Ezekiel 37:1-14; 1 John 5:4-10; St John 20:19-31
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen . . . He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Today has many names. The Second Sunday of Easter. The Octave of the Resurrection, meaning it falls on the eighth day since our Lord’s triumph over death and the grave. St Thomas Sunday, for obvious reasons. “Low Sunday,” because usually attendance drops below average after the great swell for Easter Sunday last week.
But as with all the Sundays in Lent, all the Sundays of Advent, and all seven Sundays of Easter, the historic name for the day is taken from the first words of the Introit in Latin: Quasimodo Geniti, “As newborn babes.”
This name ought to ring a bell - no pun intended - from the 1831 religio-political novel by Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The constant effort of Disney to ignore and degrade Christianity, while highlighting neo-pagan and animist worldviews, of course relegates the intentional themes of the novel to the editing floor. But Victor Hugo was trying to make a theological and political point when he placed a hideously deformed baby on the steps of the great cathedral of Paris.
Here was a little boy too ugly for a mother’s love. He was abandoned not in mercy, but in desperation. Barely a week old - it would be most fitting if he were eight days - the little guy received mercy and pity. He was taken in. The priest would be his father, and Our Lady, Notre Dame, would be his mother.
In the womb of the baptismal font he was given new life; reborn from above and welcomed with love into the arms of his Father in heaven and his Mother the Church. The hideously deformed child, rejected by the world, even by his own mother, found sanctuary, peace, and love within the wounds of his Lord Jesus Christ. Too ugly even for a name, he was now robed in the beauty of Christ’s righteousness that covered all his sin and was given a name, the name of his baptismal birthday. He was Quasimodo.
What Victor Hugo intended to be a public statement concerning the infectious secularism and self-destructive anti-Christian efforts of the French Revolution, we may also use as an analogy. Quasimodo, this outwardly grotesque man, who inwardly is an innocent soul, is the inverse picture of all of us.
Outwardly we appear to have our lives together. We post the happy and the posed pictures on Instagram, trying to hide the chaotic and unmanageable. Outwardly we put on the good face, respond that everything is fine when asked how we’re doing. We try to cover up that we’re falling apart, hoping dearly that no one notices that we are barely holding on, and attempting to hush the terrified conscience with bumper sticker platitudes and pop-psychology coated with a thin Christian veneer. Its not working. We’re broken and empty.
The truth is we are much like the disciples that first Easter Eve, huddled, not together, but hunched up in our own minds, locked behind the door of self-denial and impenitence. We are Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. Our bones are dried up from lack of baptismal cleansing. Our hope is languishing on account of besetting sin wrecking havoc on our hearts and minds. We are clean cut off.
Thus on morning of this day, the first day of the week, His disciples sitting in silent fear, Jesus comes and stands among you and says, Peace be with you. Peace. Peace not as the world can give. Peace beyond all human understanding. Peace that guards your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Peace between you and His God and your God, His Father in heaven and your Father. Peace in His Church, among His brothers and sisters.
And upon saying this, He shows you His hands and His side. Rejoice, you Quasimodos, for these are the tokens of your redemption, the great trophies of His victory on your behalf. For though He is the resurrected Christ, He is now, and always shall be, the Crucified One. It is in His wounds, His pierced hands and riven side, that you are at peace.
This is not an abstraction. You are not to merely meditate on the scars of Jesus, but He, in fact, invites you, as He did for St Thomas, to touch them. Put out your hand and receive His very Body, given into death for you, resurrected from the dead, and placed into your body as the guarantee of your resurrection. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Receive in faith He who comes to you by way of Bread and Wine, His Body and Blood, handed over to death, now handed over to you in the Sacrament.
You have not seen, yet you believe, by the very Word that is prophesied and preached to you which raises you from your graves and gives life to your dry, dusty bones. His sweet and comforting Word which covers your hideous sin with His perfect life and love.
For this wondrous and profound appearance of our Lord on the eve of His glorious resurrection and again the following Sunday, is the establishment of His Church, the institution of His Office of the Ministry of the Holy Gospel, the command to baptize, the imperative to pastors to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, and even, in a certain way, the fulness of His Holy Communion. He does all of these here, all by His Word. And He continues all of these here, each Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, by the on-going Word and work of His Spirit.
Behold the superabundance of His grace and mercy, not only to put His forgiveness won upon the Cross now delivered to you in Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar, but also to place it in the Office of the Keys, the Preached Word, and the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren, as seen even by the disciples seeking out the absent St Thomas. This is your evangelism program, beloved. Like Philip and Nathaniel, the Twelve and Thomas, “We have seen and heard the crucified and risen Christ; come and see.” Or even like the compassionate priest taking in the deformed and rejected child.
Know for certain, O sons and daughters of the King, that “the preaching of the Word is not a vain and useless babbling of words. But the Holy Spirit is present in this ministry. He is efficacious through it, and wants, by this means as with a kind of keys, the kingdom of heaven to be unlocked and many to be brought in” (Chemnitz, Enchiridion, para 283).
In the beginning, God breathed the breath of life into the man of dust and he became a living creature. So to now, at the beginning of the new creation, inaugurated by the death and resurrection of the Second Adam, Christ Jesus, God in the flesh exspirates the Holy Spirit, breathing His life breathing breath upon the dry and dusty bones of His disciples and Church, quickening them by the very Lord and Giver of Life who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
As the Father sent Him, dispatching Him on a rescue mission to ransom and redeem the world by His blood; so too does He now send His apostles; not as saviors, but as His emissaries and heralds, even as St John the Evangelist is the herald and mouth piece of the words of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim this victory to the ends of the earth. He has so ordered and ordained this ministry, and gathered you to Himself, today, the first day of the week, that you may hear and believe.
For the pastors who follow in the apostolic train have been entrusted with these self-same keys of the kingdom of heaven. Not that they may use them for themselves, but for your sake. That you, Quasimodos, might be fed and nourished by the pure spiritual milk of the Word, find solace and sanctuary, peace and rest within the wounds of the Crucified One who breathes His life-breathing breath upon you in the pronouncement of the forgiveness of your sins. As the hymn sings, “The words which absolution give Are His who died the we might live; The minister whom Christ has sent Is but His humble instrument” (LSB 614:5).
Beloved, would you enter the kingdom of heaven? Would you be freed from your guilty conscience and deformed mind? Here is the Way, even Jesus Christ our Lord. For you have been laid at the steps of His Church, adopted by grace through the birth waters of your baptism. Named with His own Name. His Father in heaven is your Father; His God, your God. The Church is your dear Mother, and Jesus Christ, your Brother not only in the flesh, but also according to the Spirit, speaks to you the true stories of the kingdom. By this preaching and proclamation, the Lord Himself puts His Spirit within you and you live. He has spoken. He has loosed you from the bonds of your sins.
He continues, not only on Easter, but each eighth day, to nourish and sustain you, dear little ones, newborn babes, with the spiritual milk of His Word. He speaks the absolution of His peace. The peace of the Lord be with you always. He invites you, by His Word and Spirit, to put out your hand that He place into it His Body. Then you sing with Simeon and, in a way, St Thomas, Lord, now let Your servant, depart in peace, according to Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.
You are blessed and beloved by the Lord. At the last, He who put the guarantee of His Body and His Spirit within you, shall open your graves and raise you from your graves, O people. And He will bring you into the land of His eternal Israel, the very kingdom of heaven, prepared for you from before the foundation of the world, established upon the foundation of His death, resurrection, and ascension, and built by the doctrine of the apostles, enfolding you, His precious little ones, into the majesty of His grace.
In the Name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen . . . He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Today has many names. The Second Sunday of Easter. The Octave of the Resurrection, meaning it falls on the eighth day since our Lord’s triumph over death and the grave. St Thomas Sunday, for obvious reasons. “Low Sunday,” because usually attendance drops below average after the great swell for Easter Sunday last week.
But as with all the Sundays in Lent, all the Sundays of Advent, and all seven Sundays of Easter, the historic name for the day is taken from the first words of the Introit in Latin: Quasimodo Geniti, “As newborn babes.”
This name ought to ring a bell - no pun intended - from the 1831 religio-political novel by Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The constant effort of Disney to ignore and degrade Christianity, while highlighting neo-pagan and animist worldviews, of course relegates the intentional themes of the novel to the editing floor. But Victor Hugo was trying to make a theological and political point when he placed a hideously deformed baby on the steps of the great cathedral of Paris.
Here was a little boy too ugly for a mother’s love. He was abandoned not in mercy, but in desperation. Barely a week old - it would be most fitting if he were eight days - the little guy received mercy and pity. He was taken in. The priest would be his father, and Our Lady, Notre Dame, would be his mother.
In the womb of the baptismal font he was given new life; reborn from above and welcomed with love into the arms of his Father in heaven and his Mother the Church. The hideously deformed child, rejected by the world, even by his own mother, found sanctuary, peace, and love within the wounds of his Lord Jesus Christ. Too ugly even for a name, he was now robed in the beauty of Christ’s righteousness that covered all his sin and was given a name, the name of his baptismal birthday. He was Quasimodo.
What Victor Hugo intended to be a public statement concerning the infectious secularism and self-destructive anti-Christian efforts of the French Revolution, we may also use as an analogy. Quasimodo, this outwardly grotesque man, who inwardly is an innocent soul, is the inverse picture of all of us.
Outwardly we appear to have our lives together. We post the happy and the posed pictures on Instagram, trying to hide the chaotic and unmanageable. Outwardly we put on the good face, respond that everything is fine when asked how we’re doing. We try to cover up that we’re falling apart, hoping dearly that no one notices that we are barely holding on, and attempting to hush the terrified conscience with bumper sticker platitudes and pop-psychology coated with a thin Christian veneer. Its not working. We’re broken and empty.
The truth is we are much like the disciples that first Easter Eve, huddled, not together, but hunched up in our own minds, locked behind the door of self-denial and impenitence. We are Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. Our bones are dried up from lack of baptismal cleansing. Our hope is languishing on account of besetting sin wrecking havoc on our hearts and minds. We are clean cut off.
Thus on morning of this day, the first day of the week, His disciples sitting in silent fear, Jesus comes and stands among you and says, Peace be with you. Peace. Peace not as the world can give. Peace beyond all human understanding. Peace that guards your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Peace between you and His God and your God, His Father in heaven and your Father. Peace in His Church, among His brothers and sisters.
And upon saying this, He shows you His hands and His side. Rejoice, you Quasimodos, for these are the tokens of your redemption, the great trophies of His victory on your behalf. For though He is the resurrected Christ, He is now, and always shall be, the Crucified One. It is in His wounds, His pierced hands and riven side, that you are at peace.
This is not an abstraction. You are not to merely meditate on the scars of Jesus, but He, in fact, invites you, as He did for St Thomas, to touch them. Put out your hand and receive His very Body, given into death for you, resurrected from the dead, and placed into your body as the guarantee of your resurrection. Do not disbelieve, but believe. Receive in faith He who comes to you by way of Bread and Wine, His Body and Blood, handed over to death, now handed over to you in the Sacrament.
You have not seen, yet you believe, by the very Word that is prophesied and preached to you which raises you from your graves and gives life to your dry, dusty bones. His sweet and comforting Word which covers your hideous sin with His perfect life and love.
For this wondrous and profound appearance of our Lord on the eve of His glorious resurrection and again the following Sunday, is the establishment of His Church, the institution of His Office of the Ministry of the Holy Gospel, the command to baptize, the imperative to pastors to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, and even, in a certain way, the fulness of His Holy Communion. He does all of these here, all by His Word. And He continues all of these here, each Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, by the on-going Word and work of His Spirit.
Behold the superabundance of His grace and mercy, not only to put His forgiveness won upon the Cross now delivered to you in Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar, but also to place it in the Office of the Keys, the Preached Word, and the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren, as seen even by the disciples seeking out the absent St Thomas. This is your evangelism program, beloved. Like Philip and Nathaniel, the Twelve and Thomas, “We have seen and heard the crucified and risen Christ; come and see.” Or even like the compassionate priest taking in the deformed and rejected child.
Know for certain, O sons and daughters of the King, that “the preaching of the Word is not a vain and useless babbling of words. But the Holy Spirit is present in this ministry. He is efficacious through it, and wants, by this means as with a kind of keys, the kingdom of heaven to be unlocked and many to be brought in” (Chemnitz, Enchiridion, para 283).
In the beginning, God breathed the breath of life into the man of dust and he became a living creature. So to now, at the beginning of the new creation, inaugurated by the death and resurrection of the Second Adam, Christ Jesus, God in the flesh exspirates the Holy Spirit, breathing His life breathing breath upon the dry and dusty bones of His disciples and Church, quickening them by the very Lord and Giver of Life who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
As the Father sent Him, dispatching Him on a rescue mission to ransom and redeem the world by His blood; so too does He now send His apostles; not as saviors, but as His emissaries and heralds, even as St John the Evangelist is the herald and mouth piece of the words of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim this victory to the ends of the earth. He has so ordered and ordained this ministry, and gathered you to Himself, today, the first day of the week, that you may hear and believe.
For the pastors who follow in the apostolic train have been entrusted with these self-same keys of the kingdom of heaven. Not that they may use them for themselves, but for your sake. That you, Quasimodos, might be fed and nourished by the pure spiritual milk of the Word, find solace and sanctuary, peace and rest within the wounds of the Crucified One who breathes His life-breathing breath upon you in the pronouncement of the forgiveness of your sins. As the hymn sings, “The words which absolution give Are His who died the we might live; The minister whom Christ has sent Is but His humble instrument” (LSB 614:5).
Beloved, would you enter the kingdom of heaven? Would you be freed from your guilty conscience and deformed mind? Here is the Way, even Jesus Christ our Lord. For you have been laid at the steps of His Church, adopted by grace through the birth waters of your baptism. Named with His own Name. His Father in heaven is your Father; His God, your God. The Church is your dear Mother, and Jesus Christ, your Brother not only in the flesh, but also according to the Spirit, speaks to you the true stories of the kingdom. By this preaching and proclamation, the Lord Himself puts His Spirit within you and you live. He has spoken. He has loosed you from the bonds of your sins.
He continues, not only on Easter, but each eighth day, to nourish and sustain you, dear little ones, newborn babes, with the spiritual milk of His Word. He speaks the absolution of His peace. The peace of the Lord be with you always. He invites you, by His Word and Spirit, to put out your hand that He place into it His Body. Then you sing with Simeon and, in a way, St Thomas, Lord, now let Your servant, depart in peace, according to Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.
You are blessed and beloved by the Lord. At the last, He who put the guarantee of His Body and His Spirit within you, shall open your graves and raise you from your graves, O people. And He will bring you into the land of His eternal Israel, the very kingdom of heaven, prepared for you from before the foundation of the world, established upon the foundation of His death, resurrection, and ascension, and built by the doctrine of the apostles, enfolding you, His precious little ones, into the majesty of His grace.
In the Name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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