5a Easter - I Peter 2. 2-10 Resurrection: An Invitation to a New Identity
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
On Easter morning, Christ burst from the tomb. Since Christ has defeated death on the cross, His resurrection is the event that reveals God to us, and knowing Who God is, we discover who we are.
In this morning's Gospel, we have heard Jesus' definitive assertion to Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Jesus' rising from the dead is God the Father's expression of His solidarity with us through His Son. As these so called "farewell discourses of the next few chapters explain, God the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, comes to empower our faith and unite us in the Church's witness as it "daily and richly forgives all of our sins." Our Lutheran insight is a Holy Spirit is not some optional part of God that shows up when we get excited, motivated, or particularly filled with pious thoughts.
The Holy Spirit is the power that makes believing the Gospel possible at all. In us, as baptised children of God, the Holy Spirit is the presence of Christ's resurrection. Proto-martyr St Stephen in our first reading (Acts 7. 55-60) sees heaven at his execution because of the same promise that he "did not see", (kinda, sorta) in his ministry as a deacon in the Church, in the faces of those he served.
With this meditation, I want to make clear two presumptions of the new life to which we're invited. The first one, I've already implied. Our life in Christ is faith in a Crucified and Risen (alive in every way He can be alive.) There is no "Christ Jesus" in Whom we believe w\Who is not crucified, no Jesus Who is not arisen. That is to say, if we feel we must prove that Christ is risen, that proof is not found by finding his tomb and looking for DNA or broken rocks or any so called evidence. The evidence of Christ's resurrection is - wait for it - baptism! Your baptism, my baptism! "One Lord, one faith,one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all." (Eph 4.5-6, CEB) All the Christ we know, we need to know: crucified. risen triumphant over death, the final enemy. (c.f. I Cor 15.26)
Jesus' greatest enemy in the political sense, High Priest Caiaphas, could may have done as well as anyone in "prophesying" of the purpose of the Father in His Word declared by a Crucified Jesus,
"that one man must die for the people." (John 11.50) The writer of the gospel book interprets and affirms his (Caiaphas') prophecy "that Jesus would . . . die for the nation - and not only for the nation - Jesus would also die so that God's children scattered everywhere would be gathered together as one. From that day they plotted to kill him." (John 11.51b-53, CEB)
Caiaphas opposed Jesus' programme, and therefor the Father as Jesus is the envisioning of the Father as we heard in today's Gospel. All this to say that the Sacrament of Baptism is about God's work of oneness, that a child in our care should be one with us all as one people of God. If a child is saved by drops of water, (some number of drops,) poured over the child's head in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,) then certainly through faith, the one thing that matters, the child is one with the destiny of the people of God, as saved as (s)he can be.
So, thinking of the invite to new life and identity as "accepted", what now? A seat on the patio chair with a beverage and publication of choice? Another requirement done and none the more to do?
Now we come to the fine print of our contract with new life, a one sided contract to be sure, for God has executed it in Jesus Christ. The fine print of course is the Bible. (What this means for our "reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting" [after a traditional collect in the Book of Common Prayer] is for another time.) But the "fine print" of any contract - even God's one sided one where all the work is His - remains a valid expectation. Any person who uses the cursed technology of computering today knows that one of the quickest clicks we make is the box on a company's "privacy policy". They expect it "read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested." Could it be that we disregard the "fine print" of Holy Baptism? (see ELW, pg. 228) It makes a great template for understanding our need for the Holy Spirit's "daily and richly forgiv(ing) our sins. (as M. Luther writes in the Smaller Catechism.)
All I mean to say (to those of you still following,) is that the New Testament scriptures proclaim a God who has sent Jesus born among humankind, living a life of witness to His Father's kingdom, dying in the Spirit, according to His Father's will, that we might be part of one people of God.
Through faith, that is as real as it can possibly be, in our lives. In the life of an infant or adolescent, in the life of a pubescent, or a "functioning" (LOL) adult, a sept or octogenarian, (and all the genarians to come,) faith lives, as evidence of one faith in one Lord Who offers one Baptism.
We are in the midst of what I referred to earlier as a second presumption. Here it is - there is no lNew Testament scripture we read that doesn't assume a risen Christ. As "Holy Scriptures written for our learning" (op. cit. collect above), we hear the New Testament as proclamation of Christ's dying and rising again. Scripture's timeless truths or unchanging truths aren't so much the content of such truths, but the death defying Christ, the "way, truth, life" Jesus Christ (who) "died for our sins and rose for our justification."
God sees our faith. God approves our faith. Trust in Jesus Christ taking flesh, becoming compromised in his execution, lifeless in being taken from cross to grave, then a new body of indescribable and wondrous beauty (life) with the exception of His identity that was His destiny (as we see it.) Christ is risen. And Christ will come again.
In the Eucharist/Holy Communion we taste of that. The Son of God, the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth has found his place, "the right hand of God" in the words of the creeds) invites us through the bath of Baptism and the Communion of the Holy Meal to live our new identity, to anticipate through Christ's person and work the new life in all of its' abundance, in one baptism and one faith in our one Lord we pray, "Into your hands I commend my spirit, O LORD, O God of truth." ( Ps 31.5)
Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.
On Easter morning, Christ burst from the tomb. Since Christ has defeated death on the cross, His resurrection is the event that reveals God to us, and knowing Who God is, we discover who we are.
In this morning's Gospel, we have heard Jesus' definitive assertion to Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Jesus' rising from the dead is God the Father's expression of His solidarity with us through His Son. As these so called "farewell discourses of the next few chapters explain, God the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, comes to empower our faith and unite us in the Church's witness as it "daily and richly forgives all of our sins." Our Lutheran insight is a Holy Spirit is not some optional part of God that shows up when we get excited, motivated, or particularly filled with pious thoughts.
The Holy Spirit is the power that makes believing the Gospel possible at all. In us, as baptised children of God, the Holy Spirit is the presence of Christ's resurrection. Proto-martyr St Stephen in our first reading (Acts 7. 55-60) sees heaven at his execution because of the same promise that he "did not see", (kinda, sorta) in his ministry as a deacon in the Church, in the faces of those he served.
With this meditation, I want to make clear two presumptions of the new life to which we're invited. The first one, I've already implied. Our life in Christ is faith in a Crucified and Risen (alive in every way He can be alive.) There is no "Christ Jesus" in Whom we believe w\Who is not crucified, no Jesus Who is not arisen. That is to say, if we feel we must prove that Christ is risen, that proof is not found by finding his tomb and looking for DNA or broken rocks or any so called evidence. The evidence of Christ's resurrection is - wait for it - baptism! Your baptism, my baptism! "One Lord, one faith,one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all." (Eph 4.5-6, CEB) All the Christ we know, we need to know: crucified. risen triumphant over death, the final enemy. (c.f. I Cor 15.26)
Jesus' greatest enemy in the political sense, High Priest Caiaphas, could may have done as well as anyone in "prophesying" of the purpose of the Father in His Word declared by a Crucified Jesus,
"that one man must die for the people." (John 11.50) The writer of the gospel book interprets and affirms his (Caiaphas') prophecy "that Jesus would . . . die for the nation - and not only for the nation - Jesus would also die so that God's children scattered everywhere would be gathered together as one. From that day they plotted to kill him." (John 11.51b-53, CEB)
Caiaphas opposed Jesus' programme, and therefor the Father as Jesus is the envisioning of the Father as we heard in today's Gospel. All this to say that the Sacrament of Baptism is about God's work of oneness, that a child in our care should be one with us all as one people of God. If a child is saved by drops of water, (some number of drops,) poured over the child's head in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,) then certainly through faith, the one thing that matters, the child is one with the destiny of the people of God, as saved as (s)he can be.
So, thinking of the invite to new life and identity as "accepted", what now? A seat on the patio chair with a beverage and publication of choice? Another requirement done and none the more to do?
Now we come to the fine print of our contract with new life, a one sided contract to be sure, for God has executed it in Jesus Christ. The fine print of course is the Bible. (What this means for our "reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting" [after a traditional collect in the Book of Common Prayer] is for another time.) But the "fine print" of any contract - even God's one sided one where all the work is His - remains a valid expectation. Any person who uses the cursed technology of computering today knows that one of the quickest clicks we make is the box on a company's "privacy policy". They expect it "read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested." Could it be that we disregard the "fine print" of Holy Baptism? (see ELW, pg. 228) It makes a great template for understanding our need for the Holy Spirit's "daily and richly forgiv(ing) our sins. (as M. Luther writes in the Smaller Catechism.)
All I mean to say (to those of you still following,) is that the New Testament scriptures proclaim a God who has sent Jesus born among humankind, living a life of witness to His Father's kingdom, dying in the Spirit, according to His Father's will, that we might be part of one people of God.
Through faith, that is as real as it can possibly be, in our lives. In the life of an infant or adolescent, in the life of a pubescent, or a "functioning" (LOL) adult, a sept or octogenarian, (and all the genarians to come,) faith lives, as evidence of one faith in one Lord Who offers one Baptism.
We are in the midst of what I referred to earlier as a second presumption. Here it is - there is no lNew Testament scripture we read that doesn't assume a risen Christ. As "Holy Scriptures written for our learning" (op. cit. collect above), we hear the New Testament as proclamation of Christ's dying and rising again. Scripture's timeless truths or unchanging truths aren't so much the content of such truths, but the death defying Christ, the "way, truth, life" Jesus Christ (who) "died for our sins and rose for our justification."
God sees our faith. God approves our faith. Trust in Jesus Christ taking flesh, becoming compromised in his execution, lifeless in being taken from cross to grave, then a new body of indescribable and wondrous beauty (life) with the exception of His identity that was His destiny (as we see it.) Christ is risen. And Christ will come again.
In the Eucharist/Holy Communion we taste of that. The Son of God, the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth has found his place, "the right hand of God" in the words of the creeds) invites us through the bath of Baptism and the Communion of the Holy Meal to live our new identity, to anticipate through Christ's person and work the new life in all of its' abundance, in one baptism and one faith in our one Lord we pray, "Into your hands I commend my spirit, O LORD, O God of truth." ( Ps 31.5)
Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.
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