Matthew 25:1-13
Last Sunday of the Church Year

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

    Why is it that you want to go to heaven?  Serious question.  You might say, “Well, obviously, I don’t want to go to hell, so heaven is clearly the better option.”  OK, but aside from avoiding punishment, what is it about heaven that makes you want to go there and to be there?  There is this notion that it will be good and happy.  So that’s nice.  On the other hand, there’s also this notion that it may not be as exciting as some of the things we enjoy on this earth.  Heaven is all holy and stuff, so you better have your fun now while you’re still here.  “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now.”  This is actually a good way for you to do a little spiritual self-diagnosis:  What is it that might make you want to put off heaven or the second coming of Jesus?  What is it that would make you want to tell God to hold off for a little bit; I’ve got something else I’m really looking forward to first.  Whatever that is, even if it’s a good thing, it has become an idol in your heart and a false god in your life.

    So again, what’s going to make heaven so great?  Actually, the Bible never really talks about “going to heaven” as the primary goal of the Christian.  To be sure, God’s Word clearly teaches that the souls of those who die in the faith go to be with the Lord.  But there is still much more that God has prepared and planned.  The truth of Scripture is expressed in the Creed, when we say that we look for the “resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.”  Our real hope is tangible, fleshly, and focused on the Last Day.  On that final day, we won’t be going to heaven, heaven will be coming to us.  With the return of Christ, heaven and earth will be rejoined and all creation will be made new through Him and in Him.  What we set our hearts on is bodily resurrection.

    It is as the Old Testament reading said, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth  . . .  No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. . .  The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”  Notice there that eternity is described in physical terms, a new creation.  It will be a world where no aging person is wondering why they’re still here, where no family is ever gathered around a hospital bed or coffin, a world where even in the animal kingdom there will be no more blood-red teeth or claws.  God’s plan for this creation will not be delayed forever.  It will become what He intended it to be in the beginning: a world without fear, without sin, without death.

    But is even that really our ultimate goal, simply to have a pleasant place to exist for eternity?  No, what truly makes the life of the world to come so good–and this is what we often forget–is that there we will be in communion with God Himself, living forever in the overflow of His lovingkindness.   It is written in Revelation, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men. . .  God Himself will be with them and be their God.”  Why do we want to have our share in the resurrection of the body to eternal life?  To be with Jesus.  That’s where it’s at.  Being together with Him, sharing in the life of our Redeemer is what it’s all about.  Only through Him is anything truly good and right.  Just beholding the glory of God face to face will far surpass any earthly experience.  In Him is perfect peace and contentment and gladness.  If your idea of heaven isn’t centered in life with Christ, if it’s primarily about a place that fulfills all your own personal dreams, you’re missing the point.  What makes eternal life to be real living is the presence of your Creator and Lord.

     So it’s no wonder, then, that the final prayer in the Bible and the constant prayer of the church is “Come, Lord Jesus!”  That is our faith’s greatest desire, to be with Him, in an even greater way than we desire to be with loved ones for the holidays that we haven’t seen for a long time, or even to see believing loved ones who have died and are with Christ.  We seek something even more than that.  When the sorrows and the fears of this world press hard against us, and we don’t know if we can hold up much longer, we pray: “Come, Lord Jesus!” When change and decay in all around we see, and it seems as if the very foundations are being shaken, we pray: “Come, Lord Jesus!” When we feel the devastating effects of our own sinful flesh, we pray: “Come, Lord Jesus!  Come quickly to deliver us!”  Or as the Psalmist prayed, “My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (Psalm 84:2)

    By faith we long for that Day, but we know from Scripture that it will not be a day of joy for everyone. There are those who are unprepared for it, who really don’t welcome it.  Many would see Jesus’ return as an unwelcome disturbance of their plans, who love this world and don’t want to let go of it.  For them that Day will come like a thief in the night bringing sudden destruction, and there will be no escape. To meet that day without faith in the Savior and love for being with Him is to meet it as the Day of Doom.

    What made the wise virgins truly wise in this parable was that nothing was more important to them than being with the Bridegroom.  Everything else was secondary.  It was all about Him.  For the foolish, being with the Bridegroom was just another thing to squeeze in with the other priorities of life–if possible.  And so the wise were well prepared, while the foolish were unprepared.

    Having faith in the Savior and wanting to be with Him is the main point of today’s Gospel parable.  Those who were wise staked everything on Him.  The lamps of the 10 virgins are the Word of God, as Psalm 119 says, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet.”  The oil in the lamp is the Holy Spirit who works through the Word and the Sacraments to create faith in Christ and keep the flame of faith burning brightly.  Because the foolish virgins gave little attention to the Word of God and the Sacraments, their flames went out; their faith died.  And they ended up being shut of the wedding feast, shut out of life in the new creation forever, even hearing the Lord say those horrifying words, “I do not know you.”  That’s a description of hell right there–hearing Jesus say that He doesn’t know you and that you can’t be with Him; all that’s left is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

    The five foolish ones did not endure in the faith to the end. They thought the bare minimum was enough; but tragically, it wasn’t.  It’s not God’s fault.  The doors are open.  And God eagerly and gladly supplies everything necessary–oil in abundance, free of charge, no strings attached, all paid for and provided by Christ.  There is not one soul for whom God’s Son did not shed His blood.  There is not one human life whose sins were not atoned for on Golgotha’s wood.  There is not one human being whose death wasn’t destroyed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of you are forgiven and redeemed entirely for the sake of Christ.  All of you are on the invitation list for the wedding feast.

    Your heavenly Father longs to be with you.  Much more than our desire for God is His desire for us.  That’s really the whole point of being at church, isn’t it?–to be with God and He with you, concretely, tangibly, in the flesh.  He delights in you through Jesus and wants you to be with Him.  Christ shares in your humanity so that you may share in His divine glory.  By His external, preached Word, God keeps you in the faith, lamps burning brightly all the way through to the end.

    To the foolish all the church stuff may seem unnecessary.  What's the point of having so much oil?  But in other matters of life that is exactly how everyone would expect you to behave.  When you are going somewhere without a source of electricity, you make sure that your phone and your devices are charged, or that you’ve brought along some sort of extra charging device.  When you’re going on a big cruise or trip, you make sure you’re all packed up the night before and that you arrive at the airport early.  Young brides-to-be will often spend countless hours shopping for dresses, trying on make-up, consulting with their hairstylist, deciding on menus and flowers, preparing for a wedding.  Doesn’t it make perfect sense then to be even better prepared for the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb in His kingdom?  

    The extra oil of the wise is a reminder that faith never thinks in the way of having the bare minimum, any more than you would want to spend the least amount of time possible with someone you love.  Why wouldn’t you want to receive communion every week?  Being with Christ in divine service and being with Christ in eternity go together, and the cause of joy is the same in both cases–His presence, His mercy.  This is what makes the wise so single-minded:  You know that the One who is coming is the true, heavenly Groom who is perfect love in the flesh, the One who “gave Himself up for His beloved church, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water and the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, . . . holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:26-27).  

    We eagerly watch for the Last Day, for when St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he told them that God did not destine them for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him.  That holds true for you too who believe and are baptized.  You are not destined for wrath, but for life with Christ.  The Introit proclaims, “The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads . . . and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”  And Christ declares in the Old Testament reading, “I will joy in My people.”  That’s a description of heaven right there, the Lord rejoicing in you!  Anyone who thinks that’s going to be boring, or that something else might be more important or exciting simply doesn’t have a clue.  The Lord’s passion and desire for you is that you may live with Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

    So listen to the call:  “Behold the Bridegroom is coming; go out to meet Him!”  Go out with the brightly burning lamps of faith in the present darkness of this world.  Be filled by the Holy Spirit with Jesus’ words and body and blood.  Possess these life-giving gifts in abundance from the Lord.  And as you go out to meet Jesus here in divine service week by week, then it will be no disturbance of your plans at all, but a most natural and joyous thing, when you go out to meet Him on the Last Day.

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

(With thanks to William Weedon)

2 Peter 3:3-14
Trinity 26

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

    Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the path that sinners take, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.”  One of the defining characteristics of the ungodly is that they are scoffers, mockers.  They revel in making fun of stuff.  They delight in tearing down the good gifts of God and His teaching and the things that make for order and peace in our lives, and they do little to build up what is good and right.  This is the content of much of today’s comedy and entertainment, mocking and scoffing and doing parodies of people and institutions, and then walking away and blaming others for the rubble that remains.  Hidden beneath the mockery is an unbelieving heart.  

    Now that’s not to say that all scoffing is wrong.  Some mockery actually flows from faith.  In the Old Testament the prophet Elijah famously mocked the prophets of Baal as they danced around their altar and called on their god to send down fire on their sacrifice.  Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.  Maybe he’s on the toilet!”  Idolatry in all its forms is to be mocked, along with the foolishness of those who oppose God’s ways.  Psalm 2 speaks of how, when God looks down at all the scheming and politicking of the rulers of this world, as if they’re the ones in control, the Lord laughs at them and scorns them.

    But in particular, the Scriptures warn us to be prepared to be on the receiving end of ridicule because of who we are as the people of God.  You’re going to have a hard time being a Christian in this world if you’re going to be worried about what people say about you, if you’re trying to remain popular with the secular and pagan folks who are around you.  
 
    Peter reminds us in today’s Epistle that scoffers will come in the last days, saying things like, “You actually believe that accounts in the Bible like the flood are historically accurate?  You actually think that what the Bible says about sexuality and sin and repentance still applies to today?  You actually profess faith in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, and that Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead?  I mean, come on, it’s been 2000 years now.  Where is He?  Aren’t your beliefs just a little bit backward and superstitious?  You only cling to all that because you’re weak-minded.”  Notice how Peter states that they say all this because they walk “according to their own lusts.”  Their way of life is to follow their own desires and appetites and wisdom.  The notion of a God who might one day judge them doesn’t fit in very well with the way they want to live.  And so they deal with that by scoffing at the Christian faith, mocking it and making fun of it as stupid or hateful.

    But Peter goes on to point out that they do this by willfully forgetting the truth.  They purposely ignore reality in order to justify themselves.  That is why those who object to Christian teaching are becoming increasingly bold and condescending in their speech–it takes a lot of passion and effort to fight against what you know deep down is true.  St. Paul speaks in Romans 1 about how the unrighteous “suppress the truth” that is clearly evident in creation.  Unbelief pushes the truth down and out of the mind so that people can rationalize the way they think and act.

    All of this is not unlike how it was in the days before the flood.  Genesis 6 says, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”   And so the flood came.  But before that it took Noah many years to build the ark.  In the meantime the Scriptures say he was a “preacher of righteousness,” warning people of the coming judgment.  But no one paid attention.  They surely mocked him for his building project.  It is written in Luke 17, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married . . . until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”  Peter reminds us that there is another judgment coming, this time not by water but by fire.

    So even though you may be growing weary in trying to live like a Christian, even if you’re tired of being made to feel like an outsider, resist the temptation to just give in, to go along with the mindset of the culture, to adopt its self-absorbed way of living, to compromise your beliefs because that’s what you’ve got to do to get by or to get ahead.  The daily barrage can entice us all to believe the lies, to question or just give up on God’s Word.

    Peter here offers you some encouragement.  He reminds you first of all that the Lord’s delay is not a sign that He’s forgotten about you or that the promise of His return is empty.  Rather, it’s a sign of His great mercy.  He is patient and longsuffering with us sinners, not wanting anyone to perish eternally.  He gives us all time to repent.  It is written that the Lord is “slow to anger.”  He’s not like us, with a short fuse when things don’t go our way.  He’s not looking for a reason to let us have it.  Rather, He is “abounding in steadfast love,” wanting all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  So if you hear someone ridiculing a belief in the second coming, or if you find yourself beginning to question it, remember that in the Lord’s delay we see His patient mercy.  The only reason the world continues on each day is because of His love for fallen human beings.

    Our Lord patiently suffered for us, which included His being mercilessly mocked and ridiculed.  Think of Jesus being slapped around before the Sanhedrin, blindfolded and told to prophesy who it was that hit Him.  Think of Him being dressed up as a king complete with a crown of thorns and being offered mock praise.  Think of Him on the cross, being taunted with chants of how He should come down if He really was the Messiah.  On Good Friday Jesus was treated as a fool in order to deliver us from our foolishness and vindicate us who believe in Him and deliver us from judgment.  The sentence has been served for you.  Jesus took your punishment completely.  It is finished.  And since it’s all been accomplished and taken care of, that means that the Lord can wait, and so can we.  There is no hurry.  For God’s wrath has already been appeased.  Your redemption is won in Christ through the blood that He shed. You are safe and forgiven and put right with God.  You have nothing to fear.

    And here’s another thing to remember: what seems like a dreadfully long time to us is just a blink of an eye to the Lord.  One day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day to Him.  We must always be careful to look at things from His eternal perspective and be patient, even as He is.

    Still, there will come a point when the time of mercy, when the opportunity for repentance will end.  “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night,” suddenly and unexpectedly on the world, as did the flood.  On that last day it is written here that the whole universe will be incinerated and will pass away with a great noise–the real big bang.  The elements of this sin-cursed old creation will melt and fully degrade and expire to make way for the rising new creation to come.  Specifically, Peter says that the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.  All of our greatest works and achievements, all that human hands have made will be consumed, evaporated, gone.

    Therefore, since that is what is going to happen, how should we be conducting ourselves?  Should we be setting our hearts on the stuff of this world, or the status and power that comes with being honored by others and not mocked by them?  Why be completely wrapped up in what doesn’t last?  This is no time for complacency and spiritual laziness.  Rather, says Peter, since the last day is fast approaching, conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness and love toward others.  Look for and live for the day of His return.  

    The Epistle draws this all together when it says, “According to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”   We await our bodily resurrection in that place which our Lord Jesus is preparing for us, a real, tangible world in which righteousness dwells.  For He, the Righteous One is there.  No more will there be stomach-turning news reports.  No more will we have to deal with our own frustrating fallen nature.  For all things will be made permanently right and good and new in that Day.  All scoffing will be done, all mockers cast out, and there will be only perfect praise and reveling in God’s glory.

    And even now, the Scriptures say, you are already new in Christ, for you have been baptized into Him who is immortal and incorruptible.  You have been saved from judgment through water.  Just as Noah and His family and the animals entered in through the side of the ark, so also you have found refuge in the side of Christ, from which the blood and the water flowed for your cleansing and your redemption.  You are the ones the Gospel speaks of who are at the Jesus’ right hand.  To you He will say, “Come, you blessed of My Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  

    Let us then pray daily for our Lord’s return.  Let us look for His coming, especially as He comes to us hiddenly now in the holy supper.  Our Lord says in Revelation, “Surely I am coming quickly.”  We say with all the saints who have gone before us, “Amen.  Even so, come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22:20)

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

Matthew 24:1-28
Trinity 25, 3rd Last Sunday in the Church Year

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

    The temple area in Jerusalem used to be a truly impressive display of architecture and engineering.  In the years before Jesus’ birth, King Herod had engaged in a multi-decade project turning the entire temple mount into a place rivaling the glories of Rome, with dozens of huge colonnades and porticos and archways and structures surrounding the temple.  And the temple itself was also renovated and upgraded by Herod, with white marble and gold and bronze entrance doors.  It was said that you couldn’t look directly at the temple in full sunlight or it would practically blind you. The disciples were impressed by all this glory, and they pointed it out to Jesus.

    However, Jesus bursts their bubble.  The glories of this present world, even of the temple itself, were passing away.  Jesus, who is the eternal temple, the dwelling place of God in the flesh, tells them that those huge, expertly-crafted, marvelously-placed stones would all be destroyed and thrown down, not one stone left upon another.  This must have been a shocking thing for the disciples to hear, and it gets them to thinking about big apocalyptic things, like the end of the age.

    That’s what Jesus wants us to do, too, especially as we begin to wind down to the end of the church year.  Now is the time for us to ponder ultimate and eternal things and not just what is impressive in this world.  We, too, can rightly marvel at amazing feats of architecture, like the ancient pyramids, medieval and renaissance church buildings, modern stadiums and skyscrapers.  We, too, can be amazed at technological wonders like GPS and AI and rockets that can go into orbit and then return and land with precision at a tower that catches it.  But lest we get too full of ourselves and what humans can achieve, Jesus bursts our bubble and gives us a dose of reality.  It’s all going to be thrown down and destroyed–including even this building, including the things you’ve built up in your life–all of it.  Don’t get too caught up in temporary wonders and accomplishments, or you’ll go down with them.

    Jesus gives several signs which are intended to keep us focused on the main thing, the big picture of life with Him.  The events that led up to the cataclysmic destruction of the temple are a microcosm of what will happen to the whole world in the last days.  And so Jesus talks about both of these things together.

    First, Jesus says that in the last days, you should watch out for false Messiahs and false prophets so that you are not deceived by them.  Whether it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon “latter-day saints” or Muslims or Hindus or generic spiritual gurus, they all present a false Christ–not the historical person who is truly God in the flesh, who died on the cross as the sacrifice to atone for all sin, not the one who is risen in the flesh as the only Lord and Redeemer, but some person of their own invention.  Even within the church there are some who lead people away from the Christ-centered truth of Scripture to the deceitful wisdom of man.  So be on guard; pay attention to doctrine.  Be sure that you are receiving the Bread of Life and not the junk food of false teaching.

    Next, Jesus speaks of wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, of famines and pestilence and earthquakes.  Sounds a bit like our nightly newscasts, doesn’t it?  Conflicts are occurring and brewing from Russia to China to right here at home.  And nature itself is often in upheaval, as we saw with the recent hurricane.  Yet all these things, Jesus says, are just the beginning of the birth pains.  

    Now when labor pains come, what do the parents do?  They get everything ready for the delivery.  They head to the hospital.  They focus on the new life about to come into the world.  So what do we do when we see these signs?  When everything looks like it’s coming apart wherever we turn, too often we get anxious and fearful and cynical.  But Jesus gives us the signs of the end not so that we’ll focus worriedly on those troubling events but on Him whom the signs are pointing us to.  Just like birth pains, these signs are meant as a wake-up call.  Get ready!  New life is about to come.  We don’t know exactly when–labor is sometimes short, sometimes long.  But one thing we know for sure: Jesus is returning soon.  And that’s a good thing!  So you’re in the right place, this hospital, this divine service.  Do the spiritual lamaze of breathing in and breathing out His holy words.  Receive the medicine of immortality in the Sacrament of the Altar to strengthen your hearts.  Don’t dwell on how everything is crumbling down.  Rather, keep your eyes fixed on Him who is building up and bringing in the new creation for you, even in this moment.

    It’s important to do this, because Jesus says that Christians will be hated and killed for the sake of His name.  How’s that for an evangelism message?  “Come and die with us.”  Those who love the lies and the false promises of this world hate those who hold firmly to Christ and His words of truth.  So don’t be surprised at how violently irrational this could get.  Jesus said, “If the world hates you, know that it hated Me first.”  You are given to be like your Lord and to walk the way of His cross.

    Be prepared for this, so that you don’t stumble and fall away from the faith.  Jesus says here, “Many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.”  Former Christians will turn on those who were once their brothers and sisters.  And on a larger scale our Lord says, “Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”  Sometimes lawlessness is accomplished (ironically) by using legal levers of power.  What greater example could there be of love growing cold than the majority voting for the legal ability to kill innocent unborn children?  Why are people so motivated to maintain this “right” to slaughter defenseless human beings?  It’s because of the sexual lawlessness that abounds in our porn-saturated culture.  When it comes right down to it, sexual freedom is more highly prized in this country than the human life it conceives.  Lawlessness and cold-heartedness go hand in hand.

    However, not all of Jesus’ signs are bad news.  The last sign He speaks of is very good news, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”  Missionary work is a sign of the last days!  Even in the midst of the chaos and disorder of this fallen world, the new world is already breaking in through the preaching of the Gospel.  The kingdom of God is coming right now by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  His kingdom is in our midst wherever two or three are gathered in His name, assembled around His words and body and blood, receiving His forgiveness and life and salvation by faith.  The fact that you have gathered like this today is a witness to the nations of the presence of God’s kingdom and the sure hope you have in His mercy.  In this world of upheaval and constant change, you know that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  You can count on Him who is your Rock and your Fortress.  Jesus gives you this promise, “He who endures to the end shall be saved.”

    That’s what you are called to do: endure.  Continue to hold on to Christ and His promises.  For they will come to pass.  Wait with patience for His return.  For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.  When you see all these signs that He speaks of, know that Jesus is close at hand.  The very gates of heaven are about to be opened in the sight of all.  His glory will soon be revealed to us and in us.  The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of the living God.  You can endure with confidence because your victory is assured in the crucified One.

    And that brings us finally to this mention of the “abomination of desolation” in the Gospel.  Israel, of course, was under Roman rule in Jesus’ day.  And the Romans demonstrated their dominion by placing their image upon the lands they ruled, the image of the eagle.  The eagle insignia was even attached to the front of the temple.  For the Jew, these graven images were an abomination and idolatry, something like a swastika.  Eventually a large Jewish rebellion arose against Rome in 66 A.D., one which would be crushed in the following years.  Jesus said in Luke 21, “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.”  The sign of the eagle arrived in force with these Roman armies.  They entered into the temple, burned it, and tore it down in 70 AD–the abomination that brings desolation.  Wherever the corpse is–the dead bodies of war–there the Roman eagles were gathered together.

    And yet we can see that there is a greater meaning to these words of Jesus.  For just as the destruction of Jerusalem foreshadows Jesus’ return in glory, it also points back to Jesus’ death in dishonor.  “Wherever the corpse is, there the eagles will be gathered together.”  Didn’t Jesus die at the hands of the Romans–Pontius Pilate who condemned Him, the soldiers who flogged Him, the centurion who stood guard at Golgotha with his troops?  The sign of the eagle was certainly there as the corpse of Jesus was taken down from the cross.  The real abomination of desolation was that God incarnate was crucified under the authority of Caesar. And the holy of holies, Christ’s body, was violated as a Roman spear pierced Him and the sacrificial blood of the Lamb of God was poured out.  And yet precisely because Jesus endured this great tribulation, because He underwent this greatest of suffering at the hands of the powerful for you, the tribulation that you must endure will not be your undoing.  Your powerful enemies, Satan and sin and the grave, have all been conquered by the greater insignia, the sign of the cross.  Marked with that sign in baptism, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.  “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:28).  For the sake of the elect, the days of tribulation have been shortened–for your sake.  They are temporary.  Then have an end in Christ.  “See, I have told you beforehand,” Jesus says.  He has prepared you for this.  He will see you through it.

    So it’s no longer about corpses and eagles for us.  Now we rejoice to say, “Wherever the risen body of Jesus Christ is, there the sheep will be gathered together.”  We assemble at His table where our hearts are stirred up to love by His forgiving presence.  His coming is hidden now, but not on the Last Day.  “For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”  Remember how the angel at Jesus’ tomb had a countenance like lightning.  When he descended from heaven there was a great earthquake as he rolled away the stone.  Imagine, then, what an earth-shaking, radiant event it will be when the Lord returns with the whole angelic host, when your grave is opened, and you share bodily in Jesus’ resurrection.  So it is that we pray with the whole church, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”
    
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

Luke 8:41-56
Trinity 24

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

    12 years.  To the parents of the girl in the Gospel reading, that must have seemed like such a short amount of time, now that they were losing her.  To the woman with the flow of blood, 12 years must have seemed like forever, slowed down to a crawl by her suffering.  These two separate lives of suffering and death are about to intersect with Jesus.  And once they are connected with Him, things will never be the same.

    Jairus the synagogue ruler comes to Jesus with an urgent, emotional plea.  His only daughter, not even a teenager yet, was near death.  Jairus’ heart was breaking at the thought of losing her.  His only hope was that Jesus could save her and restore her life.  He was desperate; he fell down at Jesus’ feet.  Time was of the essence.

    All of us must learn to become like Jairus, to recognize our desperate need in this dying world, to be willing to come humbly before Jesus pleading for His help.  He’s our only hope to be saved.  Like Jairus, we must be unafraid to lay hold of Him, recognizing that there’s no time to waste in this passing world.

    As Jesus began to make His way to Jairus’ house, the multitudes surrounded and pressed in close to the Lord.  I’m sure Jairus was becoming distressed at the slow pace.  Jesus could have slipped through the crowd if He chose.  He did that once at Nazareth in Luke 4, when a hostile crowd tried to grab him and throw him off a cliff.  But He didn’t do that here.  He chose to let the crowd get in His way.

    In the crowd was this woman who had been sick since about the time that Jairus’ daughter was born.  This woman suffered from a hemorrhage in her uterus, constantly bleeding.  She’d been to all the doctors.  She’d tried all their remedies and potions.  They took her money, but things never got any better, only worse.  

    Perhaps that situation sounds familiar to you.  Even today, with all our medical advancements, there’s only so much that doctors can do for us in our bodily afflictions.  Even after spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on tests and procedures and pills and treatments, things sometimes don’t change.  It’s frustrating.

    For twelve long years this woman suffered, not just physically, but also by being isolated from the community.  According to the Old Testament Levitical law, a woman was ceremonially unclean during the time of her flow of blood–which meant that this woman was constantly unclean.  She couldn’t enter the temple courts, excluded outside.  Plus, she couldn’t bear children, even as Jairus feared that his 12-year old daughter would never grow up to have children.

    This woman heard that Jesus was coming.  “I won’t bother Him,” she thought.  “He wouldn’t want to touch me, anyway.  I’m unclean.  I’ll just come up behind him.  All I have to do is touch his robe, and I’ll be well.”  And so she works her way close to Jesus and reaches out and touches the border of His garment.  And immediately her flow of blood is stopped.  She feels a surge of life flow into her.  When she touches the robe of Jesus in faith, she is drawing upon the same energy of God that created the universe and everything that is in it.  She is healed.  

    Notice that the power to heal does not lie inside of us, some inner energy we need to tap into.  No, it comes from Jesus.  There is no healing power within us waiting to be unlocked and unleashed.  Inside us there is only disease and death, hemorrhaging away our life.  Life and health come from outside ourselves.  Every healing comes from Jesus, whether through prayer or penicillin or both.  Medicine and prayer are instruments, but Jesus is the source.

     This woman’s flow of blood stopped because she had come into contact with Jesus, who would cause His blood to flow for her on Good Friday.  It is written, “He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”  Jesus absorbed all of our ailments, and He crucified them in His body.  He suffered all of our suffering to death, so that in Him we might have real and enduring life and wholeness.  The Epistle reminds us, “In Jesus we have redemption through His blood.”

    Jesus immediately stopped and looked around.  “Who touched Me?” He knew power had gone out from Him.  Peter replied, “How can you ask such a question?  The crowds are all pressing in on You.”  But Jesus wouldn’t move until He had dealt face to face with the one who had touched Him in faith.  He doesn’t deal with people anonymously but personally.  Jesus wanted to speak to her, to give her more than she had already received from him. “Who touched me?”  

    When the woman saw that she couldn’t hide herself, she came trembling before Jesus.  She confessed the reason why she touched Him and how she was immediately healed.  And Jesus turns her fear to joy when He says, “Daughter, be of good cheer.”  He restores her to the family of God; “daughter” He says,claiming her as His own.  Then Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Not just generic faith which believes God exists, but specific faith in Jesus, faith that dares to sneak up behind Him to touch Him.  Through Him she not only had healing but peace with God.

    Doesn’t Jesus still extend the border of His garment also to us?  You also are given to touch His garment in this very place and receive His healing and forgiving power.  Just as the woman came into real contact with Jesus, so you come into real contact with Him in the Sacraments, particularly the Supper of His true body and blood.  Though you are not yet given to see Him face to face, yet you take courage and come up to Him from behind, so to speak, and touch His garment here at the altar.  And when you come in faith as the woman did, the power of His forgiveness goes out from Him to you.  As it is written, “The blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin.”  

    And just as it was for the woman, you are not anonymous to Him; He sees you.  He says to you, “Be of good cheer.  Your faith in Me has saved you.  Depart in peace.”  “Go, knowing that whatever ails and pains and troubles your body I have already conquered and overcome, and you will be gloriously healed and made whole in the resurrection of the body at the close of the age.”

    Which brings us back to Jairus’ daughter.  Remember, all of this business with the woman in the crowd was an interruption and a detour from what Jesus was on His way to do.  The story suddenly stops and everything is put on hold.  Isn’t that how life generally is, a bunch of stops and side trips on the way to where you think you want to go?  However, Jesus shows us here that what may at first seem like a detour in our human existence is in fact precisely the road God is giving us to travel.  It’s the actual circumstances and people the Lord gives you which constitute the path you should walk by faith and with love.  For our true destination is not merely our own goals and dreams; our destination is Christ Himself.  He is the path and the way.  Jesus received this supposed interruption as sent from His Father, and He was completely there for this woman.  In the same way He is completely there also for you, even in the midst of the interruptions and the unexpected events of your life.

    By the time Jesus is done dealing with the woman in the crowd, word comes to Jairus, “Your daughter is dead.  Do not trouble the Teacher.”  But Jesus seems to ignore the news.  He looks straight at Jairus.  “You trusted in Me when your little girl was sick.  Trust Me now that she’s dead.  I haven’t forgotten you; I will not fail you.  Do not fear.  She will be made well.  Just believe.”

    Jairus must have been tempted to think that Jesus didn’t really care all that much for him, at least not as much as He cared for others.  Jesus delayed while his little girl’s life just faded away.  Shouldn’t Jesus have done a little triage here and helped his daughter first?  So also we can be tempted to doubt God’s care for us, especially when we see others doing better than we are, while our life if full of problems.  “Where is God?  Why does He delay in helping me?”  It’s one thing to trust in God when all is well; it’s another thing to trust in Him when the hand of blessing seems shut and all you have to cling to is Jesus and His Word, “Do not be afraid; only believe, and all will be made well, better than you can imagine.”

    Jairus must have believed and held out hope in Jesus, for He continues with Him on to his house.  When they arrived, they saw everyone mourning and weeping.  But Jesus said to them, “Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.”  And they ridiculed Him for saying something that seemed so foolish and insensitive.  But from Jesus’ perspective, it was true.  For He knew she would awaken to life.  An ordinary doctor can only help when there’s still life in the body.  But Jesus can help even after the life is gone.  For He is the Lord of life and the Great Physician.

    Jesus put them all outside except for the parents and Peter, James, and John.  No unbeliever would see this miracle.  Then Jesus took the little girl by the hand; He touched her with His life-giving presence and said, “Child, arise.”  And by the power of His Word, her spirit returned and she arose immediately.  And He commanded that she be given something to eat, much to the joyous astonishment of her parents.

    The world still ridicules Christ and His church today for this teaching of the resurrection.  To human reason it seems to be a foolish proposition to believe.   Yet we do profess, especially on this All Saints Sunday, that those who have died in the faith are asleep in Jesus and that their bodies will awaken at His return to everlasting life.  Remember the words of St. Paul, “I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.  For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. . .  The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. . .  And the dead in Christ will rise.”  There won’t be any more ridicule on the Last Day.  For Christ will put the unbelievers outside, who in their profound regret will die a death that never ends.  But Christ will say to the faithful, to you, “Child, arise,” and your bodies will be awakened from their grave beds to the astonishing joy of sharing in Christ’s Easter glory.

    I have little doubt that the woman and the 12-year-old girl in the Gospel stayed in touch after this day–Jesus Himself had connected their stories.  And through your baptism into Jesus, your story is now connected with them, too.  One day, you will meet both of these women and rejoice with them, together with your believing loved ones who have died.  For you will see Jesus, who has raised all of us up from the death of sin by His life-giving Spirit.  He calls upon me now to give you something to eat, this holy communion which strengthens you in your new life.  Touch Jesus’ garment.  Do not fear; only believe.  Trust Him in sickness and pain and in the hour of your death.  Your faith in Jesus will save you.

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

(With thanks to the Rev. William Cwirla)

Matthew 18:21-35
Trinity 22

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

    In the Lord’s Prayer, we’re used to saying, “Forgive us our trespasses. . .”  Trespass is another word for sin, crossing over into some area God has told you not to go; that’s how Jesus gives this prayer in the Gospel of Luke.  But in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  I imagine that language hit home with Matthew the tax collector.  Sin is debt.  You owe something to the one you’ve sinned against, whether it’s God or your neighbor or both.  

    It’s helpful to have this in mind when we talk about forgiveness.  Forgiveness is not just about brushing off the offense.  “It’s OK; forget about it.”  If sin is a debt, then there’s something much more real and tangible going on when forgiveness is given.  As an example, if you owe your parents or the bank or the government $40,000 that you borrowed for your college education, and they forgive that amount, it’s not as if the debt just vanished.  It may have for you, but somebody had to pay it–the taxpayers, the bank shareholders, Mom and Dad–someone had absorb that cost.  And in the same way, to forgive sin is to say, “I’m willing to pay the price for what you did without me getting any payback.  I release you from that. I won’t make you cover the cost.”  

    Someone always has to pay.  Forgiveness simply means that the one who incurred the debt, who did the wrong, doesn’t have to pay the price because someone else is willing to pay the price for them.  This is true of money debt; it’s true of sin debt.  One way or another, though, the debt gets paid.

    I’ve been asked a couple of times–and perhaps you’ve wondered this yourself–why was it necessary for Jesus to share in our flesh and suffer and die and shed His blood?  Why couldn’t God simply forgive everyone’s sins simply with a wave of His hand?  Couldn’t God have just said of our sins, “Don’t worry about it” and leave it at that without all the blood and death?  The answer is, “No, not if His justice and mercy are real and true.”  

    To sin is to offend against the justice and righteousness of God.  It is to rebel against His commands in favor of doing things your own way.  Your sin is not just the equivalent of getting a few parking tickets, a few minor misdeeds.  According to Scripture, your sin is treason against the King of the Universe.  It is the act of a traitor who wants to take over the Lord’s throne.  In the end someone has to pay the price for that.  A just God and Lord doesn’t simply say, “Oh, whatever.”  Such sin, such sinners cannot stand in His presence.  His very nature requires that it be dealt with.  It is written in Hebrews 9, “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.”  So the question is, who’s going to pay that price?  Is it you, or is it someone else who is willing to cover it for you?  Someone’s got to pay.

    In the Gospel reading, the first servant owed the King an enormous debt, 10,000 talents.  Just one talent was worth about 6,000 denarii, and each denarius was about a day’s wage for an ordinary laborer.  So to pay off a debt of 10,000 talents would take the equivalent of 60 million days of work.  How this servant got into such debt we don’t know.  But his claim that he could pay it off if he was given enough time is just laughable.  There’s no way he could ever climb his way out of that hole he had dug.

    This first servant is a picture of each of us.  We have run up such a tab against God with our thoughts and desires, words and deeds, that we can’t even begin to grasp how big it is.  Even if we spent the rest of our lives trying to make ourselves right with God again, even if we entered into a monastery or convent and devoted every possible moment to making up for our sin and trying to become righteous, it wouldn’t be enough.  All we can do is throw ourselves at the King’s feet and humbly beg for mercy.

    And thanks be to God, He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  He’s not in the business of payback.  The Lord has taken pity on you and canceled your debt.  He didn’t just reduce what you owed and put you on an interest-free payment plan.  The debt is completely erased.  It’s gone.  You are debt-free.  You are forgiven.

    Now understand, the debt still had to be paid; just not by you.  The debt is very real; and so the payment must be very real.  Just like the king in the Gospel lost 10,000 talents by forgiving the servant, someone had to absorb your debt.  And that person is the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.  Our Lord became a human being in order stand in for us and 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 gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.  And by rising again to life, He earned eternal life for you and restored your relationship with the heavenly Father.  All this God has done without any merit or worthiness in you but only because of His fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy.  You are free from the power of sin, free from hell, free from being afraid of God.  Overflowing forgiveness has been given 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–for everyone–since it’s all covered and paid for 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.  And so he went out and grabbed his fellow servant by the throat and demanded, “Pay me what you owe!”  How could that servant behave the way he did?  It seems to me the only way he could act like that was if he didn’t really trust that his debt was actually forgiven.  Still in the back of his mind he was thinking, “This can’t really 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 and ended up suffering the king’s judgment.  

    Jesus issues a very clear warning to us here.  To insist on payback with others is to invite God to get payback with you.  To refuse to forgive others is to refuse to be forgiven by God.  After all, you can’t be on your knees before God and angrily at one another’s throats at the same time.  The attitude of humility before God seeking His mercy is the same attitude we should have toward others in giving mercy.

    Someone’s got to pay.  Either you can spend your life making sure other people pay for their sin-debts against you and be consumed by your anger and bitterness and efforts at making them pay for how wrong they were and how much they hurt you.  Or you can pay using Jesus’ account.  You have this limitless resource that Jesus has earned, that covers all sin–including those terrible sins that have been done against you.  Forgiveness is not a denial of how horrible those things are or a minimizing of them.  Rather, it is a way of living which acknowledges that Jesus paid the price for all of it.  With that abundant overflow of His mercy toward you, you are made able to forgive the debts owed to you by others.  Because You have full access to Jesus’ account, you are given to say to others, “I’m going to treat you without a desire for revenge, without a desire for payback, without you having to make it up to me.  I’ll take the hit, since the hit was already absorbed by Christ for both of us.  I release you from your debt to me.  I forgive you.”

    Through Jesus God has paid for the sins of every single human being, even those who won’t repent and believe, who won't 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.  That’s how Erika Kirk could forgive her husband’s killer.  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 sin is greater than God’s 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.”

    Real forgiveness like that will always be hard.  But all the truly hard stuff was done by Jesus.  All the sin-debt was transferred to Him–atoned for, punished, taken away, released.  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 of all sins.

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

Luke 14:1-14
Trinity 17

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

    The Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading seem awfully silly, don’t they?  It’s easy for us to mock how ridiculous they are.  None of us would think for a minute that it would be bad for someone to be healed on the Sabbath.  God was obviously not forbidding that when He told us to “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”  Why would it be OK for someone to get a trapped animal out of a pit but not OK to help someone trapped and afflicted with some disease?  To us that just seems absurd.  It’s easy for us to justify ourselves and think that we certainly would have done better than the Pharisees.

    But don’t just dismiss them.  It’s worth asking, why is it that they were thinking that way?  What did they wrongly believe that led them astray?  They were thinking that the way they would be counted as good and righteous in God’s sight was by how well they kept His commandments.  That’s still a common belief to this day, isn’t it?  And keeping the Sabbath was a particularly important commandment.  Every seven days they were to stop their work, just like God did on the seventh day of creation.  In their mind, it was an offense against the Creator to do any work at all, even if it was something good like a healing; there were six other days for that.  Especially someone who was a rabbi like Jesus should know better, they thought.  If He was a true prophet of God, He would be setting an example which showed how righteousness comes through obeying God’s Law. 
    
    Now as Lutherans, we think we’re pretty well defended against the Pharisees’ false teaching.  We’ve rightly had it drilled into us that we’re saved not by our own works, but by grace alone and what Christ alone has done for us.  However, we sometimes then fall into the opposite error of the Pharisees.  I mean, why is it that so many Christians are tempted to just disregard the 3rd commandment?  Why are so many gone from church for weeks at a time–sometimes even months at a time–and are not remembering the Sabbath day? Is it possible that we actually have the same root problem as the Pharisees?  Here's what I mean:  If people believe they can do without the preaching of Christ and the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, there’s only two possible reasons for that: either they don’t think they have any real sins that need to be forgiven–which is a big problem–or they think that they already know enough of this stuff, and so their own private belief and efforts at being a good person are enough to merit God’s favor.  In both of those scenarios, Jesus’ words and sacraments become basically non-essential, just something maybe for Christmas and Easter.  Do you see?  In the end it’s the exact same sin as the Pharisees, thinking that righteousness comes by what we think and do, apart from Christ’s divine service to us.  Those who purposely skip church are trusting in their own works instead of Christ’s works, just like the Pharisees.

    Now of course, there will be times once in a while when you simply can’t make it to divine service because of sickness or an unexpected work obligation and the like.  We don’t want to descend into Pharisaic legalism here.  But imagine if people treated the other commandments the way they do with “Remember the Sabbath Day.”  Think of how ridiculous it would sound: “I refrain from murder except when I have to work.”  Or “I refrain from adultery at least two weeks out of every month.”  Or “I don’t steal except when the weather’s really nice.”  All those statements sound completely idiotic.  And yet, that’s the way even many church members talk about remembering the Sabbath day, as it if it were merely a suggestion that we could sometimes safely ignore based on our plans and desires.  “You skipped church?  Oh, well. I’m sure you had a good reason.”  Even if we thought we didn’t need church, even if we thought it was completely pointless, still simply because God has commanded it we should be eager to hold preaching and His Word sacred and gladly hear and learn it.

    And here’s the thing: it truly is a glad thing to remember the Sabbath day, because it’s not about trying to merit God’s favor by your good church attendance, chalking up points with Him; that’s not why you come to divine service.  It’s about receiving God’s favor dished out to you as a free gift in Christ’s preaching and supper.  “Lord to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life!”  The Sabbath day is all about us stopping our work so that we can focus on God’s work and receive His work for us in Christ.  That’s where real Sabbath rest and peace is to be found in this world that is so restless and lacking peace.  This commandment, like all the commandments, is given for your good, not as a burden but as a blessing.

    When Jesus healed on the Sabbath day, He was showing precisely what the day is all about.  We gather around the Great Physician to receive His healing mercy and forgiveness and His wise counsel.  What the Pharisees failed to see was that in Christ God was the One doing the work here.  Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.  And the Sabbath work that He does saves us and redeems us in both body and soul.  Again, remembering the Sabbath day means that we stop our work and all the activities and the running around and the sports–good heavens, the sports!–and all the busyness of our life to dwell upon God’s work for a couple of hours and receive His divine service to us in Christ.  We focus not on our performance but on what He performs and does for us through His words and sacraments.  And we then respond with glad thanksgiving and praise that confesses what He has done.

    Now it is true that this commandment applies to us in the New Testament differently than it did in the Old Testament.  Back then, the day of rest had to be the 7th day of the week, Saturday.  But with Christ’s coming the Law was fulfilled so that the requirement to worship on a particular day no longer applies.  Colossians 2 says, “Sabbaths are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.”  The Old Testament day of rest pointed us forward to Him who Himself is our rest and our peace, namely, Jesus.  Why focus on all the Old Testament shadows when the One who is casting the shadow has come!  

    Just consider how wonderfully Jesus fulfilled the 3rd commandment for us in order to save us.  Not only was it his custom to be in the synagogue each Sabbath where the Word of God was preached and taught (and He certainly knew it all and still showed up); not only did He love being in His Father’s house, meditating on and talking about the Scriptures; but He redeemed and renewed the days of creation, including especially the seventh.  

    Think of Holy Week as a new creation week.  On the first day, Palm Sunday, the Light of the world entered into Jerusalem to do His Father’s business and carry out the mission He had been given.  He taught and He labored throughout that week.  On the sixth day He suffered and died to redeem man whom He had created from the dust of the ground, triumphantly declaring, “It is finished!”  His work was very good.  And what did He do on the seventh day?  He rested in the tomb, sanctifying our graves and making them a holy place of rest from which we shall rise again on the Last Day.  Finally, He brought into existence an eternal 8th day, an unending Easter by conquering death for us.  His bodily resurrection has ushered in a new creation, free from the curse of sin, rich with mercy and divine life.  That is why Sunday is called “the Lord’s Day” in Scripture and is the church’s primary day of worship.  Divine Service can happen on any day of the week, of course, but at its center is always the Word of the risen Savior who said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  

    Since the Sabbath is all about God’s work, what Jesus is doing, it is necessary that we come before Him with an attitude of humility.  It’s not about us and our works.  This is His show, His teaching, His meal.  Our place at the table is not something for us to achieve for ourselves but for Him to give.  We all come before God as beggars, without any right to exalt ourselves in His presence.  Whatever we are is a gift of His grace.  

    So instead of jockeying for the places of honor and glory, Jesus says, “When you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’  Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.”  So humble yourself before God.  Acknowledge your sin in true repentance; hope in His mercy.  Do not come to assert your spiritual rights based on your works, but come recognizing that it is the Lord’s place to bestow honor and glory, and it your place simply to receive whatever His good and gracious will gives.  Those who love and honor the Lord in humble faith will be exalted by Him and brought to everlasting glory in the presence of the whole creation.

    This is Jesus’ way.  He put Himself in the lowest place, the place of death, in order to save you.  He bore your shame on the cross to restore your honor.  And now Jesus is exalted to the highest place at the right hand of the Father.  And the good news is that He has raised you up with Himself.  By your baptismal faith you are united with Him in such a way that you share in His exaltation as members of His body.  If Jesus the bridegroom is honored, then His Church, the bride, is also honored with Him.  It is written in Ephesians that you who believe are seated with Christ in the heavenly places.  

    That heavenly place is here for you today.  Jesus is here among us at the head of the table.  To every penitent heart He says, “Friend, move up higher.”  “Come, ascend these steps to this holy place.  Share in My honor by receiving My own body and blood.  Be filled with My forgiveness and My life.  Here is your Sabbath rest and healing.  Here is the foretaste of the Last Day, the day of resurrection, the day when you will move up higher forever.”

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

Matthew 9:9-13
St. Matthew

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

    In a way, it’s really a bit strange that when we hear the word “Pharisee,” we automatically think of something negative and bad.  For in their day, the Pharisees would have been regarded as good people, the ones who were in worship every week, who were trying to apply the Scriptures to everyday life.  And it’s equally strange that when we hear the phrase “tax collectors and sinners” we tend to think of that more positively.  For those sinners would have included prostitutes; and a tax collector would be like a CEO who profited by working with foreign countries at the expense of American workers.  Would you rather have Pharisees or tax collectors and sinners come and sit in the pew with you and your family?

    A Jewish tax collector–such as the one we now know as St. Matthew–he had paid a large sum of money for the right to collect taxes for the Romans from his countrymen.  Matthew, in a very real sense, was a traitor; he had joined the side of the foreigners who were ruling Israel and was a part of their oppression.  The Romans expected to receive a certain amount of money from Matthew on a regular basis.  The difference between that amount and what Matthew actually assessed was his margin of profit, his income.  Therefore, there was a strong incentive for Matthew to assess high and tax his countrymen for all they were worth, especially since he was already hated by them anyway for doing this job.

    St. Matthew Himself records honestly for us what sort of life he led before Christ called him away from it all with the Gospel.  However, Matthew leaves out, unlike Mark and Luke, the fact that his Hebrew name was Levi.  And we can understand why Matthew might choose to neglect that little detail.  Levi was the name of the tribe from which all of Israel’s priests came.  A Levite received no portion or possession of land like the members of the other eleven tribes.  Rather, a Levite was to rely on the Lord as his portion and upon the gifts of his fellow Israelites, who were to honor the Lord by supporting the Levite priests.  Well, our man Matthew-Levi here had decided not to wait upon the Lord but rather to go out and get hold of his own lucrative portion by becoming a tax collector for the Romans.  “Matthew” means “gift of God,” but this Matthew-Levi was no gift to his people.  In the same way that a prostitute sold her body, a tax collector sold his soul for money.

    And so it is somewhat understandable when the Pharisees speak to Jesus’ disciples and ask with righteous indignation, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  You can imagine what a group of Matthew’s friends gathered for a party might have looked like.  However, to this question the Great Healer of sin-sick souls replies that it is not those who are well–or who think they are well–that have need of a physician.  It is rather those who are sick and diseased and who know it.  If you don’t believe you’re sick, you’re not likely to be seeking out a doctor.  It’s generally only when your health fails that you do so.  So it was with these Pharisees.  Though they had sinful, ill, self-serving hearts like everyone else, they thought that they had no sin-sickness, that they were spiritually healthy.  And so they saw no need for Jesus and were repulsed by the company He was keeping.  But many of the tax collectors and other sinners had come to know very well that things were all wrong with them.  They knew they needed help.  And when the Great Physician came to them, many received His healing medicine.  Moved by His mercy and love, they repented, they turned away from their sin–which is key–and they believed in Christ’s words of life, rejoicing in the fellowship of eating with Him in His presence.  Like a skilled and caring doctor ministering to the sick in a third world country, Jesus had come to seek and to save the lost.  And Matthew was one of those whom Jesus sought out and recovered and redeemed.

    Jesus continues by telling the Pharisees to go and learn what the Scripture means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”  Jesus is referring there to a passage from the Old Testament prophet Hosea.  Hosea had been instructed by the Lord to go and marry a prostitute, a woman named Gomer.  That action was meant to be a living parable of God’s steadfast and faithful love to His people–Israel which continually went whoring after false gods.  God was saying to His people, “I desire to show you My mercy and loving-kindness far more than to receive your half-hearted and inconsistent sacrifices.”  God wanted them to know Him as Savior and live in His mercy; not that that they should pridefully try to work out their own salvation.

    This beautiful Gospel of God’s undeserved grace toward His people was the living message of Hosea to Gomer.  She was unable to free herself from her sin and her prostitution, but out of sheer mercy God gave Hosea to rescue her.  Hosea literally bought her out of that life.  Matthew, too, was entirely unable to free himself from his sin; he was all caught up in his money-grubbing covetousness.  But out of sheer mercy, Jesus came to him, forgave him, and set him free from that old way of living, calling Matthew to follow him on the path of true life.

    And the same thing is true for you, too.  For you also are in bondage and cannot set yourselves free from your lost condition.  As we heard Hosea say last week, our faithfulness to the Lord is like the dew that burns away early; it’s there and then it’s gone.  One minute things look good, and the next we’re straying away from God to adulterate ourselves with other pleasures and priorities.  But our Lord Jesus does not turn away from you or forget you.  Rather, He calls you out of that and calls you back to Himself.  He has literally bought you out of your enslavement to sin and death and the devil.  This He has done not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.  That is the price your heavenly Groom willingly paid to purchase your freedom and to have you back with Himself.  Matthew may have sold his soul, but Jesus bought it back–and He bought yours, too.

    Just as Jesus came to Matthew, He came to you personally and individually in Baptism.  He called you one on one to be His disciple, washing away your sins by water and the Word and setting you on the path of life in Him.  Just as Matthew arose and followed Jesus, so also through Jesus’ Gospel call your soul has been raised from the death of sin.  Just as Matthew left his former life behind him forever, you have been given to live a new life.  Let the old ways pass away; you are a new creation.  Baptized into Christ, you disciples are given to follow Him through death into the resurrection of the body on the Last Day.  

    In fact Jesus’ mandate to go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching is recorded for us in Matthew’s Gospel.  Matthew himself is one of the eleven apostles who was first given this charge.  This, too, is a sign of God’s great grace, that when the Lord calls certain men to be apostles and evangelists and pastors, He even puts into His service messed up and prideful sinners like Matthew and Paul and Peter and me.  Matthew was converted by grace from one who takes to one who gives.  Once a thief by trade, now it was his calling to freely dispense the mercy of God to the undeserving.  This is the calling of every pastor today, to go about just like Christ, dishing out to repentant sinners the overflowing forgiveness of God in baptism, preaching, absolution, and the holy supper.

    Matthew once extracted taxes for Rome from the Jews; but now we have in Matthew’s Gospel the Gospel written specifically for the Jews, that they might receive their long-promised Messiah.  That’s why Matthew quotes the Old Testament more than any other Gospel.  This man who had sold his soul for money was redeemed by Christ and made into a physician of souls for others. The words St. Paul wrote about himself, then, could certainly also be applied to Matthew, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.  However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.”

    When we see the calling of Matthew by our Lord Jesus, we see the truth of those words for us.  If God can save someone like Matthew–and even make him an apostle and writer of the first Gospel–then certainly He can also save people like you and me and use us for His kingdom.

    You also are given to rise and follow Christ in the vocations and callings that God has placed you into.  You may not be called to preach, but you are called to confess your faith in Jesus and to be ready to give a reason to others for the hope that you have within you.  That may mean leaving some things behind; it may cause a certain degree of difficulty or suffering for you.  We have seen in recent days with the murder of Charlie Kirk how some people simply hate the Word of God and anyone who openly professes faith in Christ.  But to follow Christ is to bear the cross and to walk with Him through death to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

    One last thing: St. Matthew is not only an apostle and evangelist, but also a martyr.  According to tradition, Matthew was killed on the orders of the king of Ethiopia while celebrating Holy Communion.  The king had lusted after his own niece and wanted to marry her.  Matthew rebuked him for this and called him to repentance.  In his anger, the king sent one of his soldiers who thrust Matthew through during the liturgy.  Matthew had recorded these words of Jesus in his Gospel, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”  

    Let us, then, lose our lives for Jesus’ sake and give up trusting in our own righteousness.  He did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.  To repent is to die.  But to die with Christ is to live.  For Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  And as He did with Matthew, and these tax collectors and sinners, Jesus came into the world to share a meal with you, His own body and blood given and shed for you for the entire forgiveness of all of your sin.  

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

(With thanks to the Rev. Stephen Wiest)