Jeremiah 8:4-12; Romans 9:30 - 10:4; Luke 19:41-48
Trinity 10
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, you’ve heard some things about the Olympic Games currently going on in Paris. There have been some great moments and good competition. And there have been some controversial things, too–mockery of Jesus and the Lord’s Supper (and yes, they acknowledged it was a depiction of the Lord's Supper), bizarre and sexually suggestive pagan themes, men pretending to be women, both in the opening ceremony and (if you believe the reported xy chromosome test) even in competition. And while it gets tiresome after a while to pay attention to all this foolishness (hey, the unbelieving world is acting crazy again; what’s new?), it’s also not something we should just dismiss and be apathetic about either if we care about bearing witness to the truth.
I bring this up because there is a verse in today’s Old Testament reading that sounds exactly like what the prophet Jeremiah would say if he were preaching about today’s pop cultural elite and the ruling political class and wishy-washy progressive church leaders. Jeremiah asks, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed, nor did they know how to blush.” One of the signs of unrepentance and acceptance of sin is that a person loses all sense of shame and embarrassment. Instead of blushing at one’s foolish behavior or rebellious words and saying “What have I done?” they just shrug their shoulders and say, “Meh, whatever. I’m just embracing who I am.”
This is how it had become even for God’s people, the people of Israel. They had become so accustomed to the various abominations of their day and the pagan practices in the surrounding culture that they were no longer able to be embarrassed. They had no sense of shame over their false dealings and their covetous hearts and their sacrilegious deeds, which even the clergy were taking part in. Even when a prophet like Jeremiah would call them to account, nothing could make them blush.
There’s a warning in that for us. We, too, can become so accustomed to the pagan practices of our surrounding culture that we begin to compromise what is good and right and true and beautiful. We grow weary of swimming against the constant flow of godlessness and begin to go along with it–the self-focused worldly philosophy, the HR training at your job that contradicts God’s Word, the godless approach to dating and sexuality and marriage, the approving of the love of mammon, the acceptance of all spiritualities as being valid. It’s difficult having to be the one constantly saying “no” to all that and to keep speaking the truth in love. In fact, saying “no” to the cultural orthodoxy and “yes” to God’s Word is the one thing the world will try make you feel shame about. Let us all repent of where we have succumbed to that pressure.
However, let us also be on guard against the opposite error as well. For when we see the corrupt and degenerate state of things in this world, we can be tempted to become prideful and stake our hope on our own moral efforts and our own upright behavior. We can begin to place our confidence in the fact that we ourselves haven’t succumbed to the ways of the world, or at least that we’ve turned our lives around now. We can begin to think that our works and our good living is what keeps us close to God and wins His favor. And such a false belief is just as bad as society’s corruption.
St. Paul spoke of that in the Epistle. He said that the Jews of his day did have a zeal and a passion for God; they were very religious. But rather than receiving the righteousness God gives in Christ as a free gift, they thought they could produce their own righteousness through the works of the law. And that’s actually just another form of idolatry, trusting in yourself, making a god out of your own spirituality. Self-righteousness is no better than sinful immorality. When you think about it, those who are self-righteous can’t blush either. For they think they have no real sins to be embarrassed about, nothing to be ashamed of.
Let us remember, then, that it is not enough to have religious conviction or spiritual passion as the Jews did. For too often that zeal and passion are man-centered rather than God-centered, focusing on my works and my life and my walk rather than on Christ’s works and Christ’s life and Christ’s walk to the cross for us. Our fervor should especially be directed toward the life-giving teaching of the Gospel and not simply to the deadly requirements of the Law.
St. Paul says in the Epistle, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Did you hear that? Christ is the end, the fulfillment, the goal of the law. That doesn’t mean that you are free to disobey the commandments. But it does mean that the entire law is meant to point you to Jesus, and show you your need for Him who has saved you from the Law’s judgment. That’s why shame is an important and necessary thing. For without regret and shame over sin, there is nothing to drive you to the cross, to create in you a desire for cleansing and mercy and forgiveness. The Law says, “Shame on you” so that you might despair of your own righteousness and seek the righteousness of Christ alone, freely given to you in the Gospel.
All of the moral demands of the law have been satisfied and kept completely by Christ for you. All of the old ceremonial regulations pertaining to the Sabbath and circumcision and sacrifices find their fulfillment in Christ, the perfect sacrifice, who was cut off for your sins and raised again to give you life and rest.
Christ came to take your shame away by taking your sin away. It is written in Hebrews, “For the joy that was set before Him,” Jesus “endured the cross, despising its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” All that He did because He loves you. He was shamed and humiliated more than anyone as He faced God’s wrath and paid sin’s penalty at Golgotha. And then He rose triumphantly, so that His victory over sin and shame might be yours as well. Now the Epistle proclaims to you that “everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.”
I’m sure that all of us could be truly humiliated and shamed and embarrassed if something about us was made publicly known and revealed to the world. All of us have reason to blush. Rejoice, then, that even though all of those things are revealed in the eyes of God, He has chosen by His grace to cover your shame, just as Adam and Eve were covered and clothed by God after the sin in the garden. Your shame was swallowed up in the wounds of Jesus. In Him your dignity is restored so that you need not cower before God, but you can stand tall and unashamed as His dear children, clothed in the white robe of Christ.
Jesus weeps and cries over those who do not know their shame, who think they have nothing to blush about before God, who see no need for a Savior. He weeps over Jerusalem out of love. It’s bad enough that their unbelief would result in the destruction of the city by the Romans within a generation. But He weeps especially over their rejection of Him, that they do not want to have the life and mercy He brings. God Himself was visiting them in the flesh. But they did not know the things that made for their peace.
Let us learn from this so that we may recognize the time of our visitation by God. It has come upon us in Jesus; and it is coming upon you right now, even in this very moment. This is the hour in which Christ Himself is coming to you in the words of His saving Gospel now sounding in your ears. Penitently acknowledge your shame, and then take courage and believe firmly and gladly in Christ. Don’t assume that you’ll have forever to repent. It is written, “Behold now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.” Don’t let this time of your visitation pass you by. Believe in what the Lord has done to redeem you from your sin, how He has suffered your shame on the cross and taken it away forever. Take refuge in Him and His words; seek His righteousness.
For our Lord has cleansed the temple. When Jesus drove out the moneychangers in righteous anger and purified the temple as a house of prayer, that was a sign of what He was about to do at Calvary. For there on the cross Jesus Himself experienced the righteous anger of God against the world’s sin and drove it out in the temple of His own body. Jesus made Himself unclean in your place. He took all of the greed and the self-righteousness and the shame of every sin that you’ve done or that has been done to you, and He made it His own dirty mess. By His holy suffering and death He took it away from you and cleansed you forever. Jesus had said of His body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He is now bodily raised in glory and honor, the new and eternal dwelling place of God for you. You have entered into the temple of Christ through baptism, and so His glory and His honor are yours.
Jesus says, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!” Brothers and sisters in Christ, here are the things that make for your peace with God, the body and blood of Christ, offered up for you for the forgiveness of your sins, for your peace, for your rest. You are those who are not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. Call upon God, and He will hear your voice. Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you. For He has redeemed your soul in peace from the battle that was against you.
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠