Archive for December, 2008
January 4, 2009: The Boy Jesus in the Temple
The text for this lesson is Luke 2:41–52.
Key Points
- Jesus is always about His Father’s business—and that business is always earning our salvation! No thing and no one can stand in His way.
- Law: God doesn’t act the way we want Him to act. He acts in harmony with His will, not ours. But we try to cage Him, tame Him, force Him to be a circus deity. In our hearts, if not even in our prayers, we list conditions for Him to meet. We are in a vain—oh, so vain—power struggle with heaven.
- Gospel: The Lion of the tribe of Judah is no tame lion. He won’t roar on our cue or jump through our hoops. Even at the age of twelve, the boy Jesus shows that He is no ordinary boy. The Son of Mary, yes, and the “Son” of his foster father, Joseph, yes, but also their Lord. He is about His Father’s business. And that business is always earning our salvation.
December 28, 2008: The Presentation of Jesus
The text for this lesson is Luke 2:22–40.
Key Points
- In the Divine Service, we join with Simeon and Anna, the angels and archangels, and the great cloud of witnesses in heaven and on earth hailing Christ as the fulfiller of the Law who rescued us from the Low, its accusations, and our sins.
- Law: The Law always accuses. It unceasingly dogs us, never letting us off the hook. Like it or not, all are condemned by it, all “help captive under the law, imprisoned” by sin (Galatians 3:23). In the Old Testament, sacrifices even had to be offered after childbirth, both for mothers and children, as a cleansing for sin. No one can outcrawl or outrun the long arm of the Law.
- Gospel: Jesus out-laws the Law. He does more than enough. He who had no sin for which a sacrifice had to be offered, offered a sacrifice anyway. He gave 110 percent. He let the Law have its way with Him, that He might have His way with us. And, ultimately, what the Law demanded of us—perfection or punishment for imperfection—He took onto Himself.
December 21, 2008: The Birth of Jesus
The text for this lesson is Luke 2:1–20.
Key Points
- The Son of God became what we are—human—to make us what He is: a child of the heavenly Father. Furthermore, He revealed where He is to be found: in His Word and Sacraments.
- Law: In the beginning, God created man in His own image, and ever since, we have been trying to return the favor. But the “God” we fashion in our own minds is a caricature—a warped, deformed, blasphemous image of the reality we look for in all the wrong places.
- Gospel: In the beginning, God created man in His own image. And in the fullness of time, God assumed that image Himself. The Son of God became also a Son of Adam, Son of David, and Son of Mary. In so doing, He reimaged us re-created us to be as He is. He became what we are to make us what He is: children of the heavenly Father. And He revealed where He is to be found: swaddled in His Gospel and Sacraments.
December 14, 2008: An Angel Visits Joseph
The text for this lesson is Matthew 1:18–25.
Key Points
- Just as the angel proclaimed to Joseph that Mary would bear an infant who is the Son of God, the Savior, so God proclaimed to us in His Word that this same Jesus is our Savior from sin and death.
- Law: “Seeing is believing,” or so we tell, or, rather, deceive ourselves. We live by sight, not faith in the divine Word. Worse yet, most often we see only what we want to see. We school our eyes to perceive reality as we desire it to be, not as it really is. In our own eyes, our own senses, we trust, not Christ.
- Gospel: God tells us what is real, what is true, what is trustworthy. He acts in a way perceptible not necessarily through the eyes, but through the ears—ears attuned to what God says. Believing is not seeing, but hearing, for “faith comes from hearing” (Romans 10:17) and is “the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is in Immanuel, God with us, cradled in a virgin womb.
December 7, 2008: An Angel Visits Mary
The text for this lesson is Luke 1:26–38.
Key Points
- In the womb of Mary, Jesus, the Son of God, became a man so that we sinful people might become adopted children of God and share in the inheritance of heaven.
- Law: I am sinful at birth, sinful from the time of my conception, and thus spiritually dead. We don’t grow into being sinners any more than we grow into being humans. From the second we are alive, we are also dead spiritually. We join David in his lament: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
- Gospel: God’s Son, Jesus, as born sinless in order to take my sin upon Himself and redeem me. The Son of God leaves no part of our lives unredeemed. He crosses every t and dots every i in the human experience. Even as a tiny fetus, a near-microscopic baby, God—Jesus—is our Savior. Holy from the time His mother conceived Him, He makes us holy from the womb to the tomb.
