LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 82

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in the heavenly city. Your life is now hidden in Christ. You no
longer live, but Christ now lives in you, albeit in a body of death
predisposed to sin, and the life you live here and now you live by
faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave Himself up for you.
Dying and rising is the baptismal way of life. You can’t rehab a
sinner. You can only kill him and raise him a saint. Death and
resurrection is God’s modus operandi. The life of repentance is
a continual recognizing, rethinking, renewing of your mind in
Christ, learning to see things God’s way instead of your own through
contrition and faith. It is learning to trust the Word in your ears
rather than what you perceive with your eyes, your reason, your
senses, and your pious religious sentiments. It is being transformed
not by the renovation and rehabilitation of the sinful flesh, but by
the renewing of your minds in Christ Jesus.
Repentance. Metanoia—a change of mind, a new way of thinking,
a new way of seeing yourself. Rising every morning to make the
sign of the holy cross and to say, “In the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and going to sleep at the close of
the day under the same sign and name. You are dead to sin; you
are alive to God in Christ.

Baptism as Priestly Moment
Baptism is a priestly moment. One is born a priest. To the newly
baptized, the apostle Peter writes, “But you are a chosen race, a
royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession,
that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out
of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9–10).
We tend to get “religious” when we hear the word “priest.” We think
priests are guys who do religious things. We hear “priest,” and we
think “pastor.” And some priests are pastors. That’s true. Some are
plumbers, electricians, and accountants too. Priests offer sacrifices.
In the Old Testament, the sacrifices were bloody and burnt.
In the New Testament, they are unbloody and living. “I appeal
to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which
is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). The once-for-all-peopleand-all-time atoning sacrifice has been made on the cross by the
High Priest. Now His priests offer their bodies in service as living
sacrifices, holy and acceptable in His sacrifice. So, what do these
living sacrifices look like? What does it mean to offer up your
bodies as a living sacrifice?
It means this: martyria (witness), diakonia (service), koinonia (life
together).
Martyria. Baptized priests bear witness. They speak to their neighbor
about God, declaring the praises of Him who called them out of
darkness into His marvelous light. They are martyrs engaging in
martyria often to their own martyrdom. It happens somewhere
in this world every day. Don’t think it can’t happen here in our
time and place. As soon as the world catches wind of the Christ
in your martyria, it will want to crucify you too. “The world will
hate you because of Me,” Jesus warned His disciples. They don’t
give out Nobel Prizes for proclaiming the Gospel. Only crosses.
If you want to get a bead on martyria, watch John the Baptist in
action. When they asked him who he was, John refused even to
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answer. Are you the Christ? No. Are you Elijah? No. Are you the
Prophet? No. Then who are you, John? Tell us. We want to hear
your personal testimony, John. John says, “I’m a voice calling in the
wilderness. That’s all you need to know. Get ready for the Lord!”
A voice in the wilderness. A voice. Nothing more, nothing less.
If they forget your name, who cares, so long as they call on the
name of Jesus. He must increase, we must decrease. Even if they
serve your head up on a silver platter, so what! Behold the Lamb!
Priests tell a sharp, two-edged truth. They speak the hard penultimate truth of the Law that condemns sin, kills the sinner, shuts
every self-justifying mouth before God, and consigns every man,
woman, and child to disobedience. They tell the comforting, ultimate truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who became our sin so
that in Him, baptized into His death and life, we might become
the righteousness of God, covered not with our righteousness but
with His perfect righteousness. This is the truth, the whole truth,
the only truth, that quiets the accusing/excusing conscience before
God. Priests speak the truth in love. Love is the context of our
martyria; truth is its content. We speak neither a truthless love
nor a loveless truth.
Priests are servants of God for their neighbor. They do diakonia
in the name of God, doing the goodness and mercy of God for
those around them.
There was a man who fell among thieves on the road from Jerusalem
to Jericho. As he lay there in the ditch, bleeding and dying, three
men had opportunity to be neighbor, to be priest, to the man who
fell among the thieves. Ironically, the priest and his deacon, the
Levite, declined the call to be priest to this man. They likely had
things to do when they got back home. And they had a law. Touch
a corpse and you were unclean, which meant a lengthy furlough
and a costly sacrifice. Try to explain that to the home congregation.
They do the safe, expedient, prudent thing. They walk safely on
the other side of the road, averting their eyes, and let someone else
deal with the man who fell among thieves.
Then along comes a Samaritan, whom no pious Jew would give the
time of day or a cup of water, much less bend down in the ditch to
serve. He is a free man. He is dead to the world. He doesn’t have
a care in this world. He’s not debating “Who is my neighbor?” or
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” or “What would Jesus do?”
He simply sees a man in need and stops on the road and gets down
in the ditch to help him. He pours oil and wine into his wounds,
puts him on his donkey, takes him to the local inn, spends the
night caring for him, plunks down a couple of days’ wages at the
front desk, and leaves his Visa card and signature in case there are
more expenses. No “Good Samaritan” laws could ever produce
this kind of goodness and mercy. This is a mercy born of freedom.
Who then is neighbor, who is priest, to the man who fell among
thieves? Why, the Samaritan, of course. The one who is dead to
this world. The only one who is free to do the goodness and mercy
of God. The Law says, “Love God and love your neighbor,” but
it cannot produce love of neighbor nor love of God. In fact, you
will resent your neighbor for being in the ditch and hate God for
making laws that obligate you to help him.
In his 1520 writing on the liberty of the Christian, Luther wrote
this marvelous insight: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all,
subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all,
C o n v e n t io n E s s ays