You can listen to the devotion here.

Invocation
In the Name of the Father, and (+) of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
​
Scripture
Revelation 11:1-3
Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, 2 but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. 3 And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”

4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. 5 And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. 6 They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. 7 And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, 10 and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. 11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. 13 And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

14 The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come.

Devotion
Revelation uses a lot of imagery to teach the church.  Revelation 11 is no different, and the focus is that the church will suffer greatly in this world. God will protect His church and yet Christians will suffer persecution and even death. But in the end, they have victory because Christ is victorious.
There is a lot going on in this chapter, but it helps if you understand that both the temple and the two witnesses are a picture of the church.

This temple is the church where God dwells with His people in Word and Sacrament.  This is how the church is sustained even in the face of persecution, suffering, and even death.  The church will suffer and suffer greatly but it will not ultimately be defeated.

This is the same thing we see with the two witnesses.  The two witnesses are representative of the church’s preaching and teaching ministry, that is its prophetic witness to the world.  The church calls the world to repentance and proclaims Christ crucified for them.

The two witnesses are even killed in this section.  At times the witness of the church will be silenced in an area for a time (and the world will even celebrate this!), but then the church is raised up in that place again just as we see the two witnesses raised up. 

The end of the chapter shows the end of all things and the great joy that God’s children will have on that day. The ark of the covenant makes an appearance at the close of the chapter because it is a symbol of God’s presence and shows that His presence and fellowship is possible because of the atonement of Christ.  This presence is found today in the church as we gather around Word and Sacrament – the very place where Christ has promised to be for you and your salvation!

Martin Luther has some helpful insights into what it means for the church to suffer under the cross. He calls this suffering the seventh mark of the church: "Seventh, the holy Christian people are externally recognized by the holy possession of the sacred cross. They must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world, and the flesh (as the Lord’s Prayer indicates) by inward sadness, timidity, fear, outward poverty, contempt, illness, and weakness, in order to become like their head, Christ. And the only reason they must suffer is that they steadfastly adhere to Christ and God’s word, enduring this for the sake of Christ, Matthew 5 [:11], “Blessed are you when men persecute you on my account.” Wherever you see or hear this, you may know that the holy Christian church is there, as Christ says in Matthew 5 [:11–12], “Blessed are you when men revile you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”…This too is a holy possession whereby the Holy Spirit not only sanctifies his people, but also blesses them."

These sufferings are actually a blessing that we can rejoice in because we know that Christ is with us using all these things for the good of His Church. 

Collect
Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank You, that through Your Son Jesus Christ You have sown Your holy word among us: We pray that You will prepare our hearts by Your Holy Spirit, that we may diligently and reverently hear Your word, keep it in good hearts, and bring forth fruit with patience; and that we may not incline to sin, but subdue it by Your power, and in all persecutions comfort ourselves with Your grace and continual help, through Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

You can listen to the devotion here.

Invocation
In the Name of the Father, and (+) of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
​
Scripture
1 Peter 1:6-9
6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Devotion Based on Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me (LSB 756)
1 Why should cross and trial grieve me?
Christ is near
With His cheer;
Never will He leave me.
Who can rob me of the heaven
That God's Son
For me won
When His life was given?

2 When life's troubles rise to meet me,
Though their weight
May be great,
They will not defeat me.
God, my loving Savior, sends them;
He who knows
All my woes
Knows how best to end them.

3 God gives me my days of gladness,
And I will
Trust Him still
When He send me sadness.
God is good;
His love attends me
Day by day,
Come what may,
Guides me and defends me.

4 From God’s joy can nothing sever,
For I am
His dear lamb,
He, my Shepherd ever
I am His
Because he gave me
His own blood
For my good,
By His death to save me.
 
5 Now in Christ, death cannot slay me,
Though it might,
Day and night,
Trouble and dismay me.
Christ has made my death a portal
From the strife
Of this life
To His joy immortal!
 
You can listen to the hymn here.

The hymn commentary for today comes from Pastor Richard Resch as found in the Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns Volume 1. 
 
This hymn by Paul Gerhardt, originally in twelve stanzas, is a treasure of comfort. These words even comforted the author on his deathbed, for he spoke the final stanza used in the Lutheran Service Book as his dying prayer.

Many of Gerhardt’s hymns present the theology of the cross as sung poetry, though he is not the first to articulate this theology. Martin Luther spike of the theology of the cross in his Heidelberg Disputation of 1518. The place of trials (tentatio) in teaching the student of theology becomes a common theme in the Reformer’s writings from then on. We learn from him that the more we abide in God’s Word, the more the devil will afflict us. We can count on it. But such afflictions are good in that they cause us to seek and to love God’s Word all the more. Then, in 1539, Luther even gave thanks for the “pummeling, pressing, and terrifying” of the papists toward him, for he said that they helped to make him a decent theologian.
 
The background of Gerhardt’s hymn writing is a trial (tentatio) of a different kind; namely the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, being surrounded by death for most of his life, and being removed from his call as pastor of St. Nicholas Church in Berlin for remaining faithful to his ordination vows. While Luther was able to see a blessed road in the persecution he suffered at the hands of papists, Gerhardt was able to confidently say, “Why should cross and trial grieve me? Christ is near with His cheer; never will He leave me.” As a result of Gerhardt’s crosses, the saints have hymns to sing about that unique, beautiful, and blessed road even as they suffer crosses of all types.

This is a sung sermon in which the singer learns the difficult lessons of how our Lord chastens, refines, and builds up the ones He loves. Here the baptized are catechized in the ways of their Father’s kingdom. Gerhardt does this teaching by asking and answering five questions in his original twelve-stanza text:
 

1. “Why should cross and trial grieve me?” Answer: Since Christ is near with the promise that He will never leave me, I therefore have all I need, and there is no reason for me to grieve.
2. “Who can robe me of the heaven that God’s Son” won for me when He gave His life? Answer: The answer is revealed in the question. Since heaven was won for me by the death of God’s Son, no one can rob me of heaven.
3. “Though a heavy cross I’m bearing and my heart feels the smart, shall I be despairing?” Answer: No, we are not to despair or be defeated, for our loving God has sent the cross for our good. He knows every single woe also knows how best to end them. We are not left alone in our crosses and trials.
4. “God oft gives me days of gladness; shall I grieve if He give seasons, too, of sadness?” Answer: God defends and guides us day by day, moment by moment, as His love attends us. What more could we want or need?
5. “What is all this life possesses?” Answer: A hand full of sand that only causes distress. Instead, the saints of Christ have a life filled with noble gifts that will sustain them safely through this pilgrimage on to the next life.

 
These questions and their answers are more or less preserved in the five stanzas in the Lutheran Service Book. But the answers are not easy ones to hear or live, for they reveal the often puzzling ways of God’s kingdom. Yet they have to be answered again and again for the faithful, because the world’s answers to these questions lead only to despair. Worldly answers can do no other, because they are outside of God’s beautiful plan for His children.
 
Collect
Lord God, heavenly Father, who in Your divine wisdom and fatherly goodness makes Your children to bear the cross, and sends diverse afflictions upon us to subdue the flesh, and quicken our hearts unto faith, hope and unceasing prayer: We beseech You to have mercy upon us, and graciously deliver us out of our trials and afflictions, so that we may perceive Your grace and fatherly help, and with all saints forever praise and worship You; through Your dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, world without end. Amen.
 

​Invocation
In the Name of the Father, and (+) of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Scripture
Romans 8:18
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Devotion by Pastor Odom
We believe that God is both almighty and that He is good.  He created all things and we look to Him for every blessing.  These all come from God alone.  That’s what we confess in the Apostles’ Creed when we say, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

But as we live through this pandemic, we may be bugged with the question: if God is both all-powerful and completely good why is the world He created full of suffering?

One way we’re tempted to answer this question is to try to excuse God. You may hear some Christian leaders or even your friends or family claim, “God has nothing to do with suffering.” Though perhaps well-intentioned, this a misguided attempt to protect our Lord from anything that might cause people to fear Him is ultimately an effort to remove God from the picture altogether. This attempt fails, though, and leaves us with a God who has been remodeled according to the human imagination. This is hardly the God known by Job and Jonah in the Old Testament, and is not the God the Apostles could confess.

Others might suggest that God is not the cause of suffering, but merely allows it. Yet if God is almighty, then it is of little comfort to insist that this all-powerful God allows evil when He could have stopped it.

The sad result of this second effort to answer the question “why” is that God’s omnipotence is at best softened and at worst given up completely. But God is not impotent. Remember? We confess that He is “God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Attempts to get God off the hook, to defend Him by limited or weakening His power again leaves us with a God that is more like an idol we’ve shaped for ourselves; an idol we’re comfortable with.

Rather than trying to formulate an answer that could excuse God of the suffering in this world, we do better to first listen to Jesus. Though our natural response to catastrophic events is to ask God, “Why?”, the words of Jesus anticipate the question with a stark warning: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

Jesus does not offer a philosophical explanation for the event. He wastes no time with theories of “why?” In fact, Jesus’ words will not let us go there. His words call for repentance, not speculation. Repentance lets go of the questions that we would use to hold on to life on our own terms, to try to protect ourselves from the God who kills and makes alive.

Unexplainable tragedies bring pain and chaos, but God often leaves the wound open. Our response is to cry out to God in lament in the face of events that defy our capacities for understanding. But anguish and lament from the lips of Christians ascend from faith, not unbelief.

They are a confession of trust in the God who works all things for the good of those who are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). It is a confession that our God has done something about evil and suffering even if our eyes tempt us to believe otherwise. Our God comes. He does not merely give us a reasonable answer to the question “Why?” but He Himself comes to us.

When we look for God in the midst of suffering in this world, we look to the words of St. Paul: “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).  There is no greater revelation of God in our suffering world than this: God Himself in Christ Jesus hanging dead on the cross for the sin of the world.

This is our answer. There God in Jesus gets to the very bottom of all that hurts us, all the sin that kills us.  Living in repentance and faith, we are then freed from the speculation that seeks to investigate what God has not revealed to us. Instead, we trust in the kindness and mercy of God revealed in Christ Jesus and His cross and resurrection.

With such a freedom, we are able to rely on God’s promises and turn our attention to acts of mercy that bring compassion and relief to those who suffer. God does not give us explanations that will satisfy our persistent questions, but He does give us sure and certain promises of unquestionable mercy and unfailing faithfulness in His Son handed over to death and raised again for our justification.

Apart from the cross of Christ, suffering is a never-ending evil, but in the hand of God, and at the foot of the cross of Jesus, we can boldly confess: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).


Collect

Almighty and most merciful God, you are a very present help in every kind of danger. Comfort us in our time of need through your Word of the free forgiveness of all our sin and the sure promise of life everlasting in the world to come. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.