Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost (A) 2017

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: Exodus 12:14
Theme: Sealed With Blood

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

God is ageless. The Holy Trinity IS eternally existing life. Jesus extends God’s immortal life to believers. Christ isn’t constrained by time and neither is His word. The progression of years that we experience doesn’t cause His memory to fade or His blessings to diminish. The kingdom of God is marvelous because it is incomparable. It’s history never becomes obsolete because it is an unbroken chain of life. God is the God of the living, not of the dead.1

Today God tells the Israelites to remember their deliverance from bondage. The reason wasn’t simply historical and certainly not sentimental. It was indicative of their future and their new identity. It was a celebration of life. Blood would be the requirement for the ultimate deliverance: From the slavery of death. The angel of death passed over because God’s people were sealed with blood. The meaning of the Passover remains significant.

Lamb’s blood over the doors of their houses was the sign. Now, of course, it’s not that God needed this mark of identification so as not to make a mistake. God knew exactly who the Israelites were. The benefit was for the people, not for God. It was not a time for doubting, second-guessing, or divided loyalties. God would render judgement against the idolatry of Egypt. It would require a radical reprisal to force Pharaoh’s hand. But the Israelites would be spared God’s righteous indignation.

On what basis is the wrath of God turned away from us? How can we be sure His condemnation is no longer directed to us? The Scripture says that believers “are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.”2 A propitiation is a sacrificial offering that appeases the divine wrath. God is not arbitrarily angry. He is just. And in His justice, He punishes sin. Unforgiven sin separates from God.

The Israelites became so disillusioned wandering in the desert they wanted to return to the oppression of Egypt. "Better the devil you know than the one that is unfamiliar." It's never easy to leave one's comfort zone. We all have a lot of Lot's wife's blood running in our veins. We like to look back. When the present seems too challenging or the future too uncertain, we're tempted to long for what was. Our priorities become self-absorbed instead of focused on our neighbours and their well-being. Derailing our priorities is one of the devil’s more successful tactics. In an old recipe book for preparing rabbit, the first line of the description reads, “First, catch the rabbit.”

Dear friends, salvation in Christ means that we leave the past and its baggage of sin behind as the Spirit draws un into the future. The Scripture says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”3 It says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”4 And again it says, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”5

But the old self always likes to reassert itself. The disparity between who we are in Christ- reconciled, liberated, restored, forgiven, holy, and freed from condemnation- and how we are in and of ourselves- selfish, broken, doubting, guilty, prone to sin, and vulnerable to temptation- is a paradox only the Holy Spirit can resolve. Living baptismally means always being in the fray. In Christ, we are free from the condemnation of sin, but not the complications. Repentance characterizes our struggle.

Maturity in the faith doesn't mean we need less forgiveness, but that we crave it more. As we grow in our faith, as it is tested and refined, we don’t become more spiritually self-supporting, we become more dependent on the forgiveness of Christ, more in need of the Spirit’s comfort. We don’t need less of the power of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, we need more of it. We don’t move further away from our baptism, we move closer to it. We become less attached to the temporary things of this life and more connected with what’s permanent. Over the triple doorways of the cathedral of Milan there are three inscriptions spanning the splendid arches. Over one is carved a beautiful wreath of roses, and underneath it is the legend, "All that which pleases is but for a moment." Over the other is sculptured a cross, and there are the words, "All that which troubles us is but for a moment." But underneath the great central entrance to the main aisle is the inscription, "That only is important which is eternal."

Therefore, we cherish the blood of Christ because through it we gain entrance straight into the holy of holies. It is the price that ransoms us from the power of eternal death. It silences Satan. It gains us a hearing before the throne of grace. When St. John made his query about the white-robed martyrs he saw in heaven this was the reply, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”6 The Israelites were delivered from the ordeal of slavery, but sinners are rescued from the far greater crisis of death. It happens only by the blood of the Lamb.

But that blood is not only the historical substance of the sacrifice, it is also the gift in the sacrament. Holy Communion is strength for our new life. It’s a meal that is always a foretaste of the feast to come. At the Lord’s Table we dine not only with our fellow believers in the here and now, but with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the faithful departed of all time. At His altar, we remember the Passover as we “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”7

Dear friends, the God who led the Israelites out of Egypt is the same God who rescued Noah’s family in the flood, called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans, and established the lineage of David on the throne of Israel. The same God establishes His spiritual kingdom “on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.”8 The kingdom was constructed on the blood of the Son of God. That will not change. It is our guarantee for all eternity. Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
10 September 2017
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt

1 See Matthew 22:32 2 Romans 3:24-25
3 2 Corinthians 5:17 4 Romans 6:3-4
5 Colossians 3:9-10 6 Revelation 7:14
7 1 Corinthians 11:26 8 Ephesians 2:20