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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Some of you know that this Lent I have been trying both to eat healthier and to exercise more‑regularly, and some of you know that I have not been doing all that well with either the diet or the exercise. So, as we again this Lent both hear Readings from the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ as drawn from the four Gospel accounts and reflect on key statements or events from the Readings, the statement from tonight’s Reading that particularly resonated with me was Jesus’s statement to Peter that “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38). Some of you may even recall my mentioning that passage in connection both with a 2013 Midweek Lenten sermon on the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer in light of the words and deeds of our Lord’s Passion and with a “Minister’s Moment” I wrote a month or so later in 20‑13 for the Kilgore News Herald. As was implicit on both of those occasions, I will say explicitly tonight, but already you and I who believe know from our own experience: what Jesus says to Peter is equally true of us: “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”.
As we heard in tonight’s Passion Reading, after Jesus told His disciples that they would be offended because of Him and scattered, Peter boldly declared that he would never deny Jesus, even if he had to die with Him, and all the others said likewise. When they came to the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus had eight of the disciples sit in one place, while He took with Him Peter and James and John and asked them to wait and watch in another place, while He went on to pray. Instead, when Jesus came back the first time, perhaps an hour or so later, He found them sleeping and made this statement about our hearts’ eagerness but our human nature’s inability. Jesus may well have been thinking of and drawing on Psalm 51 verse 12, where the psalmist pleads for God to restore to him the joy of His salvation and uphold him with a willing spirit (confer v.10’s “right” or “steadfast” spirit).
When that psalm verse was translated in the King James Version and used as we have it in the Offertory of Lutheran Service Book Divine Service, Setting Three (192‑193), the Hebrew word נָדִיב (pronounced “naw-deeb”) was translated “free spirit”. But, whether translated “free” or “willing”, such a spirit is something for which we must pray to God! Since humankind’s fall into sin, we are not “free” to decide to believe in Him or to do anything at all spiritually good. Apart from God our will is only “free” to do that which is evil in His sight. In that sense, our spirit, heart, and will are like our weak and infirm flesh: subject to the limitations of our earthly nature (Romans 6:19), and so corrupted by sin and darkness. And, we are so corrupted! By nature our spirit and flesh are sinful and unclean, justly deserving God’s temporal and eternal punishment.
A spirit or heart inclined towards God that does not have to be compelled towards God only comes about after God has already intervened in someone’s life, as Jesus had done in the case of His disciples. As Jesus says elsewhere, “the flesh is no help at all”, for the Holy Spirit gives spiritual life (John 6:63), just as God breathed into the first man the breath of life and so made him a living creature (Genesis 2:7). We are completely dependent upon the Spirit of God, Who calls and enables us both to repent of our sin and to believe that God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake. And, when we so repent and believe, then God truly forgives our sin, whatever it might be. Tonight’s penitential psalm is the source for the exchange between pastor and people also familiar from L‑S‑B’s Divine Service, Setting Three, “I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and You forgave the iniquity [or guilt] of my sin” (Psalm 32:5; confer LSB 184).
Tonight’s Opening Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 436) directed us to “Go to dark Gethsemane” and there to “Learn from Jesus Christ to pray”. Indeed, at the judgment hall, Calvary, and the tomb and we also learn to bear the cross, die, and rise, but Jesus is far more than a teacher of such things. Jesus prays in Gethsemane, is arraigned at the judgment hall, dies on Calvary, and rises from the tomb not as an example for us but in order to benefit us. Jesus’s perfect submission to God the Father’s will in prayer, His suffering and shame, His sacrifice as true God and true man all were necessary in order to save us from our sins. There on the cross, Jesus suffered the temporal and eternal punishment we deserve on account of our sins. God’s love for us sent Jesus into this world, and on the cross Jesus’s sacrifice merited God’s mercy and grace toward us.
God’s mercy and grace toward us, His forgiveness of our sins, is given to us through His means of grace, that is, through His Word and Sacraments. In Psalm 51, the willing or free spirit only comes about after God has purged and washed the psalmist with hyssop and the water of cleansing of which the hyssop is a part and which water conveys (Psalm 51:7; confer Numbers 19). We find that purging and washing in Holy Baptism. Jesus says that which is born of the flesh is flesh but that which is born of water and the Holy Spirit has a willing or free spirit and can enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5-6). Those who are so baptized, who know and feel particular sins in their hearts, confess them privately to their pastor for the sake of receiving individual Holy Absolution from the pastor as from God Himself. And, while fallen human flesh is of no help at all, the human flesh and blood of the Son of Man, which comes to us in the Sacrament of the Altar under the forms of bread and wine, is true food and drink that gives life. Jesus says whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him, and He abides in them, and He will raise them up on the last day (confer the Closing Hymn, LSB 878).
Until that last day, we do well to “watch and pray” as Jesus told His disciples to do, and as our Office Hymn emphasized for us (LSB 663). The case is not that we can never sleep, but, when going to sleep and rising, we in prayer commend ourselves into His care. Prayer itself is powerless apart from the powerful God to Whom we pray. We trust that powerful God to keep us from all harm and danger and from sin and every evil, to be with us that the evil foe may have no power over us (Small Catechism VII:2, 5). Yet, somewhat inevitably, even we who believe and so pray will still fail to voluntarily and freely serve God according to our vocations. Even we who believe and so pray will continue to sin. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak! Just as no amount of dieting and exercising can prevent the temporal death that is the consequence of our sin, so we do not do the good we want, but the evil we do not want is what we keep on doing (Romans 7:19). Wretched people that we are! Who will deliver us from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24-25).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +