✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
Isaiah 49,1-6 5012
17. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 062
Jerome, Pastor and Translator, † 419
30. September 2012
1. O Holy Spirit, who inspired the Prophets and Apostles to write the Holy Scriptures, grant unto us faithful pastors and bishops to preach Your Word in truth and purity. We forget at times that You move in the world and work in our history. You do so to save us from ourselves and our sins. Help us to constantly look unto Jesus for our salvation. Amen.
2. Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. Yahweh called Me from the womb, from the body of My mother He named My name. 2He made My mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He hid Me; He made Me a polished arrow; in His quiver He hid Me away. 3And He said to Me: „You are My servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.“ 4But I said: „I have labored in vain; I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely My right is with Yahweh, and My recompense with My God.“ 5And now Yahweh says: „He who formed Me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him; and that Israel might be gathered to Him for I am honored in the eyes of Yahweh, and My God has become My strength“ and 6He says: „It is too light a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make You as a light for the nations, so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“
3. The last verse from our reading from Israel naturally recalls similar words spoken 700 years later by Simeon in the temple who, when he saw the infant Jesus, proclaimed: „a Light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of Thy people Israel“. Both Isaiah and Simeon recognize, believe and confess that Yahweh’s Christ is for all people. First, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies given to His chosen people Israel. The Apostle Paul summarizes this succinctly when he writes: »My kinsmen are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever« (Romans 9,4-5). This glory is not for Israel only, for Yahweh desires all people to believe in Him and be saved. First Israel, then the Gentiles. The Prophet Isaiah foresaw this, prophesying: »Yahweh says: „I am Yahweh; I called You in righteousness; I take You by the hand and keep You; I give You as a Covenant for the people, a Light for the nations. I make You as a Light for the nations, so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth. And nations will come to Your light, and kings to the brightness of Your rising“« (Isaiah 42,6; 49,6; 60,3).
4. Yahweh promised to redeem men and women from the curse of sin, death and the devil. In His unfolding plan of salvation history (Heilsgeschichte), Yahweh chose to give Abraham the promise of the messianic line. He made Israel His chosen people, and through Israel came the Christ, and thus through Israel on account of Christ who is Israel reduced to one, Yahweh saved all the nations, including you and me. Even at two months old, Jesus was fulfilling the law, and He fulfilled the law for us in our stead so that by fulfilling the law He has redeemed us from the curse of the law and has shined upon us the light of salvation and the glorious eternal life in His heavenly reign. God the Father has redeemed us from the law and has adopted us as His children (Galatians 4,5). We are no longer slaves to sin and the law, but we are children and heirs through God (Galatians 4,7) on account of Christ, the Son of God, our newborn Savior, who at the temple was named Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins (Matthew 1,21).
5. The term „Israel reduced to one“ was first coined by Lutheran theologian Dr. Horace Hummel in the 1970s, and was put into print in 1979 with his book The Word Becoming Flesh. Dr. Hummel explained the term this way: „Old Testament history really is our history via Christ…. Since Christ is ‘Israel reduced to one,’ and since Israel’s inner history was all recapitulated and consummated in Him, the ‘new Israel,’ the church, expresses [her] identity and mission in terms of the promise given the old Israel“ (Hummel 17).
6. The Holy Scripture teaches that Christ Jesus is Israel reduced to one, standing in our place, as the Christus Victor who triumphs over our old, evil foes of sin, death, hell and the devil.
7. Jesus stands in Israel’s place because Israel failed the testing Yahweh subjected them too in the Sinai Desert. Jesus stands in the place of all the nations because all the nations failed to trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for their deliverance. Jesus stands in our place because we were born in bondage to sin and Satan.
8. After Jesus had been conceived, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and said: »Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins« (Matthew 1,20-21). The name Jesus is derived from the word „yeshu’ah“, which is Hebrew for „salvation“.
9. The temptation we have today is that we want to make Jesus into a 21. century Westerner complete with our unique outlook and culture. Jesus, however, is not this sort of man, because the Jesus we discover in the Bible is a 1. century Jewish man. There are some rather large gaps in outlook between these two cultures. First, notice the subject of the pronouns in Isaiah 49. I, Yahweh, will do this. I, Yahweh, will do that. It is Yahweh who does the verbs. 21. century Westerners don’t think that way. We are more prone to make ourselves the subject of the verbs. I will pull myself up by my bootstraps. I will approach God. I will have some say in my salvation. Second, our nation is an heir of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which was a cultural movement of intellectuals in 18. century Europe and the American colonies. Its purpose was to reform society using reason (rather than tradition, faith and revelation) and advance knowledge through science. Jesus’ cultural context in the first century was faith, revelation and tradition. So we in the 21. century Western Church have the tension of both reason and science against faith, revelation and tradition. The two need not be diametrically opposed to each other. Both theology and science have their own respective spheres. Science should not make religious dogmas, and theology should not posit scientific theorems. The two, however, can, and do, work in tandem. Theology says who created the universe and how it happened. Science helps us discover and apply the many wonders in this universe.
10. Jesus is our true Enlightenment. The Apostle John writes in his Gospel: »In Jesus was Life, and the Life was the Light of men« (John 1,4). Jesus Himself proclaimed: »I am the Light of the world« (John 8,12). Jesus is our salvation, for He hangs in our place on the cross. Jesus bore our guilt, received our punishment and died as our vicarious substitute. The road to salvation leads to the cross, and from the cross Jesus saved the entire world from its sin. As the gospel is preached throughout the world, people hear the gospel, believe it and salvation spreads to individuals.
11. Jesus is God the Father’s Servant, and in Him God the Father is glorified. Jesus is also our Servant, and therefore we are glorified. Jesus’ glory is our glory. Jesus’ Light is our Light. Jesus’ Life is our Life, yes eternal and everlasting Life. Jesus is our Israel who fulfills the Mosaic covenant for us. The new covenant that God established is a covenant of faith in Jesus the Christ. Faith in Jesus is belief that we are redeemed and forgiven, for He has merited our justification and salvation. Jesus is the only path that leads to salvation, and this path reaches every corner of the world. Jesus is Israel reduced to one, and only Jesus makes us righteous in His Father’s sight. Amen.
12. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, You are faithful to all generations, help us to sing of Your steadfast love so that our hearts and minds may be at peace in this tumultuous life. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
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