As a Roman citizen, Paul had the right to be tried by the emperor himself. Since the High Priests had decided to kill him, Paul exercised that right. Traveling by ship was still the quickest way to get to Rome, although it was risky, especially in the fall, when Paul’s ship set sail. Having arrived at a small port in Crete, the group had to decide if they would want to try for a larger port to their west. Paul had a vision of danger, and warned the party without success.
When a ship in this circumstance runs too close to shore, sailors would throw all unnecessary cargo overboard. St. Paul’s crew did this and put down the anchors as well. Since this left the boat at the mercy of the winds, sailors would always look for other options. Normally it is not wise to attempt to land in an unfamiliar place without aid. St. Paul’s crew had no better option and ran the ship into a sandbar attempting it.
Throughout this ordeal, God kept Paul and his companions safe as He promised He would. Paul’s calm in peril impressed all the pagans who traveled with him. These events are remembered to this day in Malta, where they were stranded over the winter.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Sermon on Revelation 7:13-17 All Saint’s Sunday October 30, 2022 Saint Paul Lutheran Church And Trinity Lutheran Church McGregor and Guttenberg, Iowa
Text: “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Prayer: For all the saints who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Amen.
Christ is Risen!
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who by his death has destroy death and by his rising again opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Introduction: On this All Saints 2022, a flood of thoughts and emotions occupy my thoughts. Three years ago on Reformation Day, Evangeline Charissa Keller was baptized into the name of the Triune God by her father in the NICU in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Her entrance into the world was dramatic and the shadow in the back of my thoughts as we drove there was the remote possibility that she, her mother — my daughter Hanne — and her father could be at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb by that day. The Lord had mercy and blessed the work of doctors, nurses and many others to perform near perfect procedures. They all came through well and thrived as I preached for my son-in-law that year’s All Saints divine service. It was as if the Holy Spirit whispered “not yet, not yet.” In the years since, all is very well with them and a very bright three-year-old joined her six-year-old sister in delighting and challenging her mother and father.
Our text this morning opens the curtain of heaven for us to see the throne of God. There gathered before the Father and the Lamb of God are the children of God from every time – Adam and Noah, Joseph and Moses, David and Elijah, and all those trusting in the coming Messiah. There are also the Apostles and Evangelists, Christians from every time and place, language and nation, and people much more familiar to me.
I remember my own grandparents and grandparents-in-law, who lived and prospered through incredibly hard times, kept the faith in their own … unique … ways, who were often living examples of saints and sinners at the same time. I remember my grandmother Smith reading from the big, KJV family Bible to me as a child on her lap. I remember my grandmother Schneider and her aunt who gave me my first Greek New Testament as a confirmation gift. There are my parents and parents-in-law, troubled in troubled times, yet who still kept their faith. Also present is my father, that bruised reed the Lord did not break. And now in 2022, my beloved wife, Kris, has joined them. She loved me, her children and grandchildren through constant pain all of her life, produced endless beautiful and practical crafts that blessed many. Her straightforward, rock-hard faith was an inspiration to me and to many. All are at rest with their Savior, along with two grandchildren whom the Good Shepherd folded in his arms while still in the womb. Many others are there, too. My Fathers and brothers in the faith that taught me and many others and laid the same stole of ministry on me as I have now laid on my son-in-law and spiritual sons. I am thankful for them and for their confessions, praying to be as faithful to the Lord as they were.
So, how did they get there before the throne? Born sinners they struggled with the Old Adam and Old Eve until the day they died. Yet when they were baptized, Jesus united them with his death. When he rose from the dead, he opened the way for them – and us – to be with him forever. He, the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world – their sin, our sin. At their deaths, his angels came, gave them the white robes of his righteousness and the palms of victory they wave before the throne.
In life, he was their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might; he was their Captain in the well-fought fight. Now they rest from their labors and God has dried every tear from their eyes. Yet to me, and to you, the Holy Spirit still seems to whisper, “Not yet, Not yet!” We feebly struggle, they in glory shine!
Eight years ago, I struggled with a massive infection in my heel. Several times I told my pastor that I still believed what I taught and confessed these thirty-seven years as I went to surgery. Later I was told that I was on the threshold of attending the Marriage Feast. It was as if the Holy Spirit had said, “not yet, not yet.” In the years since, I have continued to preach, to teach, cared for my home congregation when our pastor was on the threshold himself, presided at the weddings of two of my children, seen all my grandchildren save one baptized with the same baptismal shell with which their parents and others were baptized, began to pass the baton on to four of my spiritual sons, welcomed a brand new pastor to our home congregation, and, with him, mentor vicars. God has blessed me more than I deserve.
And now I reflect that I was blessed to celebrate All Saints Day with my wife thirty-four times, thankful for each day we were together, praying to thank the Lord for those safely home. Now I pray after receiving the Lord’s Supper to thank God for my late wife, an ever-growing list of grandchildren, my children and their spouses. I will rejoice that this year I can still hold their hands, speak with them through the ether and see them all once in a while. Soon, all too soon, the angels will come for me or one of them, to join those at the Feast as the Holy Spirit no longer says, “not yet” but the Lord Jesus says to one of us, “welcome to the joy of your Father.”
And yet there breaks a more glorious day. The saints triumphant will rise in bright array; The King of glory passes on His way. Sin and death will die. The world renewed, restored and be transformed, fit for eternity. God will pitch his tent with us and live with us forever. And he will dry every tear from our eyes.
Christ is Risen! Amen, come Lord Jesus, come!
Prayer:
Oh, may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold, Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old And win with them the victor’s crown of gold! Amen.
Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, set watch over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
No, you should not. And the why matters here. The notion of community enjoyed by Christians in fellowship together is governed by the Law of Christian love for my neighbor. Yes, love is a function of God’s Law. God’s love for you is purely the Gospel of undeserved forgiveness through the blood of Jesus. But, His command for you to love your neighbor and your compliance with it is purely a function of God’s Law.
Fourth commandment – “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12 ESV) “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)
“What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” (Luther’s Small Catechism, section 1:4)
Luther’s expansion of the commandments in the small catechism is taken directly from Jesus’s teaching of the commandments in Matt 5. Jesus condemns lust just as adultery and hatred just as murder. We are right to understand all of the commandments in a similar way.
As the head of a household, you bring your family into a church. By joining fellowship with that church, you are submitting yourself to her authority. You may only resist or reject, if that church operates in a way that is contrary to God’s Word. If your conscience so compels you, you ought also to leave that church and find a faithful one.
However, under the authority of that church, you are bound to her governance. This is not different than children, who are bound to the governance of their parents. The voluntary nature of our submission is the only unique feature here. If we are Christians in a particular place, then we are bound by God’s law to that body unless or until we sever ourselves from it.
This is also true of a congregation’s relationship to District and Synod. We do not have the moral authority to disregard synodical doctrine and practice. In our voluntary association with a synod, we are bound by the 4th Commandment to submit ourselves to that governance. If we are to deviate from it, we are also bound to separate ourselves from that synod.
Now, getting back home, my household is a member of a local congregation. This congregation is a member congregation of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. We believe teach and confess that the institution of the Lord’s Supper belongs to the church as a whole and ought to be governed and conducted in good order.
Our teaching springs from Jesus’s institution of the Lord’s Supper among the twelve disciples (Matthew 26, Mark 16, Luke 22). It’s important to recognize that there were other groupings of followers throughout Jesus’s ministry. Jesus sent out seventy-two to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of God (Luke 10). St. Paul also reports that there were over 500 witnesses to the resurrection in the 40 days Jesus walked the earth before the Ascension (1 Corinthians 15).
Yet, none of these received the institution of the Lord’s Supper or the command to go and make disciples of all nations. That work, the governance of it, and passing of it to others was left for the disciples to manage. That’s the work of the church. We are to conduct ourselves in good order and submit ourselves to faithful governance within the church.
The particular articles governing us as members of member congregations of the LC–MS are these. “Our churches teach that the one holy Christian Church is to remain forever. The church is the congregation of Saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are correctly administered…” (Augsburg Confession, Article: VII). “Our churches teach that no one should publicly teach in the church, or administer the sacraments, without a rightly ordered call” (AC XIV).
In voluntary Fourth Commandment submission to the authority of our congregations and their synodical governance, we cannot practice the Lord’s Supper apart from the administration of those pastors, who are rightly called to do so. We are certainly free to leave the fellowship in search of a faithful one, if we are so driven by our conscience. But, we cannot pretend to submit to the church’s authority publicly, and privately rebel against her.
That would be unfaithful to God’s commands for us. God’s Word requires that we hear and obey. That includes submitting to those authorities He has given us. As we each confessed in our confirmations, I will suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from this faith.
As we confess, so let us do.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX and Mission planting pastoral team: Epiphany Lutheran Church Bastrop, TX
Sheep are not the cuddly, fluffy, pure white creatures we see in paintings and picture books. They are dirty, smelly, noisy and interested in only one thing – food. They wander wherever they want to go and do not pay attention to the dangers of world around them. They often walk off cliffs, in the path of wolves and other predators and are easily separated from the flock.
For this reason, shepherds often took their flocks out together. If one got lost, then, helpers would watch those that did not wander while the shepherd. Shepherds often loved their sheep the way we love our pets. If a sheep or a lamb was too weak to walk, they would carry the sheep on their shoulders. If a lost sheep was found, everyone would rejoice.
Shepherds and sheep appear often in the pages of the Bible. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and David were shepherds. The Bible calls God our shepherd. He feeds us, guides us safely through the wilderness, finds us when we are lost, binds up our wounds and carries us home. Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd. We hear His voice, we follow Him and He lays down His life for us. The Christian Church from the very beginning called its leaders pastors, which comes from the Latin word for shepherd. God calls pastors to care for His people – His sheep – the way He cares for them.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
The Parable of the Lost Son is one the most loved of the stories Jesus told. Everyone can relate to it. We see a very strong love shown by the Father to both His sons – the responsible one as much as the wasteful one. In the time of Jesus’ ministry, a father normally did not divide his property while he was alive. In the story, when the younger son asked for his inheritance, he was saying “I wish you were dead.” Still the father did what his son wanted. The father so loved his son that he kept looking for him to return.
When the younger son came back, the father saw him and did what men at that time did not do – he ran to meet his son. He would have to pull up his robes to do so and would be embarrassing. He did not wait for the younger son to apologize. Instead, he dressed his son as one of his own heirs and threw a very big party to celebrate his return.
When the older son was so angry that he did not come to the party, he was insulting his father. Yet his father came out to plead with him. The older son continued to show disrespect when he lectured his father. Yet the father still speaks to him tenderly. “All I have is yours,” he said, “but we have to rejoice, for your brother who was dead is now alive, was lost has now been found.”
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
“Pastors don’t want parsonages anymore.” That was a colloquial refrain in churches around the close of the 20th Century. It may have been the case, to varying degrees, among the boomer generation. Conversely, Gen-X and following have lived through less prosperous economic times. Particularly, we’ve seen our churches struggling increasingly with less capability to meet budgets. Dwindling church membership and attendance in Christian churches throughout the US, in various denominations, aren’t helping the issue either.
This article does not seek to address causal issues of economic struggles, attendance, membership, or congregational vitality. Those are topics for other men and other articles. Here, I’m sticking to pragmatic realities of housing, savings, and retirement plans.
Mentoring can be part of the problem here. Pastors who are struggling with significant poor financial timing or choices aren’t quick to advise other men in the office. Men who are recipients of dumb luck or unusually long calls can be quick to attribute the benefit of time in the housing market to their own wisdom rather than fortunate timing.
Advice from within and outside the congregation may also pressure men to buy sooner than they ought. These pressures can take the form of the sociological, “You need to send a message to the people that you’re in it for the long haul by buying a house.” They can be tribalistic, “Don’t you want to buy a home and become part of the community?” The advice can ignore conflicting financial burdens, “You need to buy right away, while the market is [insert favorable condition here].” These kinds of advice frequently outweigh and shout-over calmer, slower advice.
Stacking debt upon debt is always a bad idea. Our grandparents understood this. Somehow, we lost track of that wisdom. Men serving as pastors frequently enter the office of the ministry with large piles of debt already. “But the seminary is free…” Personally, I missed the “free” seminary days, which preceded and followed my time. Regardless of that, undergrad degrees are not free. Moving, renting, and maintaining our households on minimal budgets can cause other debt pressures.
Consider this: what’s an ideal pastoral candidate? The call committees on which I served prior to the seminary reflect some variation of this theme. “We want a younger man with a few years under his belt in the pulpit. We want a man with young children. It really would be advantageous if his wife plays the organ, teaches, or is a deaconess.” That’s certainly a great sounding candidate. He and his family will be a great benefit to your congregation.
Here are some pitfalls associated with that. This family unit is an inherently high debt family. Did they meet at a synodical university? That’s debt. Did he go directly to the seminary, getting married along the way? That’s debt. Did they start their family in the seminary, as many do? She wasn’t working while he attended. That’s debt.
The debt this ideal family has acquired isn’t evil or inherently bad. It remains a preexisting debt pile that they’ll have to address for some years to come. Home ownership can be a tremendous blessing for those without other significant debt. But, it can also be an impoverishing curse to those for whom each expense of ownership is a financial crisis.
Back to our ideal guy, has he owned his home between two and three years? Generally, that means he won’t lose any money trading into another home. Pastors don’t choose their own calls. When a call comes from a weak housing market to a strong one, he’s likely to suffer in the exchange. What about the economic climate? Have interest rates climbed recently? In 2022, interest rates are climbing rapidly. That can be a poor time to buy or sell.
Pastors are in an inherently unpredictable living situation. Each pastor accepts a call intending to live out his days of service there and nowhere else. When a call comes in, he now has two Divine calls and must prayerfully consider which is God’s intention for him. The call process has an inborn risk of placing men into disadvantageous positions in housing markets at disadvantageous times.
The colloquial late 20th Century wisdom will say, “But a home is a great investment.” It can be a decent investment, for those who stay put, build equity, and move up only at advantageous times. Actual investments, however, are better long-term solutions. A pastor working, retiring debt, and saving will retire well. I can think of at least a dozen men, including my grandfather, who retired from a lifetime of mostly or exclusively parsonages. These men bought their retirement homes with cash. Thanks to their parsonages, the financial burden of home ownership was reduced for both the congregations served and the pastors.
If you’re concerned about your pastor’s debt management and financial health, send him and his wife through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. They are theologically equipped to navigate the pitfalls and errors of Dave’s religion. The important part is his wisdom about money, budgeting, and the dangers of debt.
The days may be coming when congregations without a parsonage will also sit without a pastor. The parsonage is not just a benefit to your pastor. It’s also a gift to the congregation’s future generations. In desperate times, you will better be able to retain a pastor, because he and his family have housing. In simpler times, he’ll be more able to save and prepare for the future.
If your congregation has a parsonage, keep it. Even if your pastor doesn’t live there, maintain it, and consider improving it. The next man is likely to need it. If y’all don’t have a parsonage, start working towards getting or building one. It’s also worth preparing for a bigger family than you might expect. Bigger families are becoming common again among folks who marry younger. Your pastor will also have a tough time accepting a call to a congregation without a parsonage from your parsonage, or to an inadequate parsonage from an adequate one.
There will no doubt be much dissent on this opinion. That’s perfectly fine. I live in a parsonage. Most of my circuit brothers do too. There is a vacancy in a local circuit that does not have a parsonage. Though it may not have mattered in years past, the lack of a parsonage may be a big deal this time.
For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages. (1 Timothy 5:18)
Encore Post: When Martin Luther was born, Europe, including Germany, was changing. The discovery of America and trade routes to India and the Far East brought a flood of goods, gold and ideas fueled changes in everyday life. After many years of population decline due to disease, life for the lower and middle classes improved and births filled their ranks. The ideas of the Renaissance brought changes in art, music, philosophy and theology. Inventors brought new technologies to everyone, one of the most important being the printing press. People could afford to buy and own books for the first time in history.
All these changes caused the everyday languages people spoke — the vernacular language — to adapt and grow. The isolation of medieval society, made up of patchworks of small territories, free cities, and counties (territories ruled by counts, princes and knights), meant that thousands of dialects made conversation between everyday people difficult. The Latin language unified the ruling and educated classes somewhat. The Church discouraged the use of translations of the Bible, convinced that unlearned people studying it directly would multiply heresies. They did not need to worry. Most vernacular translations were virtually unreadable: wooden, word-for-word representations of the Latin Vulgate.
As the Reformation took hold, both Luther and his friends became convinced that everyday people needed to be able to read the Bible in their own language. The fast pace of events, his ever-growing insight into the teachings of God’s word and the need to write a high volume of tracts kept the reformer from translating the Bible himself. In 1521, when his prince put him in his Wartburg Castle for safe keeping, he finally had the time. He produced a first draft of his German New Testament in eleven weeks. It was published in September 1522. It sold out immediately. Luther followed with a revision in December of the same year.
Luther’s work was a masterpiece of the emerging High German Language. His use of his prince’s Saxon Court German, well understood throughout German lands, supplemented by words spoken by everyday people throughout Germany was easily understood, sounded natural to people when read aloud and designed so that no one would suspect its writers were not Saxon peasants. It was so widely published, bought and read that it brought about a common German language.
So impressed was Luther’s disciple, William Tyndale, it shaped his own translation of the Bible into English. In 1611, when King James’ translators produced the King James Version of the Bible, they, in turn, used most of Tyndale’s work. So it came to be that the standard Bible translations of Germany and the English speaking world came largely from the labors of Luther to bring the Bible to the homes of everyday people.
Rev. Robert E. Smith Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, Indiana
Encore Post: The rapture and host of other teachings about the end times spring primarily from the American theological quagmire of 1800s upstate New York. This area gave us Charles Grandison Finney, Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russel, and William Miller among others. Those four respectively produced American Revivalism, the LDS church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Adventist & Davidian churches.
There is some significant commonality of end times teaching (eschatology) between these groups. The belief in a millennium, a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on Earth, is one such teaching. The rapture is a key feature of these millennial eschatologies. There will, no doubt, be additional questions in the future about the teachings from these groups.
Generally, the rapture is the notion that the righteous, the believers will be yanked away from creation into the air. Often, that also means they are removed from earth for a period of time, during which the tribulation occurs. There are numerous variations on the sequencing and chronology. But, that’s the thumbnail sketch.
One of the major proofs of the rapture is from Matthew 24. Jesus speaks at great length about the end of days. Verses 40 and 41 are often used in support of this “left behind” type rapture teaching.
Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. (Matthew 24:40-41)
That seems a fairly straight forward interpretation. The one taken is the righteous person, the believer. The one left behind is the unrighteous person, the unbeliever. Now, those verses do not indicate which might be which.
Is there a way for us to see that passage more clearly from its own context? Well, let’s look at verse 38 and 39. They immediately precede these two.
For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:38-39)
It’s unlikely that any of us would argue in favor of the righteousness of those taken in the flood. They were swept away. Noah and his family, eight souls in all, were preserved, left behind, amidst the destruction.
It seems quite clear that the unbelievers, the unrighteous are the ones who are taken. In the broader context of Matthew, the things taken, cut into pieces, burned by fire, and cast into the outer darkness are the wicked things. As Lutherans we also hold that all of this is part of the in-an-instant-ness of the day of salvation.
When the Son of Man returns in glory, the trumpet sounds, and all is accomplished at once. The day of judgement and all its events are one moment for all of creation. We are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, right now.
Thanks be to God for the salvation bought by the death of Jesus.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
and
Mission planting pastoral team: Epiphany Lutheran Church Bastrop, TX
There is much to ponder as the Church remembers James the Elder, Apostle this day. While James was blessed to be in Christ’s inner circle, we are similar to James. We also have been called by name to follow our Lord. James was called directly from the fishing boat with his brother John. We were called in the waters of Holy Baptism.
Like James, we can have quite a bit of arrogance about us. James and his brother John had a bit of that too. Think about their nickname, Sons of Thunder. They were told to preach the good news of the kingdom. They were not received and neither was the message. They asked if Jesus wanted them to call down fire from heaven to consume the folks who did not listen. They also both had been in that inner circle of the 3. They were always the closest to Jesus. They were with Jesus on the mountain when He was transfigured. Peter, James, and John were with Jesus when he raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead. They had some pretty cool honors.
And those honors while good for John and James to have witnessed, became something more than a gift from Jesus. Satan likes to take gifts that we humans have received, and make us think we have earned them for some reason or another. That these things are our rights to have. And what we request we should get just because of who we are, what we have done, what we have seen, etc. For James and John this arrogance came to a watershed moment with their audacious question to Jesus about the particular seating chart for the kingdom. For us we might be like the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, arrogant and indignant towards the Father because he has done nothing to celebrate and acknowledge our continual presence. And this is the way the other disciples seem too after this episode. The other boys are mad at James and John for even asking the question. But everyone was thinking about where their seats were. Who was to be greatest among them? Let this moment be of warning for us all.
Greatness in the kingdom of God does not equal greatness in the world. Glory in the world’s eye is the complete opposite of the glory of the kingdom of God. The boys ask their audacious question immediately after Jesus speaks to his disciples the 3rd time about his passion at the cross. He will be handed over to suffer, be killed, crucified on the cross. And on the third day rise from the dead. Jesus literally had just told the 12 what would begin his reign, suffering and death. It’s as if James and John had their ears stuffed. They did not hear, and certainly did not understand what they were asking.
Jesus tells us and them as much. He says, “You do not know what your asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And if the brothers were listening they would have caught the first statement and likely would have stopped and asked for clarification, but they answer the rhetorical questions posed by Jesus. “Yes, we are able.”
The cup that Jesus drinks is the cup that we hear Jesus pray about at the garden of Gethsemane. It is the cup of suffering and wrath of God for the sin of the world. That cup would be drunk fully Jesus when he is hanging naked on the cross dying, crying out, “My God My God why have you forsaken me?” That cup was drunk by Jesus because it was given to him to drink on behalf of the world to save the world, to redeem it. He was doing His work as the servant for the world, giving his life for many.
The word many makes a few people hang up. Because that word in our language does not mean all. But in the Greek that word for many is an all-encompassing word. The cup that Jesus drinks as the servant is for the entire world.
James and John don’t know what they are asking, they have in their mind the worldly understanding of glory and cup, it was not until the event of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection that things became clear. Christ’s reign really began at the throne of the cross. And James’ brother John makes that fascinatingly and utterly clear in the gospel wrote. Christ’s throne of glory is his cross.
This question that James and John ask to Jesus likely could have been asked by any of the disciples, and if we had been there, it probably would have come from our own mouth, too. And the answer would have been the same.
Jesus does not chastise them too harshly for the question, but tells them they do not know what they are asking, then continues with the questions about being able to drink the cup and be baptized with the baptism. Jesus is speaking directly about His cross and passion. And with their answer of being able to drink and be baptized, Jesus tells them they will indeed drink and be baptized with His baptism. James, participating to the fullest extent, receiving the honor of being the first of the apostles to be martyred for the sake of Jesus’ Name.
James is only capable of this because of the grace of Jesus. James has nothing of himself to say that he is worthy. He is not worthy of anything in himself when it comes to honors given to him by Jesus. There was nothing innately more saintly in James than in anyone else. James shows his sinfulness in the arrogance of the question put before us in this reading. But Christ called him out of the darkness of his sinfulness and gave him new life, the life that Jesus gave up. James would drink the cup of suffering and would die a martyr’s death. He would receive that honor solely because the Lord Jesus gave him the strength to endure unto the end.
The cup that Jesus drank for you and for you as the servant who gave his life as a ransom is the same cup you and I drink now for our benefit. While he drank the cup of wrath down to the dregs and finished it, having tasted death and swallowed it forever, he now gives us his blood to drink for our life. The same manner that James was strengthened to endure and see the glory of Christ in his cross, is the same exact manner in which we too receive strength and nourishment for our faith to endure unto the end.
Let us not lord over one another. But let us learn from the lesson of James and John. Give thanks to Jesus for His teaching. Let us be filled with His life, receiving from him the cup that is now the cup of our salvation. Eat His body and drink His blood so that you might be filled with His Life. By such eating and drinking, we grow to be like Him.
While his earthly voice was stopped and no book of the bible was written by James, James is remembered and honored as the first apostle to be received into the holy band of martyrs bright who constantly are before their Lord praising Him unto life everlasting. Lord, may we be granted the same strength of faith granted to James to endure unto the end however that end come. Amen.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
It is clear that that recent biblical scholars, such as Ben Collett (and every orthodox Lutheran?) desire to place human reason back to its proper place underneath Scripture. Ben Collett reminds his readers of the early creeds, particularly the Nicene Creed. The Creed offers its own “set of objective controls upon Biblical meaning by which to critically assess Biblical interpretation and adjudicate its claims to meaning.” (Don C. Collett, Figural Reading and the Old Testament, 162). Effectively, Collett encourages students to return human reason to its ministerial role, that is, reason being normed by Scripture.
It is refreshing to see people outside the Lutheran camp realize this! This is the treasure our church has had since the beginning, and it is built into our own Confessions! This understanding of interpreting Scripture would soon give way to the formulation of the Book of Concord, which states that Biblical exposition serves as the norma normata under the norma normans of Scripture (FC Ep, 1.2).
The Old Testament points to and has its center on Christ. This Christological reading is inherent in the Scripture, and is established by the Lord. Scripture is God’s self-revelation to humanity that they might know Him through Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world from sin, death and hell. Though human reason received a magisterial role in various worldviews that came after the Christian theistic worldview, it now returns to its ministerial role under the guidance and teaching of Scripture. As it turns out, the Christian theistic worldview and methods of interpretation that foster this worldview never fully left the scene. Several theologians, throughout all of history, have continued to work under the Christian theistic worldview presuppositions even though the rest of the world despises it. Yet even today, it seems that the methods of Christocentric interpretation of Scripture are, by God’s providential grace, making a much-welcomed return to the academy as more books and studies are coming forth.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp St. Peter’s Lutheran Church La Grange, MO
