Transcript
Our leader in worship this noon is the very Reverend Professor Thomas F. Torrance, who is on campus last week and this week giving the Warfield Lectures. The fourth in the series of six Warfield Lectures will be delivered this afternoon at five o 'clock here in Miller Chapel. The topic is the Incarnate Savior. Dr. Torrance has taught as a visiting professor on the faculty of Princeton Seminary, is a frequent and always welcome visitor. Let's worship God singing to his praise hymn number 136.
[music]
Hear the word of God from the Gospel according to St. Mark chapter 10 reading at verse 32. And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them, and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they
will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles, and they will mock him and spit upon him and scourge him and kill him, and after three days he will rise. And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask for. And he said to them, What do you want me to do for you? And they said to him,
Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory. But Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? And they said to him, We are able. And Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink, you will drink. And with the baptism with which I
am baptized, you will be baptized. But to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. Amen. God bless to us this reading of his holy word. Let us pray in terms of the Gloria in Excelsis. Glory be to God on high and in earth, goodwill towards
men. We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee. We give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty. O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand
of God the Father, have mercy upon us. For thou only art holy, thou only art the Lord, thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art the most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen. Saint Mark chapter 10 and verses 38 and 40. But Jesus answered and said, you do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink of and to be baptized with the baptism with which I
am baptized? And they say unto him, we are able. And he said to them, you shall drink of my cup and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. But to sit at my right hand and on my left is not mine to give. It shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. What a human story this is. Saint
Matthew's account is slightly different. He tells us that the mother was involved. John and James's mother, zealous for her sons and seeking the best for them as she conceived it, and that we can understand. On the other hand, here are two disciples who had lived particularly close to Jesus for three years, lived with incarnate love, such love as the world has never known. And now, just as Jesus goes up to his supreme hour, they make a
very selfish request. Their motives were certainly mixed. They wanted to be close to Jesus, but they wanted places of priority. Blatant self-seeking, no wonder the disciples were indignant. How did Jesus react? No word of direct rebuke. It was, after all, just for such people as these that he had come, come to share their lot so that they might share his lot. He took them at their weakest and worst, and shared with them what was his,
so that he made their weakest and worst points the very ground of his union with them. Let us try to understand that. Think of the baptism of Jesus. John the Baptist was baptizing sinners, eis metanoian, into repentance, into judgment and amendment of life. And then came Jesus, and stood in the row of penitents, asking to be baptized as one of them. John was aghast, but Jesus insisted. It was a vicarious baptism. He was baptized as a
sinner, baptized into repentance. It was not his own repentance into which Jesus was baptized, but ours, for his baptism was on our behalf. He was baptized with us in such a way that he made baptism, his baptism, as Calvin puts it, common between himself and us. He united himself with us in order that working from within our failures and weaknesses, he might make what is ours his, and give us what is his. Baptism signified the way
in which he fulfilled his ministry and lived his whole life. And so St. Mark tells us, Jesus said, I have a baptism with which I am being baptized, a daily continuous baptism. He's sharing our condition, the condition of which we ought to repent, in order to unite himself to us, and thus to unite us to himself. There's a tantalizing fragment of Irenaeus of Lugdunum that we can reconstruct in this way. And this has seemed to be
what he's meaning. In the incarnation, Jesus didn't only touch the leper and heal him, he took upon himself our leperous humanity, in order that from within he might heal and cleanse and renew it. That's how Irenaeus understood the union of Christ with his fellow men, with his disciples. And so when the question comes, are you able to drink the cup that I drink of and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, James and John
said we are able, but they hardly knew what they were saying. For the baptism was Jesus' baptism into their condition, and it was because he made their sinful condition his own that they could share his baptism and his cup. He made it possible because he united himself completely to what they are and gave them that union. Let's try to understand that from the side of the cup, which Jesus drank, as well as the baptism with which
he was baptized. For three years, Jesus had been training the disciples. They lived together, shared a common life, and he taught them and called them to follow him. At the end of the first stage of their discipleship, he took them apart and he said, now who am I? Who do you think I am? And when the confession came, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, then Jesus began to initiate them into the deeper
mystery of union with himself through sharing his passion and told them that they had to take up his cross and follow him. And then we have the last stage, which we can date, let's say, with the Last Supper, the consummation of their union with Christ, the sacrament of the new covenant. But remember what happened. A few hours later, Jesus was hanging, wracked in pain upon the cross. The disciples had all fled, offended, and were found at
last gulking behind those who mocked and jeered at Jesus, Jesus utterly alone on the cross. And what a chasm now separated the disciples from Jesus. The chasm not only of his death, but of their own dastardly unfaithfulness and shame. Nothing, nothing could undo or bridge that gap. It was an unbridgeable gap. And then the disciples remembered, as Jesus had meant them to, the Last Supper. They drank the cup together. They broke the bread together. This is
my body. This is my cup. Eat it, drink it. All of you share my passion. The new covenant in the blood of Christ shed for the remission of sins. Now they understood. Jesus had laid hold of them in their sin and shame in all their betrayal. And he had used that as the very instrument by which to bind them to him forever and to bind himself to them forever. It was for sinners he died. And therefore,
it is by our sin that he binds himself to us and us to himself. And he died to take our place, taking all our sin and shame upon himself and thus constituted the disciples and thus one body with him. Now that is a bond that nothing can break, no unfaithfulness, no shame, no betrayal on our part can break it because it's a bond forged out of the very sins and failures and sin and guilt and shame
of mankind. A bond made with them in sin and failure and in spite of it. That is the breathtaking mystery of our union with Christ. And so Jesus does not rebuke us for our shabby motives. Now we are like those disciples on the way up to Calvary. Right now as we make our spiritual pilgrimage through Lent toward the cross and the resurrection toward Good Friday and Easter, and we know full well how mixed are our motives,
how much there is in us in what we think and say and are that shames us and belies what we confess. But this is what Jesus has to say to us through his baptism and his cup. You shall indeed drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. It is your cup that I drink and your baptism that I take upon myself. Even our unrepenting repentance, even our twisted
distorted faith, even our unworthy prayers and devotion, all that Jesus takes on himself, drinks it to the full, shares it to the full with us. The last bitter drink, far from letting it divide us from him, he makes it precisely into what binds us to him. And so when the hour comes, when the bread and the wine are put into our hands and we eat the bread, the body of Christ, he has already made himself one
with us and we drink the cup. For he has already drunk to the full the cup of divine judgment on our sins and shame and poured out his blood, our blood, which he made his own, that we might share together in the mystery of union and through that mystery partake also. And this is the glory of it in the mystery of his resurrection in body. Amen. Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling
and to present you faultless before the of his glory with exceeding joy to the only wise God, our savior, the glory and majesty, dominion and power now and forever. And may the blessing of God almighty, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.