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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. (Amen.)
This Lent, our special Midweek Lenten Sermon Series calls you to “Lift up your eyes to the Bible’s mountains”, and last week we began our consideration of five of the Bible’s mountains with the Mountains of Ararat, where the ark containing Noah and his family came to rest (Genesis 8:4). As we noted last Wednesday, there certainly are in the Bible more than the five mountains that we are considering, but there are fewer mountains than a casual reading of the Bible might suggest, for closer study of the Bible reveals that at least several mountains are called by more than one name. For example, tonight we consider Mount Zion, which name refers to one or more of a number of hills or peaks, including one earlier called “Mount Moriah”, and, in a broader sense, Mount Zion also includes both the city of Jerusalem and, right outside of it, the place known as “Golgotha” or “Calvary”.
Limiting to three the Readings for tonight was difficult, given the importance of Mount Zion and all the places associated with it, attested to by any number of Scripture passages. For example, tonight we also could have read Genesis chapter 22, most of which we heard as the Old Testament Reading two Sundays ago (Genesis 22:1-18), telling how God tested Abraham by sending Abraham to the land of Moriah to offer his only son Isaac, whom Abraham loved, on one of the mountains of which the Lord would tell Abraham. The Divinely-inspired author of 2 Chronicles associates that mountain in Moriah with Mount Zion (2 Chronicles 3:1), as do later writers of other books outside of the Bible. Tonight we also could have read part of 2 Samuel chapter 5, which tells of newly-crowned King David’s conquering the Jebusites and taking from them the city of Jerusalem, which sometimes is called the “city of David” (2 Samuel 5:6-10; confer 1 Chronicles 11:4-9), not to be confused with David’s hometown of Bethlehem, which sometimes is also called “the city of David” (Luke 2:4; confer John 7:42, with apparent reference to 1 Samuel 16:1). And, tonight we could have read what likely are already‑familiar accounts of our Lord’s Crucifixion, which took place just outside of Jerusalem (John 19:20; Hebrews 13:12) at a place variously called “Golgotha”, transliterated from Aramaic or Hebrew; “kran-ee-oo” translated into Greek; or Calvaria, translated into Latin—all of which in English mean “skull” (Matthew 27:33; Mark 15:22; Luke 23:33; John 19:17), a place so-named perhaps because it was a hill that resembled a skull, perhaps because a skull symbolized the death wrought by a place of execution, or perhaps because, as held by an early Christian tradition, one commonly depicted in medieval art, the literal skull of Adam was buried under the place of the cross (Clark, TIDOTB II:439).
The First Reading that we did hear recounted how, near the end of his reign, King David repeatedly confessed his sin over an apparently prideful military census that resulted in the death of 70‑thousand men. We do well to think not only of the sin that we inherit from Adam but also of our own actual sins that not only can have negative impacts on other people but also warrant both our own deaths now in this lifetime and our torment for eternity in hell. Truly, the Third Reading that we heard warned that the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars will be excluded from the new Jerusalem and will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That, unless like King David, enabled by God, we both confess our sin and appeal to God for mercy. So, as we sang in the Office Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 435), we “Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain … in sorrow and contrition, / Wounded, impotent, and blind; / Here the guilty free remission, / Here the troubled, peace may find”.
In the First Reading, as directed by the Prophet Gad, King David raised up an altar and made a sacrifice to the Lord, having bought the threshing floor of Araunah and his oxen for fifty shekels of silver. That threshing floor in some sense is held to be the same place as Mount Moriah, where earlier, by faith, Abraham had offered his only son Isaac, whom he loved, and, the Divinely‑inspired author of the book of Hebrews says that Abraham, figuratively speaking, received Isaac back from the dead (Hebrews 13:17‑19). And, that threshing floor in some sense is held to be the same place as Mount Calvary, where later God the Father gave His only Son, Whom He loved, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Such is the self‑sacrificial way that God loved even the fallen world, including you and me. God the Father Himself provided the Lamb of God, His holy Son in the spotless human flesh of Jesus, Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36), Who died on the cross in our place, as our substitute. And, Jesus literally rose from the dead, in part showing that God the Father accepted Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf. When we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does just that: God forgives us. God forgives us, through His Means of Grace.
Especially the river of the water of life in the Third Reading should make us think of Holy Baptism, the water of our life, as it were, water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word, that works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe what the words and promises of God declare about Holy Baptism. There at the Baptismal Font we receive the Lamb’s sign of the holy cross both upon our foreheads and upon our hearts, marking us as those redeemed by Christ the crucified. There at the Baptismal Font, as it were, our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. We who are so baptized confess to our pastors the sins that particularly trouble us for the sake of Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself, as the prophet Gad spoke the Lord’s Word to David in the First Reading. So absolved, we are admitted to the Holy Supper, the meal our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, instituted in the upper room of a Jerusalem house thus in some sense on Mount Zion. Centuries earlier, Melchizedek, priest of God Most High and King of Salem—that is, likely, Jerusalem—brought out bread and wine and blessed Abraham on God’s behalf (Genesis 14:17-20). Now, on this Altar and at is rail, bread is the Body of Christ given for you, and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for you, and so they give forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
We have those blessings of forgiveness, life, and salvation as our possession already now, even if we do not yet fully experience them. Tonight’s Second Reading anticipates the ultimate exaltation of not the literal Mount Zion but Mount Zion figuratively as the people of God who have received God’s mercy, on the Last Day when all believers will dwell on the new or restored earth under the new or restored sky and will cherish the Word of God and experience His universal peace (TLSB, ad loc Micah 4:1-13, p.1490). Of course, already now we who are transformed by God at least want to put His teachings into practice, even as we, with daily contrition and faith, live in God’s forgiveness of sins for our failures to do so, until our deaths, or our Lord’s return, whichever comes first. From a great high mountain, that is, from an otherwise inaccessible vantage point that allows a glimpse into Divine mysteries (TLSB, ad loc Revelation 21:10, p.2234), tonight’s Third Reading sees the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Such references to Jerusalem and Mount Zion include the river and tree of life, elements from the paradise of the Garden of Eden, which itself may have been on a mountain (Talmon, TDOT III:432; confer Genesis 2:10-14; Ezekiel 28:12-19). The splendid, grand city of New Jerusalem is creation perfectly restored, without mourning, crying, or pain, as gone are sin, corruption, and death (TLSB, ad loc Revelation 21:15-21, p.2234).
Mount Zion and all that goes with it—Mount Moriah, Mount Calvary, Golgotha, Jerusalem—truly has various shifting senses, arguably expanding to take in all the significant sacrifice and so all the blessings of God upon us. But, one thing that does not change and of which we can be certain, is that, as God’s presence with His Old Testament people moved around in the Tabernacle of the wilderness and up a hill and eventually to His fixed location in the Temple (confer 1 Samuel 7:1; 2 Samuel 6:3; 1 Kings 8:1; 2 Chronicles 5:2), so God’s presence with us His New Testament people also moves around in the forms of His Word and Sacraments eventually to His fixed location without a temple in the New Jerusalem. In the words of tonight’s Psalm (Psalm 48:1-14; antiphon v.11), we walk about Zion and consider well her citadels, that we may tell the next generation that this is God, our God, forever and ever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +