Greetings and welcome to this Lenten devotion. And I'm glad that you have joined us as I'm going to be doing a devotion each day, Monday through Wednesday, as we are now in Holy Week, the week of Christ's passion. And we look for his suffering and death for our sins as a focus this week. And of course, looking towards Easter Sunday with the victorious resurrection and victory over sin, death, and the devil. And I haven't done this before as far as a Holy Week devotional by video or anything like that, but I felt like during this year, 2020, where we're not able to gather in person like we like to as much recently. And so this would be another way to stay connected with people and hopefully encourage you in your devotion during this time as we reflect on what our Lord has done for us. So I'm in my home office today. I'm making this recording and I'll do one of these each of the three days, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then we have our Maundy Thursday, Good Friday service that's going to be live streamed. And then of course some great events coming up on Easter. What I'm going to do, this is not an in-depth scholarly study or something. I've prepared a lot of notes for you. It's devotional, and I'm actually going to read to you something written by Martin Luther in 1519. He writes something called A Meditation on Christ's Passion, or as Concordia put out a little booklet, which we have in our gathering room years ago when Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ film came out, there was a lot of, you know, awareness of this in society, and it was a very popular movie, they put it out as how to meditate on the passion of the Christ. And so I'm going to give you a little background of it today. And then there's 15 basically paragraphs, points in this. And so we're going to do five each day. I'm going to try to keep it to a reasonable length as it's a devotion, but we want to look at about five of these each day. And I think there's a very powerful, I guess you'd call it a tract, especially for his time that was really meant for the common people to help them in their personal spiritual devotion. It was a pastoral thing that he wrote. And fairly early in the Reformation period, remember 1517 is the 95 Theses toward the end of 1517 and by 1519 things are really ramping up here as I'm going to read you some of this introduction. So that's what we're going to look at for our devotion. So again, let me give you a little more background on Sunday, March 13, Luther wrote to his friend George Spallatin, who was a friend of his. He went to law school with him, and Spallatin ended up being the secretary for Prince Frederick, and that's how they communicated back and forth with each other. And he says, I am planning a treatise dealing with the meditation of Christ's passion. I do not know, however, when I shall have enough leisure to write it out, yet I shall try hard. In the same letter, he cites the reason for his lack of leisure. He has activities directed toward the renewal of the university curriculum, his work on the Lord's Prayer, a commentary on Galatians, and particularly pressing in Urxom his intense study of canon law in preparation for the upcoming Leipzig debate with John Eck in July of that year. So as he always was, Luther was a pretty busy guy dealing with all this. But this is so Luther here. So he writes this, I'm going to do this, I don't know when, because I've got all this other stuff going on. Nevertheless, three weeks later, on April 5th, Luther sent a printed copy of his work on the Passion to Spalatin. Again, classic Luther here. This thing was incredibly popular. By 1524, there are 24 editions that have been printed throughout what is today Germany. There's a Latin edition, a German edition. It was included in Luther's book of sermons as a Good Friday sermon. Maybe I'll preach it one year as a Good Friday sermon. Probably not this year since we're doing this, but it can certainly just be preached as a Good Friday sermon. And it was very popular. It says it was a test to the inner needs of the common man. It has a very pastoral emphasis, as I said. It even attracted a lot more readers than even some of his more you know, polemic works where he's criticizing the theology of Rome and his other opponents. So, you know, this was an important thing, and this was a deep-rooted thing throughout the history of the Church, especially in the medieval period, to meditate on the passion of Christ. So this was a very contemporary thing that people knew about, and Luther's trying to say this is the way that it should be done. So a lot of these works, it says, were accompanied with woodcuts showing the crucified Christ, Christ on the cross with Mary and John standing at the foot of the cross. That artwork accompanied a lot of this. All right, so that's just a little bit about it. So let's go ahead and jump right into it. So we have time to hear again Luther's words translated to English, and then I'll throw in a few comments on each thing. All right, so the first three points that he makes are dealing with ways that people incorrectly or incompletely reflect on Christ's passion. that were common in the time, and he's saying these aren't really adequate, at least as the entire way that it should be done. First one. Some people meditate on Christ's passion by venting their anger on the Jews. This singing and ranting about wretched Judas satisfies them, for they are in the habit of complaining about other people, of condemning and reproaching their adversaries. That might well be a meditation on the wickedness of Judas and the Jews, but not on the suffering of Christ. Antisemitism has been around for a long time, and you know, Luther is taking his own criticism for some of the things that he wrote about the Jews, especially later in his life, which most of his, you know, rantings, if you want to call them that, were theological as opposed to ethnic. But here he's saying, and this was a common thing, this is, you know, Lent can be seen as the anti-Jew time, you know, blaming the Jews for everything that happened to Jesus, although, you know, he himself was Jewish. And so he said that's a popular way, but not the best way to meditate on the passion of the Christ. As we're going to see later, the Jews, especially the religious authorities, they did play a key role in sending Jesus to the cross, but that was not the only reason why Jesus died on the cross. And we'll see a little bit of that today. So, again, this plays on our sinful nature in that we always want to talk about other groups of people past the buck. Oh, yeah, those bad people over there, that's why we have these problems in America or we have these problems in the church. It's, you know, these people who want to do this and it should be done this way. So we always want to project on others and pass the blame. And he's saying that's kind of what this Jew-bashing way of observing Lent was. 2. Some point to the manifold benefits and fruits that grow from contemplating Christ's passion. There is a saying ascribed to Albertus, who was one of the teachers of St. Thomas Aquinas, about this, that it is more beneficial to ponder Christ's passion just once than to fast for a whole year or pray a psalm daily, etc. These people follow this saying blindly and therefore do not reap the fruit of Christ's passion. For in doing so, they are seeking their own advantage. They carry pictures and booklets, letters and crosses on their person. Some will travel afar, do this, and they believe that this thus will protect themselves against water and sword, fire and all sorts of peril. Christ's suffering is thus used to effect in them a lack of suffering, contrary to His being in nature. So this is the kind of ritualistic way. If I just think on, and again, this still goes on in some quarters of Christianity today. If I can go to this certain holy site or I can have this picture of a saint or this cross that's going to bring me blessing, this trinket or that, this idea, or I spend this many hours in prayer, so we still see that in our world today in some quarters of Christianity. If we want to put this on Protestantism, then we still see it as kind of like, well, if I have enough faith or if I pray for so many hours, maybe God's going to bring me a blessing or something like that. So the idea is that meditating on Christ's passion was so important. that you received blessings for it. And Luther's criticizing this in typical Luther fashion because I love how he puts it, well, if the point is to reflect on Christ's suffering and death for us, but if by doing this you are getting stuff that you want, you're being protected, you're getting blessings, What's the point? So even if this didn't work, you're kind of defeating the purpose of solemnly reflecting and penitential reflecting if you're going to get something out of it, right? So it kind of turns the meaning of it on its head. 3. Some feel pity for Christ, lamenting and bewailing His innocence. They are like the women who followed Christ from Jerusalem and were chided and told by Christ that it would be better to weep for themselves and their children. They are the kind of people who go far afield in their meditation on the Passion, making much of Christ's farewell from Bethany and of the Virgin Mary's anguish, but never progressing beyond that, which is why so many hours are devoted to the contemplation of Christ's Passion. Only God knows whether it is invented for the purpose of sleeping or for waking." Again, I love the little humor Luther puts in this. And the footnote here is that this was a common practice where people were We're expected to go to gatherings in the church or whatever and spend hours, sometimes four, five, or more hours contemplating on Christ's passion. Undoubtedly, some people would fall asleep during this process. That's what he's talking about. Only God knows whether this is invented for the purpose of sleeping or for waking. And he continues, "...also to this group belong those who have learned what rich fruits of the Holy Mass offers. In their civil-mindedness, they think it is enough simply to hear the Mass." And at the time, what we call the Divine Service, even the Lutheran Reformers referred to it as the Mass, so he's using that term. In support of this, several teachers are cited to us who hold that the Mass is opere operere, non opere operennis, that's Latin, that basically means is it effective in itself without merit and worthiness, and this is all that is needed. Yet the Mass was not instituted for its own worthiness, but to make us worthy and to remind us of the Passion of Christ. Where that is not done, we make of the Mass a physical and unfruitful act, though even this is of some good. Of what help is it to you that God is God, if He is not God to you? Of what benefit is it to you that food and drink are good and wholesome in themselves, if they are not healthy for you? And it is to be feared that many Masses will not improve matters, as long as we do not seek the right fruit in them. Okay, so what's he talking about here? He's talking about, and a lot of this goes on today, kind of, if I do enough stuff. Well, first of all, he's talking about the feeling pity over the suffering, the beating, and just the abuse that Christ took, and how Mary felt, you know, witnessing all that. And that's certainly terrible, and that's part of our Lenten reflection, but he's saying you can't stop there. A lot of people never progress, because, I mean, again, if you saw the Passion of the Christ movie, and you just saw how it was portrayed, just this bloody pulp that Jesus was put to, I mean, even someone who wasn't a Christian, how could you not feel sorry for him? How could you not feel sorry for his mother? I mean, this guy really didn't do anything wrong, and he's being treated so horribly. Well, but the point is here, this isn't just some innocent guy who got caught up in the system. This is the Son of God, and we're gonna get to that. So we can think about the suffering, the mental anguish, emotional anguish of Mary as she's around when all this is happening and witnessing at the cross, but we can't just stop there, okay? Because lots of people can suffer horrible things, but not for the same reason that Jesus did. And then he goes on about this idea of mass. In a lot of churches, you have extra services during Lent. But is it the act of going to a bunch of services or spending a lot of time in prayer that gives us the merit? No. No. And he gives it here even with the mass, the divine service. What's so great about it? God comes to us. God comes to us and gives us his gifts. So it's not just enough to go in there. The act of going to church or the act of spending X number of hours in prayers is that God is is giving us his gifts here Okay number four Four and five now we're getting to away from the improper ways to more of, or incomplete at least, ways to some of the blessed things we're starting to really drill down here. Now, of course, there's a lot of other ways people misuse Lent today in thinking about Christ's Passion. Some people make a big deal about their fasting, what they're fasting from, and Jesus cautions us against that in Acts 6. It's great to fast, but it's not to be done in a self-righteous way or a showy way. Even the whole idea, a big thing, especially in the Catholic Church, is the fish on Friday, fasting for meat. But of course there has to be a loophole where you can eat fish. Some people, they have these giant fish fries with all kinds of fixins and everything, and it's just giant. It's like, That's really suffering. Yeah, I mean, it's really rough Friday going to this giant fish fry and getting all this good food. It might be the best meal you ate that week, you know. And the other thing is a lot of times people just skip Lent. That's kind of how our world celebrates Easter. Well, let's skip over the penitential stuff, the sin, death, the dark stuff, and let's just buy Easter eggs and baskets and Easter bunnies. You know, let's just skip over all that and go right to the the celebration, which maybe we'll mention Jesus, maybe we won't, you know. So there's lots of improper ways to observe it. All right, let's go to four and five here because we're running out of time. I want to kind of take this to a reasonable length of time. 4. They contemplate Christ's passion aright, who view it with a terror-stricken heart and a despairing conscience. This terror must be felt as you witness the stern wrath and unchanging earnestness with which God looks upon sin and sinners, so much that so He was unwilling to release sinners even for His only and dearest Son without His payment of the severest penalty for them. Thus he says in Isaiah 53, I have chastened him for the transgressions of my people. If the dearest child is punished thus, what will be the fate of sinners? It must be an inexpressible and unbearable earnestness that forces such great and infinite person to suffer and die to appease it. And if you seriously consider that it is God's very own Son, the eternal wisdom of the Father who suffers, you will be terrified indeed. The more you think about it, the more intensely you will be frightened. Okay, so now we're not projecting, we're starting to look inward. And we're saying, yes, our sin is serious and that should terrify us because God's wrath against sin is something fierce, it's something powerful. It's nothing to be trifled with. And he makes the point here, God's wrath against sin is so strong It cost the life of his only begotten son. It wasn't just enough for Jesus to come to earth and live a good life. Perfect life, actually. He had to die. He had to die. Shed his own blood. So that's why it's not just simply the suffering that we want to focus on, the physical suffering he went through. It's that this is God pouring out his wrath. The Father is pouring out his wrath on his own son. Why? for us, because our sin is so heinous that this was the only way that it can be paid for. So powerful, powerful thought there. So the thought of facing God in our sins, facing the full wrath of God when we see what was poured out on his son, Jesus, God in the flesh, that should terrify us. because he who spared not his own son. All right, number five. So I know I'm over 15 minutes now, so I was trying to keep it to 15. We'll shoot for 20 here today, okay? Maybe tomorrow we won't have all the introduction stuff, but. You must get to this thought through your head and not doubt that you are the one who is torturing Christ. Thus for your sins have surely wrought this. In Acts 2, St. Peter frightened the Jews like a peel of thunder when he said to all them, you crucified him. Consequently, 3,000 alarmed and terrified Jews asked the apostles on that day, O dearest brethren, what shall we do now? Therefore, when you see the nails piercing Christ's hands, you can be certain that it is your work. When you behold his crown of thorns, you may rest assured that these are your evil thoughts, etc." It's getting personal, right? This is the way to reflect on Christ's passion. read about, or we watch a movie, or we think about those nails that the Roman soldiers pounded into Christ. It wasn't just those Roman soldiers who pounded those nails. It might as well have been us doing it. Because we're the ones, through our sin, nailing Him to the cross. As it says that you crucified Him, not Those people over there, yes, because we're all sinners. Not this group over here. Each and every one of us is the reason Jesus went to the cross. Our sin, the sin that we have committed against the just and holy God. And just like it said in that passage of Mass, what do we do now? Well, there's nothing we can do except trust Christ. I'll close with this, and I've referenced the Passion of the Christ movie, and that's when Concordia Publishing re-released this track. The scene in the movie where Jesus is being nailed to the cross, I mean, it's pretty hard to watch if you've seen it, and if you haven't, you can imagine. And I remember seeing an interview with Mel Gibson about that, about the making of it. In the movie, you just see the hand holding the hammer, nailing these in. And he said that that was actually him that did that in the filming. You know, his face isn't shown or anything, but because of this, going back to this point here that he wanted to emphasize to himself that, I put him there. I put him there. And we all have. So I pray this devotion has been a blessing to you today. And again, I love to read Luther because 500 years later, the words just really, you know, they hit home and they speak to us. Again, maybe not exactly the same abuses as in time, but some similar ones with the same need, the same wicked sinners and the same solution. in Jesus Christ giving himself for us. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for your servant, Martin Luther, who has written this tract for us to reflect on this Lenten season. May we reflect on your passion in a right and proper way. Yes, understanding the physical pain and the suffering that you went through, but ultimately, that it was for us. The spiritual anguish as you took on my sin, your sin, the sin of all in the world. As your son lived a perfect life as God, you are perfect and holy, but we are fallen, wretched sinners, and we thank you that you have come and saved us. So may we go forth this week in a repentant and penitent frame of mind, and also knowing that your forgiveness is for us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.