Lenten Midweek I

Lenten Midweek I

March 8, 2017

“Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice: Possessed by Sin and Bound by Death”[1]

Text: John 8:31-38; LSB 556:2-3

            “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone” (John 8:33; ESV).  It is laughable on the face of it.  The Jews, the Israelites, have never been enslaved?  Anyone with a casual familiarity with the story of the Old Testament knows this is patently false.  The book of Exodus is all about how God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  Judges is all about how time and time again the Israelites turned away from God and were enslaved by the heathen nations occupying the Promised Land.  When they repented, when they turned back to God, He would send a deliverer.  The books of Kings and Chronicles and the books of the prophets are all about the slow decline of the Kingdom of Israel into idolatry and rebellion, her civil war and separation into Northern and Southern Kingdoms, and her humiliation and defeat as she is carried off into captivity; the Northern Kingdom, Israel, to captivity in Assyria in 722 BC; the Southern Kingdom, Judah, the Jews, to captivity in Babylon in 586 BC.  And now even at this moment in our Holy Gospel, as the Jews are asserting their freedom over against our Lord’s preaching, the Romans patrol the streets of Jerusalem, keeping their Jewish subjects in line.  Never been enslaved to anyone?  Why, that’s the whole story of the Jews!

            But you and I are Americans!  We are offspring of the founding fathers and have never been enslaved to anyone!  We live in “the land of the free,” and liberty is an unalienable right with which we are endowed by our Creator.  Now, it is true that since the Revolution, the United States has maintained her freedom as a sovereign nation.  But what have we done with that freedom?  What once was understood to be freedom from tyranny, we have distorted into personal autonomy, law unto self, the freedom to do whatever we want.  It’s like the days of the Judges in Israel: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25).  What do we get when we do whatever is right in our own eyes?  Abortion, euthanasia, sexual permissiveness and perversion come to mind.  Note the common theme in all of these: Death and the distortion of marital relations from which God gives life. 

            But it’s not just them.  It’s not just those people who do those things.  You think you are free.  You believe you have never been enslaved by anyone.  To you Jesus says, “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34), and St. Paul and King David agree: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12; Cf. Ps. 14:1-3).  These words are about us.  We talk a big talk about free will, but it’s utterly foolish.  Adam and Eve were created with free will, but they screwed it up in the Garden.  Remember?  “(I)n the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17).  Our first parents died spiritually as their teeth sank into the fruit.  And their children have been born in death ever since, dead in your trespasses and sins.  What freedom does a dead man have?  A dead man is only free to be dead.  A sinner is only free to sin.  An unbeliever is only free not to believe.  What kind of freedom is that?  It’s no freedom at all!  “Fast bound in Satan’s chains I lay; Death brooded darkly o’er me.  Sin was my torment night and day; In sin my mother bore me.”  And it’s not just an inherited condition, although that is our greatest problem, original sin, as we heard on Sunday.  But we act accordingly: “But daily deeper still I fell; My life became a living hell, So firmly sin possessed me” (LSB 556:2). 

            We are good at keeping up the illusion that we are free, in and of ourselves, apart from Christ.  As if being a Christian is a matter of decision and earning God’s favor.  When someone dies, we say of him, “He was a good man.  He is in a better place.”  As though heaven is for good people, or at least people not as bad as the bad people.  What we’re really saying is, “I hope I’m good enough to get to heaven.”  Well... you’re not.  No matter how good you are, you are not good enough.  And I hate to burst your bubble, but you really aren’t good at all.  Remember what St. Paul says in our Epistle: “All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”  That means you.  It is true, what we sang with Dr. Luther: “My own good works all came to naught, No grace or merit gaining.”  And what about free will?  “Free will against God’s judgment fought, Dead to all good remaining” (LSB 556:3).  There is no freedom of the will for sinners.  There is only bondage of the will.

            So if there is to be freedom, if there is to be life, if there is to be rescue from slavery to sin and death, it must come from outside of you.  “(I)f the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).  Jesus came for this very reason, to liberate you from bondage.  His blood and death are the price of your ransom.  The cross of Christ unlocks the chains in which Satan has bound you.  His death destroys death.  His resurrection puts death to open shame.  And now Jesus gives you His freedom and life by the means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments.  “If you abide in my word,” He says, “you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (vv. 31-32).  What truth is it that you will know, that will liberate you?  You will know the truth of your sinful condition, and you will know the truth of the forgiveness of sins and salvation that come alone by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for you.  In other words, to know the truth is to receive the saving gifts of Christ by faith.  The purpose of Christian preaching is to shatter your faith in anyone or anything that is not our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The purpose of Christian preaching is to shatter your illusions of autonomy and freedom and the ability to work your way out of your slavery to sin and death.  The purpose of preaching is to give you the true freedom that comes only by the Gospel as the living voice of Christ forgives your sins and breathes the Spirit of life into your dry bones.

            And what is this freedom which you have come to possess by your knowledge of the truth, by Jesus’ Word, by faith?  It is not the freedom to do whatever you want.  That is the old bondage of the flesh to sin and death.  No, when Jesus frees a man, he is for the first time free to love God and love his neighbor.  He is freed from the tyranny of the self.  He is freed from the slavish subjection to the Law to the freedom of the doing of God’s will.  He is freed from the condemnation of death and hell for the life God always intended for man.  In his classic treatise, The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther shows us that the life of the Christian is lived in this paradox: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.  A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”[2]  You are free from the doing of good works in order to earn God’s favor and salvation.  In that way, you are perfectly free, a lord of all, subject to none.  But you are also free for love and service and self-sacrifice for the sake of your neighbor.  In that way, you are a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.  In Christ, you are freed from yourself to do this very thing, not for the sake of earning anything, but for the sake of love.  God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.  Freed from sin, freed from death, freed from slavery to Satan, you are free to do what love demands, what your neighbor needs you to do for him.  This freedom is yours in Christ alone.

            The great paradox that runs so counter to our fallen human reason is this: In freedom from God, you are enslaved by sin, death, and the devil.  As God’s slave, you are truly free.  Redeemed by Christ, your sins are forgiven.  You are free to love.  You are free to live.  You are free to be the child of God He has called you to be in Baptism.  “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”  The Son has set you free.  You are free indeed.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.         

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[1] The theme and structure of this sermon are from John T. Pless, “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice,” Lenten Preaching Seminar 2010, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN.

[2] Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960) p. 277.

First Sunday in Lent

First Sunday in Lent (A)

March 5, 2017

Text: Matt. 4:1-11

            Everything was riding on Adam.  He had the Commandment.  He was armed with the Word of God.  “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17; ESV).  This is not just some arbitrary rule God made up because He’s a divine stick-in-the-mud and doesn’t want Adam to have any fun.  God is not withholding good food from Adam and Eve.  He has given them every other tree in the Garden for food, and I’m certain all of it is very delicious.  But this tree is special.  This is tree is a place of worship.  This tree is a place for man to exercise faith that God’s Word and will are good and wise.  By not eating this fruit, and preaching the Commandment to his wife and their children, Adam would be loving God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving his neighbor as himself (Mark 12:30-31).  In failing to preach the Commandment, and eating from this tree, Adam would be rejecting God as his God and proclaiming himself god.

            And so the moment of battle came.  The sly serpent approached Eve, questioning God’s Word which Adam had preached, preaching instead an anti-Gospel.  “You will not surely die.  God knows that in the day you eat of it you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  Now, don’t miss the trick in the devil’s words.  He would have Eve believe that with just one bite she could determine good and evil for herself, be like God, essentially be her own god.  And he would have Eve believe that God was holding out on her for this very reason, that He did not want to cede His power to the man and the woman.  But the plain truth is, up to this moment, Adam and Eve had known only good.  Now the supple flesh of forbidden fruit between their teeth, the juice still dripping down their chins, Adam and Eve for the first time knew evil.  And it was them.  It was their rejection of God.  They had lost.  They had fallen.  They had died spiritually, and they were dying physically, and they would die for all eternity as slaves of the serpent.  By the way, where was Adam in the heat of battle?  Hiding behind his wife.  We find out he was standing there the whole time, not saying anything, failing to preach the Word God had given him.  He let Eve be the preacher.  He let Eve fight the battle.  It would be like Jesus making His Bride, the Church, fight the devil on her own!  Eve preached a sermon, though it was not given her to preach, and she got it wrong.  She skewed God’s Word and finally rejected it, and then she turned to her husband and gave an anti-Sacrament.  “Take and eat,” she said, and the whole creation was subjected to the curse, plunged into darkness, broken, dying, and dead. 

            Our first parents sinned.  It’s not just that they did what they weren’t supposed to.  They were mortally wounded by the serpent, infected with a deadly disease.  We call this original sin, not just because it was the first, but because it is the condition to which Adam and Eve succumbed and in which their children have been born ever since.  Sin is not simply a matter of the bad things we do and the good things we fail to do.  We call those actual sins, sins of commission and sins of omission, our transgressions of God’s holy Commandments.  But the problem is so much deeper than that.  No matter how successful you may be at avoiding sin and doing all the things you should do, you’re still a son, a daughter of Adam.  And so you’re still a sinner.  From the moment of conception.  That is what King David confesses in Psalm 51: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (v. 5).  Original sin is a corruption deep within your nature.  Its guilt is with you from the moment you exist, passed down from father to child.  Yes, it’s your dad’s fault you’re a sinner.  It’s ultimately Father Adam’s fault.  Everything was riding on him, and in a moment, with one bite, it was gone.

            And so the Promise, a new Word from God spoken directly to the evil foe: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).  A Son would be born of the woman, born without the guilt of Adam, without an earthly father, and He would go toe to toe with the devil.  He would be our last and greatest hope, One who by the mortal bite of the serpent would crush the serpent’s head forever.  “Ask ye, Who is this?  Jesus Christ it is, Of Sabaoth Lord, And there’s none other God; He holds the field forever” (LSB 656:2). 

            Jesus is our Champion.  Jesus fights for us against the prince of darkness.  Adam lost everything in Paradise.  Jesus, our new and greater Adam, fights the rematch in the desert.  Note again the place of food in the temptation, food God has not given.  Take and eat, forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Take and eat, stones commanded to become bread.  It is the temptation to forsake God’s Word which nourishes to eternal life, for that which only fills the belly for a time.  Armed with the Word of God, our Champion proclaims: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).  Note also place of glory in the temptation, glory God has not given.  Your eyes will be opened.  You will be like God.  You will not die.  Cast yourself down now from the pinnacle of the temple.  The eyes of the masses will be opened.  They will see you are God, as the angels catch you before you strike your foot against a stone.  You will not die.  And again our Champion preaches, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (v. 7).  Finally, note the place of power in the temptation.  You will be like God.  You can determine what is good and what is evil for yourself.  Make your own rules.  Follow your heart.  See all the kingdoms of the world in a moment, throughout time, across space.  These I will give you, now, apart from suffering, apart from the cross, if you bow down and worship me.  And our Champion proclaims the First Commandment, the Commandment of Commandments: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (v. 10).  And the devil has been mastered.  It is only the first battle in a war that will culminate at the cross.  But it is a decisive victory.  And it is vital for your salvation.  For just as sin came into the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, and sin came to all men for all sinned, so by the one man’s obedience, that of Jesus Christ, are the many made righteous (Rom. 5:12, 19). 

            This is what we call our Lord’s active righteousness, His fulfilling God’s Law on our behalf.  Adam fought the serpent and lost.  You fight the serpent and lose.  Jesus fought the serpent and won.  He did not give in to the temptation.  It is Eden 2.0.  Recapitulation we call it in theology.  Jesus undoes all that has gone wrong with Adam and with us.  He is THE faithful man.  He is THE righteous one.  And all His righteousness, all of His resisting temptation, all of His active fulfilling of the Law, He gives to us in Holy Baptism, He gives to us by faith.  We rightly stress Jesus’ passive righteousness, His suffering and death for our sins on the cross as the sacrifice of atonement.  So also we stress our Lord’s resurrection victory over death, and rightly so.  But we so easily forget that our Lord’s life of faithfulness to His Father is also a vital component of our salvation.  He does what we cannot do, and we get all the credit.  Our Lord undertakes a great exchange.  He takes all our sin and death upon Himself and nails it to the cross.  He gives us all His righteousness and life in exchange, received by faith.  Jesus fights the devil and wins.  God declares His victory is ours.

            And, of course, the ultimate victory is His death and resurrection.  In His death on the cross, where the nail literally pierces His heel, the serpent’s head is crushed.  By His death, death is undone.  By His resurrection, we have life eternal.  Everything was riding on Jesus, and He came through for us.  If He had lost, if He had sinned, if He had failed, we would all go to hell.  But He did not lose.  He did not sin.  Jesus is our Champion.  He won for Himself a Kingdom, and He gives it to you.  By means of a tree, the precious tree of the cross, once a tree of death and condemnation, now the tree of life and salvation.  This tree is also a place of worship, but unlike the tree in the Garden, here you worship by taking of its fruit.  Its fruit is the body and blood of Jesus.  Man does not live by bread alone, but by the Word of God.  Hanging on the cross is the Word become flesh, and He is the Bread of Life.  Take and eat.  In receiving this fruit, you receive Jesus as your God.  Your sins are forgiven.  You live.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                   

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

March 1, 2017

“Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice: Rejoicing in Repentance”[1]

Text: Psalm 51; LSB 556:1

            “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice”… in repentance?  This may seem an odd theme for Lent, and especially for Ash Wednesday as we smear our foreheads with the dust and ashes of repentance, and upon us is pronounced the sentence for every sinner: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  It’s a more poetic way of saying, “You are a sinner, therefore you must die!”  Rejoice in that?  Yes.  Because that is not the end of the story.  That is not the end of you.  Remember that those ashes are smeared in the sign of the cross, the cross made over your forehead and your heart at Baptism, to mark you as one redeemed by Christ, the crucified.  You are baptized into Christ!  You have put on Christ!  His death is your death.  His resurrection is your life.  And so, while the ashes declare the truth that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), the cross declares the truth that Christ took your death upon Himself, O sinner.  You will not die, but live, eternally, with the crucified and risen Christ.  And though your body must expire when your earthly life has run its course, still, you live, with Christ, in heaven.  And the risen Christ will raise your body from the grave on the Last Day, and you will live eternally in your body in the New Creation inaugurated on Easter with the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

            And so, Dr. Luther’s magnificent hymn is just the right theme for this Ash Wednesday, and for all of Lent.  If preaching ended with the Law, if we simply smeared your forehead with a blob of ashes and told you that you were going to die, and then left you in your death and condemnation, there would be no joy, there would be no rejoicing.  In fact, there really wouldn’t be repentance.  Repentance is a turning from sin and from self and from all that causes your death and condemnation to the God who saves you in the flesh of Christ.  In other words, the Christian life of repentance is the life lived under the shelter of Christ’s salvation, His saving you from your slavery to sin and the condemnation of the Law.  This is great joy!  This is reason to rejoice!  Repentance is God’s gift to you.  We too often think of repentance as something we do, a feeling of sorrow we evoke from ourselves by singing sad hymns and putting on sad faces.  That’s not it at all.  God is the one who turns you.  The Spirit convicts you of your sin in the preaching of the Law.  The Spirit kills you, crucifies Old Adam, by the preaching of the Law, and then raises you to new life, faith in Christ, by the preaching of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins and restoration to the Father by Christ’s saving death and resurrection for you.  That’s the turning.  That’s repentance.  God turns you.  God repents you.  It is all His work.  And that calls for praise and thanksgiving and great rejoicing.

            King David was a man on the run from God.  He was hiding in his sin.  You remember the story.  One day as he looks out upon the Holy City from his palace, he beholds the beautiful Bathsheba, bathing in the light of day.  And he desires her for himself.  He lusts for her.  There is just one problem.  She is married.  To Uriah the Hittite, a faithful soldier in David’s army.  But David is the king, and Uriah is conveniently occupied in the battle.  He’ll never know, thinks David.  And so the king summons Bathsheba to his chamber.  It’s the stuff of soap operas.  It’s also the stuff of the real lives of real sinners.  Adultery.  Lies.  A cover up.  Bathsheba is pregnant.  Uriah is too honorable, when summoned home, to sleep in his house with his own wife, to unwittingly cooperate in the scandal.  So David sends a letter by Uriah’s own hand to General Joab.  Put him where the fighting is fiercest and withdraw so that he dies.  Murder.  And now David can take Bathsheba as his wife and there will be no public scandal.  You can read the whole sordid story in 2 Samuel 11.  David is saved. 

            Except he isn’t.  David is lost.  David is dead in his trespasses and sins.  David is the dust of the earth, and he acts like it, and so to dust he shall return.  I’m sure David was sorry, deep down, that it had to be this way.  But that sorrow is not repentance.  It is not a turning.  And it is no cause for joy.  All the sorrow David can drum up in his heart will never be enough to turn him out of himself.  If there is to be a turning, if there is to be repentance, God must do it.

            So the LORD sends a preacher.  The Prophet Nathan comes before David and tells him a parable about a rich man who has many sheep of his own, but takes the one and only dearly loved sheep from a poor man and slaughters it to entertain his guest.  David is filled with what he supposes to be righteous anger.  Sinners are really good at being angry with the sins of others.  “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity” (2 Sam. 12:5-6; ESV).  Nathan preaches the Law.  “Thou art the man” (v. 7; KJV).  And all at once, the whole false narrative David has constructed to deceive himself and protect his kingdom, the whole house of cards comes crashing down.  David is cut to the heart, as God intends His Law to do.  He confesses to his prophet, his pastor, “I have sinned against the LORD” (v. 13; ESV).  And Nathan, God’s called and ordained servant of the Word, pronounces the Absolution: “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die” (v. 13).  And so God turns David by the preaching of His Word from sin to salvation, from death to life, from unbelief to faith.  And there is greater rejoicing in heaven over this one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous Pharisees who need no repentance (Luke 15:7). 

            There is one catch, though.  The sin must still be atoned for by a death.  David’s Son must die.  Oh, yes, the fruit of David’s union with Bathsheba dies as a consequence of the sin.  But that is not the Son we’re talking about here.  That son is but a type of the Son of David who will come for this very purpose.  That Son is Jesus, who dies for David’s sin, and for the sin of the whole world.  He dies for you.  This is how the LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.

            So we sing Psalm 51 with King David.  David wrote this song in his repentance over Bathsheba and Uriah.  With David, we come before God with the sacrifice of a spirit broken by sin, a broken and a contrite heart which God will not despise (Ps. 51:17).  We confess our sin and pray that God will wash us with that alone which can make us pure and clean… the blood of David’s Son, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  We pray that we may hear joy and gladness once again, that the bones God has broken with His holy Law may rejoice in the sweetness of the saving Gospel (v. 8).  We pray that God would create in us a clean heart and a right spirit, that He would not withdraw His Holy Spirit from us, that He would restore to us to joy of His salvation (vv. 10-12).  We are praying that having been repented by God, having been smeared with the ashes of death, but in the shape of the holy cross, we would rejoice.  That we would rejoice in repentance.  That we would rejoice in Christ.

            In the canon of Luther hymns, “A Mighty Fortress,” gets all the play, and it is a marvelous hymn which you should commit to memory, and in fact we’ll be singing it this coming Sunday.  It’s the appointed Hymn of the Day for the First Sunday in Lent for all the congregations in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, whether they sing it or not.  But this hymn we’ve chosen for our meditation in our midweek services is perhaps Luther’s best.  It’s Law and Gospel, it’s the whole story of salvation, applied to you personally.  This one delivers the goods.  In Lent, we put our alleluias away for a time.  We do this in Christian freedom, as a discipline, to remind us where we are without Christ, dead in our trespasses and sins, self-bent and hell-bound.  But we know the Day is coming.  We know this path leads through Good Friday and our Lord’s suffering and death on the cross for our redemption.  And we know that on Easter morn, the tomb will be empty.  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  On that Day, we will sing our alleluias with full throated joy.  But even in this penitential season of Lent, dear Christians, we rejoice.  For this is the unfolding of our salvation in Christ.  And here at the font, in the pulpit, and at the altar, is where God turns us from all that stinks of death and hell to Himself and the joy of His saving work.  The LORD has taken away your sin.  You shall not die.  The right arm of Christ has won the victory by receiving the nail, pierced for your redemption.  Praise the Lord!  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.           

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[1] The theme and structure of this sermon is from John T. Pless, “Dear Christians, One and All Rejoice,” Lenten Preaching Seminar 2010, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN.

The Transfiguration of Our Lord

The Transfiguration of Our Lord (A)

February 26, 2017

Text: Matt. 17:1-9

            Listening is an art. I have it on good authority from those who know that I’ve mastered the art of selective listening, which really isn’t listening at all. Listening to other people does not come naturally to our fallen flesh, because that flesh is curved in on itself. We have a hard enough time listening to those we love, because it takes effort to pay attention to the interests of others, and our selfish selves are not convinced that the effort is worthwhile. But when it comes to the speech of the living God, we have an even greater problem. That is that the ears of this fallen flesh are totally tuned out. We don’t understand the language of God, and we don’t really want to. And because even the Christian is weighed down by the fallen flesh, the old sinful nature, we, likewise, have trouble listening to God. It’s not for lack of trying. It’s just that we fail miserably every time. Because we listen in all the wrong places. And we listen to all the wrong gods.

            On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter thinks he’s listening. But he’s failing miserably. Instead, he’s talking. And by talking, he’s really listening to himself. He’s getting in the way of himself hearing the Word of God. Peter thinks that he will learn of God by talking.[1] Beholding the great light emanating from Jesus’ body in the Transfiguration, seeing Moses and Elijah, the author of the Torah and the great prophet, talking with Jesus about His exodus (Luke 9:31), His saving work in His fulfilling of the Law, His suffering and sacrificial death on the cross, and His victorious resurrection… In the midst of all of this, Peter has the audacity to speak and to tell Jesus how this phenomenal situation might be better. Peter wants to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles with the glorified Jesus and His saintly guests. “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Matt. 17:4; ESV). Peter wants to stay on the mountain. Peter wants to bask in Jesus’ glory. This is much better than Jesus’ plan.

            Only six days before our Lord took Peter, James, and John up the holy mountain, Jesus had predicted his death. And Peter, having in mind the things of men rather than the things of God, made himself an instrument of Satan, rejecting the Lord’s Word. Peter rebuked Jesus, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” (16:22). Peter, in turn, received the Lord’s stern rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” (v. 23). But now in the radiance of Jesus’ divine glory, Peter feels vindicated. “See, Lord, you don’t have to suffer and die. You have your glory now. Let’s stay up here on the mountain. Let’s enjoy the Kingdom here and now on earth. It is good that we are here. This is better than Your plan of death and resurrection.” St. Luke reports that Peter didn’t know what he was saying (Luke 9:33). He didn’t know what he was talking about. He was just talking. Enough talk! In talking, he was listening to himself. He had become his own god. Thus the true God cuts him off. While Peter is still prattling on and on, a bright cloud, the shekinah, the glory of the LORD, overshadows them, just as the same pillar of cloud guided the Israelites in their wilderness wandering, and as the same cloud was present at the Tent of Meeting whenever Moses would speak with God face to face. This was the cloud of God’s presence. And from the cloud, the Father speaks. He silences Peter. No more talking. Listen. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matt. 17:5).

            Stop talking. Listen to Jesus. Don’t instruct Jesus about how things could be better. Be instructed by Him. Learn of Him from His own Word. We’re always talking. And in talking, we’re really listening to ourselves. We become our own gods. We always think we have a better doctrine to offer than that which Jesus teaches in His Word, so we re-interpret His Word to fit the times and to fit our liking. We always think we can make worship better, more glorious, by making it more of an experience for the people, taking the emphasis off of God’s Word and His external means of grace (preaching and Sacraments) where God serves us with His gifts, and instead placing the emphasis on our praises and the things we can do for God. We’re just like Peter. We’re always talking instead of listening, teaching rather than being taught. We don’t know what we’re talking about. We listen to everyone but Jesus. We listen to the world, listen to our emotions and gut feelings, listen to our reason, listen to the devil. We listen in all the wrong places, to all the wrong gods. Most of all we listen to ourselves, for we worship ourselves by living for ourselves. We listen to our own desires, our own preferences, our own wisdom (which is utter foolishness). On and on we talk. God has to interrupt us. The Father silences us in our endless prattling. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!”

            Beloved in the Lord, repent, and listen to Jesus only. For His Word alone gives life. He speaks to you wherever and whenever His Word is preached, read, contemplated, studied, given and distributed. He ties Himself to His Word so that you can always know whether it is Him speaking, or someone else, some other god, your own sinful flesh, the godless world, or that sly old serpent, the devil. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter was listening to other voices, especially his own. By the time Peter writes our Epistle, he’s learned his lesson. In his office as apostle, he writes by the Spirit’s inspiration just how we sinners can, even today, listen to Jesus our Savior. He points us to the prophetic Word, the Holy Scriptures, to which we do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place (2 Peter 1:19). The Word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105) as we navigate through the darkness of this fallen world. By this Word of God the Holy Spirit keeps us on the path, keeps us in the one true faith, until the Lord’s return to judge the living and the dead. Because God is ultimately the Author behind the human authors of the Scriptures, the Scriptures are living and active, powerful, able to make us wise unto salvation, and keep us in the one true faith.

            But it is true, with the Scriptures comes the cross and suffering. The Word of God always directs us to Christ crucified. And likewise, the Word of God always lays a cross upon us as we live this earthly life in a world hostile to Christ, in this rebellious and sinful flesh, walking by faith, not by sight. There is a reason why we would rather listen to ourselves, or to any other god, than Jesus. Because Jesus only gives us a glimpse of His glory before sending us down the mountain. We cannot stay and bask in the Transfiguration light. There is a cross to be borne down there. The road leads through suffering and death, Good Friday, Golgotha. We must put our alleluias away for a time. It cannot be any other way. It is divinely necessary for the Son of Man to suffer, to be crucified, and after three days, to rise from the dead. Upon this hangs the salvation of the whole world, your salvation and mine. Only through the cross and suffering can we come to glory. Only through Good Friday can we come to Easter.

            That is why the Mount of Transfiguration is where we begin our Lenten journey. Having now caught a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, and the glory that will be ours in Christ, we have been encouraged and strengthened to go the way of the cross, to trudge on (really, being carried by Him), knowing that after suffering glory awaits. The Lord knows how weak we are. The Lord knows that apart from Him we can do nothing, that we are utterly helpless. The Lord knows that like Peter and James and John on the mountain, naked in our sinfulness before God, we cower in fear. And so He comes to us, tenderly, and touches us (really, not figuratively… He touches us with His true body and blood in the Sacrament). And He speaks to us (really, not figuratively… He speaks to us in the Scriptures and the Absolution and the preaching). And He says to us, dead as we are in our trespasses and sins, “Rise, and have no fear” (Matt. 17:7). And by His Word, we are risen from the dead. By His Word all fear is cast out. By His Word our eyes are lifted up to see no one but Jesus only. Seeing Him, we behold the author and perfecter of our faith. Seeing Him, we see the beloved and only-begotten Son of the Father, and we listen to Him. We live by His Word, which takes us through the valley of the shadow of death to His heavenly glory.

            Dear Christians, be faithful this Lententide. Take up your cross and follow Jesus. Listen to Him. Discipline your bodies and your souls. Take every thought captive to the Word of God. Come to the midweek Lenten services to hear our Lord’s Word and meditate on His Passion. We descend the mountain now to begin our 40-day journey to the cross. But know that you cannot do this on your own. You cannot do this by your own reason or strength. You cannot do this if you insist on doing all the talking. Listen to the Son of God. For His Word makes strong the weak hands and makes firm the feeble knees (Is. 35:3). Rise and have no fear. Set your eyes on Jesus. He lifts you up. He strengthens you. He takes away your sins and by His cross makes you sons of God, with whom the Father is well pleased. It is good that you are here. It is good that you are wherever Jesus is speaking His Word of life. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] [1] Rolf Preus, http://www.christforus.org/Sermons/Content/2009/Transfiguration%202009.doc.

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (A)

February 19, 2017

Text: Matt. 5:38-48

            “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:44-45; ESV).  It’s a tall order.  Yet this is what God expects of His people.  This is what God expects of you.  And to love your enemy means not only to pray for him, but to take his abuse, to turn the other cheek, give him the very shirt of your back, go the extra mile, and give him whatever he needs, freely, without expecting anything in return.  God expects nothing less than perfection, and if that perfection depended on you, you’d be toast.  All have sinned.  All fall far short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).  Thank God, as is the case throughout the Sermon on the Mount, this is not first a description of you, but of Jesus.  Jesus turns His cheek to the fists and spittle of the soldiers.  Jesus is stripped of His robe and His seamless woven tunic over which His executioners cast lots.  Jesus carries the burden of the tree to Golgotha, the Place of a Skull, and is mounted to that tree for the sins of the world.  He gives His all, everything He has, everything He is, in sacrifice for sinners.  Jesus loves His enemies even unto death.  And as it all happens, as the nails pierce His flesh and the bystanders mock and the soldiers hurl abuse, as ultimate injustice is served, Jesus prays for His enemies, for the soldiers, for the crowd, for you: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  Our Holy Gospel this morning is not first a description of you, it is a description of Jesus for you.  He does what God commands, and His doing is done for you.  He does it, and does it perfectly, and you get all the credit, poured out upon you in Baptism, received in Word and Supper by faith.  You don’t do it.  You do the opposite.  And He takes all of your doing and not doing and makes atonement for it on the altar of the cross. 

            Love your enemies.  Pray for them.  Serve them.  Give yourself into death for them.  This is not the way it works in this world.  This world’s economy is built on tit for tat, I scratch your back and you scratch mine, and you get what’s coming to you.  This is how it works among the pagans, as Jesus points out.  You love those who love you.  You greet those who are useful to you.  You shun those who are not.  You look the other way as they pass by.  And that’s just the strangers.  The enemies you actively despise.  That is why you find it so hard to let go of the trespasses committed against you.  Old Adam keeps a thorough record of wrongs.  Repent. 

            Things are different in the economy of God’s Kingdom.  Who does God love?  Tax collectors and prostitutes.  Sinners.  Even pastors.  You.  God loves you.  He loves world.  So He gave His only-begotten Son into death.  That is how He loves you.  Jesus is God incarnate, God in the flesh, the only-begotten Son of the Father.  Why are the Pharisees always so upset with Him?  Because He hangs out with sinners and eats with them.  He has mercy.  He does not despise the lowly.  He heals the sick and casts out demons.  He touches the unclean and takes their uncleanness away.  He gives His all, His very self, for those who can give nothing in return, for those who hate Him and despise Him, reject Him and kill Him.  Because that is how it works in God’s economy.  That is who God is.  He is mercy.  He is forgiveness.  He is life for the dead.  He is life for you.

            And if that is true (and it is), and if you are baptized into Christ and therefore a son of God, an heir with Christ according to the promise, what does that mean about how you treat your enemy?  Our Holy Gospel, thank God, is first about Christ.  He is the only One who can do what is here commanded.  But now as you are in Christ, it is also about you.  These are the things God wants you to do as sons of our Father in heaven.  He really does want you to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  St. Matthew records our text for a Church under tremendous persecution.  Jesus meant it when He said it, and He meant it when His Spirit gave Matthew to write it.  And He means it now.  “Yes, those guys who are out to get you because you believe in Me.  Those guys who want to arrest you and burn your house down and throw you to the wild beasts, or behead you, or crucify you, or burn you alive.  Those guys.  The Romans.  ISIS.  Love them.  Pray for them.  Turn your cheek to them, give them the shirt off your back, go the extra mile for them, even if that mile is to carry your cross to Golgotha.”  Jesus does not call us to kick back in this life, eat, drink, and be merry until we continue the good life in the sky.  There is a time and place for all of those joys, of course.  But our Lord, the crucified One, bids us take up our cross and follow Him.  He bids you come and die.  It hurts.  There’s a cost to it. 

            Our sister, Barronelle Stutzman, knows that cost intimately.  She’s lost everything for refusing to arrange flowers for a gay wedding, for a couple, I might add, whom she knows and loves and has served faithfully for over a decade.  Just this week the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that she violated anti-discrimination laws, that the State could compel her to provide services against her conscience, and that the couple can sue her to recoup legal expenses of over a million dollars.  It makes you angry that this sort of thing can happen here in America, and right across the state border from us, no less.  But you know, throughout this ordeal and in all the years leading up to it, as one of the gay men in this case himself testified under oath, Barronelle has shown nothing but love and compassion to those who are seeking her ruin.  She’s lost everything, her livelihood, her reputation, and now she’ll likely be sued for every last penny.  Yet she loves.  She loves those who are doing this to her.  And she prays for them.  And she forgives them, even as she suffers the abuse.  How can she do it?  Why does she do it?  She knows what you know.  She knows that is precisely what Jesus does for her, and for you.  She knows that all of this has been put to death with her Savior on the cross.  She knows He is risen and lives and reigns, and she will rise and live and reign with Him.  So she loves and she prays and she suffers, now, for a little while.  She takes up her cross and follows Jesus.  Be like Barronelle.  Be like your Christian brothers and sisters throughout the centuries who have loved their captors and prayed for them even as they were led to slaughter.  And rejoice!  They can kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul.  Jesus will raise you, soul and body, to eternal life.  You are a son of God!  What can the world do to you?  It can’t touch you.  Not really.  Not in any lasting way.  So when your Father gives you to suffer affliction, when He lays a cross upon you, greet it as did St. Andrew: “Hail, precious cross, you who were dedicated by the body of Christ; may He receive me through you, who redeemed me through you.”  Indeed, he said, “If I feared the punishment of the cross, I would never have preached the mystery of the cross.”[1]

            Now, if it’s true of those who want to strip you of your possessions and kill you, that you should love them and pray for them, what does it mean for those who have simply trespassed against you in some way?  Forgive.  Love.  Pray.  Suffer.  So you were wronged!  So you were hurt!  So you lost out!  Have mercy.  Let it go.  Free your neighbor from his guilt.  Understand, Christ has freed you from your sin and selfishness for this very thing.  He has given you to be His priest, to extend the freedom of forgiveness.  He freed you.  You free your neighbor.  He loves you.  You love your neighbor.  That is how the gifts of God work.  God pours out His gifts upon you abundantly and unfailingly, and those gifts flow through you and toward your neighbor.  The more you give those gifts away, the more they fill you.  Your cup is always full to the brim and overflowing.  God is faithful.  He will not withdraw His fountain of blessing.  There will always be enough.  He will always provide for you and keep you in His love. 

            And now there is an unfortunate translation issue in the last verse of our Holy Gospel.  The ESV reads, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).  But a better translation would be, “You therefore will be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  It’s not an imperative, it’s a future.  It’s not a condition.  It’s a promise.  You will be…  All God’s promises have their fulfillment in Christ.  Christ is the Father’s perfect Son.  And in Christ, you are perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  And the word “perfect” there is so much more than just morally flawless.  It means complete.  It means whole.  It means you’ve reached the goal, you’re full to the brim, you’ve reached full stature.  The word actually comes from the same root as a very important word uttered by Jesus on the cross.  There it is not translated as “perfect,” but as “finished.”  “It is finished,” Jesus said, “and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30).  This is no accident.  Your perfection is in the sin-atoning death of Jesus, even as your life is in His resurrection.  You don’t love your enemies and pray for them in order to be perfect.  You love your enemies and pray for them because you are perfect in the death and resurrection of Christ.  You are complete, whole, fulfilled, spotless in the death and resurrection of Christ.  That’s the promise.  That’s how God sees you in Christ.  It’s how you’ll see yourself when that Day comes.  And maybe, God grant it, that’s how you’ll see your enemy on that Day, because your love and prayers brought him to Christ.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.              

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[1] Treasury of Daily Prayer (St. Louis: Concordia, 2008) p. 968.

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (A)

February 12, 2017

Text: Matt. 5:21-37

            “You have heard… But I say to you…”  We sinners are very good at hearing God’s Law differently than He speaks it.  The Pharisees and the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day heard the Law as something that could be kept, with great effort to be sure, but it was possible for those of superior character and religiosity… you know, like they were.  But for them the Law was strictly an outward matter, as we heard last week.  They were only concerned with outward behavior.  They were not concerned with the disposition of the heart.  The Pharisees were also very good at changing God’s Law.  Jesus illustrates this point with regard to the 4^th Commandment: “Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and ‘whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’  But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God) – then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down” (Mark 7:10-13; ESV).  So you see there is a difference between what the Pharisees heard and what God actually said.  The Word of God is changed as a matter of interpretation.  If giving money to provide for older parents is good, giving it to God is even better, or so the thinking goes.  So we’ve improved upon God’s Commandment.  And while it is easy for us to sit here in the pew and condemn the Pharisees, the truth of the matter is that we do the same thing.  God said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), but who are we to judge the actions of two (or nowadays, more) consenting adults, be they men and women, or men and men, or women and women?  Who are we to judge the way another treats his or her own body?  Who are we to judge a husband and wife for whom the flame of love has died if they tear asunder what God has joined together?  It is more loving to live and let live, to be, not just tolerant, but affirming.  After all, God is love (1 John 8).  Which He is, but of course, what that really means is that in love God has given us His Commandments for our good.  But we interpret our way out of them.  We rationalize or emotionalize God’s Commandments in such a way that any and all outward behavior is excused and even justified.  And so there are two ways that we hear God’s Law wrong.  There is the way of the Pharisees, legalism, which is concerned only with outward behavior and cares not about the disposition of the heart.  Or there is the way which is much more prevalent in our culture, moral relativism, the way that says anything goes in terms of outward behavior, because all that matters is warm fuzzies in the heart, all that matters is that you are fulfilled, happy, and true to yourself.  At the end of the day, both approaches are the same.  Pharisees and libertines, legalists and moral relativists, both attempt to manage the Law in such a way as to declare themselves righteous.  Both seek self-justification, either by moralism, or by lawlessness.

            But that’s not Christianity.  That is why Jesus ups the ante in our Holy Gospel.  You have heard the Law preached in many and various ways, but Jesus preaches it in all its unyielding truth.  Jesus gives it to you straight.  The Ten Commandments leave no breathing room.  God expects you not to murder.  There are no exceptions here for unwanted pregnancies, vigilante justice, or excruciating terminal illnesses.  But even if you have kept this Commandment outwardly, you haven’t yet kept it.  For when you have been filled with unrighteous anger toward your neighbor, when you have insulted him or called him names, when you’ve refused to forgive his trespasses against you, you have broken the 5^th Commandment.  St. John writes that “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15).  If you do not love your brother as yourself, you have murdered him in your heart.  If you can help your brother in physical need but don’t, if you embitter your neighbor’s life by your words and actions, if you injure your neighbor physically or emotionally, you have murdered him.  No one walks away free from this Commandment.  And the Sixth Commandment is the same.  God expects you not to commit adultery.  To be sure, this means that you shall not physically cheat on your spouse.  He also expects husbands and wives to remain faithful to their marriage vows until death parts them, and so He forbids divorce, with only very narrow exceptions to that rule.  But here God also expects sexual purity in thought, word, desire, and deed.  This prohibits all forms of unchastity, fornication, sex before marriage, living together outside of marriage, prostitution, pornography, homosexuality.  It should go without saying, and yet it cannot go without saying: Christians do not engage in such behaviors.  If you do, repent.  Confess and be absolved.  Let’s talk, you and I, about how to make the situation right.  But even if you have not offended against this Commandment outwardly, you still aren’t free.  For Jesus says that even to look at another person with lust is to commit adultery with him or her in your heart (v. 28).  And we’re all nailed to the wall.  We’ve all broken this Commandment, too.  Jesus also gives instruction on the 8^th Commandment, that a Christian’s yes ought to be yes, and your no, no.  There are times when you must take an oath before God, such as in court or when you get married, whenever your neighbor’s welfare demands it, but this should only be in very serious circumstances.  A Christian’s words should always be truthful even without an oath.  How many empty promises do we make?  Sure, I’ll do this or that.  Sure, I’ll be there at this time.  And we have no intention of following through, or we lose that intention somewhere along the way.  And so you see, once again we’re all nailed.  We’ve all sinned.  Repent.

            But dealing with this sin is going to take a whole lot more than a simple outward reformation of life.  For your outward behavior is symptomatic of the condition of your heart.  Jesus is interested in your heart.  That’s where the disease is.  Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, etc. (Matt. 15:19).  Defeating sin is not as simple as gouging out your eye or cutting off your hand.  Amputate all your limbs and appendages and you’ll still be a sinner.  Because what you really need is a new heart.  “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Ps. 51:10).  What you really need is a heart transplant, a bona fide death and resurrection.  And that is what you get with Jesus, His death and His resurrection for you, and your death and resurrection in His.  A great exchange takes place for you in Christ.  Jesus takes your murderous, unforgiving, adulterous, dishonest, and unfaithful heart into Himself.  And He gives you His sacrificial life, His faithfulness, His truthfulness, His love, so that these are credited to your account.  He takes all your sins to the cross to be crucified and die with Him.  And now they can never count against you.   He gives all of His sinless body parts to redeem all of your sinful body parts.  He gives His eye, His hand, His whole Body into death and hell for you, that you might have life and heaven.  He who knew no sin became sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

            And though you have been unfaithful, your Bridegroom, Jesus, does not divorce you.  He gives Himself up for you to make you holy, cleansing you by the washing of water and the Word, to present you to Himself in splendor, as a Bride adorned for her Husband, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:25-27).  The risen Lord Jesus bestows His righteousness and His resurrection life upon His Bride, the Church, you.  And so in spite of what you have heard from the world, from society, from the culture, even from false Christian teachers, you listen only to the voice of your Beloved Savior.  You do not try to justify yourself.  You do not try to earn your righteousness by your outward keeping of the Law.  You do not excuse your sinful behavior, or seek Jesus’ tolerance and acceptance of your sin.  Instead, you confess it.  You confess the hidden wickedness of your heart to the One who alone can make you clean and new.  You confess it into His tomb where it is buried forever, forgiven, never to be resurrected.  You say “Amen” to your Lord’s killing and condemning Law, because you know that He slays you only to raise you to new life, that you may say “Amen” to His life-giving Gospel.  You have heard many and various things from many and various voices in the world.  But you also know the one and only voice of truth, the voice of Jesus Christ.  Let all that is not of Him be put to silence.  For He is your God.  His Word is your life.  His Word bespeaks you righteous.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (A)

February 5, 2017

Text: Matt. 5:13-20

            “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20; ESV).  Well, on the face of it, it seems like we might as well just give up and resign ourselves to eternal condemnation.  The Scribes and the Pharisees, these were the guys who knew every jot and tittle, every iota and dot of the Law, and meticulously kept every detail.  So how on earth is my righteousness, your righteousness, to be greater than theirs?  After all, you and I know our sins.  And Jesus knows them even better than we do.  There are times when we may regard our neighbor with pharisaical pride.  In fact, we love to do this.  We love to revel in another person’s sins and faults and weaknesses.  We love to gossip about them.  We smirk with delight in the knowledge that we are better than they are.  And then the unforgiving mirror of God’s Law shows us the hideous truth of our condition.  Our gossip betrays us.  We are not better than our neighbor.  We are not holier.  For every finger we point at another, ten thousand fingers of the Law are pointing back.  Righteousness exceeding that of the Scribes and Pharisees?  Hardly.  We are not righteous at all.  We are, as we confess, by nature sinful and unclean, constantly sinning against God and our neighbor in thought, word, and deed. 

            Jesus knows that, and thanks be to God our righteousness is not determined by our conduct or our disposition or our piety.  Our righteousness is in no way determined by our keeping of the Law.  Christ Jesus is our righteousness.  And it is in that way, and that way only, that our righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees.  The Scribes and the Pharisees put on a pretty good show.  They were really good at outwardly keeping the Law.  Humanly speaking, these were the upstanding citizens, good Christian folk, morally blameless, advocates of traditional values.  They talked a good talk.  They walked a good walk.  All of which is fine and good.  But it does not count as righteousness before God.  For as St. James reminds us, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10).  There is no breathing room when it comes to God’s Law.  No matter how bright and shiny your life may be, the fact remains that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), all, including Scribes and Pharisees and good Christian folk.  Because as good as you may be at keeping the Law outwardly, you know the thoughts in your mind and the desires in your heart.  You know that you are not pure.  You know that you are full of rebellion against God, selfishness, greed, lust, pride.  So you are a sinner.  And a sinner is, by definition, not righteous.  So here is the dirty little secret about the Scribes and Pharisees: They have bright and shiny, religious lives, but they are not righteous.  Because they do not have Christ.  They are sinners.  And instead of receiving God’s salvation for their sins, they reject Him, and by their own efforts work to make themselves righteous.

            You are a sinner, to be sure.  Your life is not even as bright and shiny as the Scribes and Pharisees.  And yet, your righteousness exceeds theirs.  Because your righteousness has nothing to do with who you are in and of yourself, or anything that you have done or left undone.  Your righteousness is Jesus Christ.  You are in Christ.  You are baptized.  His righteousness counts for you.  His blood washes away all your sin.  And so, while the Scribes and Pharisees find themselves shut outside the doors where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, you are entering into the kingdom of heaven, into the joy of your Master.

            And this is great Good News to us who are beset by vexing sins, whose consciences are troubled, fightings and fears within and without, whose hearts are weighed down with grief and hopelessness, broken lives, broken relationships, a broken faith.  Whatever you are going through right now, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, wherever you’ve been, all of that is baptized in the blood of Jesus Christ, your crucified Lord.  All your sins are forgiven.  And Christ is your righteousness.  That is what St. Paul means when he says you’re justified.  Justified simply means righteous.  Righteous on account of Christ.  Justified on account of Christ.  Here’s what he says: “But  now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:21-25).  How are you made righteous before God?  Christ died for your sins and God raised Him from the dead.  And now on His account God bespeaks you righteous, declares you righteousness, pronounces you righteous.  It’s a courtroom decree.  And Christ’s righteousness is given to you as God’s free gift.  It is received by faith.  Believe it and it is yours.  It’s as simple as that.  There’s nothing to add.  There’s nothing said here about your works.  There’s nothing said here about your worthiness or whether you deserve it, because you don’t.  It’s pure grace.  It’s pure gift.  For you.  In Christ alone.  And in this way your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, who, in reality, are not righteous at all.

            But aren’t Christians supposed to do good things?  Shouldn’t we do good works?  Shouldn’t we be upstanding citizens, good Christian folk, moral, advocates of traditional values and the like?  Shouldn’t we serve our neighbor, love our neighbor, provide for our neighbor’s needs?  Shouldn’t we flee from sin and godlessness?  Yes, yes, and yes.  Absolutely.  But that doesn’t make you righteous.  And thank God for that, because in your fallen flesh you will fail.  Your fallen flesh still needs to be crucified daily in repentance.  But you should do these things, not in order to be righteous, but because you are righteous in Christ.  So He sends you out to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  What does salt do?  It preserves and it seasons.  Back in the days before refrigeration, how did you keep the meat from spoiling?  Salt!  And my wife doesn’t always believe me, but even when something tastes great, sometimes the experience can be enhanced all the more with just a little bit of salt.  Christians are salt.  God preserves the world on account of Christians who pray and love and serve in it, and on account of people who are not yet Christians but will be as they hear God’s Word and receive Baptism.  And God seasons the world with His Christians, with your faithful confession, with your works done in Jesus’ Name, with your various vocations to which God has called you to be His hands in the world.  He sends you to be light in this dark world, to shine the light of Christ in the darkness and expel it.  You do this as you speak of Christ, as you speak God’s Word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Ps. 119:105).  And by example as you live according to God’s Word in the world, confessing your sins, and hearing and living by the Absolution of the Lord that you receive freely here in His Church.

            It is an amazing thing what Jesus once said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you” (Matt. 21:31).  Or, as He said of the tax collector over against the Pharisee: “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other” (Luke 18:14).  How can Jesus say such things?  It is not that Jesus has suddenly become tolerant of sin and affirming of materialistic lifestyles or sexual transgressions.  He has not come to relax the Law, much less abolish it.  In fact, as He says, not one iota or dot will pass away from the Law until it is accomplished.  Jesus does not abolish the Law.  He fulfills it.  He accomplishes it.  By His righteous life in our stead.  By His death on the cross for our forgiveness.  And He is risen and gives new life to us who were dead in our trespasses and sins, new life now in Baptism so that we can be His salt and His light in the world, life hidden under this weak flesh, but real life, a life that will be made manifest on the Last Day in the resurrection of the dead.

            It is no secret that you are a sinner.  If you try to keep it a secret, you are a Pharisee and not a Christian.  Christians confess their sins.  Christians confess that they are sinners.  Because you know that your righteousness does not consist in a polished outward life that, like a whitewashed tomb, hides the stench of deadly sins inside.  Your life is Christ.  Your righteousness is Christ.  Your everything is Christ.  And so in Christ, your righteousness not only exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees… In Christ, when your Father in heaven looks at you, He sees only the perfection of His Son.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.