet, and continue in His train.

Second, no deceit was found in His mouth. If our actions should conform to the steps of Christ, then so too should our thoughts and words. The Holy Spirit has much to say about the evil that is produced by the tongue. “The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.”[5] How easy it is to let a sinful word pass our lips or a wicked thought capture our minds!

Perhaps worse still is keeping silence when speaking is required. When called to confess, repent, or forgive, if you should keep your tongue in your mouth then the flame of the tongue begins to burn within you, setting your body and soul aflame. Yet look to Christ who spoke the Law to hardened hearts, the Gospel to the repentant, and even kept His silence when words no longer touched the hearts of His persecutors. No deceit was found in His mouth because from it issued the pure Word of God.

Third, when Christ was reviled, He did not revile in return. Christ did not curse His persecutors and executioners from the cross but rather prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”[6] This prayer was certainly answered in the case of the repentant thief on the cross and perhaps also in the centurion who confessed that “certainly this Man is the Son of God.”[7]

We are to follow Christ in restraining our hearts against those who persecute us and those who sin against us. Cry out to God that justice be done? Absolutely. Pray that the wicked be destroyed, as Psalm 55 says, “Destroy, O Lord, and divide the tongues [of the enemy], For I have seen violence and strife in the city;” or Psalm 58, “Break the teeth [of the wicked] in their mouth, O God! Let them flow away as water which run continually…The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.”[8]

Yet even in these harsh psalms, we pray for the purpose that God’s will would be done and that we would be spared the sins of wicked men. The cry for God’s justice to be meted out on the wicked is so that God’s will would be kept pure and holy and that the righteous would be saved. It is not a prayer for personal vengeance. These are not prayers for personal retribution. They are prayers for justice and righteousness.

No Christian is called to be a punching bag, absorbing the kicks and punches of the wicked. Turning the other cheek is not a commandment to enable abuse. Rather, when the persecution, wickedness, and sins of others come against you, look to the God of all mercy, grace, and justice for relief. He will judge the unrighteous. He will protect the righteous. He is our strength and shield, not we ourselves.

The fourth and fifth respects in which we are to follow Christ are related to the third. He did not return reviling with reviling, nor did He return threats with threats. Rather, He committed Himself to the one who judges righteously. “‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.”[9] When persecution and sin comes against you, the first thought is to protect your own heart, lest you too be swallow by the wrath of others and join them in their iniquity. God has said, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”[10] The Lord hears the cries of the faithful and will preserve the righteous. He will judge the wicked to the glory of His own name. We are to walk in the footsteps of Christ by having faith, trusting in the Lord’s righteousness to deal with us (and the wicked) according to His Word.

The admonition to follow Christ’s example in His perfect life but especially in His perfect suffering and death begs the question, why? As good evangelical Christians, we know that Christ proclaimed, “It is finished!” from the cross. Your salvation is finished, complete, made whole, by Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Why, then, does the Holy Spirit speak to us through St. Peter and speak so boldly about our duty to follow Christ’s steps?

It is precisely because He is the Good Shepherd. He leads His flock from the front. He guards and protects the sheep. He knows you by name. He also leads you to still waters and away from dangers. The footsteps of Christ show the way of salvation. Where Christ, our Shepherd is, that is where we want to go. If our desire is to be with Christ, to be in His flock and to go where He is leading us, then naturally, we ought to follow His steps.

We were once like sheep going astray, that is, we were once sheep without a shepherd, lost in the confusion of our sin; turned inward, staring at our navels, thinking we knew the path within ourselves. Yet even while we were in our sins, the Father sent His Son to gather the wayward sheep to Himself. He came to die that we would have life. If Christ has said, “I know My own, and My own know Me,” then it is we, who know Christ, who have been called to follow Him.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] 1 Peter 2:21.

[2] St. Matthew 16:24; St. Mark 8:34; St. Luke 9:23.

[3] St. Matthew 26:50.

[4] St. John 18:8.

[5] James 3:6.

[6] St. Luke 23:34.

[7] Cf. St. Matthew 27:54.

[8] Psalm 55:9; 58:6-7, 10.

[9] Romans 12:19.

[10] Romans 9:13; cf. Malachi 1:2-3.

Lent Midweek 5

 Lent Midweek 5 – April 9, 2025

Psalm 143; Leviticus 19:1-2a, 10b-19a, 25b

St. John 10:22-38

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

169 years before the birth of Christ, the Syrians ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes conquered Judea and overthrew Jerusalem. He arrogantly entered the Temple, removing the altar and the other appointments. In its place, Antiochus erected a pagan altar and began offering sacrifices to Zeus. He ordered that all citizens of the kingdom adopt Greek habits, culture, and religion on punishment of death.[1] Many from Israel “gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath.”[2]

At that time, God raised up a man named Mattathias to begin a rebellion against this pagan ruler. This rebellion began with the faithful remnant fleeing into the hills and waging a guerilla campaign against the superior forces of Antiochus. As word of the rebellion spread, faithful women and children also made their way into the hills to find safety among these steadfast men of God.

It was Mattathias’s son, Judas Maccabeus, who would eventually defeat the Syrian army and liberate Jerusalem after 4 years of brutal warfare. All the while, Judas would encourage his men by bolstering their faith. In the face of vastly superior numbers and armaments, Judas remained faithful that the True and Living God would deliver them from the oppression and false worship of the Syrians.

When that day of deliverance finally came, the first action of the now freed Israelites was to remove the pagan altar from the temple. They refused even to repurpose the stone, preferring to cast it into an unclean place, awaiting God to raise up a prophet to tell them what to do with it. They rebuilt the altar and remade the furniture and appointments of the temple. When the preparations were complete, the priests offered the first right sacrifices in the temple since Antiochus had erected the Abomination of Desolation in that holy place. To commemorate the occasion, Judas Maccabeus declared an 8-day celebration of mirth and gladness, giving thanks to the God who had delivered them from the hands of Antiochus, his pagan worship, and his pagan way of living. This 8-day feast is called “Hannukah,” translated, “The Feast of Dedication.”

This feast is the setting for our reading this evening. It was a feast to commemorate the rededication of the temple, after it had been cleansed of the false worship of pagan gods and rededicated to the worship of the True and Living God. You may have heard Hannukah as the “Festival of Lights,” but the legend of the miraculous oil that burned for 8 straight days is not recorded until nearly 700 years after the Maccabean Rebellion. The feast was instituted to commemorate the great victory God provided over the Syrians and the restoration of worship according to the Word of God.

With this in mind, the actions and questions of the Jews in our text take on renewed significance. Just as the nations surrounded Jerusalem and threatened the existence of God’s people, the Jews surround Christ. As He walks in the oldest portion of the Temple, it is demanded that He tell them plainly if He is the Christ.[3] These Pharisees and chief priests are asking an honest question. They have already asked this same question five chapters earlier. Christ has shown through His works and through His teachings that He is indeed, the Christ of the Scriptures, the Son of God become Man, but they have refused to see, refused to hear.

Christ answers them very directly, “I told you, and you do not believe.”[4] He goes on to characterize His sheep as those who hear His voice. This hearing, receiving of the Word of God, is not strictly passive in the sense of audio waves bouncing off the ear drum. Its like the mother who tells her teenage son to take out the garbage. When she finds him still sitting on the couch and the garbage sitting in the kitchen, she might say, “Did you not hear me?” Hearing the voice of the shepherd manifests in action. In the case of Christ, this Word of the Shepherd is the call to leave earthly and sinful attachments and follow Christ.

Salvation is by faith alone. It is not the result of our actions, even our response to the Word of God. But being one of the sheep, being one who hears and receives the call of faith, results in a change in the state of being. Having heard the Word of God, one cannot help but be called to a new life. This is the life of a Christian. It involves a new way of life, a new habitus.

The nefarious Jews and chief priests of our text are like their forefathers who gladly adopted the religion and ways of life of Antiochus. They are firmly rooted in their false beliefs concerning God and His Word. They refuse to hear, and respond, to the Words of Christ. Thus, their way of life, their habitus, is unchanged. Being unchanged, their lack of faith is made manifest to all.

The devil has not changed his tactics in the last 2,000 years. Those who belong to him still seek to draw away the faithful sheep into an earthly habitus, an earthly way of life, as opposed to the way of Christ. Rainbow pride, DEI, and critical theory are a new creed commanded by the collective conscience of a new Antiochus, the ruler and high priest of our age. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and “Live and let live” would never be enough to satisfy this new religion. Christians are daily demanded to confess the words of these new creeds. We must resist that temptation. Young and old alike, we must resist.

The most fundamental step in this resistance is to refuse to speak the lies. After Antiochus commanded everyone in Judea to sacrifice to his gods, there was a small minority who refused. Among these was a 90-year-old man named Eleazer. His friends begged him to participate, if only to save his life, but Eleazer refused. He said, “At our age it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense; many of the young would think the ninety-year-old Eleazar had gone over to an alien religion. If I dissemble to gain a brief moment of life, they would be led astray by me, while I would bring defilement and dishonor on my old age.”[5] Eleazer did not lead the military revolt against Antiochus, but he refused to speak the lie. He would not dishonor God’s Word, and he would not set the unfaithful example for the young. Youth, and children especially, need role models. They especially need men who will show them the way of life, the way of Christ. They need men to be men so that they would learn to lead in their own time.

Beyond refusing to speak the lie, the next step to which all Christians are called is living the life of a Christian. That might sound overly simple, but it is true. Show the next generation of Christians how to act in Church. Listen, sing, give attention to the matters at hand. Recite the catechism with your children or grandchildren as often as possible. If you are employed, be the best employee you can, setting the example of one who works for Christ. Care for your children as the gifts of God they are.

If it has been given to you, the greatest step is actively participating in the rebellion. At the beginning of the Maccabean revolt, the faithful few had no weapons, yet they ran into battle with the Lord at their side. The Word of God was their sword and shield, their armor and defense. These first steps might look like attending a March for Life. It might look like refusing to attend DEI training. It might even be as simple as reading articles or books to better understand the situation we are facing.

The sheep who hear the voice of the Shepherd are never alone. He holds you in the palm of His hand and no one can snatch you away. The warmth of the Father’s hand enlivens you to live according to the word that gives you hearing. Our Shepherd is the one who gives eternal life. That life is the freedom to stand with Judas Maccabeus and Eleazer, to rejoice in the Temple not made with hands. Freedom to stand against the Jews, the chief priests, and the nations who surround you. It is the freedom of one released from the bonds of sin and called into the sheepfold of Christ.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] 1 Maccabees 1:41-50.

[2] 1 Maccabees 1:43.

[3] St. John 10:24.

[4] St. John 10:25.

[5] 2 Maccabees 6:24-25.

Misericordias Domini

Misericordias Domini – April 14, 2024

Psalm 33; Ezekiel 34:11-16; 1 Peter 2:21b-25

St. John 10:7-18

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

It is not an accident that so many of our fathers in the Old Testament were shepherds. Abel, Jacob, David, and Amos are just a few who shared this profession. Especially with the life of David, the image of the shepherd is also associated with kings. The primary job of the shepherd is to guide, provide for, and protect his sheep. A king’s duty is the same—to guide, provide for, and protect his people. God has thus established Himself as the Shepherd of His people as He has promised to guide, provide for, and protect them.

A shepherd guides his flock from the front, that is, he walks in front and the flock follows behind. He sets the example of where to walk, where it is safe to graze, and where to lie down for the evening. Our Lord, Jesus Christ does the same for you. He was in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led the Israelites out of Egypt. He was with David when he went before the army of Israel and slew the giant, Goliath. He walked perfectly in the Law of the Lord to fulfill the Law on your behalf but also that you would see what it is to live according to the Word of God.

More directly, Christ has sent His Holy Spirit upon you that you would not be alone. If left alone, you would not follow Christ, your Shepherd. You couldn’t. It is the Holy Spirit that carries your limping body and aching soul along the way that you might look to Christ and be guided upon the narrow path of salvation.

And of course, Christ has given you His Word to guide you. “Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” God’s Word guides you in how to live and behave but it also guides you to your final destination. His Word even tells you that this narrow path of salvation will be full of danger and suffering. Christ has called all who would follow Him to take up the cross. Such suffering in this life is not aimless. It is for the strengthening of your soul and in fact, plays it’s own role in conforming you to your Lord. Such suffering is small compared to the suffering of our Lord, but it serves to gather you into the image of Christ.

How then, does the Good Shepherd provide for you? “He daily and richly provides you will all you need for this body and life.” All material things that you need to survive are provided by the hand of God. If for even one moment, God stopped providing for the world, it would cease to exist. Out of His divine, Fatherly, “Shepherdly” goodness, He provides for the needs of every living thing.

The Good Shepherd is even more abundant in His blessings than this. He provides not only for your material needs but also for your spiritual needs. Chiefly, He provides you with His Word. He has communicated to you through the hands of His prophets and Apostles so that you might hear the voice of your Shepherd and know Him.

He also combines this Word with physical elements in the Sacraments. Because He knows how easy it is for you to doubt His Word, Christ has bound His Word to water, bread, and wine so that you can feel, taste, and touch the promises He has given you. He provides for you in thought, word, deed, and sensory perception.

He provides for you the voice of an undershepherd, a pastor, who speaks to you the words of absolution. These words of forgiveness are just as true and certain as if God Himself spoke them from heaven. This is a gift to you directly from God.

He provides the Church, the gathering of the saints to hear God’s Word and receive His gifts. He provides brothers and sisters in Christ that, yes, are able to provide you with temporal blessings, but far more importantly are able to uplift your soul in the worship of the Triune God; are able to support your voice even as Aaron and Hur supported the arms of Moses; are able to orient your mind and body toward the things of God when you would rather turn away toward the passing things of this world.

How then does Jesus, the Good Shepherd, protect His flock? He protects you chiefly from sin, death, and the devil. He does this by dying and rising again. This is what makes Him the great, noble, beautiful Shepherd. He lays down His life of His own accord and takes it up again. No man took the life of Jesus. Jesus laid it down for you. By doing this, He destroyed the Goliath of death. He snatched you, His sheep, from the very mouth of hell and placed you in the sheepfold of His heavenly kingdom.

He continues to protect His flock using the very same things He has provided for the flock. What are you to do when you are assaulted by temptation, sin, or demons? Use the Word of God. Recite the Creed. Call your pastor. Pray the Psalms. Jesus continues to work through means, and these are sure and certain weapons against the agents of Satan. That which He provides He also uses to protect you.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.