Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost - Proper 20
September 23, 2012 - Pastor Adam Moline
Jeremiah
11:18-20 James 3:13-4:10 Mark 9:30-37
Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today comes from the Old Testament lesson just read, especially
these words, “But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” Thus far our text.
Dear friends in
Christ. What do you think of when you
hear the word slaughter? Do you think of
chickens losing their heads and making their way into your freezer? Do you think of duck season that opened
yesterday? Or maybe you don’t think of
food at all, maybe you think of war, of fighting, of murder. Do you think of the untold millions of babies
who were vacuumed out of women’s bodies this year? Do you think of ambassadors and army
personnel losing their lives over seas?
Do you think of the great number of people killed in Vietnam and
Cambodia? For me, slaughter means lots
of blood, lots of gore, lots of suffering.
What about you? What exactly do
you think of when you hear the word Slaughter?
Slaughter is the
cost of sin. Blood is the price that
must be paid for people who are guilty.
Something innocent must be taken, and slaughtered, murdered, destroyed,
so that sins might be taken away. An
animal must be massacred, and then, and only then will forgiveness be
given. In fact, the law requires that
nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood
there is no forgiveness. (Hebrews 9:22)
Forgiveness is
what was needed in Jeremiah’s day. The
people of Israel had fallen into apostasy.
They had turned their backs on God.
They worshipped false gods and goddesses, like Baal and Ashtoreth. Their kings ignored true prophets and instead
listened to false prophets who told them exactly what their itching ears wanted
them to hear. They stole, they swore,
they failed in their duties as fathers and mothers, they didn’t teach the
faith. They were sinners. Or to put it plainly, they were people just
like you and me.
Jeremiah came and
preached to them. Jeremiah came and told
them the truth, that they were guilty, and that God’s just judgment was coming,
that if they did not repent and turn from their sin that the Babylonians would
come and take them away.
The people laughed
when Jeremiah told them this. The people
ignored Jeremiah, even throwing him into a pit to stop him from preaching this
nonsense. They didn’t perform the sacrifice
for forgiveness. They didn’t believe
God’s word through his prophet. There
wasn’t blood sacrifice for sin. But
slaughter would still come. The
Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem, driving Jeremiah to Egypt, and taking the
rest of the people into exile. After all, that is the price of sin – Slaughter,
blood, massacre.
Dear friends, do
you think your sin is any less serious?
Do you think that the cost for your own forgiveness is any less dire
than the slaughter mentioned in our text today?
You are just as guilty. You are
just as sinful. And you and me, we
ignore our guilt just as much as the people of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s
day.
It’s exactly what
James says in our epistle today. Look at
your life. “You desire and do not have,
so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do
not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do
not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You
adulterous people!”
We sin daily. We curse, swear, lie, steal, hate, gossip,
fail every day. We fail to live up to
that perfect standard set up by God. And
so there must be a slaughtering on our behalf.
There must be blood out poured for you and me. There must be a massacre and carnage, there
must be a blood sacrifice. There must be blood, and it must either be your own
or someone else’s.
That’s the catch
isn’t it. We don’t want our own blood
shed. We want someone elses shed for
us. We want someone else to hurt,
someone else to bleed, someone else to die for us, because we are too
frightened to do it on our own. And
that, dear friends in who Jesus is.
Jesus is the one
who has come for the explicit purpose of shedding his blood for you. He is the one who came to be led like a
gentle sheep to the slaughter in your place.
He is the one who came to die, he’s the one to take the punishment, he’s
the one to set you free from sin and death.
It’s Jesus, That’s his purpose, that’s what Jesus would do for you. That’s the person your God is. A person who loves you so that he gives up
his life in your place.
That’s exactly
what Jesus tells his disciples in our text today. “‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered
into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is
killed, after three days he will rise.’ But
they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.” We so often don’t understand who Jesus is
either. We make him out to be a nice
guy, or a great teacher, or a law giver who says, “Just accept my invitation,
and then I’ll bless you.”
Its true, Jesus is
a nice guy. Its true, Jesus loved
everyone, and that we ought to do the same in faith. But none of these things matter one lick, one
iota, unless Jesus is the lamb of slaughter who goes to suffering and death in
your place. Jesus is only “Jesus” if
he’s slaughtered for you.
The blood from
that slaughter covers you in baptism.
That blood washes away your guilt, your shame, your weakness, and leaves
you forgiven forever. The blood from the
slaughter of Jesus makes you well. The
blood heals your sin, and makes you once again forever a holy people of
God. And you know that hope will be
forever, for Christ did not stay slaughtered, he rose again, and even now lives
and reigns in heaven forever.
That’s the
promise. That’s the joy of a slaughtered
Jesus. That’s the hope we all share in
him. That we are forgiven in blood, that
Christ has been slaughtered for you, and that you have hope now forever
more. He’s your God, He’s the Lamb of
Slaughter, He’s Jesus, your hope and joy.
Amen.
