Jesus nails it. He puts it in such simple words: “I do not have a devil, but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory.” And that right there is what set Him apart from them, and from us.
They thought he was possessed, so different was the life He lived, so outrageous were the words He spoke. But He was not possessed by a demon. He was not crazy. He was dishonored precisely because of the light that shone from His life – the light of a life that never sought its own glory, but solely the glory of the One who had sent Him. He was hated and ridiculed and mocked because His food and drink were simply and always to do the will of His Father.
Those who seek to do the will of God always seem a little odd, don’t they? And sometimes they seem very odd. I mean, think of Abraham in today’s Old Testament reading. How can we even begin to understand him, as he obediently trots off with Isaac to the mountain of slaughter. Yet, was he crazy? No. It’s never crazy to honor the heavenly Father, to do as He bids and to trust in His promises, seeking only His glory.
Abraham could have held quite a conversation in his mind: “No, this can’t be the will of God. God has told me that through Isaac my children would be named. This lad is to be One through whom the Promised One would come, bringing blessing to all the nations of the earth. God simply can’t mean for me to sacrifice him. It’s not God; it must be the devil.” And so on and on.
Yet the book of Hebrews tells us that when Abraham set out to sacrifice Isaac, he did so in faith, trusting completely God’s promise that through this child all nations would be blessed no matter what. It says Abraham just figured that if God had to raise the child from the dead to keep His promise, well, that’s what God would do. Abraham had learned that nothing was more certain God’s promise. And so in faith and in hope, Abraham honored the Father’s voice and instruction. He raised the knife to kill his son.
But at the last moment, as you know, the Angel of the Lord intervened and a substitute was provided. Not the Lamb Abraham had foretold God would provide, but a ram. The Lamb was still to come.
That Lamb is Jesus Christ. But have you ever wondered why His sacrifice can do such great things? Why as the Epistle puts it, the blood of Christ has the power to purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Why is Christ’s sacrifice perfect? Why does it fulfill all the types of sacrifice in the Old Testament?
Certainly a big part of the answer is in WHO is sacrificed, for the One who offers Himself upon the Cross is One of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But there’s more. Not just that He is true God, but that as true Man He freely and willingly submits Himself to the Father.
You see, Isaac wasn’t given the choice. Nor was that ram. Nor were the countless animals whose blood stained Jewish altars in a never-ending flood for centuries. Their bloodshed all pointed ahead to Jesus. But what separates Him from them aside from the greatness of His person, is His willingness to do what He is called to do in perfect obedience to His Father.
He put it once like this: “No one takes my life from me. I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I have received from My Father.”
Here is the beauty of the Cross, people loved by God! Don’t you ever look at it and think: “What a shame that it had to happen!” Don’t you ever look at it and wonder: “Couldn’t it have happened some other way?” No, my friends, look at it and rejoice that the perfect sacrifice was provided for you! The Eternal Son came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Blessed Virgin because He willed to suffer in your place. He freely chose to give His life a ransom to set you free. He determined to spill His blood that your sin might be wiped out and your life spared. He wanted to carry your death, your hell, the entire weight of your sin. And He did it all in obedience to His Father. “I honor my Father” he told the Jews in today’s Gospel.
“I do not seek My own glory. There is One who seeks it and he is the judge.” That One, the Father, rendered His verdict on His Son on the Day of Resurrection. By raising His Son from the grip of the grave, He gave His Son glory that will never end. He judged His Son to be innocent indeed, and that verdict goes for all who are baptized into Him and who “hear God’s words!” They are judged innocent in that self-same resurrection verdict.
The debt we owed, He paid in full. But oh, so much more. It’s not as though he merely bought off our debt, to let us go off on our own. Rather, He pays the debt, He adopts us into His family as His brothers and sister, He invites us into His home, He prepares for us a place, He speaks to us words that if a man hold to them “he shall not taste death.” He gives us a Kingdom that never ends!
Now our Lord, crucified and risen in glory, summons us all to enter such glory with Him! He invites us one and all to forsake seeking our own glory and honor and to give all honor to His Father! He invites us to place His will above our own. When we do that, will folks think we’re nuts? Of course they will! Just like they would have thought Abraham nuts; just like our Lord was judged to be possessed. When we do that, will it mean sometimes that God will demand of us sacrifices that tear at our hearts? You bet. There will be times that God sends suffering of such magnitude that our hearts will break. But what does that matter? We know that we can offer such suffering to God in thanksgiving and bear it with patience, carrying it willingly, because we seek HIS honor, HIS glory – not our own! And we can do so in the certainty that whatever we suffer here in this world simply is not worth being compared with the glory that will be revealed in us!
Again today we get to receive what our Epistle called “the promise of an eternal inheritance.” He delivers it to us at this Table. Here the sacrifice our Lord freely and willingly once made upon the cross is given to us as our life. These holy gifts free us from seeking our own glory and unite us to our Lord that with and in Him we may always seek only the honor of the Father, who with the Son and the All-holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever! Amen.