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“Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ Now there was much grass in that place.” – John 6:10

What does Jesus see when He sees this crowd coming towards Him? We could say that they are people who are simply following Him because He’s being doing miracles. Or that they don’t understand yet that He’s the Savior. And even when they do figure out that He is the great and promised Prophet, they’ll only want to make Jesus king by force. Jesus will have to run away to keep this from happening. In fact, by the end of this chapter, most of the folks here will be flat out mad at Jesus – that’s the rest of the discussion in John 6.

So what does Jesus see when He looks out over that crowd? Is it people who are foolish and troublesome? Is it the failure of generations worth of teaching? Is it a bunch of greedy and needy people who view Him not for who He is but just for the stuff He might give them? While those might be the things we’d be most inclined to see, Jesus sees something else. He sees people to love. The Good Shepherd sees His (often wayward) sheep, and He makes them to lie down in green pasture. And He will care for them now. And He will care for them upon the Cross. Jesus sees people to love.

So often the way that we view the world, life, ourselves, and certainly other people is dominated by sin. We see, we assess, we judge and categorize people on the basis of their sin and how annoying their particular sins are to us. These folks are just mildly annoying, but these over here are too much trouble. And we easily and readily write of people and discard them (especially in these days of rising tribalism).

That person you disdain; that’s just another person Jesus actually and truly loves. That’s another person Jesus loves and died for. And you know what? Those times when the person you disdain is the one you see in the mirror, those times when you are disgusted with yourself – well, guess what? You still are a person Jesus loves. Still a person Jesus died for. Still a person whom Jesus washed in the waters of Holy Baptism and made holy and blameless without spot or blemish.

Jesus sees you truly as His own beloved. That’s the truth, that’s the highest reality. He went to the cross to make it real. God grant us more and more to see this truth!

“But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”

What does it mean if a kingdom comes upon you? That’s not how we normally think of it. You think of a kingdom coming TO you or you coming TO a kingdom. But upon? Upon is battle language. When the Marines come landing on to your island, when the army hits the beach on D-Day, that means the US Military has come upon you.

The world sees Jesus preach and heal, cast out demons. Those don’t generally seem like violent actions (maybe the casting out of demons), but in reality they are acts of war against Satan and his kingdom. They are the Kingdom of God and His might and power bursting in upon this world that Satan had claimed as his own, upon people that Satan had claimed as his own. Jesus, throughout His earthly ministry was constantly waging warfare against Satan and his powers.

Jesus continues to wage this war against Satan, Sin, the world, and our flesh, whenever His Word is preached. The Word of Christ breaks down the powers of evil and rescues us from Satan. Baptism drowns the old Adam. The word of forgiveness destroys sin. And the Supper gives us life and strength for the week to come as we venture into hostile territory. This is the battle Christ fights for you, this is the battle He wages even against your own sin, as He takes it away from you and kills it upon the Cross.

It’s a battle. And battles often become loud and scary and confusing. Yet take heart; the victory remains with Jesus, and you are won to eternal life by Him!

“Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these I will give You, if you fall down and worship me.” – Matthew 4:8-9

Satan here lays out for Jesus a very simple fact. One that we don’t like. Satan owned us. Satan is ‘this world’s prince’ as Luther has us sing it. And that’s not something we think about. It’s not something we ponder. We toss Satan off into a corner and like to forget about him once the Sunday service is over. We don’t talk about evil either – even when there’s a disaster we can’t say that someone was evil; there’s surely some systemic flaw or we were lacking some law that would have kept everyone safe.

Satan cuts across all that. See this world, Jesus? It’s mine, and its full of wickedness and evil and I like it that way. And yet, Satan seeks to cut a deal. The Evil One knows that Jesus is out to win you and I away from Satan’s clutches. He knows Jesus comes to take us out of Satan’s Kingdom into God’s Kingdom. So, Satan offers a solution. Jesus, just be my number two fella. You can have all of these people to do with as you please. All you have to do in return is worship me instead of destroying me.

Satan offers Jesus a plan of “salvation” (if you can even call it that) without the Cross. No messy Good Friday. No battle stupendous. No pain. But, you could still gain, Jesus! And as we know from the Gospel account, Jesus will have none of it. Of course He wouldn’t. It was false worship that got mankind into this mess, therefore false worship won’t fix it. We were not created by God just to spend a few years living out lives of sin. We were created to live forever with God.

And so Jesus Christ came down from heaven into a world full of real sin and violence and wickedness. A world that always tries to justify and explain all that sin away. But, instead of mollycoddling sin and death, Jesus took it all up and destroyed sin and death upon the cross. He rose on the Third Day to trample Satan under His feet. From this alone, we can believe that Jesus is determined to deliver us from evil, no matter what, all thanks be to God.

“And after flogging Him, they will kill Him, and on the third day He will rise.”

Even when Jesus spelled it out, even when He told them point blank about His death and resurrection for a third time, the disciples didn’t get it. They didn’t want a suffering and dying Messiah, they wanted a Messiah who was going to kick some backside and take some names! They wanted a Messiah who was going to rule and give them goodies galore. Isn’t that what we want a Messiah, a “god” to do? Give us more and more “blessings” – by which we mean stuff and might and power? By nature, we’d prefer a God who is like a kindly uncle who shows up, gives us a bunch of gifts, and then leaves us alone.

Jesus can’t do that, though. He won’t. Why? Because Jesus knows what sin is. Sin isn’t something to be brushed off lightly – sin is death. Sin breaks and destroys and kills. How often has sin broken friendships, destroyed your joy and peace, killed things you hold dear? We try to brush that under the rug, move on; pretend it never happened, and pretend it will never happen again. But Jesus doesn’t ignore sin. He doesn’t pat it on the head. Jesus doesn’t affirm sin. Instead, He becomes man and takes up your sin onto Himself, and He drags it to the cross in His own flesh, and He kills sin even with His own death.

Then, He will rise. He will rise triumphant over sin and give you life. True life. Life that isn’t defined by how much money you have, or how many likes and favorites. No, Jesus gives you true life – Himself. Jesus gives Himself to you. Having taken away your sin, He doesn’t leave you empty and on your own, He makes you to be His own holy temple. He promises to be with you all your days, because He knows that you still wander a sinful world and still have your own sinful flesh that fights against you. And He will not abandon you to that, He won’t treat your temptations lightly. Instead, He will be with you to return you to your Baptism and strengthen you with His Body and Blood over and over – even until you die and rise and sin is made truly a thing of the past. This is the blessing, this is the victory Jesus is determined to win for you, and He will let nothing get in the way of His love and salvation for you.

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God.”

As a Pastor, few things get me more antsy than getting ready to hear someone talk about the “Parable of the Sower” – you know, there’s some seed that falls on the path and is eaten by the birds, and some that falls in rocky soil and withers, and some that falls in the weeds and thorns and is choked out, and some that bears a great harvest. Jesus even goes on to explain the parable, but I have heard more lousy presentations on this text than any other.

The push so often is a “how do we sow the Word of God better or more efficiently” – and the parable gets used as a pretext talk about some new “strategy” that we have. But that’s not the parable. We call it the parable of the sower, but Jesus says, “Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God.” And in the story, the Word of God goes all over the place – generously. Even to places we wouldn’t expect. It’s not a very efficient tale.

But what the parable does do when we consider that the seed is the Word of God is that it shows us three ways that Satan attacks the Word of God that is given to us. The birds come – Satan will simply try to cut you off from hearing the Word. Be on guard against anything that would pull you away from hearing God’s Word! Or there are times of temptation, and if there are no roots, we get into trouble. So be rooted in Christ; remember always that you are His baptized child, both on good days and bad, and remain attentive to His Word. Or there are times of plenty, where we get tempted to be just too busy or too focused on “stuff” for God’s Word – and we get into trouble then.

Over and against all of that, be in the Word. Remain in it. Hear it again and again, because it is in His Word that you learn to see and understand God’s love for you, where you receive it. It is by the Word that the Holy Spirit is given to you so that you would believe. It’s by the Word that you are forgiven of all your sins and strengthened for whatever trials come your way. That’s why Christ generously gives His Word to you over and over again.

HT Meditation – Transfiguration

They hit the dirt. All of them. Peter, James, and John had been invited to the mountaintop to see Jesus transfigured, to hear Him talking with Moses and Elijah. It had been a great and awesome thing! Wonderful to behold. Perhaps a little too wonderful for Peter, because he says, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Yeah, it’s great hearing you talk to Moses and Elijah, but maybe I should go get busy doing something instead of just listening.

Then the voice of the Father rings out, cutting Peter and his plans off. “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” Stop yammering and planning Peter and just listen! And they all the dirt. Peter does, and James and John too. And rightfully so. Sinners who have gone against God’s plans tended to die, so three sinners duck and cover.

And there stands Jesus, seeing His three cowering disciples. By rights they should die, by rights their bodies should return to the dirt from which man was created. Sinful man had spent generation after generation not listening to the Word of God. But Jesus is not done with them. Instead, He goes to them and He touches them. “Rise, and have no fear.”

God’s plan isn’t centered around smiting. Nope. It is centered in Christ Jesus who Himself becomes man (see, He touched them, physically). And Jesus becomes man so as to go to the cross and die as sinful man deserves to die. He dies to forgive sins, so that man would not have to be terrified of God any longer. He dies so that He would rise and then be able to say to Peter, to James and John, to us come the last day, “Rise!”

And on that day, we will have no fear. Our own bodies will become like His glorious and resurrected body. And until that Last Day, Jesus continually comes to us in His Word, pulling us away from all our busy little plans, and He tells us again of His love, His salvation, His forgiveness. Jesus draws us unto Himself, so that we see Him, now and forever.