Articles Archive for February 2012
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2nd Midweek in Lent
Genesis 3:1-8 & Mark 1:9-13
“You came, I was alone / I should have known you were temptation. / You smiled, luring me on. / My heart was gone, you were temptation… I’m just a slave, only a slave / To you, temptation.” From the year 1933. A classic torch song. And temptation has been the subject of so many, many songs…always a touch sad, always a touch tragic.
Maybe it’s a sign of our times…but I don’t hear many songs about temptation these days. If I do, it’s a …
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Lent is underway. The Midweek Services have begun, with Wednesday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. followed by a light supper, and the same service on Thursday evenings at 6:30 p.m. The month of March has other things going on as well. Check out the latest issue of St. Peter’s Net.
March 2012 Newsletter
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But Abraham believed the promise of God, despite the command of God. Despite the command of God, Abraham trusted the promise of God. In the face of God’s dreadful command, Abraham, in faith, trusted those promises all the more. It’s what faith does. As Jesus, in faith, would bring strength out of weakness, glory out of shame, forgiveness out of sin, life out of death. That’s what faith does when it seems that God is our enemy? As Martin Luther once said, “faith trusts God even against God.” In the face of God’s dread command, faith trusts God’s promises.
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England’s Henry V successfully hacked and slashed his way to victory over the French. The original text of this tune sings, “Our King went forth to Normandy, / With grace and might of chivalry, / There God for him wrought marvelously, / Wherefore England may call and cry, / Deo gracias Anglia redde pro victoria! (Thanks be to God, England, for the victory!)” Jolly good, what!
But we sing that ancient battle hymn today, because a much greater than Henry goes before us. Yet our King goes forth from the mountain of Transfiguration with a grace and might of a very different, hidden sort of chivalry. But what Christ hath wrought by His dreadful fight upon that greater St. Crispin’s Day we call Good Friday, oh, it is marvelous indeed. Deo gratias! Thanks be to God!
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Well why, then, does Jesus command—so sternly, so angrily—why does He command the cleansed leper to silence, as though He’s dealing with one of the demons? In a sense He is, though not the man himself, but the evil which had imprisoned that man, socially and physically, in his leprosy. Until Jesus goes to His cross, until Jesus defeats the power of evil one final time, this particular healing, like all the others, will only be an isolated, miraculous event. None of Jesus’ healing miracles have any meaning apart from the great healing for all mankind on Good Friday and Easter.
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For Jesus, preaching is a sacramental act. It’s not just saying words. With Jesus His words are doing what He says. He says, “The kingdom is at hand.” And with those words it is. With those words disciples follow, demons take a hike, fevers get banished, and diseases and sicknesses get healed. With those words heaven is breaking in upon earth. He speaks and it happens. The happening is His preaching. Tangible. Physical. Sacramental.
