On Friday, the weeping women heard His last words.
“It is finished,” Jesus said, and they believed Him. It’s all over.
You’ve heard those words. “We’re finished!”
What’s finished is over. Done. Dead.
“It is finished,” Jesus said. They believed Him.
The priests win. Rome wins. Death wins….
Read More“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” “Mind” suggests thinking, but the term St. Paul uses is the origin of our English word diaphragm. It’s not up here [head] but down here [middle]. In the creation of man, it was God’s breath that made Adam a living being. Skilled singers emphasize letting the voice come up from the diaphragm. The Greeks used this as a way to describe not just our thinking but our emotions, our consciousness, our understanding, our person.
So when St. Paul says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” it is more than thinking right thoughts about Jesus. He’s calling us to adopt the mindset of Jesus, the outlook, the emotions; we are called to bring the person of Jesus into ourselves.
This exhortation quickly reveals how very unlike Jesus we are. We are rather like Lucifer, who is obliquely referenced in today’s Epistle. …
Read MoreWhen God made our first parents, He made them to be the crown of His creation. He made them in His image.
This is the source of Satan’s rebellion. He envied man’s place. He despised that material creatures— he despised that a man and woman of flesh and bone—would be so exalted, would be God’s image-bearers in the cosmos. That—man’s place in God’s creation—is the point of attack.
Temptation to sin therefore is not a temptation to do this or that bad thing. The demonic temptation is for “man to cease being man” [Weinrich]. The goal of temptation is to destroy man….
Read MoreThe lack of money is a test. Insufficient resources is a test. In today’s Gospel, Jesus sees a large crowd coming to Him, so He puts a question to Philip, “‘Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”
Jesus is enacting here His own sermon, where He told His disciples not to worry about what they would eat, or what they would drink, or what they would wear: “For your heavenly Father knows you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”…
Read MoreToday’s Gospel begins with Jesus “casting out a demon.” What are demons? The Epistle of Jude describes them as “angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode.” In other words, they are spirits who were part of God’s “host,” or military, but left their posts. Elsewhere God’s Word describes the demons particularly operating by telling lies, with the aim of destroying mankind. Some are very adept at damaging people through sickness and maladies. So Scripture gives us labels for different types of demons, such as spirits of error, spirits of weakness, and unclean spirits. The preeminent demon is sometimes called διάβολος, which means “the slanderer.” He is also called σατάν, “the adversary” or simply, “the enemy.” Every day bless yourself with the sign of the holy cross and ask for God’s protection against the demons….
Read MoreIt’s a strange business, this bronze serpent. It seems to directly contradict the command to make no graven images. But the command was never about making no sacred art. It was about worshiping an image as a depiction of God. “You shall not bow down to them or serve them,” says the commandment [Deut. 5:7].
What distinguished Israelite worship from the pagans was not a lack of imagery, but the confession of YHWH as not being resembled by any animal or object in creation. He is not likened to a bull, or a reptile, or the sun or moon. His representative, his icon, his image in the tabernacle was a man, the high priest. Through this living man God spoke to His people.
Images were present in the tabernacle, at God’s command. The ark of the covenant had golden cherubim, whose wings covered the mercy seat. Engravers and carvers were hired for the preparation of the golden vessels, candelabra, embroidered hangings. In the tabernacle was a bronze sea, held up by twelve oxen made of bronze. Animals and vines with grape clusters were in the second temple, by men who severely and most strictly interpreted the law. It was not the image that was outlawed, but the worship of the image as YHWH. The men who spoke for YHWH were adorned in elaborate vestments rich in symbolic meaning.
Standing out in all of this was the erection of a cross on which hung a serpent of bronze. The rebels in tonight’s first reading were instructed, “Look at this, and you will live.” Were sacred properties infused into this cross with the statue of the cursed serpent? Certainly not. What happened was that God attached His word of promise there. It was not that medicine was transmitted by rays of light into the eyeballs of the repentant rebels. Now, their eyes saw what the Word said. This action of looking was really an action of hearing and believing. …
Read More“Receive the sign of the holy cross on both your forehead and your heart to mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.”
These words from the liturgy of Holy Baptism should be on our hearts this night, when we are marked again by the sign of the holy cross, and reminded of our own impending death.
Yet aren’t we doing the very thing Jesus condemns? In the Gospel for Ash Wednesday, Jesus tells us not to disfigure our faces, not to appear to men to be fasting, and that we should wash our faces. Are we the hypocrites Jesus warns about?
Read MoreShe felt cursed by God. Her husband loved her. But in her body, and in her soul, she felt cursed. Echoing in her heart were the ancient words spoken to our first mother: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children.”
The pain applies to the birth, to be sure. But there is sorrow here, too – sorrow in conceiving a child, or rather, the difficulty thereof. The woman in today’s Old Testament reading spends years in the sorrow of barrenness.
Why does this happen, these trials of infertility, secondary infertility, and miscarriage? …
Read MoreWe do not worship saints, nor pray to them. These things clearly contradict God’s Word. We do, however, remember the saints and give them honor. The Augsburg Confession says,
Concerning the cult of the saints our people teach that the saints are to be remembered so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they experienced grace and how they were helped by faith. Moreover, it is taught that each person, according to his or her calling, should take the saints’ good works as an example….
Read MoreIn his book The Sermon on the Mount: The Church’s First Statement of the Gospel, David P. Scaer draws out the true teaching of Jesus, obscured by textual assertions that accommodated man’s tendency to justify himself: there is no place for anger in the life of a disciple of Jesus.
“One who is angry has taken to himself the prerogative that belongs to God alone. The phrase “without cause” does not belong to the original reading. Even if there is a cause for anger, anger must be put aside among the followers of Jesus. There is no cause for anger. Though anger is the prerogative of God alone, in his work of reconciliation in Jesus he has set aside this anger. This makes the offense of anger even more repugnant. By becoming angry the one who claims to belong to Jesus and to know his mind takes an attitude diametrically opposed to God, who is no longer angry. The refusal to be reconciled is the sign that the person no longer belongs to Jesus and from God’s point of view is no longer a member of the community. Here is where excommunication becomes operative.”
Jeffrey Gibbs’ excellent article “The Myth of Righteous Anger” expands on this and is highly recommended.