Rogate (Easter 5)

 Rogate – May 25, 2025

Psalm 66; Numbers 21:4-9; James 1:22-27

St. John 16:23b-33

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

On the night when He was betrayed, our Lord told His disciples that the time was coming when He would no longer speak to them in figurative language but would plainly tell them about the Father.^[1] In these words, Jesus is prophesying concerning the Church and the Apostolic office. After the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, He sends the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles that they would remember all that He taught them and that they would go into the world proclaiming what Jesus has done. Hence the duty of the Apostles is not to teach in figurative language, leaving their hearers to interpret what is said. Rather, they are given to teach, to unfold the Scriptures, that their hearers would understand who God is and how He has won salvation for them.

This is the primary duty of the Apostolic office – to teach. Men called into this office are not to teach according to their own words or according to stories from their own experience. Jesus says that He will speak in plain language. Men in the office of pastor are speaking the very words of Jesus, even if arranged differently and spoken according to the voice of the man called to this specific pulpit.

This is the first of our Lord’s lessons today, but it is not His primary lesson. The primary lesson concerns prayer. In that very same day that the Apostles are called to teach Christ’s words plainly, all Christians are given to ask your heavenly Father as a dear child asks his dear father. You are the beloved children of God and have been given the right and privilege to call the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth your Father. It is a false humility to believe that God does not want to hear your prayers. It is false humility to believe that God is too busy to hear your concerns, worries, desires, or questions. This is a false humility because it is treating God as though He doesn’t care about you in the very name of respecting His Omnipotence.

When a person experiences lack—perhaps he grew up poor or fell on hard times in middle age—and then prospers, he tends to overcompensate by becoming miserly. He will hoard money or possessions for fear that poverty is always hiding around the next turn of the clock’s hands. He convinces himself this is only preparation but will soon find himself dying surrounded by great possessions and nothing to show for it.

The same is true of prayer, of doctrine, of Scripture. A man might memorize the entirety of the bible but if he never tells his neighbor of Christ or comes to believe that he knows everything there is to know about God, it is as much a waste as the man surrounded by possessions. St. James implores us today to be doers of the word and not hearers only.^[2]

The man who is baptized into Christ but fails to pray every day, every moment, finds himself in the same position. He has been given the access to ask the Almighty God for comfort, blessing, help, mercy, guidance, faith, salvation, strength, food, clothing, house, home, and everything else you could imagine and fails to pray because he thinks God is too busy for him. The fault is not in God, but in man. Perhaps the fault is that you are too busy, too frugal, too scared of God.

You have been given unfettered access to the Father, to ask of Him anything in the Name of Christ and the Father has promised to answer your prayer. The frightening part is that He has not promised the manner or time in which He will answer that prayer. This is frightening because it is now out of your control. In general, man views prayer either as a last ditch effort, something to try when there is no other option, or, as a list of demands to be met according to my will and schedule. This is not humility. It is hubris. It is pride. It is sin.

The disciples’ response to Jesus is confusing. By inference, when Jesus says there will be a time when He no longer uses figurative language, He means that He is still using figurative language. Yet the disciples claim that Jesus is now speaking plainly.^[3] Are they speaking from faith, trusting the words of Jesus even if they do not fully understand Him? Or are they like a child listening to the conversation of adults and pretending to follow along? The latter seems to make more sense, especially based on the following verses, where Jesus asks, “Do you now believe,” as if to say, “Really? Do you believe these words? After everything I’ve said and done, after everything you’ve seen, it is these confusing words I’ve just spoken that have opened your ears?”

But even if this is true and the disciples are only trying to put on a veneer of maturity, it is a pious veneer that we ought to imitate. They are not denying their sin or their failure to understand all our Lord’s teachings. They are trying to prove their devotion. This is the child who not only listens to the adult conversation but tries to contribute. They don’t know the depth of the topic at hand and so long as they are engaging appropriately (not yelling, interrupting, or insisting), they are trying to show that they are mature enough to handle adult conversation. They are trying to say, “I’m just like you.”

The disciples are trying to engage Jesus. They are trying to put into practice the type of prayer that He has just explained to them. They are trying to engage Jesus in conversation the same way that He has been teaching them for the last three years. Afterall, they will soon be the teachers of the Church. Their words are wrong, and they are rightly rebuked. They do not fully grasp what Jesus is saying because they can’t. It is not until the Holy Spirit descends upon them on Pentecost that all the words of Jesus will be brought to their remembrance. It is not until they see the words of our Lord through His resurrection that they can understand any of it.

What then of you and your prayers? “Blessed are they who believe and have not seen.”^[4] You believe and have not seen. You stand on the other side of the resurrection. You stand on the other side of Pentecost. You stand in that time promised by Jesus, when the Father will hear your prayers and grant to you anything you ask for in the Name of Jesus. You stand in this blessed time so act like it.

Do not view prayer as a list of demands. View prayer as the unloading of a burden. View prayer as a morning stretch to remove the knots and kinks accumulated in your sleep. View prayer as a weekend phone call with your Father, who loves nothing more than to hear your voice. Pray for the simple things. Pray for the complex things. Pray for everything and everyone. Pray for 15 seconds under your breath. Pray for 30 minutes before bed.

Get into the habit of praying for everything, at all times. “Lord, keep my mind focused on the service today. Amen.” “Lord, guide my memory as I take this math test. Amen.” “Dear Jesus, protect our family as we drive to Minnesota to visit family. Steer the hands of our fellow drivers and grant to us a pleasant and relaxing trip. Amen.” “Lord, soften my heart to forgive my sister. Amen.” “Send the Holy Spirit to fill my mouth with those blessed words to grant faith unto my son, who has gone astray. Amen.” The point is, pray; and pray in the Name of Jesus.

What does this mean? It means to pray according to the will of God.^[5] It means first seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness and then trusting God to deliver all things needful.^[6] Prayer in the Name of Jesus means recognizing that you do not know everything, but your Father in Heaven does, and He knows what you need before you even ask.^[7]

Prayer in the Name of Jesus also recognizes that you are a sinner, coming before the Lord of Lords to beg for the honest desires of your heart. God will not hear the prayers of the unrepentant sinner, but He and all the angels in heaven rejoice over the repentance of a single sinner.^[8]

The disciples are like children who desperately desire to be included in the conversation of adults. They use words they do not understand, and they claim to be tracking along with everything being said. Yet they do not understand. They do not have the knowledge nor experience to participate in the conversation.

Let us be honest in that no matter our age, we are prone to the same. As adults, we are afraid to admit our ignorance. We are afraid that someone might know something we don’t. We would rather hide than ask. We would rather make them be quite so they don’t reveal our ignorance. We would rather fall back on the familiar than learn something we don’t know. This is childish and such childish behavior not only harms your relationships with other people but hinders your ability to grow in wisdom and knowledge. Biblically speaking, knowledge is that which you gain from reading the Scriptures while wisdom is that which you gain from living according to them. When scripture speaks of the wisdom of the aged, it does not refer to the number of years in your life. If refers to the experience you’ve endured and the wisdom gained either from living according to God’s Word or having been rebuked for betraying His Word.

Whenever Christ commends the faith of someone, it is always tied to his boldness and perseverance. The centurion boldly confesses that Jesus can heal his son with a simple word because he is not worthy that the Christ come under his roof.[9] The Syrophoenician woman will not let Jesus turn her away when He has promised to deliver us from evil, no matter what the disciples or even Jesus’ own actions seem to be telling her.[10] This is the faith in which we pray to the Father in the Name of Jesus.

Ignorance is not a sin. Refusal to learn is. Hiding from God, His Word, and His gifts is a sin stretching all the way back to Adam and Eve. They hid in the garden for shame over their sin. Refusing to ask because of your pride or shame is no different than sewing fig leaves to cover your nakedness. Repent of such sins and pray that God would embolden your spirit by His Holy Ghost and kindle in you a desire for knowledge and wisdom.

Jesus says there will come a day when He will no longer pray to the Father for you, but you will ask the Father directly.^[11] Christ is speaking of the Last Day, when you will no longer bear any sign of your former sinfulness but will converse with God face-to-face in glory. At that time, you will have no need for Christ to mediate or the Holy Spirit to translate our groanings.

Until that day, we do need Christ to be our Mediator. We do need the Holy Spirit to make intercession for our groanings, because we do not know what we should pray for as we ought.^[12] We need the guidance of our fathers in the faith and pastors sent by God to direct our knowledge and wisdom.

God begins the conversation of prayer because without His Fatherly guidance, we know nothing of what we are to do. And then, when it is your turn to respond, it is only through the Blood of Jesus that the Father hears your prayers. It is only when the Spirit takes the aches of your soul and translates them according to the will of God that your Father in Heaven hears your pleas and answers them.

This is a great comfort because it means your prayers do not need to be beautiful on their own. Your prayers do not need to be fanciful, memorized, or somehow “correct” in every detail. Is there a time for pre-written, thoroughly rehearsed, rhetorically beautiful prayers? Absolutely. They serve to teach us how to pray just as hearing your mother speak taught you English. But whether they are pre-written or created on the spot, prayer needs to be from your heart, sincere, without any hint of hypocrisy or doubt. Your prayers boldly come from a sinner who has been saved by the Blood of Jesus and now asks his Father for all that which is needful.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] St. John 16:25.

[2] James 1:22.

[3] St. John 16:30.

[4] St. John 20:29.

[5] The rest of the sermon is inspired by the 8 rules of Christian prayer outlined in Wilhelm Loehe, Seed Grains of Prayer: A Manual for Evangelical Christians, translated by H.A. Weller (Kansas City, KS: Emmanuel Press, 2010), 1-2.

[6] St. Matthew 6:33.

[7] St. Matthew 6:8.

[8] 2 Timothy 2; St. John 9:41; St. Luke 15:10.

[9] St. Matthew 8:5-13.

[10] St. Matthew 15:21-28.

[11] St. John 16:26.

[12] Romans 8:26.

Jubilate (Easter 3)

 Jubilate – May 11, 2025

Psalm 66; Isaiah 40:25-31; 1 Peter 2:11-20

St. John 16:16-22

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

The primary application of Christ’s words this morning concerns the apostles, however, Christ also intended them for you and for the Church of every age. His words have two main parts: 1) “a little while, and you will not see Me;” and 2) “again a little while, and you will see Me.”[1]

In the immediate application, Christ is speaking to His apostles concerning His death and resurrection. He spoke these words on Maundy Thursday, the night of His betrayal. It would only be a little while before He was taken from them, handed over to the Jews and Pilate, then hung on a cross until He died. Because of these events, the apostles wept and lamented while the world rejoiced in the death of Christ. Satan and his brood claimed victory over God when Christ breathed His last, believing they had overcome the Church and her head. The apostles wept because they still thought of the Kingdom of God as an earthly kingdom, whose victory would be defined by growth, property, and riches. Now that their King was dead, the death of the kingdom was sure to follow.

Christ’s words to His apostles even hold true after the resurrection. It was only a little while that He remained with them before they did not see Him after the ascension. Almost immediately after Pentecost, the enemies of Christ began to wage war on the Church. Persecution and martyrdom followed. It became the policy of the Roman Empire to stamp out the “Christian Pagans” who followed the words of the Crucified Christ. All but one of the apostles would meet a martyr’s death, along with countless others. The weeping and lamenting of the Church did not end.

There is an idea among some Christians that before Christ returns, the Church will conquer the earth. What that means is that the Church will gain prestige on the earth such that all false teachers and unbelievers will at least be brought under the temporal authority of the Church, and Christianity will govern the world. This will usher in a golden age where righteousness and blessedness will rule the world and then Christ will return. This thinking is sometimes summarized in the phrase, “We win down here.” It is also called Post-Millennialism.

But we don’t need to believe in such a radical departure from God’s Word to be deceived by the same thoughts. More locally, we are tempted to believe that if only we could get a few more members, we wouldn’t need to worry about finances. Or, more money in the church will mean less problems. Or, more people in the pews (or even more names on the roster) means a more faithful congregation. Or, more light-hearted hymns, easier liturgy, less doctrine, more events, or anything similar will solve the problems of the church.

Such thoughts might have practical value. More money in the offering plate means making decisions about repairs to the church are less difficult. More people in the pews means more hearts are being converted by the Gospel of Christ. Yet placing your trust or value in any of these endeavors is contrary to God’s Word. He has promised that the Church will always be outnumbered by the unbelieving.[2] The Church will always be despised by the world. Finances will always be a struggle for the faithful. There will always be weeping and lamentation among us.

Personally, and as an institution, we will always be weeping and lamenting because we are the body of Christ, the body that was betrayed, smitten, afflicted, and bore a cross to the mountain of Calvary.[3] Most of the world will always be on the side of our persecutors. The tares will remain until the harvest which is the return of Christ at the end of time.[4] Seasons of feast and famine will continue to turn but the feasts will seem shorter and the famines will grow longer. The faith of those precious to us will turn cold. Your body will continue to decay until it is returned to the dust from which it came.

Days of peril, violence, and persecution will increase. The preaching of false Christs will echo more loudly in your ears. Just this week, a new man ascended to the throne of the antichrist who, from what I’ve read, could be even more damaging to Christians than his predecessor. Idolatry, Atheism, Infidelity, perverted Science, false philosophy, worldly pride, heresy, schism, and turmoil from within and from without have marred the prosperity of the Church and will continue until Christ returns. A little while and you will not see Christ, and during this time there will be weeping and lamenting. Open your eyes to the state of the world and it is impossible not to see the fulfillment of Christ’s words.

But there is another, brighter side to Christ’s words. “And again a little while, and you will see me.” That is to say, it will only be a little while before you will see Christ. The suffering of this present time is nothing compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us when Christ returns.[5] What may last a lifetime on this side of glory, 70, 80, 90 years or more, is a blink of an eye compared with the eternity Christ has promised to His beloved disciples. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in a petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time,” yet all our yesterdays pale in quantity and quality when compared to the joy of Christ’s eternal presence with you.[6]

The apostles were confused by Christ’s words because they could not imagine joy outside of being with Christ. Yet He was taken from them precisely to fulfill their joy, to fulfill their salvation. It was necessary that He fall victim to the betrayal of Judas and the death of the cross that they would see Him again. And then, after a little while, it was necessary that He ascend to the Father, that He would prepare a place for them in eternity. It was also necessary that He ascend so that the Apostles would go out into all the world, proclaiming salvation in the Name of Christ. The unavoidable agony of birth was necessary so that the joy of a child would follow.

And though we might focus on the “little while,” what comes after that little while is of greater importance. You will see Christ! That doesn’t mean He is absent right now. He is not gone. He is present with us. He has promised His Church to be present always, even to the end of the age, and especially wherever two or three of His disciples are gathered.[7] And yet He is not manifest in such a way that we could draw an outline of His body. So too is Christ’s True Body and True Blood present in the Holy Supper and yet you cannot discern a thigh from a forearm in the Eucharist.

To the disciples’ great relief and joy, they did see Christ again when He rose from the dead. They saw Him in the flesh, shared meals with Him, were absolved by Him, talked with Him, and heard more of His teachings. By the time of His ascension, the Apostles could stand, watching Him depart, yes with some apprehension but a greater understanding that what the Lord has promised them will come true.

In that same joy, we can trust the Word of Christ that no one can take His Word, His joy, from us. The sins of man can harm you in body and soul. He can take your life, but He can’t take Christ from you. He can’t take the promise of eternal joy with Christ away from you. This world can take your confidence, your health, your home, even your life, but no one can take the joy of Christ from you.

The joy of which I speak is not the same as “happiness” or even an emotion at all. It is the sure and certain promise that you have been declared right with God. As a pledge of this certainty, Christ has given you His Word, His seal in Holy Baptism, and fed you on His own flesh and blood. ‘There is not a fortune that will not be scattered and disappear. There is not a kingdom or nation that won’t fall into the obscurity of history. There is not a home that won’t crumble into nothing. Even prophecies shall fail, tongues cease, and knowledge vanish away.[8] But there is one thing which shall live on unharmed amid all changes, undamaged by disaster and calamity. The dampness of the tomb cannot extinguish it. God has stamped His own immortality on it. It is lit for everlasting years. It is the joy which the believer has in Christ Jesus.  That, no man can take away.’[9]

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] St. John 16:16.

[2] St. Matthew 13:3-9.

[3] St. John 15:18-20.

[4] St. Matthew 13:24-30.

[5] Romans 8:18.

[6] Cr. Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.

[7] St. Matthew 18:20; 28:20.

[8] 1 Corinthians 13:8.

[9] Joseph August Seiss, Lectures on the Gospels, Volume 2 (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Bookstore, 1888), 591-592.

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.