Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Tuesday after Easter - 2021

April 6, 2021

Text: Hebrews 10:1-18

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

The Book of Hebrews makes it very clear who Jesus is and what He does. 

The author repeatedly refers to Jesus as our High Priest – but not a flawed sinful priest offering token animal sacrifices, but rather the High Priest who is God in the flesh, and who, as Priest, offers His own flesh as the sacrifice.  As we sing in the Eucharistic hymn: “Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest.  Alleluia!”

As the author of Hebrews teaches us: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”  For these animal sacrifices were tokens of the “single offering” by which “He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”  That offering, dear friends, is His own body offered as an oblation upon the cross, and those whom he “has perfected” and “are being sanctified” are us, the beneficiaries of the sacrifice.

For unlike the priests of the Old Covenant, who offered, over and over again, the token sacrifices of beasts “which can never take away sins” in and of themselves, by contrast, the one all-availing sacrifice of Jesus is different.  For “when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until His enemies should be made a footstool for His feet.”

Dear brothers and sisters, our High Priest fulfills the ancient yearning from our fall in Eden for the “Seed of the Woman” who was sent, in the fullness of time, to crush the serpent’s head; who would, by the Father’s will, avenge all of mankind; who would in love for us conquer death; and whose priesthood “perfects” us by grace, in the oblation of His blood. 

Our High Priest absolves us, using the priestly office of the holy ministry to declare the Good News to us, to speak the sublime and certain reality that by means of the cross, and in the blood of the Lamb, your sins are forgiven.  Our High Priest, resting from His labor, props up his blood-soaked feet upon the footstool of the devil that He has conquered, the world that he has sanctified, and our flesh that He has redeemed – all by means of His own flesh and blood, given and shed for us.

And listen to His ironclad declaration, the words of the eternal Word by whose Word the world was created, the unequivocal and undeniable pronouncement of our High Priest: “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” 

This, dear friends, is who He is and what He does – now and unto eternity!

Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.