In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

In today’s Old Testament reading, we hear about two of the plagues that God brought upon the land of Egypt.  Hearing about plagues may be a little uncomfortable as we sit here today, not in the midst of a plague, but certainly in the midst of a significant health situation in our country and in the world with the Coronavirus, COVID-19.  With the constant negative news headlines, perhaps you have just a small sense of the fear that must have come over Egypt as they had to be wondering “What next?” while the Lord caused 10 different plagues to come upon them.  

Those plagues were sent as judgment against Egypt and the Pharaoh for their oppression of God’s people Israel, for the Egyptians’ idolatry, for Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness.  The plagues were the terrible consequence of their impenitence and unbelief.  Which raises the question, when things like the Coronavirus happen today, is that God’s judgment, too?  Is God punishing us?  

It’s important to note in Exodus 8 how God drew a distinction between the Egyptians and His people Israel.  Scripture clearly reveals that this was an act of divine judgment against particular people for their sin.  As the Epistle said, "The wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience."  With things like COVID-19 though, we have no such Word of God.  This virus attacks both Christians and unbelievers alike.  Someone who gets this disease or any other disease for that matter is not necessarily being punished for some particular sin.  We should be careful to note that.

However, this is still a call to repentance–not only for the unbelieving world that has rejected the Lord’s Word in so many and increasingly rebellious ways, but also for us who believe in Jesus.  For everything that robs us of comfort and ease in this life is meant to be a reminder to us to repent.  This world will pass away.  God’s kingdom will never pass away.  Too often we find our comfort and confidence and security in the things of this world.  The stock market goes down, and we feel like everything is falling apart in our life.  The love of mammon and worldly pleasures, the idolizing of economic prosperity, the fearful hoarding of supplies from store shelves is not in keeping with the love of God and faith in Him.  Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and mammon.”  Or when our health is threatened, we can suddenly start wondering if God is absent.  But does our faith rest in how well life is going at the moment or in God’s never-changing words and promises?  Are we clinging so much to this life that our hearts aren’t set on the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come?  So at this time of upheaval and uncertainty, yes, the Lord is calling you to repentance.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, that He may lift you up in due time.

But then above all, trust that He really will lift you up in due time, that He will never leave you or forsake you.  His promises hold firm even when nothing else in this world seems firm.  Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.”  To keep the Word of God does not simply mean to obey it, though it does involve that.  To keep the Word of God more literally means to hold onto it, to cling to it, to find your confidence in it, to take comfort in it.

And here is a Word of God for you to cling to today, from Isaiah 43.  The Lord says, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name.  You are mine.  When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.  When you walk through the fire you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”  

There is much to legitimately fear out there, even though there is also much fear-mongering that is going on, too.  It’s a good idea not to watch too much news in the midst of a crisis.  The way they keep their ratings up sometimes is by keeping you fearful.  But in the midst of threats that are real, whether it’s the sin inside you, or the devil and the world outside you, the Lord says to you, “Fear not.  Don’t be afraid.”

And then He gives you two tremendous reasons why you need not fear.  First, He says, “I have redeemed you.”  Jesus has bought you with the price of His own blood.  He has ransomed you from the power sin and sickness, death and the devil.  Those enemies of yours are defeated and crushed by His holy cross and empty tomb.  It is worth noting especially today what is written in Matthew 8, “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”  Jesus suffered all of that for you so that now even a terminal disease cannot do you lasting harm.  For you will be raised in glory with Christ on the Last Day!  St. Paul said, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

And lest you think that this is only true for other people but not for you, note what else the Lord says in Isaiah 43, “I have called you by name.  You are mine.”  Those are great and precious words.  They remind you of your baptism, where the Lord literally called you by name and then put His own name and seal upon you.  He marked you as His own.  He gave you a place in the family.  What more comforting words could there be than to hear our Maker and Redeemer say, “You are mine.  You’re with me.  I am with you always to the very close of the age.  I’ve been through the worst of it for you; and now I will walk through the worst of it with you to carry you safely out of it.  Nothing in all creation can separate you from my love.  Stick with me.  I’ve got this.”  

Jesus is that Stronger Man in the Gospel who overcomes the strong man, the devil.  Satan likes to make like he’s some big mafia boss or gang leader you’ve got to pay protection money to.  He makes it seem like living in the “real world” means you’ve got compromise your beliefs and get with his program and follow worldly ways in order to live safely and well.  But then Jesus comes upon the scene and beats him at his own game.  He uses the weapons that the devil trusts in and turns them against him.  Scripture says that death, and particularly the fear of death, are a way in which Satan tries to hold people in his grip and make us cling to idols.  And so Jesus enters into the devil’s stronghold of death through the cross.  He uses that very weapon to crush the devil’s head, exploding the power of the grave from the inside out through His resurrection.  The mafioso devil is exposed as the pathetic creature that he is, bound and defeated.  It is written in Hebrews 2, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, Jesus Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. ”

This helps us to see that diseases and disasters–while they are a call to repentance, always, while they may be discipline that God uses to draw us back to Himself–they are not the punishment of an angry God against sin.  For Jesus has already suffered the punishment for all sins.  All that judgment and wrath fell on Him.  He was plagued with everything that we deserved in order to set us free.  Even as Israel was saved from the final plague of death by putting the Lamb’s blood on their doorpost, so eternal death has passed over us who have taken refuge in Jesus and the blood He shed for us.  

So when we face fearful or uncertain times, when things don’t seem quite as solid or sure as they once did, it is here in divine service, where the words of the liturgy which have held solid and sure through the ages, the changeless words of God bring us comfort and hope and confidence.  How fitting the words of the Introit are for today.  Listen again to these words from the Psalms:

My eyes are ever | toward the LORD,

For He shall pluck my feet out | of the net.

The eyes of the LORD are on the | righteous,

And His ears are open | to their cry.

The face of the LORD is against those who do | evil,

To cut off the remembrance of them | from the earth.

The LORD is near to those who have a | broken heart,

And saves such as have a contrite | spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the | righteous,

But the LORD delivers him out | of them all.

The LORD redeems the soul of His | servants,

And none of those who trust in Him shall | be condemned.

Our eyes are ever toward the Lord, looking to Him for all that we need in body and soul.  And most importantly, His eyes are ever on us, watching over us, caring for us.  His ears are open to your cries.  Those who reject the Lord and turn away from Him are rejecting their only help and refuge and will be cut off.  But if you have a broken spirit, if you are burdened and weighed down,  He is near to you to help.  He saves those with a penitent heart.  You may suffer many afflictions, but the Lord Jesus who was afflicted for you, He delivers you out of them all.  Your soul has been redeemed.  Trusting in Christ, you shall not be condemned, but you shall be received by Him with joy forever.

So as it is written in Romans 5, let us rejoice even in the midst of tribulation.  For very often we learn much more of value in times of trouble than in the good times.  As we recently studied in Bible class in Ecclesiastes, we are reminded again that everything about this fallen world is vapor.  It’s all here one day and gone the next, a chasing after the wind.  The things of this world are no place for you to be staking your hope and your happiness.  A pastor friend noted how this Lenten tide, God is forcing us into a certain sort of fast, a fasting from sports and March Madness and concerts and entertainment of various sorts–all of these ultimately vaporous things that too often distract from the one thing needful.  So let us give thanks to God at all times, even in times such as these.  Let your eyes ever be toward the Lord, fixing your eyes on Jesus your Savior, who plucks your feet out of the net, who loves you and gave Himself for you, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.  Let us lay aside the faithless ways of this passing world.  Let us love our neighbor in need and fulfill our callings as Christians, serving one another in the stations of life into which God has placed us.  For though you were once darkness, now you are light in the Lord.  Walk as the children of light.

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

Matthew 4:1-11 (Genesis 3:1-21)

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Why was the knowledge of good and evil harmful to Adam and Eve?  Why did God not want them to partake of that? What’s the big deal?  What’s wrong with human beings having their eyes opened to whatever they want to look in to? 

In the beginning Adam and Eve knew only good; they experienced only the gifts and the blessing of God’s creation. They did not need to know and understand how evil works, all the ins and outs of what its like to reject God and to live disconnected from His Word.  All they needed to know was that they shouldn’t go there, they shouldn’t depart from His words, and to do so would bring death.  That was enough. 

The Lord gave this command for good reason.  For with created beings like us, to know evil is to be changed and corrupted by it.  Even on the most basic level, you probably know what it’s like to have seen something that you wish you hadn’t seen–an immoral image, an act of gory violence, some traumatic event.  But now there’s no unseeing it. The evil sticks with you and changes how you perceive even good things in your life.  Or on a little bit deeper level, perhaps you’ve done or experienced something that you shouldn’t have.  Even if you’ve repented of it and are forgiven, or even if it happened without your consent, even if you’ve tried to forget it and put it out of your mind, the effects often still remain and burden you.  You’ve become a bit more calloused or jaded.  There is still a sense of being tainted by it all.

God didn’t want Adam and Eve or you or me to know any of this evil.  He wanted us to receive only good things from His gracious hand–rather than being turned in on ourselves, hiding out from our fears, preoccupied with covering up our shame.  The Lord wants us to live in the blessed innocence of knowing only His goodness, nothing more.  That’s not stupidity or naivete, any more than we would call a child stupid or naive because they haven’t seen a bloody mixed martial arts knockout or an X rated movie.  In fact we think of children as being greatly blessed when they are free from all the corrupting influences of life that adults know, when they are just able to be kids.  We envy them; we find joy in seeing their joy in the simple pleasures of life.  Just because we know more and have experienced and seen more doesn’t mean that we’re better off than they are at all.  That’s why Scripture counsels us, “In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).  

Today we acknowledge that we are those who, like our first parents, have transgressed into the realm of the knowledge of good and evil.  We’ve wanted to be like God, to achieve our own form of self-fulfillment, to have our eyes opened to whatever our hearts desire.  Repent, for that is the way of death.  You know it; you feel it in your bones.  Turn to Christ Jesus.  For He has come to destroy the evil that corrupts our natures.  He has come to make things good and right again.

That’s why Jesus is in the wilderness in today’s Gospel reading.  In the Garden of Eden man exalted himself to be a god in place of God.  However, in the sin-cursed wilderness God humbles Himself to become a man in place of man. 

 Jesus does not eat but fasts and bears the onslaughts of the devil for us that we may be restored to life. In the Garden man tried to win independence from God, to be his own master, to be in charge of his own life.  But in the wilderness, Jesus relies on His heavenly Father, submitting to His will and looking to Him for all that He needs, in order that He might restore us to faith and to a right relationship with God.  

Let us give our attention then to the devil’s temptation of Christ and how Christ won the victory for us over the evil one.  For here we are given to see the only way out of the trap that the knowledge of evil has lured us into.  Only in Jesus is our corruption undone.  

Jesus was tested and tempted in every way just as we are. As God, He couldn’t be tempted. But He set aside that divine privilege here.  He put His bullet proof vest on the shelf, you might say.  This was the Son of God as true Man against the devil, a match promised back in Genesis where God said He would do battle with the devil through the Promised Seed of the woman. The head crusher versus the heal crusher. No referee in the ring. One on one in the wilderness.  He fights for you.

The first temptation is the temptation of the flesh, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”  “Feed your appetite.  Your Father isn’t providing for you like He should.  Are you sure He loves you?  Take things into Your own hands.  Do what you want for Yourself.  You don’t have to humble Yourself like this and listen to Him.  Come on, Son of God!”  Notice how the devil tries to implant doubt with His temptation.  “If you are the Son of God. . .”  At His Baptism the Father had just said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Now Satan wants Him to doubt that.  

This is how the devil subtly attacks you, too.  Satan wants you to doubt the Word of God spoken at your baptism.  “If you really were a beloved child of God, would God allow you to go through the things you’ve gone through?  And look at you, sinner; you don’t much look like a Christian.  Are you sure you’re forgiven?  Are you sure God wants you?” This is the true evil of the devil’s temptation.  It’s bad enough if he can lure you to engage in sinful behavior.  But even worse, he then takes those sins and shoves them in your face and tries to make you think you’re not even a Christian, that you don’t have true faith.  That’s why the greater temptation is the spiritual kind.  In the Small Catechism, Luther placed the three temptations in this order: first, false belief; then, despair; and then, other great shame and vice.  The vices come last; issues of faith come first.

And so when the devil assaults your conscience and reminds you of your sins, use Luther’s technique and add a few more sins to the devil’s list that he forgot about, and then tell him to go to hell where he belongs.  Fight him off by clinging to Christ and His Word.  Know that all of your sins were swallowed up in the wounds of Christ on the holy cross.  Anything that the devil can charge you with, Christ answered for at Calvary.  With the Word and name of Jesus you can put the devil to flight.  In this way Christ truly is your mighty fortress.

Jesus is faithful for our sake.  He wins this battle on our behalf, denying Himself, trusting in His heavenly Father, and fending off this temptation with the Scripture, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Our real life comes not simply from food but from God’s words and speaking.  His breath and voice give us life.  “I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.”  “I forgive you all your sins.” “This is My body and blood given and shed for you.”  Feeding on that Bread of Life, we live.

Jesus quotes Scripture, and so the devil, in his monstrous craftiness also quotes Scripture.  He took Jesus up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.  For it is written, ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” The devil has here what seems like a pious idea.  God says that His angels will protect you.  So let’s see if it’s true.  Jump from the roof of the temple.  But testing God like that does not flow from faith but from unbelief.  It’s an attempt to manipulate God and make Him do your bidding.  Unbelief demands miracles and signs and outward displays of power to prove that God is really with you.  Beware of those who want you to prove your faith with extraordinary works or signs.  That is the religion of the devil.  Jesus said, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

Don’t ever forget that the devil is very good at religion.  He can quote the Bible with the best of them.  But his religion, his Bible-quoting is always a perversion of the truth.  It has the appearance of godliness, but it is devoid of the grace of God, or it perverts God’s grace beyond recognition and mixes it with man-made righteousness.  The devil laughs at the naivete of those who think that it doesn’t matter what religion you are as long as you’re sincere.  The devil is the founder of every sincere false religion out there.  He loves it when people are “spiritual.”  What he doesn’t like is the cross of Christ–if people believe the preaching of the true Gospel, if they receive the Sacraments with penitent faith, if they trust not in their own merits but in the merits of Jesus alone for forgiveness.

Finally, the third temptation is that of power and honor and glory.  “All these [kingdoms of the world and their glory] I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”  “You don’t need to go the way of weakness and the cross, Jesus. All this heavy stuff about suffering and sacrifice–just put that out of Your mind.  You can have it all right now.  Just make this one little change, this one little compromise in Your principles and Your plans.”  Whereas we would be mightily tempted to take the equivalent of a billion dollar lottery ticket, Jesus doesn’t entertain such a thought for even a moment.  As our faithful captain, He quickly makes one mighty thrust of the sword of the Spirit, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”  And the devil slithers out of the ring, defeated, badly wounded, waiting for an opportune time to try a final revenge attack.  Jesus would not take the path of least resistance.  He took the path to Calvary, the only path that would truly ransom you from the power of the devil.  By the shedding of His holy blood, Jesus released you from Satan’s grip and purchased you as His own.

Today’s Gospel, then, marks the beginning of that victory of our Lord over the devil.  Here’s the key point:  Christ has carried your human flesh into temptation, and He has triumphed. He has prevailed over sin, over the devil, over death, all for you.  Where Adam was defeated, Jesus is victorious.  And He gives you His victory as a gift through faith in His name. Romans 5 states, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”  Jesus was obedient even to the point of death on the cross, for you. Just as Adam and Eve’s clothing was made from an animal God had sacrificed, so Jesus was sacrificed for you by the Father, that through His shed blood you would be clothed with His righteousness.  The risen Lord has taken away the sin that gives Satan his deathly power over you.  Now in Christ you are set free from the fatal desire to know and play around with evil.  You can see that lure for what it truly is.  Now for you who are in Christ, it is “dust to dust to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

Seeing, then, that we have such a great High Priest and Redeemer, let us hold fast our confession of faith in Christ. Come boldly to His throne of grace, that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in your time of need.  In the midst of your testings and temptations and battles, believe that in Christ, the victory is already won.  We pray, “Deliver us from evil.”  And the Lord does; and He has.  Through Him the words of the Introit come true for you, “You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra; the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.”

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Sexagesima

Luke 8:4-15

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

The weather lately certainly hasn’t been gardening weather.  But I imagine that there are at least a couple among us who have some old garden seeds stored away somewhere in the garage or in the basement or a drawer in the kitchen–maybe some leftover green bean seeds or cucumber or zucchini seeds, or sweet corn or flower seeds.  If you think about it, seeds are really remarkable things.  They can lay around for months, seemingly dry and dead.  And yet consider what they do!  A buried acorn becomes a huge oak tree.  An almost invisible speck produces the lettuce and carrots and tomatoes and other vegetables we eat.  A hard pellet imbedded with complex DNA codes and intricate chemical systems starts a chain reaction when something as simple as water is added to it.

The seed is an important element in several of Jesus’ parables.  One of His shortest ones goes like this, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is larger than all garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

The seed teaches us of the hidden way God works.  What appears unimpressive, even dead, is precisely where the action is at.  Seeds are, in a way, a sacrament, an earthly element that contains within it the life-giving Word and command of God.  Seeds bear in them the creative power of God himself.

The Lord God created a perfect world in the beginning teeming with life;  and seeds were a key part of this great creative plan.  In fact, only twelve verses into the Bible, we read: “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.’”  Seeds have always been integral to God’s creation.  And these seeds were there to give food to mankind and all living creatures. Seeds are the ongoing creative work of God to sustain man and beast alike.

But what did man do?  He abused the seed, he took advantage of God’s gift, eating that which was not sown for him.  And after the Fall, God announced the consequence to man: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.”  No more would seeds sprout effortlessly for man.  Now birds would eat what the man has sown–animals no longer living in harmony with man, but in competition. Rocky ground and lack of moisture would make his job harder, making him till and water the ground.  Thorns would entangle the seed and choke it out, requiring constant weeding and hoeing. Good ground would become hard to find, and the man would have to labor hard to eat his bread.

But interestingly, God announces to the devil only a few verses later that a Seed was coming to fix what had been broken.  He tells Satan that the Seed of the woman will crush his head.  The Seed from the body of Eve, the offspring of the very woman who committed the first sin, would come to conquer the Serpent and set the world right again.

The Seed was promised throughout the Old Testament, in particular to people like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  God said to Abraham, “In you and in your seed all nations on earth will be blessed.”  The prophets reminded God’s people of His promise.  It continued through David who reigned over a prosperous kingdom, and through God’s messengers who saw the Temple destroyed and the people taken captive.  Through wars and conquests, occupation and bloodshed, the promise of the Seed remained alive, passing from generation to generation.

And when the ground was ready, the Seed was finally sown. Unlike any other human seed sown by an earthly father in the natural way, this Seed was sown supernaturally by God Himself, through the Holy Spirit.  The angel of the Lord appeared to Mary and sowed the Seed into her womb through speaking into her ears!  The Seed is none other than the Word of the Father, the only begotten Son of God Himself!  And having been planted, that Seed of the Word became flesh; it germinated in the fertile ground of the Blessed Virgin, and grew into a Man, the fulfillment of God’s promise back in the Garden.  Jesus, the very Word of God, crushed the Serpent’s head in a totally unexpected way: by dying, and rising from the dead. For Christ himself told us that unless a “grain of wheat”–a seed–“falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Fellow believers, hear this clearly: The first three soils in today’s Gospel are descriptive of us.  You are the hardened soil of the wayside, sometimes callous to God’s Word, letting it in one ear and out the other without letting it penetrate your heart, acting as if you’ve heard it all before.  You are the rocky soil, on fire for the faith one minute, withered away in unfaithfulness the next.  You are the thorn-infested soil, all caught up in the pursuit of money and the pleasures of this life, anxious about this and that, forgetting the one thing that’s most needful.  Acknowledge this, repent of it, and believe in Christ.  

For this is the purpose of the Word and why it has been sent to you.  First of all, the seed shows the soil for what it is.  There’s never anything wrong with the seed.  But it’s being cast onto the soil reveals the nature of the soil–hard, rocky, thorn-infested, unfruitful  The soil was surely this before the seed fell on it.  But the seed confirms this judgment.  It pronounces it and manifests how things truly are with us.  It does what it was supposed to do.  It shows how the soil is powerless to change itself.  As Isaiah said, “Seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”

But then notice this: The Sower casts the Seed, the Father sends His Son right into the midst of all of this for you, into such corrupted soil.  Jesus is the One who has borne this corruption all for you to take it away from you.  For behold how this Seed falls to the earth, how our Lord suffers on the cross.  Jesus, the Word of God, the Seed, is thrown onto the wayside, the way of sorrows, where he is dragged to His cross.  But notice that the birds of the air do not devour Jesus’ body as was often the case with other condemned criminals, who would be left for the animals to consume.  And this Seed is hurled upon the rocky ground of Golgotha, where he lacked moisture.  But in spite of his suffering and thirst, this Seed would not wither away permanently.  He was even crowned with thorns, the very symbol of Adam’s curse, and yet this Seed would not be choked out of existence.  For while the Seed did die, He rose again in victory over the devil and the world and our sinful nature.  

So do you see?  By His holy suffering and death and resurrection, our Lord has overcome all that stands against you, all that keeps you from having life, all that keeps you from bearing fruit.  In Christ you are free from the hardness and the rocks and the thorns.  In Christ and in Him alone you are the holy fourth soil, pure and righteous and fruitful and forgiven.  In you, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Word of God is implanted through preaching.  You have been watered with the Word in your baptism.  And the Word is sown in the soil of your body, placed on your very tongues, in the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood.  The power of God to give life is in the Seed.  And the Seed is in you and with you and for you.

And be sure to notice how the Father sows the seed.  He doesn’t just plant it here or there in soils He deems suitable and acceptable.  He scatters the Seed everywhere, on the good and the bad, the worthy and the unworthy, on all of us.  That is the nature of His love, love that extends to all.  And the Word of God does what God intends it to do. Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven, so the Word of the Lord will not return void or empty, but will accomplish the purpose for which it was sent. For even in the midst of thorns and thistles, the prophet Isaiah said that cypress and myrtle trees will grow and replace the briars.  

So even though a sermon from a preacher, or a few words spoken over bread and wine, or an announcement of the forgiveness of sins, or a sprinkle of water and the name of God on a sinner’s head don’t look very powerful, they are indeed the very same Seed that crushed the Serpent’s head: the Word of God which is “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.”

The Word of God is truly the most powerful thing in creation.  For it brings life and creation into being.  It is far greater than the power of our fiercest weapons or the energy of the sun.  For only the Word of God overcomes death, makes us worthy to stand in the presence of God, and gives us life beyond the grave itself.

Therefore, fellow Christians, let us thank God for his Word, for his Seed.  As Isaiah said, “Go out with joy, and be led out in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” All of creation rejoices because of the fruit that the Seed bears.  And you are that produce of Christ; you are that fruit that has the seed within it.  In fact Galatians 3 goes so far as to say this, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. Larry Beane for some of the above)

Matthew 20:1-16

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

Is God fair?  If by fair you mean, is God just and righteous, the answer is yes, absolutely.  But if you mean, does he always give us what we deserve, then the answer is no–thankfully so.  For our God is a God of grace as well as justice.  And to illustrate this point, our Lord Jesus tells a parable to teach us how His kingdom works.  

In this story of the workers in the vineyard, a boss goes out in the morning to hire laborers.  As the sun rises, he makes a contract with several laborers for the standard rate of a denarius a day.  And he sent them into his vineyard.  A few hours later, about nine in the morning, he hires another group, but interestingly, their agreement is not for a specific amount but for “whatever is right,” whatever is just and righteous.  And so they went.  The same thing happens at about noon, and then about three.  Finally, at five in the afternoon, with only a single hour left in the workday, the boss hires one last group, and sends them into the vineyard too.

As the sun sets, the foreman brings the workers in to get paid.  The boss says, “Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.”  The guys that worked one single hour received their pay: “each of them received a denarius,” that is, a full day’s wage.  Imagine that!  They were paid for 12 hours, but only actually worked one hour.  So the guys who worked twelve hours, were really looking forward to getting paid.  Surely, they would receive much more, maybe as much as 12 days pay for a single day’s work (if the pay rate was going to be equal).  At the very least in their minds, they should be getting a lot more than what they originally contracted for. “But each of them also received a denarius.”

Now it would seem that Jesus couldn’t possibly approve of this.  It doesn’t seem fair!  After all, those who worked 12 hours “have borne the burden and the heat of the day,” unlike those Johnny-come-latelies who were sitting idle all day, who then only worked an hour in the evening air, and got paid for twelve hours.  When you look at it from the point of view of “equal pay for equal work,” that sounds outrageous.  Maybe this unfair boss is going to be punished in the story.  Maybe he will be forced to pay his workers more fairly.  Jesus has to fix this, right?

But instead, Jesus sides with the boss.  “Friend,” says the business owner to one of the men who worked twelve long hours for a denarius, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.  Did you not agree with me for a denarius?  Take what belongs to you and go your way.  I choose to give to this worker the same as I give to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I want with my own things?  Or is your eye evil because I am good?”

That’s an interesting phrase that Jesus concludes the story with, isn’t it?  It’s about the eyes, this grumbling and complaining and discontentment.  It’s about looking at others and making comparisons and finding some reason to be outraged at people and offended at how you’re being treated or how life’s just not fair.  To have an evil eye is to have a covetous eye that is focused always on yourself and what you can gain for yourself.  A person like this can’t be happy for someone else when things go well; they can only engage in grumbling and insults and in pity parties for themselves.  

It’s important to remember in this parable, though, that no one was treated unfairly.  No injustice was done.  The first workers got a fair day’s wage.  That was good and right.  It’s just that the others were the recipients of the landowner’s great generosity.  People might expect that Jesus’ message would be different, that He would side with the workers seeking fairness with management. But Jesus is like the landowner who has every right to do what He wants with His own things and to be generous to whom He wants to be generous.

Now you could make the point here that Jesus is no Socialist, and He does not advocate for the right of workers to make a claim on what does not belong to them, or to violate their contracts.  But, of course, the main point of this parable is not really about politics or economics but about what the kingdom of heaven is like.  Jesus says that in God’s kingdom, “The last will be first, and the first last.”  Jesus says that “fairness” according to the ways of the world is not how His kingdom operates.  In fact, it’s turned upside down.  Those who think God owes them something more than what He’s given are gravely mistaken.  His ways are just and gracious.  Who are we to begrudge His generosity to someone?

Here’s really the key spiritual point to take from the Gospel: the difference between the first laborers and the later laborers is that the first had a specific contract, a legal compact, with the landowner, whereas the last workers had nothing specific, just a promise that the landowner would give them whatever is right.  That’s a big difference, isn’t it.  Would you work for someone without knowing in advance what your wage was going to be?  Well, it depends on the character of the one hiring you.  Is the person greedy or generous?  Are they trustworthy or not?  Is it a stingy next door neighbor wanting to get their lawn mowed on the cheap, or is it grandma and grandpa looking for an excuse to give their grandchild a big gift?

So you might say that the first laborers were operating under the Law, and the later laborers were operating under the Gospel.  The first laborers were relying on their own works, the last laborers were living by faith in the goodness of the landowner.  That’s why the last are first, because their confidence is not in themselves but in the Lord and what He does.  Remember what the landowner said, “Is your eye evil because I am good?”  The Lord is good, and His mercy endures forever.  

The truth is, we should thank God daily that He doesn’t judge us by what is fair; He doesn’t give us what we deserve.  For we deserve death and hell.   We may be considered good people in a worldly sense.  But how often have we been idle and lazy in doing good works?  Have any of our words or deeds even done damage to the vineyard?  We deserve wrath.  “The wages of sin is death.”  However, because of the work of Jesus and His sacrificial death, God is free to show mercy to us.  He is free to do good to us which we have not merited or deserved.  In the cross of Jesus, justice (what is fair) and grace (what is undeserved) come together.  At Golgotha, the just punishment for sin is carried out.  Justice is done; Jesus pays the price.  And at the same time grace overflows.  Your sins are forgiven; you are treated as if you worked perfectly and tirelessly all day.  The merits of Jesus are credited to you.  “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

He who is the first and the greatest humbled Himself to be the last of all on the holy cross.  He Himself is the one who bore the burden and the heat of the day that brings us the generous reward of salvation.  Jesus was handed over to Pontius Pilate at dawn, crucified at the third hour of the day; darkness covered the land at the sixth hour, noon.  Our Lord died at the ninth hour as the perfect and complete sacrifice for our sin.  He was buried at the eleventh hour of the day just before sundown.  See how the work was all done for you, simply for you to receive by faith.  Hear again those words from the cross, “It is finished.”

One more point: Very often when we hear this parable of the laborers in the vineyard, those of us who have been lifelong Christians and lifelong Lutherans like to think of ourselves as having worked the whole day.  We didn’t come to faith later in life; we were baptized as infants and have been a part of the church right from the very beginning.  And that’s certainly an acceptable application of this parable–although it is also a warning.  Remember what happened to those hired at dawn!  Let us never grumble at the grace of God shown to sinners and to those who repent and receive the denarius of salvation later in life!  

But there’s another way to think about and apply this parable, too.  And that is that we ourselves are actually among the last workers hired.  Those who have really borne the burden and the heat of the day in the Church have come before us in history.  We’re not the ones who fought the early heresies and formed the Scriptural Creeds of the Church.  We’re not the ones who faced the power of emperors and the power of popes, risking death for our faith (though that day may soon be coming).  We’re not the ones who crossed oceans and sacrificed everything to be able to practice our faith and raise our children according to the truth.  We are not the ones who preserved the liturgy and penned the great hymns of the Church.  Truly an astonishingly rich heritage has been handed down to us. And here we are near the close of the age, at the end of the Day, eagerly waiting for the Last Day, relying on the goodness of the Master,  privileged to work in the vineyard and to be a part of the one, holy, Christian, apostolic Church.  Truly, it’s all a gift of God’s grace.

Our Lord does what He chooses with what belongs to Him.  And that is true here again today, as Jesus freely chooses to give you His very body and blood, once offered up as the atoning sacrifice for all of your sins.  Here at the altar you all are paid the denarius of salvation, regardless of how long you’ve been in the vineyard.  For in truth we are all those last fortunate workers who just squeaked in, though we do not deserve it. The Lord is just.  The Lord is gracious.  The Lord is good.  Blessed is the one who trusts in Him.

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

(With thanks to the Rev. Larry Beane for some of the above)

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠        

    Psalm 103 prays, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits." To bless the Lord here means to thank Him.  We are gathered now on this holiday precisely for that purpose, that we might remember and give thanks to the Lord for all the benefits He has bestowed on us.

    For we know all too well how prone we are to forget the Lord and His blessings. We forget because we’re all wrapped up in our own little worlds. We forget because we're tempted to think that it's to our own credit that we've gotten where we are in life.  It is as Moses warned Israel, "Beware, lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth." Then Moses counsels us, "When you have eaten and are satisfied, bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you." Don't be so wrapped up in the things of creation that you forget your Creator. Honor Him as the Source of all that is good.  

    Romans 1 describes ingratitude as one of the key characteristics of unbelief.  “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”  And Martin Luther famously and prophetically warned the Germans of his day what would happen for lack of thanksgiving, something which we in this nation should also take to heart: “Let us remember our former misery, and the darkness in which we dwelt. Germany, I am sure, has never before heard so much of God’s word as it is hearing today. . . If we let it just slip by without thanks and honor, I fear we shall suffer a still more dreadful darkness and plague. . .  Make use of God’s grace and word while it is there! For you should know that God’s word and grace is like a passing shower of rain which does not return where it has once been. It has been with the Jews, but when it’s gone it’s gone, and now they have nothing. Paul brought it to the Greeks; but again when it’s gone it’s gone, and now they have the Muslim Turk. Rome and the Latins also had it; but when it’s gone it’s gone, and now they have the pope. And you Germans need not think that you will have it forever, for ingratitude and contempt will not make it stay. Therefore, seize it and hold it fast.”

    “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” First of all, forget not the daily bread God provides you, the material gifts which He has granted you. In the Small Catechism we confess that "daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like."
We might include in that list a number of things we too often take for granted like indoor plumbing and plug-in electricity and computers and antibiotics and fresh produce throughout the winter months.  All of that and more is a gift from the Lord.

    God has given you all that you are and all that you have. You may have worked for some or even most of it, but who gave you the ability to work? Who gave you your ability to think and speak and see and hear? Who continues to sustain your bodies and sustain this nation in such a way that you can enjoy these created blessings? It is not mother nature; it is Father God, who together with the Son and the Holy Spirit is the one true God, the Blessed Holy Trinity. God does all of this for you–not because you've earned it or deserved it, but simply because He is good and merciful. He is your Father, a God of love who revels in giving you His good gifts.

    Again, we confess in the Catechism, "God gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people. But we pray . . . that God would lead us to realize this and receive our daily bread with thanksgiving." God doesn't ask us to pray for daily bread as a condition of our receiving it, and if we don’t ask nicely, He’s not going to provide.  No, God asks us to pray for daily bread so that we'll be reminded where it comes from; to Him is due all the credit and praise.  But God even sustains and cares for those who don't recognize Him as the Giver. That's because God is so good, He even provides for the needs of those who reject Him, that seeing His kindness they might come to repent and believe and be saved.

    But then the question arises: What about when it seems that God's kindness has been taken from us and the provision of daily bread seems to be failing? What about when wars or famines occur or the economy and our financial situation doesn't look so good? What about when the vision and the hearing fail and the health deteriorates? What about when people turn against us? Do we still have anything to give thanks for? Can we still say, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits"? The answer is: Absolutely, yes!

    To be sure, in this fallen world we are bound to experience troubles of various sorts. Temporal blessings are just that, temporary. Sin ruins everything in the end, from international relations right down to our very bodies. Through these things God seeks to humble us and turn us back to Himself.  The fact that God restrains the effects of evil as much as He does in this world and protects us and allows us to enjoy anything is a sign of His mercy.

    But the greatest and truest sign of God's kindness toward us, the greatest benefit for which we give thanks to the Lord, is that He has granted us every eternal blessing in His Son, Jesus Christ. Sin may eventually ruin everything in this world. But our Lord conquered sin in His death on the cross, and through His resurrection He has made all things new. Jesus has redeemed this fallen creation from the curse by bearing the curse in His body. He broke the curse on Good Friday and set us free to live in a never-ending Easter of life and immortality.

    In Jesus we have not only daily bread, but the Living Bread from heaven, His life-giving flesh and blood which He offered up for the world. In Him we have not only earthly clothing, but the robe of His righteousness which we were given to wear at the font. In Him we have not only a temporary house to live in, but an eternal home which He is preparing for us.

    That is how St. Paul, when He was in jail for preaching the Gospel, could say, "I have learned the secret of being content in any situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength." Even when Paul was beaten and deprived of everything but the clothes on his back, he still had Christ. And the fact of the matter is that if we have Christ, we have everything. For all things belong to the risen Christ, and through Christ the Father will graciously give us all things.

    Is there no peace in this world or in your relationships? In Christ you have the peace that passes all understanding to guard your hearts and minds, the peace that comes from the full and free forgiveness of your sins, the reconciliation of being restored to the Father. Does financial difficulty threaten you? In Christ you are made rich with the promise that God will never leave you or forsake and with heavenly treasures that will never pass away. Do certain enemies harass you or make you fearful? In Christ you have deliverance from all enemies by His crushing of the devil's head at Calvary. Is your health failing? In Christ you have perfect health in the resurrection of the body. Has death separated you from a loved one? In Christ you have a joyous reunion with those you love who have departed in the faith. If you have Jesus, you have it all–by faith now, by sight when He comes again.

    Our thanksgiving is not based primarily on the circumstances of our life.  Our thanksgiving is based first and foremost on our relationship with God, which has been reconciled through the precious blood of the Lamb of God.  Every single one of us, then, has reason to give thanks to God this day, because when it comes to the most important things, eternal things, we've been blessed beyond our comprehension.

    The true worship of God is to give Him thanks.  In the end that’s just about all that we can truly give to Him, anyway, since He’s the source of all things.  We say it all the time in the liturgy, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me?  I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.”  Let us, then,  call on His name and give Him thanks for our daily bread, for family and friends, for this great land, but above all, for the holy cross, for His saving Gospel and life-giving Sacraments, and for the real and everlasting life that we have in Him. Let us say with the Psalmist, this day and every day, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits."

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Matthew 18:21-35
Trinity 22

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Most of us would like to believe that we’re pretty forgiving people. As a rule we’re not angry and vengeful and bitter.  We’re nice; we’re forgiving.  But we need to be careful that we’re not fooling ourselves and misunderstanding this.  When someone says to us that they’re sorry, we think we’re being forgiving when we say, “Oh, don’t worry about it.  No big deal.  It’s alright.”  But brushing something off is not the same thing as forgiveness.  That’s just a way of saying you don’t think it’s all that bad.  It didn’t do any permanent damage. You can forget about it and overlook it.  The true test of forgiveness is when something is genuinely truly bad in our estimation, when some real harm was done.  That’s when we start obsessing about the matter.  That’s when we start talking about certain things being unforgivable.  The truth is that you can only call yourself forgiving if you let go of things that genuinely hurt you and don’t desire payback.  Real forgiveness isn’t easy.

    It’s very similar in many ways to the practice of tolerance.  Lots of people like to think of themselves as tolerant nowadays.  “I’m not bigoted against other religions or other cultures or LGBT lifestyles.  I’m a tolerant person!”  But when you ask these people, it turns out that they don’t really think there’s anything particularly wrong with any of that in the first place.  So that’s not actually tolerance at all.  You can only tolerate something which you find to be wrong or distasteful or that you disagree with.  You can’t tolerate something and celebrate it at the same time.  Real tolerance sounds more like this, when Jesus said, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; pray for those who spitefully use you.”  Real tolerance is more like a Christian showing love and kindness to someone in spite of their immorality or unbelief.  

    In the same way, if you forgive something you don’t really care about, that’s no real virtue.  It’s one thing to forgive and let go of someone’s failure to show up precisely on time for an appointment.  It’s quite another thing to forgive and let go of things that others have done which you find to be detestable–betrayal, sexual molestation, alcoholism, abuse, criminal behavior, abortion.  The only things that you can forgive are things you consider to be real, actual sins.  

    I’m emphasizing this point because in today’s Gospel, it can be easy for us to minimize the debt that the second servant owed the first servant, the 100 denarii.  We say, “Well of course the man should have forgiven his fellow servant!  That was such a small debt compared to what he had just been forgiven.”  But it was still 100 days’ worth of wages.  That’s what a denarius is, a full day’s wage.  That’s more than three months’ pay!  It doesn’t do us any good to ignore the depth of the debt, to deny the gravity of the sins against us that we or others have suffered.  To be sure, it’s not right to hold on to those sins; but neither is it right to pretend like they’re nothing either.  They can create very real bitterness and anger and resentment and fear in fallen creatures like us, a very real desire to grab our neighbor by the throat and say, “Pay me what you owe, now!  An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!”

    Sins have been committed against us which have genuinely hurt us.  But if that is so, think how much more we have committed sins which have genuinely caused pain to our God.  If the wrongs we’ve endured are only 100 denarii, imagine how deep our debt toward God is, our countless rebellions and idolatries, which are described as 10,000 talents!  Just a single talent, just one is the equivalent of 6,000 denarii, more than 18 years worth of wages–and that’s just one talent!  10,000 talents, in other words, is a way of describing a debt that is incalculable, unpayable.  For my part, at least, that means I don’t fully grasp the gravity of my own sin.  And you don’t fully grasp the gravity of your sin.  That’s how sin works.  It blinds us to the utter severity of our own condition.  We are all in the most desperate need of forgiveness from God.

    And that’s where it all must begin.  Without a humble stance as beggars before God, we will never be able to act with lowliness and gentleness toward our neighbor and forgive him.  We must all come before our God and King and acknowledge that even if He gave us 100 years, we couldn’t even begin to make a dent in our debt.  In fact all our attempts would only dig that hole deeper.  We are bankrupt; we are utterly dependent on His mercy to forgive us, or we are lost forever.

    All thanks and praise be to God, then, that He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  God has taken pity on us and canceled our debt.  He didn’t just reduce what we owed and put us on an interest-free payment plan.  No, the debt is completely erased.  It’s gone.  You are debt free.  

    But be sure to understand, the debt still has to be paid; just not by you.  The sin-debt is very real; and so the payment also must be very real.  Real forgiveness isn’t easy.  Someone has to absorb the debt.  And that person is the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.  God the Son became a human being in order to pay what we humans owed.  But since He is also God, the payment He earned was infinite, even as God Himself is infinite.  Jesus took on Himself your debt, your sins, and they were crucified with Him.  By dying in your place, Jesus settled your account with God forever–not with talents of gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.  And by rising again to life, Christ has restored you to life again with the heavenly Father.  All this has been done without any merit or worthiness in you but only because of God’s fatherly goodness and mercy.  You are free from the power of sin, free from hell, free from being afraid of God.  Forgiveness has overflown to you.  Like the servant, you’ve been given a new life, a new start.

    Since that is true, since God has answered for all sin at Calvary, since it’s all covered by Jesus’ blood, who are we to act otherwise?  Who are we to hold onto what God has let go of and dealt with and done away with, whether it’s our own sin or somebody else’s?

    The first servant in the Gospel failed to understand this.  He didn’t seem to see the connection between how his debt had been forgiven by the mercy of the king, and how therefore he was also to be forgiving toward others.  How could the servant behave so strangely the way he did?  Perhaps it was just that he was completely selfish and self-absorbed.

     Or perhaps it was because he didn’t really trust that his debt was truly forgiven.  Still in the back of his mind he was thinking, “This can’t actually be true.  Sooner or later, the king’s going to be coming for me, and I better build up as much in the way of assets as I possibly can, so that maybe I’ll have a little bargaining power.”  Do you see?  If the servant truly believed that the debt was forgiven, he would have been like a renewed Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Day, a new man, giving away and passing on with cheer the same compassion he himself had received.  Instead he didn’t believe it; he didn’t walk by faith.  And so he put himself outside the king’s mercy by his actions and ended up suffering the king’s judgment.  

    To forgive is to believe that Jesus really did atone for all sin and pay all debts.  Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “I just can’t forgive myself.”  It seems to me that what they’re really saying is, “I can’t believe that God could ever forgive me.  This is going to stay with me forever.  I should be punished or have to make up for it somehow.”  And so they still end up living according to the law of retribution, toward themselves and toward others.  But God has truly forgiven you, of everything–and not only what you’ve done, but also the sin that has been done to you.  He bore your abuse and your humiliation, too, and whatever pollutions you’ve had to endure.  All of that He took away from you; all of that He put to death on the cross.  You are clean again.  You are righteous. To forgive is not to condone the wrongdoing; it’s not to deny the pain caused or the damage done.  Rather, it’s to acknowledge it for all that it is, and to place the matter in God’s hands, the hands that were stretched out in death to take away the power of sin.  Because of that you are now freed to forgive others in the seventy times seven way of the Gospel–not by your own power but by the power and mercy of Christ.

    Just as God has forgiven the whole world through Christ, even those who won’t repent and believe and be saved, so also in Christ we forgive even those who won’t say they’re sorry or be reconciled to us.  Forgiveness is not dependent on the repentance of the person who committed the sin but on the actions and the attitude of the one who was sinned against.  You can forgive someone even if the other person hasn’t changed.  Isn’t that how it is with God?  God has forgiven the whole world’s sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It’s all covered.  People may still reject that and refuse to believe that and live outside of that forgiveness; but that’s on them.  If they are eternally condemned, it’s because of their own unbelief.  But what we are given to do is to stand with Christ and offer His mercy.  No human sin is greater than God’s divine forgiveness.  And it is by His forgiveness that we forgive others.  When someone does us harm, we remember, “Jesus paid for that sin, too. And if He paid for their sin, it’s no use for me to behave as if He didn’t.”

    So in your marriages and in your families and with your friends, get in the habit first of all of saying “I’m sorry.”  Don’t justify or excuse what you’ve done or immediately go into defense mode.  Be willing to open yourself up to the truth of what you’ve done or failed to do.  And then even more importantly, get in the habit of explicitly saying to the other, “I forgive you.”  “I’m not going to hold this over you.”  There’s vulnerability there also, on both sides of the equation.  But only in this way is there genuine and lasting reconciliation.  

    Real forgiveness will always be hard.  But all the truly hard stuff was done by Jesus, all sins done to death in His body–atoned for, punished, taken away, released and gone.  So when you find it difficult to forgive, or when you find yourself feeling unforgiving again toward a person you’ve once forgiven, the way to deal with that is to return to the cross.  You can’t forgive someone from your heart when your heart is empty.  Fill it with the merciful, debt-releasing words of Christ in Scripture.  Fill it with the sanctifying flood that flows to you from your Baptism into Christ the crucified.  And be filled once again with Jesus’ body and blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness and cleansing of all sins.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

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Matthew 22:34-46
Trinity 18

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    The Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees.  The Pharisees liked that.  For they and the Sadducees were in opposing camps.  The Sadducees were sort of like the liberal theologians of our day.  They accepted the books of Moses, but they didn’t believe in the existence of angels or life after death or the resurrection of the body.  The Pharisees did believe in all of those things, and they were glad when Jesus could be used as ammunition against their rivals–anything that would advance their power and their agenda.  Putting it into our terms, the Pharisees were the conservatives, with their emphasis on living a righteous life according to the Law, and the Sadducees were the liberals, the more culturally elite and powerful.

    We know well what it’s like to live in a world where everything has political overtones like that.  There aren’t many areas of life left where you aren’t pressured to take up sides with this or that group.  Relationships with co-workers or friends or family are full of land mines if certain issues of religion or sexuality or gender come up.  Entertainers seem to be focused less on entertaining and more with political mocking and virtue signaling.  Even in the once politics-free realm of sports, political causes are often the focus, and everyone feels compelled to take up sides for this or against that.  Everything we do now is seen through the political lens of privilege or race or gender or class.  In an era where objective truth has largely been abandoned, all that’s left is power.  Have you ever noticed how often that term is used, how people feel they need to be “empowered?”  Power is the realm of politics and control and one group asserting itself against another.

    But this is not the way of Jesus.  Jesus is not one who was after political power.  He was not merely trying to win a victory for some group or some cause, and so He can’t really be categorized politically.  Was He a conservative or a liberal or a moderate?  Just when one group or another thought that He was their man, Jesus would say something to prove that He wasn’t.

    So for instance, just before today’s Gospel Jesus said something that the conservative Pharisees didn’t like.  They had asked him about whether or not they should be paying taxes to the foreign occupiers, the Roman government.  And Jesus famously said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”  Jesus sounded a little bit pro-establishment.

    So then the establishment Sadducees came to Him, perhaps perceiving an opening.  But Jesus exposed the foolishness of their disbelief in life after death or the resurrection.  The true God whom they claimed to worship is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And Jesus said, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”  Jesus was no friend of these establishment leaders, then, either.  Our Lord wouldn’t have been a delegate at any of these groups’ political conventions.

    Like the people in His day, we also want to label Jesus and fit Him into our categories so that we can handle Him and manage Him–Jesus as a republican or a democrat or a free-love libertarian, Jesus as a capitalist or a socialist.  You’ll notice that even unbelievers try to get Jesus on their side and will quote the Bible they never read to support their particular cause.  But Jesus defies all our attempts to make His Word fit our worldly agendas and ideologies.  For as soon as we try to do that, we are making ourselves to be Lord and Master, and Jesus becomes merely the means to achieve our goals.  And that’s not how it works.  Jesus remains the Lord, and His Word is sent to accomplish His purposes, not ours.  If the God you worship agrees with everything you already believed, it’s probably not God you’re worshiping, but yourself.

    “Teacher,” the Pharisees asked, “which is the great commandment in the law?”  It was a question intended to categorize Jesus and support their self-righteous thinking.  It treated the Scriptures like a textbook rather than the living, Spirit-filled words of God.  Our Lord would not play the Pharisees’ game or submit to their litmus test.  So instead of choosing a single commandment, He summarized them all.  Since love is the fulfillment of the law, Jesus answers in two parts.  First, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  That’s not something you can reduce down to a bunch of do’s and don’ts.  For that Law commands you to love God with every fiber of your being, all that you are, with nothing held back from Him.  He wants the entire devotion of your heart; all of your allegiance to be with Him alone.

    And in case someone thinks that loving God means leaving ordinary life and your fellow man, He goes on, “And the second (great commandment) is like (the first): ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  These two go hand in hand.  The love of God and the love of the neighbor are inseparable.  For God seeks to be loved in your neighbor.  The Lord Jesus–who took up our nature and truly shares in our humanity–He is present therefore in all those around us, particularly those in need, to receive our acts of kindness and self-giving.  As the proverb says, “He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord.”  That’s why Jesus says that the commands are alike: Because God is served both in love for Him and in love for the neighbor.

    And this is where the living voice of the Law nails you.  It exposes your lovelessness.  It lays bare your self-satisfying motivations when you do engage in good works.  It brings nothing but judgment and death.  It calls you all to repent and to turn to Christ.

    For Jesus then gets us back on the track that leads to salvation and life.  The Pharisees had asked a manipulative Law question, but now Jesus asks a freeing Gospel question, not one that focuses on us, but one that focuses on who He is.  Jesus gets us away from religious philosophizing and political debates between this or that group, and instead He leads us to meditate on the personhood of the Messiah Redeemer.  Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah?  Whose Son is He?”  They said to Him, “The Son of David.”  And that was correct.  God had promised King David in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be one of His descendants.

    Jesus then asks them this question, “How then does David in the Spirit call the Messiah ‘Lord’ in one of the Psalms?”  You see, under ordinary circumstances in Jewish culture it would be the son who refers to the father as lord or master, not the other way around.  And yet here David, the father and the great ancestor of the Christ, refers to his descendant as Lord.  Jesus asks them, “Why is that?”  Just as the Pharisees had tried to trap Jesus into a debate with a Law question, Jesus here tries to “trap” them into thinking about the truth of the Gospel with this question, to get them to see the saving reality of who He is.

    The Jews had been conceiving of the Messiah as a combination of a great prophet and a powerful political leader, but always in the end only a man.  But Jesus here leads us to see that while He is truly human, He is more than just a man.  David calls Him lord and master because Jesus, his literal descendant, is also truly and fully God.  The Son of David is the everlasting Son of  God.

    Here, then, is where the good news is for us.  Jesus, thankfully, does not come in a way that fits into our political or social categories or according to the expectations of whatever groups we align ourselves with.  He comes not in the way of fallen man but in the way of His perfect humanity.  Jesus is the only man in whom God’s love is perfectly embodied.  Jesus kept the Law perfectly for us and in our place.  He loved His heavenly Father with all His heart, with all His soul, and with all His mind, devoting Himself entirely to doing His Father’s will.  And Jesus loved His neighbor as Himself.  He gave Himself completely to those around Him, healing them, helping them, teaching them saving truth.  In the end He gave His life away, laying it down for us on the cross.  There is no greater love than that a man lay down His life for His friends; and you are His friends whom He died for.  Through that perfect act of love and self-giving, Jesus won for you the full forgiveness of your sins.  

    Jesus said that on these two commandments of love hang all the Law and the prophets.  Jesus, who is love in the flesh, hangs on the cross for you to fulfill the Law of love perfectly.  Baptized into Him, the Law’s condemnation is taken away from you, as Romans 8 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  You are free, released, forgiven, right with God in Christ.  His self-sacrifice has rescued you from judgment and has brought you everlasting life.  For Jesus has made your enemies to be His enemies–sin and death and the devil–and by rising from the grave He has made them His footstool.  The grave is conquered; sin is taken away; Satan’s head is crushed.  All of this which you know only by faith you will see with your own eyes at Jesus’ return–when He who is at God’s right hand is revealed in all His glory, and all things that are under His feet will be put under your feet with Him.  

    So remember that our Lord Jesus works not in the way of power politics but in the way of sacrificial self-giving.  He doesn’t tell people what they want to hear in order to gain a larger following than the other side has and more power for Himself.  He tells us the truth of our sin and the truth of His blood-bought forgiveness, so that He might draw us to Himself, that we might be His own special, chosen, and beloved people and live with Him in His kingdom.  He’s not in the business of labeling people based merely on some worldly identity of race or sex or privilege or economic status.  Rather, He gives us all our true and eternal identity as the baptized, as ones redeemed by Christ the crucified.  For it is written in Revelation of those in heaven that they are from every tribe and nation and people and language.  We all are given to stand before the throne of God saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain whose blood set us free to be children of God!”  

    This Jesus, the Lamb of God, is present here now–not to rally a political following but to be pure love in the flesh for you, giving you His true body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins.  Here is living theology, where the love of God and love of the neighbor all come together in Christ, love’s flesh and blood.  You are sanctified and cleansed in Christ Jesus.  You are saints before God as the epistle said–not because of the Law and what you have done, but because of the Gospel and what Jesus has done.  Continue, therefore, to believe in Him and cling to Him, eagerly waiting for His return.  For He will confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God is faithful; He will do it.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠