Lenten Midweek 3March 18, 2020Mark 14:26-31, 66-72

First it was Judas and his betraying eyes and how like him, we betray our Lord when we sin or abuse His name for our own gain. Last week it was the eyes of the sleeping disciples which revealed to us how, in our Christian sleepiness and lack of alertness, we fail to see our Lord. This week we look through the eyes of Peter and the other disciples as they denied Jesus and said, “we don’t know Him”.

In the upper room, Jesus and the remaining 11 disciples sang a post-communion hymn and then headed out to Gethsemane in the Mount of Olives. Jesus had already told them that they’d all fall away, but of course they all denied His words and promised that they’d never leave Him. Peter even said, “If I must die with you, I will not deny you.”

But denying Jesus was in the air. Even when Peter contradicted Jesus’ own words, he was denying Him. Jesus spoke the Word of God because He was the Word who became flesh. So, for any disciple, one of the 11, or even us today, to deny Jesus’ words, to comingle them with our own ideas, pleasurable words, wants, and opinions – it’s all a denial of Jesus.

But the disciples didn’t think it like this; it was Jesus after all, and not God – so they thought – so contradicting His words was just part of human speech and interaction.

See, the disciples, they still thought that Jesus was the champion for their cause, that He was going to chase out the Romans and return the temple to its former glory, to return Israel to something more in line with King David’s Israel. They had their plans, their purposes, their goals…but Jesus had His, and His goal was much more world-changing than they could ever imagine.

In the garden, as the guards came to arrest Jesus and Judas finished his betrayal with a kiss, for a moment the disciples seemed to be fulfilling their promise, “if we must die with you, we will not deny you.” But it was short-lived. They all ran off into the dark of night. Jesus was taken and dragged to the Jewish court, the Sanhedrin.

But Peter followed at a distance. He wasn’t allowed to enter the temple area and stayed outside close to the warmth of a fire. It wasn’t too long before some in the crowd started to recognize him. One person insisted that he was with Jesus at his arrest. Peter denied it. Another insisted that he was one of Jesus’ disciples. Again, Peter denied it. Finally, another person said that he saw Peter with Jesus. Peter, beside himself, shouted, “I don’t know him,” and then heard the rooster crow. Immediately he knew what he had done.

But when we look at the disciples, when we look at Peter, let us not judge them too harshly. For are we truly any better?

Our Christian culture of today is so different than it was during Luther’s time, during the early church, even during the time of Jesus. Yes, there are some similarities, but our church culture has been so inundated with postmodernism and its facets: relevancy, tolerance, indifference, no absolute truth.

And we deny our Lord, we deny Jesus every time we say some silly thing like “it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you got Jesus in your heart.” We deny Jesus every time we spew out some postmodern drivel like, “the differences between churches and their beliefs aren’t that important just so long as you got the basics.”

And we don’t want to offend anyone; we don’t want to look at that church down the street and say, “what you believe and what you teach is wrong,” because we don’t want to look like jerks and because,

frankly, we don’t know IF they’re right or wrong – we don’t know what we believe anymore; when it comes to truth of doctrine, we don’t consider it that important anymore. We don’t want to go to our cousin or our sister or maybe our spouse and tell them that they’re wrong for believing that they can worship God in their own way – by looking at stars or staring at nature; by staying home on Sundays and skipping church, by embracing many beliefs and many gods; we don’t want to hurt their feelings. That’s not loving, we say, and Christians are supposed to be kind and loving…right?

We don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings and we don’t want to look like we’ve got the monopoly on truth, so instead we embrace all beliefs as equally valid and true and we don’t take a stand for any of them. Welcome to postmodernism in the church.

I think, ultimately, the era of postmodernism started, in a large way, because of the church – because of us, our ancestors – because there are so many denominations and so many different beliefs in the western church. People just got tired of it all and threw their hands in the air and said, “who can know what’s true when every Christian believes something different, when every Christian sort of goes his own way?!”

And we deny Jesus and deny him and deny him every single time we stand in contradiction to He and His Word, every time we say to our Lord, “Jesus, your words aren’t absolute and we are free to interpret them how we see fit,” in doing so and encouraging it, we deny our Lord.

What does our Lord say? He said that we, who are faithful, that people will hate us and despise us, that our own family, brothers and sisters and moms and dads and sons and daughters, that they will hate us on account of His Word. It should not be surprising to us that there is division in the church. It should not be surprising to us, and we should

not deny our Lord, trivialize His word or attempt to be indifferent toward other beliefs and doctrines, just for the sake of trying to get along. God doesn’t what that because indifference is not a facet of faith but of denial and unbelief.

Postmodernism is the most devastating force that has weaseled it’s way into the church because it has taken the teeth and the zeal and the fervor out of us Christians, and left us as passionless, tired, unsure, indifferent Christians who just don’t want to fight the good fight of faith anymore, who don’t want to stand up for the one truth, the one doctrine, the one teaching. What happened to the Christians like Luther or Walther, or some of the old German and Scandinavian Lutherans of the 18th and 19th centuries like Bo Gertz, who would not give false teaching an inch in the church, who would not let worldly practices from outside the church into its doors?

What happened to church members who read the Book of Concord, who studied the Catechism, who had Luther’s morning and evening prayers memorized and who prayed them with their kids every day, who taught their kids the Catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creeds. What happened to the Lutheran Christians who were so zealous for their Lutheran faith that the thought of even peaking in the doors of a Baptist church or a catholic church or some other church was just beyond the pale? What happened to the Lutherans who said, “we believe that the doctrines and teachings of the Lutheran church are true to Scripture,” without question and without second thought?

Postmodernism is what happened, and the Christian church has been a culture of Jesus deniers ever since.

We don’t know exactly what it was like to be a Christian during the Apostles’ time or during Luther’s time, but I can tell you without question, that Luther and the reformers, that the Apostles and early

church fathers would not put up with the attitudes of indifference and tolerance of variant beliefs in the way that we put up with it today. It’s why we have the Creeds, it’s why we have the Book of Concord, so that these other variant beliefs about important doctrines such as Baptism, Communion, the person of Christ, the Trinity, that unorthodox or heterodox doctrines would not gain a foothold in the churches.

But praise be to God, He knew that this is where the church would be today. And yet He still sent His only son to suffer and die in our stead. Peter was later restored when Jesus forgave him of His denials, and so were the rest of the disciples. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they became the zealous, God-fearing, God-loving, false-doctrine fighting Apostles that the world needed so that the Church could be planted and nurtured in a very hostile and formidable world of sin and evil. They fought the false teachings of the Pharisees and the Jews. They fought the false teachings and threats of the Roman Empire. The fought the lies and deceit of Gnosticism and spiritualism and enthusiasm. And they fought hard against the false teachings and practices that popped up in the churches and kept them at bay.

The early church fathers fought off false doctrine by coming together and scripting the Creeds of the church.

Later on, Luther came along and fought against false teaching and Jesus deniers by exposing the lies and deceit of the Holy Roman Empire and the Popes, by fighting against the false teachings of men like Calvin and Zwingli and the pietists and iconoclasts and the enthusiasts. These men of faith stood against beasts and prevailed, not because they were strong, but because the Lord was strong through them.

And our Lord is strong through us too. We have received the same Holy Spirit that men like Luther received, so that we can discern between what is true and what is false. And even while we were yet sinners,

while we were the worst of deniers and those who flee from the Lord in fear, our Lord was denied in our stead. He was denied a fair trial, he was denied humane treatment, he was denied an honest judgment. He, who knew no sin, became sin for us and was nailed to the cross for us so that we, who deny Him, will never be denied in heaven by God our Father.

In your baptism, you were given a gift so much greater than the whole world. And with the gift of faith you’ve received, you have the freedom to deny this world with all its lies and deceit, to deny false teaching and the teachers who teach it, to stand with zeal and without fear for the Word of Christ alone. You have the freedom to be a Lutheran Christian, and not be ashamed of it or try to deny it and hide it behind postmodern minutia.

This is the gift and the freedom and the life you’ve been given. Jesus says, “come follow me,” and as you follow your Lord and abide in His Word, know that He is leading you through a journey of joy which leads, ultimately to everlasting life. Walk the road. Find that zeal once again for the truth, at all costs. Stand up to the false teachings which deny our Lord, false teachings which abound in the world and in the Church, because the Lord will never stop standing for you. Do not be afraid. Amen.