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Lectionary Homilies from Confident.Faith

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Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr', vergehet nun und nimmermehr.

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July 25, 2026

Lectionary Homily for the 26 July 2026 (9th Sunday after Pentecost)

<div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"> <h3>Readings</h3> <ul> <li>Deuteronomy 7:6–9</li> <li>Psalm 125</li> <li>Romans 8:28–39</li> <li>Matthew 13:44–52</li> </ul> </div> <div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"> <h2>Homily Transcript</h2> Scripture is full of metaphor, analogy, symbolism, and dozens of other such rhetorical devices and figures of speech. This is, of course, not to say that there are not parts of Scripture that are simply literal — we do not want to wander off into the desert with those who try to torture everything into symbolism — or allegory. And yet we must recognize symbolism when and where God has employed it and then endeavor correctly to exegete and understand it. And so we must discuss ‘Jerusalem’. First, there is not one Jerusalem — there are two: <blockquote> Galatians 4:21–31 (ESV): »21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written, </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.” </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> 28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.« </blockquote> Second, the Jews are children of the slave woman, of the earthly Jerusalem, and we, the Elect, are children of the free woman, of the heavenly Jerusalem. Third, the heavenly Jerusalem is the eternal city, the city spoken of in Revelation; ultimately and truly, the heavenly Jerusalem is Paradise itself, for that is the eternal home of the Elect. We should expand these a bit. I want you to look at Psalm 125 in your Bibles. Unless you have acquired and are using a Septuagint (which you should do), then the second clause speaks of Mount Zion as being immovable, but that is not what God actually said, for the true referent, as we see in the Greek, is the same as that of the first clause: He who ‘inhabits Jerusalem’ is he who trusts in the Lord, is he who will never be shaken. This verse is comfort for the Elect; it has nothing to do with the earthly Jerusalem. In their great wickedness, the Jews altered this verse in their so-called ‘Masoretic Text’ and attempted to transfer a promise from the Elect to themselves. They truly are, as Christ called them, children of their father below, who is a murderer, a liar, and a thief. The earthly Jerusalem is just a city, like any other earthly city, and the earthly Mount Zion is like any other earthly mountain (really more a hill in this case) and both will pass away along with the rest of this Creation — they have no relevance to future prophecy or anything of that sort except for their use as symbols. All forms of Millenarianism are heresy. The issue of the Jews is certainly a tired one, but a patient with cancer cannot reasonably expect to stop hearing about that disease just because he is tired of it, and so we must discuss wickedness and heresy. It was the Jews that led the so-called ‘civil rights movement’ that tore our country apart and destroyed our national fabric. It was the Jews that spied for the Communists (and gave them nuclear weapons) and led the Communist groups in the US. It was the Jews that overturned our blasphemy, anti-sodomy, and obscenity laws. It was the Jews that pushed to legalize abortion, and they are vastly overrepresented as ‘doctors’ in that field. It was the Jews that pushed for the legalization of all manner of drugs. It is the Jews that own and promote the pornography ‘industry’. Hear the Word of the Lord: <blockquote> The Jews killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and they have persecuted His disciples; the Jews please not God, and are contrary to all men. </blockquote> And yet there are many who claim the name of Christ and rabidly support the Christ-killing Jews. And if you recoil in the slightest from calling the Jews Christ-killers, then I encourage you to examine yourself to know the state of your heart; hear the Word of the Lord: <blockquote> The God of our fathers raised Jesus, Whom you (Jews) killed by hanging Him on a tree. </blockquote> Was Peter speaking to the ‘Jewish leaders’ as modern eisegetes would tell you? No, he was speaking to a crowd of ordinary Jews. The Jews are Christ-killers and this enormous sin, this incomprehensible wickedness will follow their race unto eternity. We leave the eternal disposition of those who dedicate themselves to the Jews to the perfect justice of God, but we also surely know that He will not commend as faithful servant those who serve the very men who murdered Him. For our part, we might call that ‘aiding and abetting’. At least in some ways worse are those who rabidly — and heretically — insist that the Jews are ‘chosen’. Well, we should examine that term: What does it mean to be chosen? There are two senses; we will categorize them with two Greek verbs: προαιρεω and καλεω. The first verb appears in our first reading as ‘chosen’ and the second (in adjectival form) appears in our Epistle reading as ‘called’. Pharaoh was chosen, or, in the words of Romans 9:17: <blockquote> For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. </blockquote> in the waters of Holy Baptism, you were called — more, you were called by name, for the Good Shepherd Who numbered and named all the stars in the sky knows also all His sheep by their names (and so καλεω truly means). Would you rather be προαιρεω pharaoh or a καλεοω child of God (please forgive me the bad grammar for the sake of the point)? Perhaps I am somewhat partial because Romans 8:28 is my Confirmation verse, but I would strongly prefer, if asked to choose, to be chosen in the sense of καλεω (called) instead of merely chosen in the sense of προαιρεω (‘chosen’ for a specific purpose). This is, of course, not to even imply that these categories are mutually exclusive; pharaoh was chosen, but not called, but, to pick just a few, Moses, David, and Mary were all both chosen and called. The error that we must avoid here is the conflation of the Zionist and the heresy of the Dispensationalist: The Jews are not, by virtue of their descent from Abraham, chosen in the sense of called: <blockquote> For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. </blockquote> If anything, the unbelieving Jews are all the more damned for rejecting the Scriptures that God entrusted to them and the Christ Who came from their line; it is far worse to know God and explicitly reject Him than simply to be an ignorant heathen. The nation of Ancient Israel was chosen for the specific purpose of being the line from which the Christ would descend, but this affords them no advantage before God’s tribunal. We are bound to ask how any Christian would miss the clear heresy of any system that would even hint at another path to the Father. ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ The Jews do not have some ‘second way’. Adam was the first Christian, and he entered Paradise long before Moses, to whom God entrusted the Law to be protected and spread by Ancient Israel, was even born. It has only ever been by faith in the Christ that one may be called. May the Lord God erase both Zionism and Dispensationalism from the Earth and thereby defend His great Name. Amen. We do not look forward to the earthly restoration of any particular nation to any particular chunk of territory. We do not pin our hope on an earthly mountain, city, or hill. The only hill to which we (symbolically) assign any abiding hope is Golgotha, but our hope in Christ crucified exists because we believe in Christ raised. The existence of modern ‘Israel’ is a matter of geopolitics and corruption, not a matter of prophecy, for we know that it is only the Israel of God (i.e., the Church) and the heavenly Jerusalem (i.e., Paradise) that have any promises or ultimate meaning. The earthly Jerusalem will pass away in fire; the heavenly Jerusalem will endure for eternity with her lord and Savior as a light to all the Elect from every nation and language. None of this should be taken to diminish or demean and certainly not to denigrate the importance of the here and now. What you do in this life not only echoes in eternity, but decides your eternity. Certainly, we are saved — alone — by the free gift of faith in the forgiveness of sins won for us by the perfect work of the Christ Who lived and died for us, fulfilling the righteous demands of the Law that we could never fulfill, but there are two judgements: There is the Judgement, which asks if you are or are not in Christ, and there is the judgement of works. <blockquote> For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. — Matthew 16:27 \ For God will bring every work in judgment, in everything overlooked, whether good or evil. — Ecclesiastes 12:14 \ He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. — Romans 2:6–8 </blockquote> Your works cannot save you (and for that we cannot thank God enough), but just as certainly God will judge every deed you did or failed to do and every word you spoke or failed to speak. Anyone who think this life does not matter because the ultimate battle is already won would do well to examine himself and take heed lest he fall; God will not be mocked, and He sees, hears, and knows all. Again, you must not — and should not — fear for your eternity, for that was already won for you, your name inscribed in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and your status as a child of the Father signed and sealed in the waters of Holy Baptism; in fact, you were foreknown by God in eternity past before ever there was an Earth or a Jerusalem or a Golgotha, and your name was written in the Book of Life before your parents named you, before Adam named the animals, before God made and named the stars. You were called by the very name God inscribed in His Book of Life before time itself had even begun to run. You were called — καλεω — in eternity past when God foreknew you and here in time when you were pulled from the waters of Baptism as a child or an adult or sprinkled with the water of Baptism as an infant. And the infant truly is the better picture, for he can neither ‘consent’ (for whatever that means) nor truly object (save, perhaps, some crying if the water is cold); the infant must rely — entirely — on those around him and receives Baptism, and the forgiveness of sins and the salvation therein offered, as we are all commanded to receive the Kingdom of God: as little children, free from guile, objection, squabbling, or doubt. If you were an adult when you were baptized, then you still added nothing to the process, for the Sacrament relies upon God and not upon you. Truly blessed are those who receive so great a gift from God in the most worthy manner fallen man may muster: that of the trusting infant. As Christians, as called sons and daughters of God, we must not look upon this life as misery or suffering or any such thing (although it certainly will contain those in this fallen world), and we must certainly not look upon this life as meaningless or irrelevant: Our heavenly Father has prepared beforehand good works that we should walk in them. The Cross conquered sin, death, and the devil, but there is much work left to be done here in time. We have duties to family, to nation, which is to say to race, and to neighbor. This world is perishing, and so are all who do not know the Lord. Noah was saved from a drowning world, and instructed not to draw any more into the Ark; we have a better promise than he, for we are instructed to bring as many into the new and better Ark — the Church — as possible; in the words of the parable: <blockquote> And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ” </blockquote> We must fill our Father’s House, the Jerusalem above, Paradise. But this is not done simply by sharing, spreading, or teaching or preaching the Gospel. The Christian life is much more than the Proclamation. The Christian life is a life of deeds and not mere words; it is lived out both in accordance with God’s law and in service to neighbor. In fact, you cannot serve God directly — He needs nothing from you or from anyone else; your neighbor, however, needs food, clothing, shelter, and all manner of such things; you serve God by serving your neighbor — those are the very good works that God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. And your neighbor is not some abstraction, and nor does he represent every man on Earth. Your neighbor is a concrete; he is flesh and blood; in fact, he is your flesh and blood, for you owe your loyalty, your duty, and your time, resources, and efforts first and foremost and even to the exclusion of all others to those God has placed closest to you. Family, tribe, race, and nation are not incidental, accidental, or human constructs or fictions. You are who and what you are by essence, and God created that essence. Your people need you; you serve God by serving your people of whom God has made you part; you serve Satan by denying your own people, of whom God has made you part, to preference the alien, whom God has not made part of your people. Or do you believe God was wrong to include the Table of Nations and the genealogies in Scripture and to create man as a social animal enmeshed in concentric circles of relatedness and duty? Or do you believe the Marxists — almost exclusively Christ-denying and Christ-murdering Jews — knew better than God? For they are the very men (to abuse the term via over-inclusion) you are following when you deny the reality of sex, of race, of nation, of family. And make no mistake: To deny the reality of race is actually more evil, more wicked than to deny the reality of biological sex. Satan knows full well that all of these things are real and are good creations of God — that is why he wants you to deny them. The ‘Christian’ who claims Christ and yet denies Him in his acts is an unprofitable servant who may one day — in the not-too-distant future — find himself calling “Lord, Lord…”. Do not be an unprofitable servant. We live in a dying world among the dying, and yet live in it we must. Do your duty as a Christian man or woman. Serve your family; serve your tribe; serve your neighbor; serve your race. These are the realities by which God has created you and in which He has enmeshed you. Do not risk denying the Creator by denying His Creation. As a called, elected, sealed, and confirmed son or daughter of the Father, you have absolute certainty of your eternity, for you are in Christ and He will lose none from His hands. So comport yourself with the behavior befitting a son or a daughter of the King. He has given you work to do; do not rest on Christ’s laurels. Your people are perishing, pull them into the Greater Ark before they slip beneath the waves and are forever out of reach. Amen. </div>

June 20, 2026

Lectionary Homily for 21 June 2026 (4th Sunday after Pentecost)

<div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"> <h3>Readings</h3> <ul> <li>Jeremiah 20:7–13</li> <li>Psalm 91</li> <li>Romans 6:12–23</li> <li>Matthew 10:5a, 21–33</li> </ul> </div> <div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"> <h2>Homily Transcript</h2> Persecution has not been the universal experience of all Christians at all times in all places; there have been periods of peace, prosperity, and tranquility. (That these have virtually always been under the aegis of a Christian State with an established Church should not go without mention, but it will have to be a passing one today.) And yet, persecution has often been the fate of Christians down through the centuries (or even ages, if we want to include such men as Abel and Noah). And the existence of a supposedly Christian State is no perfect guarantee against persecution — Luther was persecuted by an Emperor and a pope, both of whom claimed to be Christian. Today, our government would not be called Christian by any but the most delusional of men, but Satan is never content; having virtually complete his conquest of the various Western governments and their attached or aligned institutions, he turned his attention to the churches decades ago (centuries ago, in some obvious cases). This should surprise no one; hear the words of our Lord from today’s Gospel reading: <blockquote> »Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.« — Matthew 10:21–22 (ESV) </blockquote> Does our Lord speak of persecution by the State or some other such authority? No, not even (exclusively, anyway) in the portion of this passage immediately before today’s reading, where He speaks of being “dragged before governors and kings”. He speaks, instead, of a more personal sort of betrayal. Our Lord was certainly persecuted and murdered by the Jewish authorities (and the Jewish people generally), but He was also betrayed by Judas, His former friend; it is that sort of personal betrayal of which Jesus speaks in this passage. Despite the parallelism, we should not limit our understanding of what Jesus means when He says ‘brother’ (or ‘child’ and ‘parent’, for that matter) to the familial; what is in view here is every sort of intimate or personal betrayal, and that certainly includes all those who are brothers by ways other than blood — close friends, brothers-in-law, brothers-in-arms, brothers-in-Christ. And that last category is certainly Satans’s focus today. Mercifully, most of you are not in a position to hear many, and certainly not most, of the stories of all the ways our churches are betraying so very many men today (and it is mostly [relatively] young men who are being betrayed), but I am in a position to hear them. And I do not think for a second that the faithless men pushing for expulsion, excommunication, and blacklisting (among many other forms of persecution) would hesitate to use the State to literally execute (which is to say murder) the men they are persecuting, if they thought the State would cooperate. In fact, such persecutors and slanderers and blasphemers have engaged in attempted murder: doxxing and false reports to law enforcement. If such ‘men’ were not so cowardly (itself a grievous sin), then they would certainly have taken up arms themselves and murdered the men they have persecuted; and they would have firmly believed that they were rendering service to God in doing so. Of course, their assessment would have been half true: They would, indeed, have been rendering service to their god, who is most certainly not the Lord God. The very persecution of which Jesus warns in this passage is rampant in the churches. In fact, things are so bad these days that it would be accurate to say that we are in a period of widespread persecution, and — more importantly — we can ‘use’ that persecution as an indication of who is faithful and who is faithless: In times of faithlessness and persecution, those who are not persecuted are not faithful. If you have never suffered for the faith, then I encourage you to examine yourself — and particularly you men, for cowardice, which is to say a lack of courage or manliness, is damnable sin. For most, such suffering need not be the sort of ‘grand’ or high-profile persecution that has been inflicted on some of us; for many, suffering for the faith will take a more ‘mundane’ form: lost friends, estranged family, perhaps some other social or economic consequences. The point is that Satan, for the moment, controls the board, and a faith that he ignores is a faith that is in some way lacking. We do not live in a time of a Christian ruler and a faithful established Church under him; rather, we live in a time of a wicked government, a pervasively evil bureaucracy that invades almost every facet of our lives, and a nearly universal apostasy among the so-called churches; under such circumstances, the Christian should not — and the Christian will not — expect to escape persecution. You will suffer for the faith. You may not be martyred — even Luther died of old age, but both the Emperor and the pope sought his head for many years, and we, unlike Luther, do not have faithful German princes to hide, provide for, and protect us. We can certainly rely upon God, but not all saints escaped the lions. If you must go the lions, then to the lions you must go. The Christian proclamation is one of eternal comfort, not one of temporal comfort. Temporal peace relies upon having a righteous, competent, and powerful State; that is a valid and important consideration for Christian men, but it is not the core concern of the Christian faith. Whether the king is righteous or wicked, whether the culture is Christian or not, whether it will cost you nothing or everything, you must confess Christ and Him crucified in both your words and your deeds. A faith that produces no good works is a dead faith, and it is only a living faith that saves. Or do you think that the Christ so often employed plant metaphors idly? As any gardener (or keeper of houseplants, at least) will tell you: Living plants always grow, and healthy fruit tree always bear fruit. Learn the lesson of the fig tree: It was not the season for figs, which certainly ‘excuses’ the fig tree, but the Christ did not curse the tree as punishment of the tree, but as a lesson for you: There are no ‘seasons’ for the Christian faith; you must produce fruit in season and out. There will be no excuse or defense on Judgement Day that you lived under a wicked State or in a wicked culture or that you ‘had to’ do this or that. The Christians of the Early Church went to the lions rather than deny the Real Presence. That is the minimum to remain faithful. ‘But it was not the season for figs.’ ‘Depart from Me, for I never knew you.’ We can ask the Lord why us and why now — certainly righteous Job did so —, but after we pray or lament, we stand up and carry on. Here, perhaps, we should thank the Lord God that we are sons and daughters of Japheth, for it has always been in the nature of our race to rise from the ashes, to endure, to carry on, to rebuild. Our people have endured great hardships and suffered great calamities in centuries past, but we have, by the grace of God, always risen to the challenge and the occasion; we are here today because our ancestors did not fail and, one day, our far-distant sons and daughters will say the same of us. It is a tragedy and a crime that our forefathers in the preceding handful of generations squandered, failed to maintain, and destroyed so much that was entrusted to their care, but we cannot change the past — only the future is mutable. We must do what they failed to do; we must be like the tiny handful of faithful kings who ruled Old Testament Israel — we must repent in sackcloth and ashes. And yet repentance alone is not enough, for talk is cheap; yes, God demands our repentance, including of the sins of our fathers — ‘both we and our fathers have sinned’ —, but true repentance is not just words but also actions. We must not only denounce and turn from the evils both of the past and of our present, but we must also seek to destroy them. What does it even mean to renounce the worship of Baal if his high places and his priests remain? What does it mean to renounce the worship of Astarte if her perversions (such as prostitution and pornography) and her shrines (such as strip clubs) remain? What does it mean to renounce the worship of Moloch if abortion ‘clinics’ remain and abortionists go unpunished? What does it mean to denounce the worship of Saturn (Satan) if his synagogues, his mosques, and his false priests remain? “Who is with the Lord? Let him come to me!” We must put to death the weak and decadent and easy faith that has masqueraded as ‘Christianity’ for the better part of a century. The Christian religion is not weak; the Christian religion is not easy; the Christian religion is not passive or pacifist, cowardly or craven, supine or submissive, inactive or indolent or inconsequential; the Christian religion is not ‘tolerant’. Do you think God will praise you for your ‘tolerance’ or reward you for your ‘restraint’ if you restrain your hand from opposing His enemies or tolerate those who blaspheme His Name? <blockquote> »Maledictus qui facit opus Domini fraudulenter et maledictus qui prohibet gladium suum a sanguine.« — Jeremiah 48:10 (VUL) </blockquote> <blockquote> »Accursed is the one who does the work of the Lord carelessly, keeping back his dagger from bloodshed.« Jeremiah 31:10 </blockquote> In the waters of Holy Baptism you died to sin, death, and the devil, and you were raised to new life in Jesus Christ to fight sin, death, and the devil. You are part of the Church Triumphant with regard to eternity, coram Deo (with respect to God), and every time you participate in the Divine Service, but you are also part of the Church Militant with regard to the temporal, coram mundo (with respect to the world), and every single day you yet draw breath on this Earth in this Creation. You are a soldier in a war that has been raging since the Garden, and will continue raging until the Christ returns to claim every crown of every earthly kingdom and cast each and every one of His enemies into eternal conscious torment. Does that sound like a weak or a passive or an effeminate religion to you? The ‘Christianity’ of the world and of too many churches is a damnable and damning counterfeit. After centuries of learning from his mistakes and his defeats, Satan realized that it is far, far better to subvert the churches than to try to sell a competing religion; certainly, he still does both, but the latter pays greater dividends and he enjoys it far more. To keep the goats wandering aimlessly is one thing, but to lead the sheep astray is quite another. I do not envy the false pastors, teachers, and leaders their appointment in God’s tribunal on Judgement Day. It will mean nothing for them to plead Christ when they never knew Him and He never knew them. “Depart from Me.” is the last thing they will hear, and it will echo for eternity. Do not pity them — it is not our place to pity the enemies of God, but only to affirm that His judgements are righteous and just. That which comforts is Gospel and that which accuses and condemns is Law: For the impenitent and the unbelieving goats, there is only Law; for the penitent and believing sheep, there is only Gospel. For the unbelieving and false ‘Christian’, eternity is a monstrous threat and a terrible promise; for the true Christian, eternity is our greatest hope and God’s promise secured and sealed to us in our Baptism and confirmed each and every time we partake of the Christ’s body and blood in His Supper. To the beloved son or daughter, every word from our Father is reassurance, comfort, and love, for even though He disciplines those whom He loves, we know that everything He does is for our good; to the damned, every word from God is a fearful promise of unending wrath, for nothing good awaits the impenitent. In this life, you will have — you must have, under present circumstances — persecution and suffering, for those are marks of the true Christian the same as good works, but such things are nothing compared to the infinite good that God has prepared for us. And yet we must not permit eternity to become an excuse for inaction or indifference — both marks of a false ‘Christian’ with a dead faith; rather, we must meet the challenges of each day, firmly relying on God and faithfully pursuing our vocation and executing our duties. It matters not if you are a king, a prince, a shoemaker, a magistrate, a homemaker, or any of a thousand other things God has ordained for man to do under the Sun. You are to do your duty diligently and faithfully, never forgetting that your good works for family, neighbor, and nation are how you serve God — they are the very good works that God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. Do not be the slothful servant who hides his talent in the ground or the faithless soldier who keeps back his sword from blood. The world wants you to be a weak, worthless, unprofitable ‘Christian’; what God demands is something far different. So you must rise to the occasion, the same as our ancestors have always done. Whatever persecution may come, we will, by the grace of God, endure and overcome it. And when we have overcome the persecution, we will, again by the grace of God, turn and destroy it, so that future generations may know the peace and tranquility that did not fall to us. This we owe to God and this we will do for our sons and our sons’ sons. God with us. Amen. </div>

May 9, 2026

Lectionary Homily for 10 May 2026 (5th Sunday of Easter)

<div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"> <h3>Readings</h3> <ul> <li>Acts 17:16–31</li> <li>Psalm 66:8–20</li> <li>1 Peter 3:13–22</li> <li>John 14:15–21</li> </ul> </div> <div class="wp-block-jetpack-markdown"> <h2>Homily Transcript</h2> There is only one extant example of a theatre trilogy from the Ancient Greeks: the Oresteia of Aeschylus. Now, the plays of Aeschylus are certainly a worth topic (although, tragically, only seven of his nearly one hundred plays survived into the modern era), but it is a topic for another time. Here, I wish to pull just one line, spoken by Apollo himself, in The Eumenides (or, The Furies), the third play in the Oresteia cycle: <blockquote> But when the thirsty dust sucks up a man’s blood / once shed in death, he shall arise no more. / No chant nor charm for this my Sire hath wrought. </blockquote> The Oresteia cycle is still performed today, but, more relevant to our purposes here, the cycle was also performed in Paul’s day — and yet more relevant, it was performed in Athens, and yet more relevant still, it was performed right on the other side of the Acropolis from the Areopagus (in the Theatre of Dionysus, which was also where it premiered). Let me be clear: Paul stood and declared αναστησις αυτου εκ νεκρων — the resurrection of the dead — in the same place — the exact same place, in terms of the location within the play — where Greek actors would stand and declare, in the person of the god Apollo, ουτισ εστ᾽ αναστασις — there is no resurrection. Paul even used the same word; his educated Greek audience would not have missed this. Further, Scripture names two groups: the Epicureans and the Stoics; both of these schools denied the immortality of the soul (the psyche). We could even say that God used the foolish things of the world (i.e., a claim one could return from the real of the dead) to shame the wise. There is even an additional layer in that the common Greek people (some of whom were undoubtedly listening) did not agree with the Epicureans or the Stoics, and held, instead, the classical belief in the realm of the dead as a sort of shadowy limbo; similarly, the elites in Greek society were more likely to be Platonists, who also did not agree with the Epicureans ot the Stoics, because the Platonists did affirm a form of immorality of the soul. It must be noted that when Apollo speaks of his sire, he is, of course, speaking of Zeus, the chief god and his father. Paul is saying to these educated Greeks that what the chief god of the Greek pantheon did not (or could not) do, God the Father did. Further, Paul is very heavily implying that others, too, may be raised from the dead (that is part of why some mocked him, as the next verse after our reading clearly states). Some of you may be familiar with Greek myth and will undoubtedly be wondering about Alcestis, Heracles, Odysseus, Orpheus (and, I suppose, Asclepius, but we will leave his case for another time); two points: 1) educated Greeks believe these myths to be illustrative or symbolic instead of literal and 2) anyone who returned from Hades in Greek mythology did so only temporarily — they would die again. Contrast the words of Christ: “[E]veryone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” We will get to Baptism shortly, on the topic of death. Even if Paul did not know all of this (and much more), God is very clear: “When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.“, and let us not forget that Paul was well educated, or, in the words of Festus: “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.”, and Paul had just twice quoted Greek poetry. God knew precisely what He was doing, and the mass conversion of Greece (and then the rest of Europe) to Christianity surely proves it. God fulfilled His promise declared through Grandfather Noah: Japheth (i.e., the European race) shall dwell in the dwelling of Shem (i.e., become and build Christendom). God can work wonders with ordinary tools and ordinary men; perhaps the men who created the lectionary knew how excellent of a job they did in selecting today’s Psalm to go with today’s first reading, perhaps they did not; at any rate, the Psalm says the Lord is the One Who places my soul (psyche) into life (ζωη) — He is the One Who resurrects me. Further, when the Psalm says that God ‘led us into refreshment [or revival]’, the word there is quite literally αναφυχη — He re-souled us. Is there a better word for the resurrcetion on the final day when we will be raised bodily to new life in a new Creation? It is appropriate that Paul speaks of a sort of inversion before the Athenians — what Apollo says Zeus cannot do, the Father demonstrates by raising Christ — for the Christian religion truly is one of a central inversion from all other religions: Whereas every other religion says that man must work his way to god or the gods, by living a good life, making sacrifices, et cetera, Christianity bluntly states that this is impossible; the chasm between man and God is infinite and no finite can ever cross an infinite; rather, the Infinite must Himself do the work — He must cross the chasm (i.e., become incarnate) and then bridge the chasm (i.e., live a perfect life and die on the cross and return from the dead) for us. The world (and every worldly religion) tells you that you must work your way to god; God the Son tells you instead: “It is finished.” And so let us turn to Baptism. In the waters of Baptism, you are called from and through death into new life; in the words of the Psalm, you are refreshed or revived, and, as already noted, the word there could be quite literally translated ‘re-souled’, and ’revive’ means ‘to live again’. The central good news of the Christian religion is that death is not the end, and not in the sense of the reincarnation of the East, the conflagration of the Stoics, eternal return, or any other such thing; rather, the Christian truth is that all things will be made new — only once to die and thereafter to enter, for the Christian, into the restored Paradise, Creation as God always intended it to be. And it is Baptism that is our portal, our entry into this new life. Never look at Baptism, like the Enthusiasts do, as mere water, for Baptism is water and Word, and there God’s Word is, there there can never be no effect, for His Word does not return to Him empty, and only blasphemous fools deny that God’s Word has the power to accomplish all that He wills. And yet Baptism is not Word alone, but water and Word, for God knows our frame, He knows that we are dust. We are not soul alone, for we are also flesh; in the water of Baptism, God gives us something that is real and knowable by and to the flesh, while the words enter our mind and soul; it is the fullness of the Gestalt of man that God meets in the water and Word of Baptism. Baptism is the first resurrection. Prior to your Baptism, you were dead in your sins and your trespasses and, in your Baptism, God raised you to new life. When Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, He speaks of Baptism and of faith. Those who are part of the first resurrection have already passed from death to life, and so we will never taste the second death — Hell. Just as there are two deaths (physical and eternal), so there are two resurrections (Baptism and the Resurrection of the Just); if you would not taste the second death, then you must receive the first resurrection in the waters of Holy Baptism. And yet there are always those who search for edge cases. If Christ offers you a life preserver, are you truly going to refuse it and drown in the hope that He will reach down and pull you up, fool that you are? Now, certainly, Christ will lose none from His hand and all of the Elect will be saved, but the Elect do not despise the Sacraments. So, first, we must condemn — in no uncertain terms — the pernicious and sinful desire to find exceptions. Satan seeks ‘exceptions’; Christians obey. Second, we must look at what Baptism does. IN the words of Peter: Baptism saves you. Now, in truth, we have the fullness of our answer in those few words, but let us expand and examine them for the sake of certainty and clarity. Helpfully, the word that immediately precedes “Baptism” in this passage in our Bibles is, indeed, “water”. As we all know, Baptism is water and Word, but Peter forecloses certain ‘objections’ of the Enthusiasts when he compares Baptism to the Flood. Only a particular sort of wicked fool would deny that water is clearly in view here. Of course, many of our translations fall short here (for various reasons) and thereby fuel heretics of various stripes. Baptism does not ‘correspond’ to the Flood (at least not in the mind and ear of men not deeply steeped in philosophy, particularly the philosophy of truth); our translators failed here. What Peter actually says is that Baptism is the αντιτυπος of the Flood, which is the τυπος — we are dealing in typology. As a refresher: The antitype is always greater than its types — it must be so. The Flood, as type, saved Noah from the wicked world and temporal death. Peter says that Baptism, the antitype of the Flood, saves. Well, what is the only thing greater than temporal death? Eternal death. Baptism saves you from Hell. And yet we know that salvation is sola gratia sola fide — by grace alone through faith alone. How do we square this? Rather easily: Unlike the Enthusiasts, we do not deny the plain teaching of Scripture that God works through means. We are certainly saved by faith alone, but that faith is a gift from God, and He has ordained Means by which we receive that gift.; one of the Means of Grace is the Word, read or heard, and Baptism is another. Via the waters of Holy Baptism, God bestows the free gift of faith that saves from eternal death. So let us never lightly esteem, as so many fools and blasphemers do, the great gift of Holy Baptism, for it is by the waters of Baptism that we avoid the fires of Hell. Every Baptism is an assault upon the gates and claims of Hell; every Baptism diminishes and enrages Satan; every time the Baptism rite is performed, Satan is reminded yet again of Christ’s words from the cross announcing the defeat of Satan, death, and Hell: It is finished! In this life, as the hymn says: ‘We walk in danger all the way.’ We are still in the fallen flesh, Creation still groans for the restoration of all things, and we are still best by temptations and fall into sin, but we must never permit sin to transform into despair, for, no matter what accusations Satan may hurl, we can always, must always, retort: Baptizatus sum — I am baptized. What work Christ began when first we received the free gift of faith, He will certainly see to fruition; He has never failed and never will. We are the sheep and He is the Good Shepherd. And it was good news that Paul proclaimed to the Greek sons of Japheth in the Areopagus: You can be born again. You can escape this wicked and fallen world, as Noah did in his time with the Ark, which preserved him from and through the destruction of the antediluvian world, but it is not an escape from the flesh, as some foolish philosophers believed (and some still believe); rather, it is a restoration, a return to what God intended us to be and what we will be in eternity in Paradise with our Creator, Whom we will behold, as did Moses, face to face. The Jews sough signs and the Greeks sough wisdom; here, then is the sign — Baptism, the sign of the true and enduring covenant — and here, then, is wisdom — what man could never do (cross the infinite divide between God and man), God as man has already done. And so we can dismiss the words of Aeschylus’ Apollo and hear instead the words of righteous Job: <blockquote> For I know that there is an eternal One Who will release me, / and He will raise up my flesh. </blockquote> And, indeed, the Greek word there is the verbal form of the same word spoken in disbelief by Apollo, in belief by Paul, and in belief and expectation by each and every one of us in the Creed: Resurrection, for we all with heart and mouth confess the resurrection of the body. Amen. </div>

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