Sermons

The cross is coming. You can feel it gathering through these weeks. Every story this season — the plotting, the stones, the thickening opposition — it is all converging on Jerusalem, converging on one man walking steadily toward it. No one takes His life from Him. He lays it down. For sheep who wander. For sheep who sleep in Gethsemane. For sheep who deny three times before the rooster finishes crowing. For you.

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Abraham saw it. Not dimly, not as a vague hope. He saw Christ’s day. When? On Mount Moriah, when the old man bound his only son, his beloved Isaac, on the wood of the altar. When the knife was raised and the angel stayed his hand. When the ram appeared, caught in the thicket by its horns, and Abraham offered it up in place of his son. Abraham saw it and was glad because in that moment on the mountain, in that substitution, he saw the shape of what God would do. The beloved Son would carry the wood up the hill. The beloved Son would be laid upon the altar. But there would be no angel to stay the hand. The knife would fall. The Son of God would die in the place of sinners. The ram caught in the thorns would wear them as a crown.

The thing that changes everything is an empty tomb on a Sunday morning outside Jerusalem. That tomb is empty. He is not there. He is risen. And because He is risen, the grave that holds Joyce Hofmann right now is temporary. Her baptism still holds. The name put on her in Skokie in 1931 still belongs to her. The resurrection that Jesus is — the life that Jesus is — she is in it.

There is mourning, and there is rejoicing. Both. All the way through Lent. Not mourning for six weeks and then a gasp of relief on Easter morning. Both. The question is where you are looking. Look at yourself, and you can only mourn. Look at Him — and rejoicing is already there underneath everything, because of what He is doing.

But Jesus does not operate by human arithmetic. He takes what is insufficient, and He gives thanks, and He distributes until everyone is full and there are twelve baskets left over. He does not run out. He will not run out. Not on that hillside, not at that Upper Table, not at this rail.

The heart surgeon cannot operate on himself. He will always stop before he gets deep enough. And so will you. When Jesus says the Pharisees have hollowed out the word of God, He is not only talking about them. He is describing what every man does when left to himself — and what you do. You adjust the terms. You find the exception. You construct the tradition that protects you from the full weight of what God actually says. And then you call it faithfulness.

The house must not be empty. Christ must dwell there. He must sit on the throne. And He does this by His Word and Sacraments. He comes to you in Baptism and claims you as His own. He comes to you in Absolution and drives the accuser out with the declaration: “You are forgiven!” He comes to you in His Supper and feeds you with His own Body and Blood so that He dwells in you and you in Him. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). You are not an empty house. You are the dwelling place of the living God.

If you want to be great, you serve. If you want to be first, you become a slave. This is the exact reversal of every human ambition, every human calculation of worth and status and advancement. The church is the one place on earth where the logic of the world is turned upside down, where the last become first, where losing your life is the only way to save it, where dying is the way to live.

So when the Lord seems slow, do not read that as absence. When He seems harsh, do not read that as final rejection. He is doing what He did with Jacob: wrestling you down to the promise. “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Genesis 32:26) That is not stubbornness; it is faith taught by the cross.

Jonah went unwillingly; Jesus goes willingly. Jonah preached grudgingly; Jesus preaches as the Word made flesh. Jonah was thrown into the sea because of his own disobedience; Jesus was thrown into death because of ours. Jonah is a sign that exposes how little control we have; Jesus is the sign that gives us what we could never earn: forgiveness, life, salvation.