Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; St John 18-19
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
It is made clear throughout the Holy Gospels, especially by the evangelist St John, that the Passion of the Christ was undertaken and accomplished voluntarily by the Son of God. Done so out of His great love for the Father and out of His own divine love for an entire world of poor, miserable sinners.
He is handed over to His Cross and Passion according to the good and gracious will of God in accordance with and fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures.
Jesus lays down His life willingly and freely, graciously and lovingly. He bears the sins and iniquities of the entire world. All the grief and sorrows. He endures the judgment, condemnation and fierce punishment of the Law, the entirety of the wrath of God against all sins, even the eternal damnation of hell, all compressed into those hours of His Passion.
So it is that, yes, by His stripes you are healed.
But this healing of your body and life from sin, death, and hell and the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation in Christ Jesus are actually administered and bestowed upon you as a medicine of immorality in the Gospel-Word and Sacraments of Christ jesus within His Holy Christian Church. These means of grace are the life-giving Fruits of His Holy Cross and Passion.
The Evangelist is directing you to hear and receive the Passion of the Christ and to embrace the benefits of His Passion by faith within the Church on earth. How? By giving attention to the preaching of His Word and by partaking in His Holy Sacraments. For the Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ will do you no good apart from faith in the Ministry of His Gospel.
Consider how St John points you to this life of the Church and indicates that it is the place where the Passion of the Christ is now given to you for life in Him.
Firstly, the way that Jesus gives His Mother to the disciple whom he loves and His beloved disciple to His Mother. Neither St Mary nor St John are identified by name, but they stand at the foot of the Cross as living icons of the Church herself and of all the disciples of Jesus.
The Church is here entrusted to the Apostolic Ministry of the Word. The disciples of Jesus, the children of His God and Father, are then entrusted to His Church on earth. As St Mary conceived and gave birth to the Son of God by the Word and Spirit from the Father, so does the Church conceive and give birth to the children of God by the preaching of the Word of Christ and by the washing of water with His Word and Spirit in Holy Baptism. You have received that new birth from His Church and are a disciple whom He loves.
It is also within His Church on earth that Jesus speaks His Word openly for all the world to hear and believe, or to reject to their own demise. Just as Jesus declared before the high priest that He had always spoken openly in the synagogues and the Temple, so does He continue to speak in the congregations of His Christian Church by the Ministry of His Gospel. This is where He preaches. Where and how you apprehend Him, not with violence, but by faith.
The Crucified One speaks to His Church from the Cross, by the Word of His Cross, which is the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name. By this preaching He pours out the Holy Spirit upon His people from the atoning Sacrifice of His Crucifixion. Otherwise, apart from the Atonement of His Cross and Passion, you would never be able to receive the Holy Spirit and live, since you are sinful and unclean, unrighteous and unholy.
But when Jesus finished His work of redemption, He brings it to perfection by giving up His Spirit from the Cross. Or to say it how St John does, He hands over the Spirit.
Thus from His Cross He breathes His Holy Spirit upon you, in order to give you life with God in your body and soul, by the Word of forgiveness that He speaks through His servants of the Gospel who are sent in His Name and stead. St John makes this abundantly clear in the next chapter of his Gospel as we’ll hear again on the Second Sunday of Easter. For now, consider that Jesus, in handing over the Spirit, is giving the Office of the Keys to His Church on earth for the binding and releasing of sins with His own authority.
Along with the Spirit, St John also describes and emphasizes that Jesus pours out the water and blood from His wounded side in the accomplished fact of His Sacrifice. Not only does the Evangelist testify to this event here in the Holy Gospel, he refers to the triune testimony of the Spirit, the water and the blood in his First Epistle! Again, we hear more about this during Easter.
Even beyond all of this, the Evangelist draws the connection between the sixth day of the first Creation, when the Lord caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and from his side crafted the Woman and brought her to the Man to be his bride. So now, on the sixth day of the New Creation, on this Good Friday, Christ, the Second Adam, enters the sacred sleep of death upon the Tree of His Cross, and from His side His holy Bride, the Church, is born from the water and the blood of her dear Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
The Church receives her entire life from the Body of Christ, even as she lives in His Body and becomes one flesh with Him. She is both cleansed and covered by the washing of the water with His Word, like a Bride made ready for her Husband. And she is enliven and sustained on her pilgrimage by the Spiritual Drink of His holy and precious Blood. So it is that her children are born from the waters of the font and nursed on the Blood of Christ at His Altar.
In fact, as St John is almost at pains to point out, is it impossible to think or speak rightly about the Sacrifice of Christ, the Passover Lamb of God, without also considering the sacred Meal of His Body and His Blood. For He not only dies in the place of sinners, but He calls them to newness of life in His crucified and risen Body and feeds them with the Fruits of His Cross. He feeds you with His won Flesh and Blood.
The Evangelist not only makes this point here, but from the very beginning! Sometime subtle, but always persistent, Jesus is the Passover Lamb through the Holy Gospel. Already in the preaching of the Baptizer you have heard this! Jesus is the Lamb of God who is not only sacrificed for the sins of the world, but His Flesh is given for the life of the world to be eaten by His disciples in faith.
This is heightened by St John’s seemingly different timeline - Jesus is crucified as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed! And in fulfillment of the Scriptures, not one of His bones is broken.
Do you see? You partake of the Cross and Passion of Christ Jesus by participating in His Supper, by eating the Body that was crucified for your transgressions and raised for your justification and by drinking the Blood that was poured from His side to cover and protect you from death. You are gathered here, to the Father’s House and the family of God in Christ Jesus, within His Church, to celebrate the Feast which binds together His disciples from all nations in the one Body of Jesus Christ.
Finally, consider the Cup which Jesus receives from the hand of His Father, which He drinks for us men and for our salvation. It is for Him the Cup of wrath, of judgment and suffering and bitter death. He drinks it to the dregs in order to remove its deadly and damnable sting for you and for all.
But in drawing that Cup through His Sacrifice on the Cross, He then fills it with His own precious Blood, which He now pours out for you and for the many for the forgiveness of sins. It is the New Testament in His Blood. It binds you to God in Christ not for punishment, but for communion with the Holy Trinity.
By the Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Cup of wrath and judgment and death has become for you the Cup of Blessing which we bless in and with His Name. And this Cup of the Lord now runneth over with His forgiveness and life, poured out for you in peace.
As you take the Cup of Salvation and call on the Name of the Lord, you give thanks and praise to God through Jesus Christ that in His tender mercies you partake from the Fountain of His crouched, risen, and ascended Body. You feast at His Table in His House under the shelter of His Cross. And so shall you abide in Him and He in you unto life everlasting.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
It is made clear throughout the Holy Gospels, especially by the evangelist St John, that the Passion of the Christ was undertaken and accomplished voluntarily by the Son of God. Done so out of His great love for the Father and out of His own divine love for an entire world of poor, miserable sinners.
He is handed over to His Cross and Passion according to the good and gracious will of God in accordance with and fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures.
Jesus lays down His life willingly and freely, graciously and lovingly. He bears the sins and iniquities of the entire world. All the grief and sorrows. He endures the judgment, condemnation and fierce punishment of the Law, the entirety of the wrath of God against all sins, even the eternal damnation of hell, all compressed into those hours of His Passion.
So it is that, yes, by His stripes you are healed.
But this healing of your body and life from sin, death, and hell and the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation in Christ Jesus are actually administered and bestowed upon you as a medicine of immorality in the Gospel-Word and Sacraments of Christ jesus within His Holy Christian Church. These means of grace are the life-giving Fruits of His Holy Cross and Passion.
The Evangelist is directing you to hear and receive the Passion of the Christ and to embrace the benefits of His Passion by faith within the Church on earth. How? By giving attention to the preaching of His Word and by partaking in His Holy Sacraments. For the Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ will do you no good apart from faith in the Ministry of His Gospel.
Consider how St John points you to this life of the Church and indicates that it is the place where the Passion of the Christ is now given to you for life in Him.
Firstly, the way that Jesus gives His Mother to the disciple whom he loves and His beloved disciple to His Mother. Neither St Mary nor St John are identified by name, but they stand at the foot of the Cross as living icons of the Church herself and of all the disciples of Jesus.
The Church is here entrusted to the Apostolic Ministry of the Word. The disciples of Jesus, the children of His God and Father, are then entrusted to His Church on earth. As St Mary conceived and gave birth to the Son of God by the Word and Spirit from the Father, so does the Church conceive and give birth to the children of God by the preaching of the Word of Christ and by the washing of water with His Word and Spirit in Holy Baptism. You have received that new birth from His Church and are a disciple whom He loves.
It is also within His Church on earth that Jesus speaks His Word openly for all the world to hear and believe, or to reject to their own demise. Just as Jesus declared before the high priest that He had always spoken openly in the synagogues and the Temple, so does He continue to speak in the congregations of His Christian Church by the Ministry of His Gospel. This is where He preaches. Where and how you apprehend Him, not with violence, but by faith.
The Crucified One speaks to His Church from the Cross, by the Word of His Cross, which is the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name. By this preaching He pours out the Holy Spirit upon His people from the atoning Sacrifice of His Crucifixion. Otherwise, apart from the Atonement of His Cross and Passion, you would never be able to receive the Holy Spirit and live, since you are sinful and unclean, unrighteous and unholy.
But when Jesus finished His work of redemption, He brings it to perfection by giving up His Spirit from the Cross. Or to say it how St John does, He hands over the Spirit.
Thus from His Cross He breathes His Holy Spirit upon you, in order to give you life with God in your body and soul, by the Word of forgiveness that He speaks through His servants of the Gospel who are sent in His Name and stead. St John makes this abundantly clear in the next chapter of his Gospel as we’ll hear again on the Second Sunday of Easter. For now, consider that Jesus, in handing over the Spirit, is giving the Office of the Keys to His Church on earth for the binding and releasing of sins with His own authority.
Along with the Spirit, St John also describes and emphasizes that Jesus pours out the water and blood from His wounded side in the accomplished fact of His Sacrifice. Not only does the Evangelist testify to this event here in the Holy Gospel, he refers to the triune testimony of the Spirit, the water and the blood in his First Epistle! Again, we hear more about this during Easter.
Even beyond all of this, the Evangelist draws the connection between the sixth day of the first Creation, when the Lord caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and from his side crafted the Woman and brought her to the Man to be his bride. So now, on the sixth day of the New Creation, on this Good Friday, Christ, the Second Adam, enters the sacred sleep of death upon the Tree of His Cross, and from His side His holy Bride, the Church, is born from the water and the blood of her dear Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
The Church receives her entire life from the Body of Christ, even as she lives in His Body and becomes one flesh with Him. She is both cleansed and covered by the washing of the water with His Word, like a Bride made ready for her Husband. And she is enliven and sustained on her pilgrimage by the Spiritual Drink of His holy and precious Blood. So it is that her children are born from the waters of the font and nursed on the Blood of Christ at His Altar.
In fact, as St John is almost at pains to point out, is it impossible to think or speak rightly about the Sacrifice of Christ, the Passover Lamb of God, without also considering the sacred Meal of His Body and His Blood. For He not only dies in the place of sinners, but He calls them to newness of life in His crucified and risen Body and feeds them with the Fruits of His Cross. He feeds you with His won Flesh and Blood.
The Evangelist not only makes this point here, but from the very beginning! Sometime subtle, but always persistent, Jesus is the Passover Lamb through the Holy Gospel. Already in the preaching of the Baptizer you have heard this! Jesus is the Lamb of God who is not only sacrificed for the sins of the world, but His Flesh is given for the life of the world to be eaten by His disciples in faith.
This is heightened by St John’s seemingly different timeline - Jesus is crucified as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed! And in fulfillment of the Scriptures, not one of His bones is broken.
Do you see? You partake of the Cross and Passion of Christ Jesus by participating in His Supper, by eating the Body that was crucified for your transgressions and raised for your justification and by drinking the Blood that was poured from His side to cover and protect you from death. You are gathered here, to the Father’s House and the family of God in Christ Jesus, within His Church, to celebrate the Feast which binds together His disciples from all nations in the one Body of Jesus Christ.
Finally, consider the Cup which Jesus receives from the hand of His Father, which He drinks for us men and for our salvation. It is for Him the Cup of wrath, of judgment and suffering and bitter death. He drinks it to the dregs in order to remove its deadly and damnable sting for you and for all.
But in drawing that Cup through His Sacrifice on the Cross, He then fills it with His own precious Blood, which He now pours out for you and for the many for the forgiveness of sins. It is the New Testament in His Blood. It binds you to God in Christ not for punishment, but for communion with the Holy Trinity.
By the Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Cup of wrath and judgment and death has become for you the Cup of Blessing which we bless in and with His Name. And this Cup of the Lord now runneth over with His forgiveness and life, poured out for you in peace.
As you take the Cup of Salvation and call on the Name of the Lord, you give thanks and praise to God through Jesus Christ that in His tender mercies you partake from the Fountain of His crouched, risen, and ascended Body. You feast at His Table in His House under the shelter of His Cross. And so shall you abide in Him and He in you unto life everlasting.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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