Good Friday Thievery

While catching up on my reading, I ran across this Good Friday sermon in Gottesdienst, Vol. 28, No. 1 on the gospel text: St. John 18:1–19:42. May it be a blessing to you.

† In the name of Jesus. †

thief to his left, a thief to his right, and thieves all around.

For to Christ, all are thieves. The elders of the people had robbed him of his title, Messiah. The disciples had robbed him of comfort and consolation. Judas had been pilfering his purse all along. The soldiers robbed him of his clothing, and Pontius Pilate would soon rob him of his life.

Thieves to the left, thieves to the right, and thieves all around.

And the thievery continues to this day. Modern science has robbed Jesus of the title, Creator. Perverse and sinful people rob him of the obedience that should be his. Abortionists rob him of little worshipers and rob the rest of us of potential researchers who might find the cure for cancer and other diseases. Indeed, thieves all around. But don't be too smug, you too have joined in the thievery. Your complaint that your life should have turned out better than it has, has robbed your God of the titles, Father and Provider. Your fear that there will not be enough for you has called into question the truthfulness of his promises and has left you selfish, failing to help others as you ought. Your angry, lusting, and pitying thoughts have robbed him of his sovereignty over you. By your self-justification, your lame excuses, your blaming others, you have robbed him of the title, the One Alone Who Justifies the Wicked.

Thieves to the left, thieves to the right, and thieves all around.

But here is the grand surprise, my friends, here is the "Ha, Ha!" from heaven, here is the great, divine comedy. Thieves to the left, thieves to the right, and thieves all around, but the greatest thief is on the center cross. Didn't the Lord Jesus say that he would come to judge the world like a thief in the night? Didn't the little Lord Jesus slip into our time and space in the deep of night? Didn't Jesus say that when a strong man guards his house his goods are safe, but when one stronger than him comes he breaks in and plunders all his goods? Yes, the strong man kidnapped us and took us into his house, but unlike other kidnappings, we went willingly. Like our father Adam we snatched up the glittering trash that he held out. He's a liar, but we love his lies. We love the lie that our lives should have turned out better. We want to believe the lie that there is no need for contention in the church, no need for confession of the truth, no need for martyrs anymore. We love the lie that our sins are small compared to others, that we are not as bad as most and better than some. We believed the lie that his prison-house was actually a mansion and the place where we could find true happiness.

But Jesus would not leave us in that prison of delusion. The Valiant One came to release us. He broke into the prison house of Satan to set us free. He took the one thing that Satan could hold against us, keeping us in everlasting bondage, and that was our sin. He took that sin, and the death that comes with it, into Himself and shed his holy precious blood for the expiation of the world's sin, and ours as well, thereby slaying death. Through that blood, we have been cleansed in Holy Baptism and thereby are granted admission into the Supper of the Lamb and his Bride, the holiest of suppers, which we concelebrate with the saints above at each and every Mass.

Into to that grand banquet, the dying Lord was about to admit an unexpecting thief. This miserable little man, who did not sleep a wink all night for the horrifying thought of the hell he fully expected and deserved, heard the unimaginable and completely unexpected words, “Today … with me … in paradise.” We know him as the repentant thief, and he was. His brief Christian life was spent in defending his Master, praying to him, and believing his promises. Yet in one sense he remained a thief. And what do thieves do? They frustrate us, for after working hard for the things we own, they creep in and in an instant take what we labored for so long. And so, while the Lord was working to death for your salvation and the salvation of the little thief, the little thief found the treasury of Jesus' mercy and grace wide open where he found salvation freely given. But the Lord always has the last laugh, and as the little thief was snatching grace, the Grand Thief snatched him clean away forever!

People of God, if the little thief found hope in the mercy of Christ, then there is surely hope for thieves like you!

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Ghost.

This sermon was preached by Pr. Peter M. Berg at the Tre Ore Service of Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan on April 19, 2019.

Even Creation Was Confused

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.… And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.  (Matthew 27:45, 51)

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.  (Luke 23:44-45)

Cease in your ignorance to receive such great deeds with abusive language, which will in no wise injure Him who did them, but which will bring danger to yourselves—danger, I say, by no means small, but one dealing with matters of great, yes, even the greatest importance, since beyond a doubt the soul is a precious thing, and nothing can be found dearer to a man than himself.  There was nothing magical, as you suppose, nothing human, deceitful, or crafty in Christ; no deception lurked in Him, although you smile in derision, as usual, and though you split with roars of laughter.  He was God on high, God in His inmost nature, God from unknown realms, and was sent by God the Ruler of all as a Savior, whom neither the sun itself, nor any stars, if they have powers of perception, nor the rulers and princes of the world, nor the great gods, or those who, feigning themselves so, terrify the whole human race, were able to know or to guess whence and who He was.  And rightly so.  But when, freed from the body, which He carried about as but a very small part of Himself, He allowed Himself to be seen, and let it be known how great He was, all the elements of the universe bewildered by the strange events were thrown into confusion.  An earthquake shook the world, the sea was heaved up from its depths, the heaven was shrouded in darkness, the sun’s fiery blaze was checked, and his heat became moderate.   For what else could occur when He who before now was reckoned to be one of us was recognized to be God?

Arnobius of Sicca, Against the Pagans I.53

The Instrument of Death Is Now the Symbol of Glory and Dominion

Come now, when you read in the words of David, how that “the Lord reigns from the tree,”* I want to know what you understand by it.  Perhaps you think some wooden king of the Jews is meant!—and not Christ, who overcame death by His suffering on the cross, and thence reigned!  Now, although death reigned from Adam even to Christ, why may not Christ be said to have reigned from the tree, from His having shut up the kingdom of death by dying upon the tree of His cross?  Likewise Isaiah also says: “For unto us a child is born.”  But what is there unusual in this, unless he speaks of the Son of God?  “To us is given He whose government is upon His shoulder.”  Now, what king is there who bears the ensign of his dominion upon his shoulder, and not rather upon his head as a diadem, or in his hand as a scepter, or else as a mark in some royal apparel?  But the one new King of the new ages, Jesus Christ, carried on His shoulder both the power and the excellence of His new glory, even His cross; so that, according to our former prophecy, He might thenceforth reign from the tree as Lord.  This tree it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of, when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, “Come, let us destroy the tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof,”† that is, His body.  For so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery.  If you require still further prediction of the Lord’s cross, the twenty-second Psalm is sufficiently able to afford it to you, containing as it does the entire passion of Christ, who was even then prophetically declaring His glory.  “They pierced,” says He, “my hands and my feet,” which is the special cruelty of the cross.

Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.19

*  Psalm 96:10 (Old Latin Version, Dominus regnavit a ligno)
†  Jeremiah 11:19

A Cry Not of Despair or Distress, but of Faith

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  (Mark 15:34)

This prayer was not a cry of despair, not a complaint against God.  It was not a cry of disappointment that the help upon which He had hoped had not come in the end.  We understand this right away when we read Psalm 22 and see that of which it speaks.  First and foremost, we notice that here speaks a tortured person in his uttermost distress, a distress that strikingly reminds us of what happens with Jesus, of course.  The one who here speaks is mocked and ridiculed by the people: they shoot out the lip and shake the head, saying “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him.  Let Him deliver Him since He delights in Him!” (Psa 22:8).  He has become a reproach of men and despised by the people.  His enemies surround him.  They have pierced his hands and his feet and divided his garments among them.  His strength is dried up, and his tongue sticks to his jaws.  In the midst of distress, he can nevertheless confess that God is God, saying “But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel” (Psa 22:3).  God will not despise nor abhor the affliction of the afflicted (Psa 22:24).  He will do what all the ends of the world shall remember (Psa 22:27).

In other words, we do not hear a cry of despair here from someone who has lost his faith.  This is, rather, a prayer that is indeed born of faith.  At the same time that Jesus lets us understand that He truly is forsaken of God and tastes of the utter and most awful consequences of our fall from God, He shows that He does this in obedience to God's will, in faith in God.  Therefore, this cry—this word from the cross—belongs well together with the other words from the cross.  When He says, “It is finished,” He means precisely that work work which His Father gave Him to do—that work which in every point kept the Law which we have broken.  To the last drop He tastes the consequences of all that we have neglected and done wrong.  And when He says, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (quoting Psalm 31:5), He expresses the same obedience and the same faith.  He was “obedient unto death,” says Paul, “even the death of the cross” (Phil 2:8).

Eric Andrae/Bo Giertz, Gottesdienst, Vol. 22.1