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1 Come to Calv'ry's holy mountain,
Sinners, ruined by the fall;
Here a pure and healing fountain
Flows for you, for me, for all,
In a full, perpetual tide,
Opened when our Savior died.
2 Come in poverty and meanness,
Come defiled, without, within;
From infection and uncleanness,
From the leprosy of sin,
Wash your robes and make them white;
Ye shall walk with God in light.
3 Come in sorrow and contrition,
Wounded, impotent, and blind;
Here the guilty, free remission,
Here the troubled, peace may find.
Health this fountain will restore;
They that drink shall thirst no more.
'Tis a soul-renewing flood.
God is faithful; God will never
Break His covenant of blood,
Signed when our Redeemer died,
Sealed when He was glorified.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The road to Calvary and the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is not lined with concrete blocks or smooth stones. Certainly it is not paved in gold. In fact, the road is barely a path, and it is uphill all the way. It is overgrown with the betrayal of man against man, snarled with the delusions of the self-righteous and ungodly, the ground made uneven by the weight of the grievous sins of all mankind of all times and places. Walking that road is a perilous journey, because the pall of death hovers over it: the death which, as St. Paul tells us, is “the wages of sin.” The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was put to death by the Nazis, once wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” It is the truth; to become a Christian, one must die. And that’s what the invitation to Calvary is: it is an invitation to die.
So this road to Calvary which we travel with our Lord is not one we walk easily, especially because our Lord has also called upon each of us to take up our cross. Hear again the words of the hymn:
Come in poverty and meanness,
Come defiled, without, within;
From infection and uncleanness,
From the leprosy of sin…
Come in sorrow and contrition,
Wounded, impotent, and blind…
We do not walk this road with our heads held high. We are “sinners ruined by the fall.” We are weighed down by the burdens we carry. We are obstructed on every step by the temptations of the devil. Satan wants us to take the side paths which lead us away from our Savior and His cross. Weakened as we are by our sin, the temptation to abandon the journey to the cross is a real one. After all, we do not take this pilgrimage as a fun-filled vacation, but as a trip to the hospital, hoping for the cure of our souls. As much as we might need it, no one looks forward to a hospital stay. Having tumors cut away, having kidney stones broken up, having wounds stitched closed: these things are painful, and sometimes it seems as if the cure is worse than the illness.
And yet, the hospital is exactly the place where the sick and dying person needs to be. It is the place of healing, of medicine, of the skilled application of knowledge which God uses to bring healing to the body. In the same way, the cross is where sinners need to be. It is the place where that poverty and meanness, where that defilement, where the “leprosy of sin” is forever leached from us. It is the place where our blind eyes are opened to see our Lord as the Fulfillment of our salvation. The cross is the place where the sins of the whole world are hung with our Jesus, the One who is our Physician of body and soul.
And from that cross, from the pierced side of the Lamb of God, flows bloody water. That water washes away our sins in a blessed baptismal flood, cleansing us from our guilt, placing upon us blood-whitened robes of Christ’s righteousness. When Christ invites us to “come and die,” He drowns the Old Adam within us in those waters. He kills the sinner, so that the new man, the baptized child of God, would emerge in new life, so that we may “walk with God in light.”
In the same way, His blood quenches our thirst. It is the medicine of immortality. It brings healing to our souls. And, unlike those foul-tasting elixers which make us gag and wish to spit them out, this is a sweet medicine, one which the child of God delights to taste again and again. It is, indeed, “a soul-renewing flood.”
Health this fountain will restore;
They that drink shall thirst no more.
They that drink shall live forever;
'Tis a soul-renewing flood.
God is faithful; God will never
Break His covenant of blood,
Signed when our Redeemer died,
Sealed when He was glorified.
This covenant, this new testament in blood from our Lord Jesus Christ, is a deathbed gift. It is our inheritance, one that cannot be taken or taxed or stolen away from us. You don’t have to work to earn it. You don’t have to be worthy of it. Indeed, you cannot earn it, and there is nothing you yourself can do to make yourself worthy to receive it. It is a free gift from the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. So…
Come to Calv'ry's holy mountain,
Sinners, ruined by the fall;
Here a pure and healing fountain
Flows for you, for me, for all,
In a full, perpetual tide,
Opened when our Savior died.
Yes, “Come to Calvary’s holy mountain.” For “on this mountain…He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces; the rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day: ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’” In the name of the Father and of the (†) Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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