Encore Post: John, son of Zebedee was many things. He was the youngest of the disciples of Jesus. With Peter and his brother James, he was the inner circle of the apostles. The beloved disciple, he was likely the closest Jesus had to a best friend. With his father, his brother, Peter and Andrew, they operated a successful fishing business on the Sea of Galilee. They headquartered in Capernaum, operated several boats and employed a number of assistants. An early follower of John the Baptist, John heard the last of the prophets point to Jesus as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
John had a ringside seat for the ministry of Jesus. He was present from the wedding at Cana through the ascension of Jesus into heaven. He saw all the miracles, the healings and heard all that Jesus taught. During the last supper, he leaned at the side of the Lord. Unlike most of the disciples, he remained with the Lord throughout his trial and his crucifixion. To him Jesus entrusted the care of his mother Mary. When the women who first heard the news of the Resurrection came to announce it to the disciples, he went with Peter to the empty tomb.
In the beginning, John and Peter led the church from Jerusalem. Eventually he moved to Ephesus with Mary. There he would live longer than all of the apostles. He was never martyred, but was exiled for awhile on the island of Patmos. Next to St. Paul, he wrote more of the New Testament books than anyone else. His gospel was the last of the four, written, taking into account the other three. He wrote three letters and probably the book of Revelation.
The church gives thanks to God for St. John on December 27th. Among the passages of Scripture most loved by Christians are words given through him. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) All that he wrote was so that we might believe and believing might have life in his name. (John 20:31)
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Encore Post: O Adonai and Ruler of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the Law on Sinai, come with an outstretched arm and redeem us.
O Adonai, et dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti,veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.
Moses was minding his own father-in-law’s business — his sheep — when he saw a bush on fire that did not burn up. When he went up to see what was happening, the Angel of the Lord (the pre-incarnate Son of God himself) spoke with him from the bush. He commissioned Moses to free the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Doing everything he could to avoid the subject, Moses asked for the Name of God. “I am who I am” the Messiah replied. (Exodus 3) That name we pronounce Yahweh. It is spelled with four consonants in Hebrew — יהוה (YHWH) After the Babylonian exile, the Jewish people decided not to pronounce that name so it could not be taken in vain. Instead, they said, “Adonai” which means “my Lord.” Wherever the Angel of the Lord appears in the Old Testament, this name is given to him. He revealed God’s Law to Moses on this same spot after the Exodus.
Because the Messiah is God, there is nothing that he cannot do. He loved his people Israel, so he sent Moses to free them. He displayed his power to free them with plagues and miracles, including the parting of the Red Sea. Later the Scriptures would describe it as his outstretched arm.
The prayer calls on the Messiah to come and redeem us — which he did. This time the miracle was not raw power, but the power of God himself paying the price of our salvation — not with silver or gold, but with his own blood. He himself became the sacrifice of our sin, paying its price in full.
One day he will come again in glory, to redeem the world once and for all, defeating death, sin and devil. On that day, his outstretched arm will restore all things and bring all to his throne. There all will confess Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father.
O come, O come, Thou Lord of might, Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height In ancient times didst give the Law In cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel!
— Lutheran Service Book 357, Stanza Three
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Encore Post: The Feast of Pentecost is the Greek name (πεντηκοστή) for the Jewish Feast of Weeks (Shavuoth, in Hebrew שָׁבוּעֹות ). The day celebrated the harvest of the barley crop and the planting of the wheat crop in Israel. This thanksgiving day was established by God on the fiftieth day after Passover and was one of three that the Torah commanded Jews celebrate in Jerusalem if at all possible. In the days following Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the city was still crowded with Jews from around the world, who stayed after Passover to celebrate this feast as well in the Holy City.
The Christian Church remembers the day as a kind of birthday of the Church. On this day, God poured out the Holy Spirit on the whole church and not just the prophets he called to proclaim his word.
Both the Hebrew and Greek word for Spirit means “Wind.” The Holy Spirit, or Holy Wind, hovered over the chaos before God created the Heavens and the Earth. During the Exodus, the Holy Spirit appeared visibly as a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. When Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit settled into the Holy of Holies in the form of a cloud. When the Prophet Elijah fled to Mount Sinai, God sent a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a fire to get his attention. On Pentecost, the wind got the attention of the crowd and the wind and tongues of fire witnessed to the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost fulfilled prophecy in Old Testament (Joel 2:28-32), by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:11) and by Jesus (Acts 1:5). By baptizing His people with the Holy Spirit, Jesus gave them the power to witness to God’s love. He provided them with a counselor to lead and guide them. Just like the prophets of the Old Testament, every one of God’s children now can proclaim His praises to everyone.
Jairus loved his daughter very much. As the leader of the local synagogue, he was a respected man. When he bowed down before Jesus, he sacrificed much of his dignity. What made his daughter’s illness especially painful was that she was twelve years old. At the time of Jesus, a child became an adult in the eyes of the community in their twelfth year. Plans for her marriage were likely under way. She would have been seen as a survivor, since many children died before their twelfth year.
The woman who interrupted Jesus’ trip to see Jairus’ daughter had also been ill for the same twelve years. Her illness was also very disruptive, since it meant that she could not go to the temple nor to worship in the synagogue while she had this constant period of hers. Nothing any of the doctors could do for her helped her. Jesus was her last hope. And his healing made all the difference in the world for her.
When Jesus was delayed as he went to Jairus’ house, his daughter died. Jesus told Jairus to trust Him and not be afraid. No one knew what Jesus would do, just that He cared about the sick. When Jesus raised her from death, everyone was amazed.
The healing miracles of Jesus show us several things. They demonstrate that he is God himself and that God has compassion on the sick and suffering. In fact, Jesus shared our sufferings and took them to the cross. There he died for the sins of the world and bore the sufferings that came as a result of it. His resurrection is the promise of the ultimate healing of all our sickness, sorrow, grief, and death. At his second coming, he will bring an end to it once and for all when he dries every tear from our eyes
Jesus wants us to have compassion for the sick, too. He tells us to love them, to pray for them and to take care of them. He continues to show mercy to people who suffer through our care. In these ways, we show people that God loves them, too.
Encore Post: Four Hundred years had passed since the prophet Malachi spoke to God’s people. God had been silent all those years, but had not been idle. Now an elderly priest named Zechariah was chosen to burn incense in the Holy Place of the temple, right outside the Holy of Holies. The Angel Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God himself appeared to Zechariah to announce the miraculous birth of a son. He was to be named John (God’s gift) and would fulfill Malachi’s last prophecy to send a herald to prepare the way of the Messiah. The last time this angel appeared, he brought dreams to Daniel.
You’d think Zechariah, who should have known better, would accept the news that he would have a son with joy. Yet the idea that like Abraham he would have a child in his old age, when he was barren, was too much. Gabriel punished him by taking his voice until the day his son was to be circumcised.
When John was born, his relatives asked Zachariah what name to give his son, Zechariah wrote on a Roman wax tablet, “His name is John.” Then the silence of God was broken. Zechariah prophesied about the coming salvation and the role his son would play. We sing this prophecy in the liturgy of morning prayer. It is called the Benedictus. This old priest was therefore the second last prophet of the Old Testament. His son, who we know as John the Baptist, would be the last and greatest.
John the Baptist had almost all the credentials to be the Messiah. His Father was a priest, descended from Aaron. His mother was related to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and so descended from King David. Gabriel the Archangel announced his birth in the temple, while his father was offering the prayers of the people to God. Both of his parents were very old, like Abraham and Sarah, and barren, like Hannah, mother of Samuel. God named him in the same way he named Isaac and changed Jacob’s name to Israel. The angel announced that he would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, one of the greatest prophets. Yet from the very start, he and his parents understood that John was not the Messiah, but the one who would reveal him to the world and prepare the way for him.
Encore Post: Elijah knew his ministry was nearing the end. At Mount Sinai he complained to God that all his ministry, including fire called from heaven, was useless. He believed he was alone. God showed his prophet his glory in wind, earthquake and fire. As Moses did in the same place, Elijah hid his eyes from the glory of God — this time with his cloak, the symbol of his call as a prophet. Yet even after seeing the glory of God, Elijah was unmoved. So, in a quiet voice, God told his faithful prophet he was far from alone. To Elijah he gave a final commission: to appoint his successors.
God sent Elijah to call Elisha to be his successor. Their names sound very close in English, but are very different in Hebrew. Elijah means, “Yahweh is God.” Elisha means, “God saves.” Elisha’s name is very close to Joshua’s name. Joshua means, “Yahweh saves.” Elijah threw his cloak over Elisha, who did not miss the meaning of that gesture.
When it was time for Elijah to go, he and Elisha went to Gilgal. There the people of Israel had first camped when they came into the promised land, were circumcised as God’s people, celebrated the Passover, saw the end of the coming of Mana and the departure of the pillar of fire by night and cloud by day. There the Angel of the Lord commissioned Joshua. Then they went to Bethel, where Jacob had dreamed of the angels coming and going from heaven. Finally, they went to Jericho, where Joshua struck the first blow against the gods of Canaan.
When the two prophets arrived at the Jordan River, Elijah rolled up the cloak into a staff like Moses’s. He struck the River and it parted — just as it did in the same place for Joshua. Like Moses, Elijah would depart this world from just outside the promised land. As the chariot of fire carried Elijah into heaven in a whirlwind, Elisha caught his cloak. The new prophet struck the Jordan with it and it parted. God had made Elisha the heir of Elijah’s ministry.
Nearly two thousand years later, Moses and Elijah met with Jesus as those he would send watched. The new Joshua (Jesus’ name is the Greek form of Joshua’s name) would suffer, die and rise again to defeat sin, death and the power of the devil. Rising from the dead, he breathed the Holy Spirit on his appointed prophets. From generation to generation, one generation’s prophets have laid their hands upon those who would take up their stoles after them. God of the prophets, bless the prophets’ sons, Elijah’s mantle on Elisha cast. Make each one nobler, stronger than the last.
Encore Post: Synagogues are like churches. They are places where the Jews gather on the Sabbath (Saturday) to hear a passage from the Old Testament read, to hear a sermon and to pray together. The Old Testament is read from a scroll, instead of a book. Someone would help the reader take it out of a storage box called an ark, unwrap it and roll the text to the place where he should start to read. Often the people would sing while they do this.
When the reading was finished, it was put away until the next Sabbath. When a boy reached the age of twelve, he got to read it for the first time in event called Bar Mitzvah, which means “Son of the Covenant.” If the reader was also a teacher, he would sit down and explain the reading.
This is what Jesus was doing when he returned to Nazareth. He read from Isaiah 61. This passage predicts the ministry of the Messiah to preach the Gospel and heal the sick. He announced that he was that Messiah.
The problem was his neighbors and friends had a hard time believing he was the Messiah. He grew up in such a normal way that there was hardly anything for the Gospels to report for the first thirty years of his life. The contractor down the block is the Messiah — please! They wanted results! What’s in it for them? Nothing! Their lack of faith in Jesus meant he could not perform miracles at home.
That day they tried to kill him, it failed. But it would not be long before Jesus would go to Jerusalem. There he suffered and died for their sins, ours and the sins of the whole world. When he rose from the dead, he set us all free. When he returns for us, then we will also be healed — not for a little while, but for forever.
A day of hope is what we need as we have been walking in the world. Isaiah’s prophesy was spoken as a rebuke against Ahaz’s unbelief in the Lord. But for you who have been called to faith in the true God, it is a word of hope, which holds you captive. It is the sign we all long for, the word which first came Eve and Adam on the day of their fall into sin. That God would become Man. And this Man would defeat sin and death for us by offering his body and blood up for the sin all the world at the cross.
Mary is rightly called the Godbearer (Theotokos) because in the moment of the preaching Gabriel, God assumed human flesh, and the flesh of Word of God Himself was conceived in the incarnation. This is the sign of God working to bring about our salvation. This is confirmation of the Lord’s promise coming true. God had not forgotten.
But the incarnation and Christmas are just half of the story. This Son of the Most High, has to do the work of salvation in His flesh. He is to serve in humanity’s stead, standing in our place, taking upon himself our pains and our sufferings, our sin. He is to suffer what all men suffer, death. But the Lord Jesus does this because it is the will of his Father, whom sent Him.
Christ will lift up the lowly. He will fill the hungry with good things, he will bring down the mighty from their thrones. He will bring the word of love and hope to you who have been sitting and waiting in the darkness of this sin filled and broken world. Be at peace in the word announced to you by the Lord’s messenger. Christ loves you, and He became flesh in order to save you from everlasting death. He has remembered his mercy and now shows you that mercy by his death on the cross, taking the place that all humanity deserves for their sins of unbelief and abandonment of His Word.
God has promised, so He has done. We are very close to Holy Week in the Church year. We will be gathering together to hear the passion accounts as written for us by the Evangelists. We will see our Lord do His Father’s will, offering himself for us at the cross. This is how sin is taken away, the body and blood of God is broken and poured out for you.
May this word of our Lord Jesus Christ, The God – Man for us and for our salvation, give you hope in the midst of the darkness. He has come and He has died and He has risen again. And He remains in His flesh even upon His ascension to the right hand of God the Father. Forevermore is Jesus the God–Man, who serves you as your great high priest having offered himself for your salvation, that you might have everlasting life with God forever. And He now comes to you to give you tangible hope, a sign. He gives you the means by which you are given His forgiveness. He gives you Baptism and His Supper. Look to the promises contained therein. You are made a child of God, receiving everlasting salvation. Then you receive the very body and blood of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. You receive the very body of God in His Supper and it is life giving. What hope and what peace we now have in promises of God. Hope in the One Who has Come Born of the Virgin to offer himself up for us all. And let us now hope in the promise of His return that He might take us to be with Him forever.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Encore Post: So just where does Jesus go? Well he goes to places that are pretty messy sometimes. If we just consider the 12 disciples who Jesus called to himself at the beginning of his ministry, we see a man in Matthew who was a tax collector. We see a zealot in Simon, we see a couple of brothers who want honor and glory. And that’s just a few of them! What we see in the 12 disciples are sinners! And all the disciples of Jesus including us are sinners! Jesus preaches to sinners like the 12 and still to you and me.
A term that comes from the bible is that of disciple. And that is a great thing to recall. We who follow Jesus as taught in the Bible according to the words of the apostles are disciples of Jesus. We believe the teaching that was handed down by Jesus to the first disciples who were later called apostles who then wrote their Gospels, Epistles, and Prophetic books that make up the New Testament.
The season of Epiphany is a great time to be talking about the disciples because we just heard the reading of Peter, James and John being called to be “fishers of men” and soon we will be hearing the words from the Mount of Transfiguration, “Listen to Him!” Disciples are and to follow and to listen to their master, their Lord Jesus. Peter on the mount shows a desire to stay on the mountain and bask in the glory, but that is not where Jesus stays. No, he goes, setting his face like flint towards Jerusalem, getting ready for the Cross, where He would atone for the sins of the world. Many people, even Peter, don’t want this to be the case, but it must be so. That is why Jesus was sent.
A disciple then follows Jesus to the cross. That is where our journey takes us, the place where our salvation is won. The place from which comes all our blessings including the blessing of being able to tell others about Jesus’ wonderful work there for all humanity. Disciples then don’t just keep this message of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to themselves, but rather disciples tell others who do not know about Jesus to follow Jesus unto that Promised Land which he has entered and will ultimately gather us together with all the faithful disciples who have gone before us.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Encore Post: Perhaps you can think of a time when you received some words with weight behind them. I remember the words of the pastor who announced to the congregation that my wife and I were married. Perhaps you have had similar words spoken. Maybe they weren’t words of great joy but maybe they were those heavy words from a doctor saying you had cancer. Or you can remember back in high school how the gossip got around. That old lie we tell ourselves: Sticks and stone may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Words definitely carry weight. Some good weight and others much worse.
And so it is with Jesus. He is preaching the Word given Him to preach. We were told what this Word was last week in his first sermon, right out of the prophet of Isaiah. He was anointed to preach good news to the poor. He preaches with authority unlike any people of the towns had seen. And His Word carries weight! And His Word is effective!
Jesus’ word has power. You might think it odd, but have you ever read the bible out loud to yourself? To hear the words, reverberate into you own ears. Paul makes the connection to faith. Faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ.
In a manner like Peter’s mother-in-law, you have been raised back to life by the word of Jesus. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. But by the power and authority of the Word of Jesus you are made alive. You were called by the very Word of Jesus at the moment of your Baptism. The very Word which was preached and proclaimed to the demon was said to you. “Out you unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit.” You were dead in trespasses and sins, held in captivity and slavery of sin, death, and Satan. And Christ speaks a mere word from the cross, “It is finished.” The time of slavery is finished, the time of death is done. “It is finished,” says your Lord and Savior Jesus.
And He speaks life into you, calling you to a life of faith in Him. Clinging to the promise and pledge that by his life, death, and resurrection, we too have the same resurrection. You have already been raised to a new life by Baptism where He speaks to a very wonderful Word carries real weight!
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
