Tuesday of All Saints – Revelation 7:2-17

Revelation 7:2-17

²Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, ³saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” ⁴And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
⁵12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed,12,000 from the tribe of Reuben,12,000 from the tribe of Gad, ⁶12,000 from the tribe of Asher,12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali,12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, ⁷12,000 from the tribe of Simeon,12,000 from the tribe of Levi,12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, ⁸12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun,12,000 from the tribe of Joseph,12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.

⁹After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,¹⁰and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” ¹¹And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

¹³Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?”¹⁴I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
¹⁵“Therefore they are before the throne of God,
   and serve him day and night in his temple;
   and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
¹⁶ They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
   nor any scorching heat.
¹⁷For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
   and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

My first parish out of the seminary was a small congregation on the north side of Salt Lake City. The community was dominated by LDS churches. Something like 92% of the population were LDS and many of them were ardently LDS. We had a small youth group, about 5 teens. While being in high school is always a challenge, in that context it could be doubly difficult. My parish raised the funds and sent this little group to the LCMS National Youth Gathering. It was one of the best things we ever did for them. The programing was great, and the week spent in service, worship, and play was excellent. But what truly made the difference was the first night and walking into a stadium filled with nearly 30,000 young Lutherans.

I had taught all these young people in confirmation class. We had spoken about the fact that the Christian church was far larger than the LDS church. But they really could not internalize that. For those who grew up in that community, they had been a tiny minority in every classroom they had ever experienced. I remember one young man standing in awe at the entrance to the arena seating area. He looked at me and asked, “Who are all these people?” I told him they were all Lutherans, like him. He spent the next five days getting his head around that. He had no idea that there were so many Lutheran young people. I think he went back to school that fall feeling differently.

Survivors of persecution have told me that the final goal of the evil one is to cause you to lose hope. The devil wants nothing more than to cause the Christian to believe that God has forgotten about you, that you are alone, the last one, a dying minority, insignificant and inconsequential. I do not think that is only in places and times of persecution. The devil works that same despair in many ways. Do you look around your parish on a Sunday morning and feel some of it? You might think that there was a time when this parish needed this big building, but now its pews are mostly empty. Perhaps your church is full. Praise God! That is not true for most Christian churches in North America. This sense of being alone has only been exacerbated by the pandemic of recent years. Our every human interaction is tinged with fear for some people today. Some elect not to come to worship because they are especially vulnerable. Zoom meetings and video services are what we can do, but they are not the same as time spent together. It is easy for the Christian to feel isolated.

Look at verse 9 in this reading again. The author was exiled to Patmos, in a cave, all alone. It must have been glorious for him to see that vision of a mighty, innumerable host. This is the reason God is sharing it with you: you need to see it too. You need that experience of that young man standing in the arena in San Antonio many years ago. You are part of a great and mighty host. You are gathered around the throne and the Lamb every Sunday.

Monday of All Saints – Prayer of the Week

Dr. Phil Brandt is the author of these devotions I post every week. We thank the Lord for his insight into the Scriptures!

Monday of All Saints – Prayer of the Week

Almighty and everlasting God, You knit together Your faithful people of all times and places into one holy communion, the mystical body of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Grant us so to follow Your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living that, together with them, we may come to the unspeakable joys You have prepared for those who love You; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

My grandmother was a woman of extraordinary skills, not necessarily the skills people appreciate today, but skills, nonetheless. I believe that in another time/place she might have excelled at mathematics. She could hold complicated patterns in her head. People would bring her a piece of torn lace and she could fix it. Making lace involves a complicated interplay of threads to create the intricate patterns in which people delight. She was able to look at a piece of lace and understand the pattern and the complicated stitching required to construct that pattern. She kept a vast collection of thread in her home and could often match dye lots. It was said that when she handed the piece back to you, you could not tell where the tear had been, it was like new.

The prayer says that God knits us together. In complicated relationships and mystical bonds, God has united all his people of every time and place into one people. As we have celebrated All Saints Day many of us might have come to this day mourning the passing of a friend, a sibling, a parent, a child, or a spouse. I find myself in that list in unexpected ways this All Saints Day. When I first read this prayer, I immediately thought of my grandmother with her knitting needles in hand, clacking in the corner of her home. She could also knit very fast while talking even faster.

Today I count on those bonds. My grandmother died some years ago, a life well lived and full of years, leaving a ragged, painful hole in the lives of the folks who loved her. More recently my own wife died very unexpectedly. That ragged hole will take even longer to heal. Yet, when I come to the sacrament of the altar and partake of that feast, I am eating with her and all my loved ones who have been gathered into Jesus’ arms. As I hold that host in my hand and partake of that chalice, the meal is expanded to include all the saints. It is good to have a meal with grandma again. It is good sit down with Stephanie and share the feast.

Friday of the Week of Reformation – John 8:31–36

John 8:31–36

³¹So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” ³³They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

³⁴Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵ The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. ³⁶So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ³⁷I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. ³⁸ I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

I grew up in a little community in rural Missouri. Densely populated with German farmers, it was an archipelago of Lutherans in a sea of Baptists, Methodists, Assemblies of God, and others. In one of the corners of that community was a church in the little gathering of houses which everyone called Flora. That church had a wonderful story to tell. In the days of the American Civil War the ancestors of those German farmers had stood up for abolition and the Union. This was not a distant issue for them. Their neighbors, who had migrated from Kentucky and Virginia, were largely slave-owners, raising hemp for the ropes that bound the bales of cotton. There were many slaves who toiled in fields close to those farmers. After the Civil War, the slaves were freed, and they sought refuge among the Germans. Well into the 20^th century, that little country church was thoroughly integrated.

I think the farmers in Flora saw God do something in those days of war and fear. After the war, the formerly slave-holding neighbors had tried violence and intimidation to cow the slaves and the German farmers alike. The violence probably served to drive them together but soon it was not fear but love that kept them there. Some of the members of Flora congregation had been freed from literal chains and bondage. Others, however, had been freed from a more subtle bondage to prejudice and freed to see the world through different, Gospel-oriented eyes.

The descendants of those slaves in Flora, for the most part, joined the great migration of their kindred to the industrial cities of the north in the early and middle part of the 20^th century. There were jobs there and a promise of a better future for their children. They often worked in the factories that made automobiles. Those cars replaced horses and that meant that there was no need for a church every few miles. Eventually the little congregation in Flora closed. Several of its members joined my father’s congregation and I got to know them. “The folks from Flora are a little different,” people used to say. But they did not mean it in a bad way. They meant that the folk from Flora could see things a little differently, graciously. They always had room in their heart to lend a hand or welcome someone. They heard Gospel calling them to love.

The Son has set you free. You are free indeed.

Thursday of the Week of Reformation – Romans 3:19–28

Romans 3:19–28

¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

²¹But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

²⁷ Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.²⁸For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

In late 1945 Colonel Burton Andrus had a difficult task. He was the commandant of a special prison in Nuremberg, Germany where Nazi war criminals were being held, awaiting trial. He had run across a man whom he thought could help, Army Chaplain Henry Gereke who was deployed in nearby Munich to aid in rebuilding a bombed-out hospital. For the next year Pr. Gereke and his Roman Catholic counterpart, Sixtus O’Conner, served the spiritual needs of some of the most hated men in all the world, the captured leaders of Hitler’s thoroughly wicked regime. There was a recently released movie about it called Nuremberg. I saw it on the plane to Germany last spring.

The sentence which begins at the end of verse 22 and runs into verse 25 would prove to be key to Pr. Gereke’s ministry for that year as the men were tried. Some were acquitted; others were found guilty. Some were sentenced to prison and some to be executed. All of them received the admonition to repent and to be forgiven. Consequences for crimes might still need to be exacted, but Gereke forgave and communed several of the men entrusted to his care.

The New Testament and these verses in particular make a shocking claim about what Jesus has done in his incarnation, death, and resurrection. He has forgiven the sins of the whole world, all of them, not just the sins we understand or the ones which we tolerate. He died for and forgave all of them. We dare not make this into a pat answer. Paul’s message to us is incredibly hard if you are a victim of abuse or some other atrocity. Pr. Gereke received hundreds of letters filled with hatred because he had ministered to these men. Some who had suffered could only see them as monsters who should be killed. They were the enemy and deserved no comfort. But Pr. Gereke listened to his New Testament as he walked with the condemned to their execution. He prayed with them and, if they asked, he absolved them. Jesus had died for them too.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who also suffered terribly in the 20^th century, once said, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” As Paul says, “there is no distinction, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift.”

This troubled world needs to hear those words anew and afresh. In 1945 he called an LCMS Lutheran Pastor to those men in Nuremburg. Today he calls you and me to speak into the conflicts and tensions of this moment. There is so much that is wrong. Jesus died for all it.

Wednesday of the Week of Reformation – Psalm 46

Psalm 46

¹God is our refuge and strength,
   a very present help in trouble.
²Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
   though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
³though its waters roar and foam,
   though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
Selah

⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
   the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
   God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶ The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
   he utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

⁸ Come, behold the works of the LORD,
   how he has brought desolations on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
   he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the chariots with fire.
¹⁰ “Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
   I will be exalted in the earth!”
¹¹ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Selah

His friends looked on with growing alarm that day in mid-April of 1521. Luther stood before the Emperor and the assembled members of the imperial nobility. He refused their demand that he disavow his writings. The Emperor was not used to being disobeyed, especially by a lowly monk. Luther could be somewhat politically obtuse. His friends grabbed him firmly by the elbow and escorted him out of the room and they just kept walking. They smiled at the guards, walked through the city gate, and came to the horses and cart which they had prepared for just such an emergency. They sent Luther out of town before he could be arrested. Somewhere outside of town, Luther’s party was surrounded, and he was taken “prisoner.”

Many people thought that was the end of Luther, but it was not. His prince, the Elector Frederick, sometimes called “the Wise” but perhaps the German is better translated “the Crafty,” had arranged for Luther to be kidnapped and brought to a secure fortress high on a hill in Saxony. It still stands and you can visit. It is called the Wartburg.

In the 16 months he spent in the Wartburg, Luther grew a beard and took on a new identity as Knight George. We even have a painting of him at the time. I have included it for you. The psalm this week repeats the phrase: “the God of Jacob is our fortress.” Those words would become the opening blast of Luther’s most famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” As Luther pondered God and the Reformation from that lofty perch in the Wartburg, he probably prayed and meditated upon this psalm. As a monk he recited his way through the psalter. People build fortresses like the Wartburg to defend against an enemy. Luther was safe there, at least from the emperor. But the emperor was not Luther’s only foe. To be safe from those other foes like sin, death, and devil, would take another fortress, a fortress which Luther sings about in that hymn and this psalm describes. Inside that fortress city the river of life flows. Outside is chaos and tumult. You have been brought to that fortress in your baptism and the promise of God to you. Here we may rest unmolested by the world, the devil, or anyone else. A mighty fortress is our God, a trusty shield and weapon; He helps us free from ev’ry need That hath us now o’ertaken.

Tuesday of the Week of Reformation – Revelation 14:6–7

Revelation 14:6–7

⁶Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. ⁷And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

Anyone who opens their newsfeed or watches the news on TV these days encounters a world of violence, cruelty, and war. As I write these words, the horrific images coming from the Middle East and Ukraine assault my heart. It feels like the social order of the post-world war II time is unraveling in real time. In times like this, people are often drawn to the words of John’s Apocalypse.

The author of these words, John, lived in time when emperors ruled the vast Roman state. Sometimes the emperors were good and able rulers. Augustus and Tiberius had long and stable reigns. Other emperors were unstable personally and the empire might be wracked with unrest. John wrote these words in the days of Diocletian, a particularly unstable man who lashed out at many people, including Christians.

When the emperor died a new emperor would be proclaimed. A herald would come into the community, blow a trumpet, and announce “good news – the reign of…has begun.” The Bible picks up that formula to describe Christian preaching. Paul, Peter, and the rest of the early church apostles and preachers were heralds of a new king with a twist. Instead of announcing that the old emperor had died, and a new rule had begun; they announced that Jesus had risen, and his eternal reign had begun. They used much of the same language that the heralds of a new emperor used. You might think about that when it comes time to inaugurate whoever wins this election.

That Christian proclamation has continued through the rise and fall of republics, monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. For 2000 years, Christians have gathered, heard words of absolution, participated in heaven’s feast, and been welcomed into fellowship with God himself. I make no prognostications about elections or the consequences of victories or losses in the political or international arenas. Such things will make a difference for some things in our lives, but the most important things will remain unchanged, for they are under a different lordship altogether. They belong to Christ and his gracious kingdom. Pray for our country, vote if you have not already, and rest in the assurance that the Kingdom of Christ has been proclaimed.

Monday of the Week of Reformation – Prayer for the Week

Prayer for the Week

Almighty and gracious Lord, pour out Your Holy Spirit on Your faithful people.  Keep us steadfast in Your grace and truth, protect and deliver us in times of temptation, defend us against all enemies, and grant to Your Church Your saving peace; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

When you are a Pastor, you learn that God calls all sorts of people to faith. Some are loud and brassy; others are quiet. Some are smart; others are not so intellectually gifted. Some are competent at fixing the church’s water heater, others not so much. God loves them all, so preachers had better get used to loving them all too. I have found over the years that God has a way of surprising me with people, opening my eyes to things which I, in my educated arrogance, had never imagined.

Had you seen her; you would have found her easy to overlook. I did, at first. She was not an assertive person by nature, the sort of woman who did not say much in a Bible study or voters meeting. She liked being on the altar guild, coming on Saturday to prepare the altar for worship, the sort of job that was behind the scenes. In a larger parish, I think she would have simply been one of those faces who regularly stared back at me from the pews while I preached, always there but unremarkable. This was not a very large parish. I came to know her better through her family. It was an interesting bunch which involved several early morning phone calls to help resolve crises. Her children and husband were, to put it mildly, not a terribly wholesome lot. But they managed, in large part, because she was always there for them and with them, even when they were foolish and difficult to love.

God had answered this prayer for her. She was steadfast in grace and truth. That meant loving people who were at times hard to love. A quiet person by nature, I also discovered that there was a steely and resolute devotion to the truth in this woman. She was dedicated to the truth that God loved her and her family. That meant she expected the truth from them and would settle for nothing less. She could make them squirm under that unflinching expectation. I discovered that she made an excellent presider at council meetings.

How does God answer this prayer for you? It will be different for every human life and yet behind all these blessings stands the same Jesus who is the Truth and who graciously gave himself for you and your justification.

Friday of Pentecost 21 – Matthew 22:15-22

Matthew 22:15-22

¹⁵ Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. ¹⁶ And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. ¹⁷ Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” ¹⁸ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹ Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. ²⁰ And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” ²¹ They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” ²² When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.

The principal looked across the desk at the three students who glowered back at him. There was a great injustice at the school which they knew needed to be addressed. This was not an unfamiliar conversation for him. He had had it every few years. The faces changed, but the drama, angst, and passion of the students was consistent. As usual, their complaint had some merit, but it did not acknowledge the realities of a large, underfunded school. He would do what he could, the students would graduate, and a few years later another group would come in with a new complaint.

He loved these conversations. He was always happy to see their fire and zeal for righting a wrong, even if, in the larger scale of things, it was probably not that important. Some of this school’s best and most important graduates had sat in those chairs and glowered at him and his predecessors over the years. There was at least one state legislator who had sat in those chairs and raised issues with a principal.

“What would you do differently?” he asked. He really did want to know. He wanted to direct them toward something healthful and edifying. He wanted them to start thinking of solutions and not just their anger. He knew that frustrated anger could become a sort of habit. This passion needed to see a way to something good. The students were not entirely satisfied. They almost never were. But they grew that day, another little step toward being an adult.

The religious leaders came Jesus in this reading filled with anger and zeal. They want to destroy Jesus, to catch Him in his words. If he said they should not pay taxes, the Romans would kill him. If he said that one should pay taxes, then the zealous among his followers would abandon him, or so they hoped. Jesus, however, looks and them and loves them. He knows their malice, but He does not react in kind. He deftly turns aside their plots. “Give to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and to God that which belongs to God,” He says. He stumped them, but He did not reject them. Later that week, for these events happened in Holy Week, Jesus died for these men who sought His ruin. He willingly endured the destruction which they intend, because he loves them and through that death he forgives their sins and ours.

Thursday of Pentecost 21 – I Thessalonians 1:1-10

I Thessalonians 1:1-10

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace.

² We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, ³ remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, ⁵ because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. ⁶ And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, ⁷ so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. ⁸ For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. ⁹ For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, ¹⁰ and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

They say that to a teenager holding a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. In more academic circles, this is called confirmation bias. You and your method are looking for a certain result and you shape the data to give you the result you are expecting. I often used this passage in my New Testament classes at the university to show students how this often afflicts us in reading the Bible too. In class I had them read this letter to the Thessalonians in small groups. To each group I assigned one chapter of Thessalonians. Their task was to look for Paul’s words about the end of the world in that chapter. Every chapter in Thessalonians has some reference to the world’s end. They always found it. It is at the end, in the very last verse of the first three chapters. Then, they almost always misread it. They heard Paul speak of God’s wrath and they heard judgment in these words. But look at it carefully. Perhaps you did the same thing. The passage says that Jesus delivers us from God’s wrath. Paul is not trying to make them afraid, but to alleviate their fear.

Just as in Paul’s day, our world is very afraid of the world’s end. They imagined that God must have been very unhappy with the way things were. He would come in wrath, they imagined. Believing ourselves to be gods, our culture couches the world’s end it in terms of climate chaos, nuclear Armageddon, or perhaps some AI generated dystopian future. The outcome is the same. We are addicted to hope, however. Many of the most successful movies are superhero films in which the world is about to end but a heroic figure, a man or woman of supernatural strength or ability, saves the day, defeats the alien monster, or overcomes the evil genius. I find it interesting that we are so drawn to such stories.

Paul turns the attention of his first century readers and us to the hope engendered by Jesus himself. Jesus of Nazareth, crucified for our sins and raised for our justification,  has averted the destruction which we deserved by our sins. Placing himself in that path, he has born its wrath. Yes, the world is going to end. But I am not worried about that.

Wednesday of Pentecost 21 – Psalm 96:1-13

Psalm 96:1-13

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
    sing to the Lord, all the earth!
² Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
    tell of his salvation from day to day.
³ Declare his glory among the nations,
    his marvelous works among all the peoples!
⁴ For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
    he is to be feared above all gods.
⁵ For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
    but the Lord made the heavens.
⁶ Splendor and majesty are before him;
    strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

⁷ Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
⁸ Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    bring an offering, and come into his courts!
⁹ Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
    tremble before him, all the earth!

¹⁰ Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!
    Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
    he will judge the peoples with equity.”

¹¹ Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
    let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
¹² let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
¹³ before the Lord, for he comes,
    for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness,
    and the peoples in his faithfulness.

In the early 5^th century BC, shortly after the Jewish exiles were allowed to go home, the Persian Empire was expanding to the west, into Greece. A small contingent of Greek soldiers stood in their way at a narrow point between the sea and a mountain. The spot was called Thermopylae. The Spartan king, Leonidas, was told that the Persians were so numerous that when they shot their arrows the sun was darkened. Leonidas’ reply was, “Good, we will fight in the shade!”

The psalmist today seems to have a similar attitude about impending doom. God comes to judge the world in equity and he is organizing a grand celebration. Shouldn’t he be running around in circles, pulling his hair out at the thought of such a judgment. He acknowledges the Lord’s power in verses 4-6 and in the next verses tells the whole world to tremble before Him. But he is planning a party!?

Leonidas of Sparta could see something larger than himself when he fearlessly faced the entire Persian army with a tiny force of his own. He knew that he would die, but he was buying time for the Greeks in the cities behind to get organized. Eventually they won great battles at Salamis and Platea, the Persian threat was turned back. The Persian Emperor, Xerxes, sometimes called Ahasuerus, fled back to Susa, his capital. There he consoled himself after his defeat with a new bride, a young Jewish woman named Esther.

The psalmist likewise knows something which makes his joy reasonable of a sort. He knows that the One who comes to judge is also the One who comes to save, filled with grace, mercy, and love. God does judge this world with equity and perfect justice, but His wrath falls upon His Son, Jesus and we are spared. So let the whole world rejoice. The Word who was with God, who is God, by whom all things were made, has been born in Bethlehem’s stable and died on Golgotha’s cross. Raised in glory, we rejoice to see our judge has wounds in His hands and feet where he paid our sin’s price.