The Catechism ought to be learned out loud for memory’s sake. It should be memorized by the hearers as it is used in the divine service. Four pieces of the catechism are mainstays within the liturgy (Apostles Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Confession, and Sacrament of the Altar). The Ten Commandments are effectively understood to be in play as they are considered when confessing our sins to God. Luther gives us that instruction in his explanation when asking the question, “What sins should we confess?” The Sacrament of Baptism still occurs within the confines of the Divine Service as well, but unfortunately baptisms appear to be fewer and farther between. However, we should not down play baptisms as in every moment of the Divine Service we are reminded of the gifts that gives to us through our Baptisms into Christ Jesus.
We memorize the catechism because the catechism is really nothing other than the Words of Christ. The Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer are specifically taken right out of Scripture. The Creed is effectively the entire story of the bible distilled down to 3 articles of faith, the confession of Creation, Redemption, and Sanctification in and through the work of the blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are granted faith as we hear the word of God revealed to us in the Catechism. The Catechism then is perhaps the greatest place to begin when teaching the faith to the littlest among us as well as the young in the faith.
The Word of God is important, and we ought be in the Word as often as possible. The Catechism ought to be memorized and used by the faithful so that it becomes embedded in our hearts. If it is not used in our daily devotional life the words of the catechism will quickly leave us. But if the words of the catechism are memorized or learned by heart, the vocabulary of the catechism informs our faith and entire life. It is after the words of our Lord for the instruction in the faith.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp Christ Lutheran Church Noblesville, Indiana
Encore Post: During the time of Distribution the congregation will more than likely sing hymns and spend time contemplating the tangible grace of their Lord Jesus Christ that they just received or will receive in the near future. Once the members of the congregation receive the Body and Blood of Christ, the pastor likely will consume whatever remains of the Sacrament. At that time, the congregation will rise to sing the beautiful song known as the Nunc Dimittis or the Song of Simeon.
St. Simeon originally sang these words when he saw the Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple forty days after his birth. For the year 2020, the 40th day after Christmas fell on a Sunday, and the church celebrated the festival known as the Purification of Mary and Presentation of our Lord. The event is recorded for us by St. Luke and is the final canticle of the Divine Service.
And with what joy you also can sing the same words! For you (in the congregation) have been waiting for this moment. In the Service of the Sacrament we are preparing for the coming of the Lord’s anointed. We sing of his coming in the Sanctus. “Blessed is He who comes!” We sing of seeing him at the altar, In His Father’s House, doing His Father’s Work, as the Lamb of God, in the Agnus Dei. And now we rejoice for we have not only seen Him and the salvation He brings for all people, but we have received and we are ready to depart in peace.
Luther does a masterful job in his hymn based off the Nunc Dimittis (938 In Peace and Joy I Now Depart). The Sacrament prepares us to die well. For in the Sacrament we have been granted forgiveness of our sins, which leads us to have confidence in Christ. “Serene and confident my heart; Stillness fills it. For the Lord has promised me That death is but a slumber.” There is also the tradition of singing this hymn at the deathbed, and if the saint dies, the verbs are then said in the past tense. Let us sing the Nunc Dimittis with confidence and joy upon receiving the Body and Blood of Christ as well as all our lives in Christ, for our salvation has been hand delivered by Christ Himself! Depart in peace!
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Encore Post: Upon chanting the Words of our Lord Jesus Christ over the bread and wine on the altar, your pastor if not already facing the congregation will pick up both the chalice and the body of our Lord, turn towards the congregation and chant, “Peace of the Lord be with you always.” The congregation responds, “Amen.”
The peace which our Lord Jesus Christ gives is a tangible peace when thinking of the Sacrament of the Altar. You actually get to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” The body and blood of Jesus Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins brings you true, tangible peace. And remembering the Lord Jesus Christ and his teaching is “refreshment to your bones.” In other words it brings you peace!
In the days of Covid-19, there is nothing more rock solid to hold onto than the body and blood of Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, which Christ gives to his people freely. All this is done in order that we might receive His Peace. Peace with God and with one another for the sake of Jesus, who died to reconcile us to our heavenly Father in Heaven and to one another.
There are some amazing photos of bombed out church buildings in which the Sacrament is still being received. Those pictures convey the truth that no matter what is happening in this world, by Christ’s presence in his body and blood for you, He grants you peace. You do not need to live in fear, but be at peace. The Lord knows and remembers you in all your afflictions and anxiety and grants you his peace, knowing that Christ goes with you because Christ is literally about to go inside you by your eating and drinking of his body and blood with the bread and the wine.
Be at peace knowing that for Christ’s sake your sins are forgiven. Be at peace, knowing that in this beautiful Sacrament that Jesus gives you that forgiveness. Taste and see the Lord is indeed good and is faithful to His Word. His peace is with you for He is with you to endure the unknowns of this world, pressing ever onward to the feast which is to come in His Kingdom forever.
With the singing of the Amen, “Yes, yes, it shall be so,” we confess our belief in the promise Jesus gives to us in giving us his body and blood. Liturgically speaking, we the congregation turns to the great 7th century hymn Agnus Dei, which we will talk about in our next Walk Through the Liturgy.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Just as we have been walking through the liturgy and have already heard a couple of times in the great Gloria that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, now we see the blood of the Lamb of God given to us to drink for the forgiveness of sins, and immediately following this we will sing the beautiful Agnus Dei.
Let us remember again that these words are spoken first by Jesus on the night before his death on the cross. He is about to pour out his blood as our redemption price. He is about to drink the cup of God’s wrath for the sin of the world at the cross, in order for this cup which He gives us to be a blessing for us. He accomplishes our salvation at the cross and participating in this meal, we receive that salvation.
At the end, Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” What does this mean? How should we hear this and understand this? Is receiving the Sacrament a work that we must do? Let us remember this: God is being gracious in giving us His gifts. He is remembering His people for the sake of Christ, who poured his blood to save us. But by receiving this gift from God for the sake of Christ, we remember our Lord’s suffering and death, as St. Paul says, “As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
As far as the Liturgy goes, the Words of our Lord are the climax of every Divine Service. These words are the Gospel in the purest sense. Likely out of honor and reverence you are kneeling as the Pastor chants these beautiful words. He likely bows in reverence and awe, as Christ does exactly what He promises. He says of the bread, “This is my Body.” Of the cup He says, “This is my Blood.” Christ is there giving to us the salvation accomplished for us by his cross. But let us not just look upon the body and blood of Christ and adore it, but let us now come to the feast our Lord has prepared for us, a feast of fatness and well aged wine well refined, the food that is the medicine of immortality, as He has commanded in His Institution.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Encore Post: In today’s installment of our walk through the liturgy, we will spend some time talking about the first part of the “Words of our Lord” namely the words concerning the bread.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave to the disciples and said: “Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.”
We should remember that this was a Passover Meal, commemorating God’s greatest act of salvation to date for Israel. However, on this night the meal between Jesus and His Disciples, would begin to unveil the act of salvation to which the Passover points and is fulfilled once and for all by his all availing sacrifice at the cross.
Dr. Arthur Just, Jr. in his fabulous book Heaven on Earth: The Gifts of Christ in the Divine Service, lays out the events that take during a “Passover Meal”, for a sketch of the events of the Passover meal liturgy see pages 59-62. We learn that there is eating then teaching at the table, where the story of the exodus would be retold and the food interpreted accordingly, followed by more eating, etc.
Luke is the most thorough Gospel concerning the events of Jesus’ Last Supper, telling us about two cups of wine (See Luke 22:17-18 and 22:20). They are not the same cup, according to Passover Liturgy.
As part of the Passover Meal Liturgy, the food itself would be interpreted by the host of meal. This is where the words of institution come into play. Jesus interprets the bread concerning himself! And it is given up “on behalf of you” (Luke 22:19). In the other accounts, there is no atonement language spoken over the bread. Thanks be to God for multiple accounts from the Gospels, catching and pointing out each detail so that our theology may be as rich as possible. Christ’s body is part of the sacrifice for our atonement!
Let us also note: Jesus words concerning the breading being his body. Is means Is! There is no way around what Jesus says. There is no other way to interpret Jesus own words. This is My Body. What we get when we receive the Sacrament is exactly what Jesus says we get: His Body. This is the same body given up for you at the cross, buried, and raised on the third day. This is the same body as the body which ascended to the right hand of the Father.
How it literally happens, we will never know on this side of heaven. That is why it is called a Sacrament: Mystery. We will look at the second part of the words of our Lord concerning the cup next.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
Encore Post: Called the “Jewish opinion” by the Lutheran Confessions, the belief in a Millennium comes from a face value reading of Old Testament prophecy and poetry about the Church or about eternal life with God after the Second Advent. It also treats the Book of Revelation, written in a symbolic code called Apocalyptic, in a similar way. By doing so, it uses difficult to understand passages to complicate the very clear words of Jesus, Peter, Paul and other New Testament writers. It is the view of the Pharisees that caused them to rule out Jesus as the Messiah, because he did not intend to battle the Romans and to miss that the Scriptures pointed to the birth, life, sufferings, death and Resurrection of the Son of God.
The word itself comes from Revelation 20, where the reign of Christ through in his church is described as 1000 years. This number is not a literal 1000 years, but is Jewish numerology. The number ten meant to them perfection and when multiplied three times, the number of God, means when everything is completed. It points to our times, when the Gospel has reached every corner of the earth.
While it may seem harmless to believe such things, it detracts from the what Christ has commanded us in order to read every event, looking for the return of Christ. Instead, we should be ready, as Jesus instructs us, making disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching them, knowing he is with us always.
I presented this hymn at the 2nd Annual Church Music Beautification Conference at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool on April 22nd of 2023.
Ezekiel 34:11-16 is the assigned text for The 3rd Sunday of Easter in the one-year lectionary, The Last Sunday of the Church Year in the three-year series A, and proper 19 in the three year series C. Ezekiel 36:22-28 is the assigned text for the seventh Sunday of Easter in the one-year lectionary. Ezekiel 37:1-14 is the assigned text for the second Sunday of Easter in the one-year lectionary, the fifth Sunday of Lent in the three-year series A, and Pentecost Day in the three-year series B. Job 19:23-27 is the assigned text for Easter Day in the one-year lectionary, Easter Sunrise in the three year series C, and the service of graveside committal. Psalm 23 is the assigned psalm for the third Sunday of Easter in the one-year lectionary, Easter Day in all three years of the three-year series, proper 23 in the three-year series A, and proper 11 in the three-year series B.
Behold, My Sheep, I Will Search You Out
1 Behold, My sheep, I’ll search you out, Rescue on day of clouds; Though through the darkness, scattered out, From global nations, proud; I Myself will make you lie down, Gathering from the crowd
2 You, O My sheep, I’ll shepherd you, On mountain heights to feed; Good grazing land, ravines through too, Satisfied without greed; Strengthened, the weak and injured, bound, Fed fully freed from need.
3 Thus says the Lord, the God of all, My name has been profaned. Yoked with the pagans, since the fall, You have my anger gained. But, in My faithfulness ‘gainst gall, You will be unashamed.
4 Thus says the Lord, the God of all, I will remove the stone, Where your heart is, instead will fall, Flesh in its place alone, My law, this flesh will love it all, I’ll bring you to your home.
5 Though your bones lie in valley, dry, In your own flesh, you’ll stand; Before My throne, in kingdom, high, In congregation, grand; Restored in flesh, Me in your eye, All this by My command.
6 On the last day, your Graves, I’ll break, People resting in faith, By Jesus blood and for His sake, My children, you, I make. Thus You will know, I am the Lord, I’ve spoken these words great.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX and Mission planting pastoral team: Epiphany Lutheran Church Bastrop, TX
Encore Post: Every year, Jewish people celebrate Passover. This festival remembers the time when God freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and led them through the Red Sea to safety. It remembers the night when God commanded their ancestors to sacrifice a lamb, place its blood on their doorposts, roast and eat the lamb with unleavened bread and prepare to leave Egypt. That evening, God sent the Angel of Death through the land to kill the firstborn son of every Egyptian from the Pharaoh to the lowest slave. When the Angel saw the blood on a doorpost, he passed over the home.
When the father of King Hezekiah died and he became king of Judah, he resolved to restore the worship of God according to the traditions of his ancestors David and Solomon. (2 Chronicles 29-30) His father had neglected the worship of God and allowed the people to worship the gods of other nations. King Hezekiah ordered the priests and Levites to perform the rituals commanded by Moses to make themselves holy, to cleanse the temple and make it holy according to the rules set down by Moses, Solomon and David. He ordered a large scale sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people and restore regular prayers and sacrifices there. Because the priests were caught by surprise by this, not enough of them were ready.
Eager to celebrate Passover again, Hezekiah and the people decided to celebrate it late — in the second month rather than the first (April into May) They invited everyone in Israel, including the survivors of the invasion of Assyria in the conquered northern kingdom of Israel. They people celebrated so joyfully, they decided to extend it to a second week.
For Christians, Jesus is the Passover Lamb, whose blood saves us from eternal death. In the Lord’s Supper, He gives us His body with the bread and blood with the wine. In it we receive the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. So we celebrate it with joy, because God set us free.
With yesterday we looked at how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, how He humbled himself to the place of servant even though He was the master, and the one who deserved to be served. He served His disciples last night attempting to prepare them for the greater service and humiliation of the very Son of God going to the cross for the sin of the world.
To suffering the Lamb goes. And all this He does willingly out of His great an amazing love for you. No sin too great no sin too small. All sins are dealt with on this day once and for all. The wrath for all the sin of the world is poured out on this one Man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Poured out on Him instead of you. And He loves you so much that He would rather take upon Himself the punishment than see you languish under the eternal condemnation of the Law. It’s a Good Friday for you.
Last night we heard how the Lord’s love is continual and perpetual. He loves His own until the end. And today my dear friends in Christ Jesus, this love is made even more manifest for you. Behold the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the One who takes your sin away. He is the one who pours out his blood for you and for your salvation. God became man for this very day, to serve you in this way. It’s a Good Friday for you.
Know His love, feel His embrace. See how He loves His own. How he nurtures and takes care of His bride. He lays down His life. By His stripes we are healed. He drinks the cup put before Him and fills that cup now with His own blood that we might have His life in us. And have it abundantly at that. It’s a Good Friday for you.
The cross that was a barren thing, a couple pieces of dead wood nailed together are now the place where life is given to you freely. It is your tree of life. You have your life because of the Life that hangs on the tree. He pours out His blood, and gives it you. Come and receive your life from His cross. Eat of his flesh and drink of his blood for these you have His love and His life now in you. It’s a Good Friday is for you.
See the Love of God in the Suffering Servant, your Lord Jesus, who set Himself like flint to go to the cross for you and your salvation, loving you unto the end. He has done it. The battle done. And you have life and have it abundantly for his sake.
Look to the cross and rejoice for the One who was long promised to come, has come. He has shown Himself by His self-sacrificial love, and He still showers us with His love and mercy via the preaching of His Word and Administration of His Sacraments. Sing the praise of Him who died upon the cross. And look to the cross for all mercy. Live in its shadow. By that, I mean to say come often to where the gifts of the Christ’s cross are given to you. Come then to the altar and have your eyes be fixed on Jesus on the cross. Baptism and Christ’s Supper only have their power by the event of the cross. By these Sacraments you are brought to the cross, and your eyes oriented on Christ’s sacrifice and love for you. It’s a Good Friday for you.
In the account of St. John 13 from last night, Jesus told His disciples where He was going the disciples could not come at first. He is speaking about the cross. He is speaking about his death. He must confront and battle Satan and death and defeat them for us. And by His death He conquers death once and for all. Death is swallowed up. Death took a bite of the wrong guy for He has power over death. And so now you do not need to fear death but rather look to the cross and our Lord’s passion. The cross takes the terror of death away. For your sins are taken away for the sake of Him who died for you loving you unto the end. It’s a Good Friday for you.
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
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
It is often the case that what Jesus preaches and teaches one day, He reinforces again not too many days later. In the parable from last week, Jesus spoke about the seed which is sown and how it grows. He took us back to the image of creation. We were reminded that He himself identified as the Seed of the Woman who would come and make things new, reconciling us back to God. He came into the world, becoming flesh, to save fallen humanity from eternal death and hell. He was making things new by sowing into our hearts and the hearts of all mankind His Word via the preaching of those He has sent to sow the Word abroad.
Jesus’ words have power. They God’s Word, for He is God. His Words are life giving. If the winds and the sea obey His Words, do you not think we should fear Him? If He can make the natural world listen to Him, do you not think He can also bring about disaster by one little word too? We are right to fear Him. Jesus does have power over wind and sea, but He has power over all things. And He as a man born of the blessed Virgin has been given power, dominion, and authority over all things, and will execute that power on the last day. And He do all this as a man.
The disciples and we too should really not receive the mercies that we do. We gripe about a lot of different things. We are bound to say something like this: “Life isn’t fair God. You took the love of my life from me via cancer. You gave me bad eyes. Can’t you see this congregation of yours is perishing? What are you doing? What did we do? Do you care, God, that your servants are languishing under this suffering?” Have many of those things reverberate in your mind? Have we done what Job did and say that we are pure and without transgression, that we are clean and there is no iniquity in me? Are we too good for all these bad things to happen to us? Are we just innocent victims of all this? Or are we getting something that we deserve. The truth is if we got what we truly deserved it would be a drowning in the boat, eternal death and hell for us all. For nothing in us is good, our hearts continually commit evil. There is none of us who are good, no not one. We are full of sin of one kind or another, deserving the full wrath of God.
When the disciples cry out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Christ our Lord shows His compassion and mercy upon the poor disciples. So also, He shows us mercy when don’t deserve it. The Lord Jesus loves us, as He loved Job and His disciples. He brought them to repentance and faith by the preaching of His Word. You get a bit of that preaching from Him in Job, and you hear the disciples question who Jesus is because they were still filled with fear of what they had just witnessed. Both Job and the disciples saw Jesus doing what Jesus does. He has command over all creation. He is great, they are small and lowly. They fear, but He has mercy on those who fear Him. He speaks, creating in them repentance and faith. The disciples were learning to trust what Jesus said because when He speaks the thing which He speaks happens.
Jesus, who is the Word of God incarnate, has power over wind and sea. It is only fitting then that the Word which He speaks also has the power to create faith in His people. Think about the man who was paralyzed. Not only did Jesus forgive the man’s sins but also told him to rise and walk in order to show that the Son of Man had authority to forgive sins. All of it happened instantly. The seed is sown and faith grows in the heart. A new creation begins. This is a faith which clings to Christ’s Word, rightly fearing Him, but also loving Him because His Word is not just a word that rains down gloom and doom but rather the promise of the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life in Him because He poured out His blood at the cross for the world, for you.
Christ promises to build His church on earth, and by Him speaking it, so shall it be. And so, if we take this a step further, Jesus showers upon all the world his forgiveness by the preaching of his atoning sacrifice at the cross, His resurrection from the dead for our justification, as well as his Ascension to the right hand of the Father, from thence He now rules over His Church on Earth until He returns the same way He came into Heaven. You hear His Word, so you receive Him, and you grow in your faith in Him.
If Jesus is indeed God, what is for Him to tell His Disciples that Baptism is the means by which a person enters into the Kingdom of God, and is cleansed from all sin? Jesus’ Word does what it says. The same for Holy Communion. What is it for Jesus to take up bread and say to His disciples, “Take and it, this is My body?” And taking a cup and saying, “Take and drink all of you, this cup is the New Testament in my Blood for the forgiveness of your sins?” If he has power over wind and sea, certainly He has power over bread and wine and they will be exactly what He says they are.
So why do we doubt what He says, when wind and sea obey Him? Why do we doubt that Christ has come to give us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life with Him, purchased and won by his sacrifice at the cross? Have we fallen into the lie of Satan that God does not really love us but rather would love to see us perish in anguish? If that be so, why did He not just let the boat perish? Why did God not just allow Satan to take Job at the beginning? Why did God take Israel out of Egypt? The Israelites believed that God was going to just kill them in the desert. But the Lord God is not sadistic. But He teaching us His way. Suffering comes before exaltation, even for the only begotten Son Jesus Christ. He is not exalted before His suffering and death on the cross. So, we trust in what our Lord is doing, because by these things we are being brought to a right and proper knowledge, fear, love and trust in our Lord that we may be saved from eternal torment.
The 2nd commandment, which we recited this morning, deals with the name of the Lord. In all times and situations, we are called to call upon Him. In times of suffering call upon Him. In times of temptation, call upon Him. In times of thanksgiving, call upon Him. You have that right, for you are his child and He your Father by the waters of Holy Baptism. He has placed His name upon you at Holy Baptism. He has marked you His own child by the sign of the cross, so talk to your Heavenly Father. In other words, pray to Him. It does not need to be anything polished. Most of the time it will be like the disciples in our reading calling out our gripes and our fears. But this is what our Lord desires because He loves granting you mercy and love. That is His nature. “Call upon me in your day of trouble, I will deliver you and you will honor me.” Our Lord desires to hear our prayers.
Our Lord especially loves to hear you tell Him what He has promised He will do. A prayer might be something like this, “Lord God, you have promised all things work for the good of those who love you. Grant me courage to trust your promise as I carry the heavy burden of cancer in my body. I do not know why you laid this upon me, but help me O Lord to put my trust in you to carry me through the trials and tribulations, as you have promised to do, for the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.” Or it might be even less, “God, you promised. Now help me in my sufferings!” Our Lord binds up those who are suffering and are hurting, and renews their strength. Now it may not be exactly what we expect. Healing may not come in this life time, but it will be done because He has spoken, and He will do it.
So come to Him, as children come to their dear Father, and receive from Him everything He has for you in Christ Jesus, who lived, died, and rose that you might know the fullness of God’s love for you. In 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
