Every movement, society, organization, group — even families! — has its own language. Sure, it sounds like English, uses the same words, grammar and structure, but when you are new to it, you can’t figure out what these people mean! The Christian Church is no exception. For Lutherans, church words are familiar and meaningful — just don’t ask anyone what the words mean! When you think about it, the meaning of these words are kind of fuzzy in our minds too! For example, if someone asks you what “Glory” means, could you tell them?
Beginning this week, whatdoesthismean.blog will take on these words one at a time. We pray that these will be helpful to you.
One of my favorite shows used to be Baseball Tonight because they showed all the highlights of the baseball games. It was a way to get the great plays of all the games.
In a similar way, we have our own highlight reel, though it probably is not a reel that we want others to see. It is the highlight reel of our sins. You see Satan just loves to drudge up our past offenses, our past faults, the things we have done or left undone. And more often than not he also gives a pretty colorful commentary on them as well. He plagues our conscience with it all the time. And the highlights continue to be added to because we continue to fall into sin some way or another.
Jesus is risen from dead! Jesus as we learned from his first appearance to the disciples in the locked room, does not come to his disciples with vengeance on his mind. He comes to bring peace. He comes to bring forgiveness.
Though we have been given His peace, we still are bombarded with the assaults of the devil. Satan still comes in with our highlights of sins and replays them over and over, accusing us. And we tend to forget about the peace which Jesus gives. Instead we tend to be afraid and begin to fear interacting with God. But we need not be afraid.
But every time we gather in the place where Jesus promises to be for us and for our salvation, the highlights of Jesus’ death and resurrection for us gets put into our mind. We get to say to Satan, “I am baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. I am saved by Christ.” And with Paul we get to say, “As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” These are the Jesus’ highlights but He makes them yours every time you receive His Word and Sacraments. May we be ever mindful of what our Lord has done for us, that we may always believe it.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
