+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Just as a new president’s first speech to the country is called his “Inaugural Address”, a new pastor’s first address to his congregation is called his “Inaugural Sermon”. Preaching this “Inaugural Sermon” to you today here at Pilgrim, Kilgore, is my privilege and pleasure, especially since this congregation has gone more than twenty years without having a full-time pastor. For their “Inaugural Sermons”, some pastors will choose what is a called a “free text”, a passage of Holy Scripture other than those appointed to be read on the given day, but I have chosen to focus this “Inaugural Sermon” on the Gospel Reading appointed for today, the Last Sunday of the Church Year. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus speaks of Himself as a “shepherd”, the Latin word for which gives us our English word “pastor”, and, though the Gospel Reading describes the end of the sheep and the goats being pastured together, the Gospel Reading also speaks to the beginning of the goats’ eternal punishment and the sheep’s eternal life. So, the theme I have given to this “Inaugural Sermon” on this particular day is “Shepherds and Beginnings and Endings”.
With the Last Sunday of the Church Year, we have come to the end of our year-long series of Gospel Readings primarily from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. The content of today’s Gospel Reading from Matthew chapter 25 is found only in St. Matthew’s account, where it serves not only as the climax of Jesus’s fifth and final discourse in that account but also as the climax of all Jesus taught in the whole account. In fact, this highly-symbolic description of an event that is still to come in the future is St. Matthew’s last recorded teaching of Jesus before the plot is hatched to arrest and kill Him.
Last week’s Gospel Reading of the Parable of the Talents comes just before this one and ended with the casting out into the outer darkness of the worthless servant who had buried the talent the Master entrusted to him. But, unlike the preceding parables dealing with true and false disciples in the church, this week’s Gospel Reading arguably describes the general separation of all: those inside and outside of the church. The Son of Man comes in His glory with all the angels, who gather all the nations, and He separates one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. Shepherds in the Holy Land still pasture the sheep and goats together during the day, but, since the sheep prefer the open air and the goats need the warmth of a shelter, the shepherds separate them at night. That separation is relatively easy, since the sheep there are generally white and the goats black. From the whole of Scripture, we understand both that the irresistible resurrection of the dead takes place in connection with the gathering of the nations and that the separation is the one and only revealing of “judgment”, which either took place when the individuals died or at that moment of separation. The ensuing discussion in the Gospel Reading reveals that the basis for the “judgment” is acts of mercy.
Have you or I ever said that if Jesus were right here we would surely serve Him, however we could? Would we really, or are we just fooling ourselves? Do we not hear what Jesus says in the Gospel Reading that serving our neighbor is serving Him? The greatest commandment is to love God, but the other greatest commandment is like it: to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we love our neighbor, we are loving God. More specifically, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther says that in the Gospel Reading Jesus is talking about the Fifth Commandment, and Luther says if we omit giving food to the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, or coming to the prisoner, then we are guilty of our neighbor’s death. Both St. James and St. Paul call for such acts of mercy, kindness, and love especially to be done to our brothers and sisters in Christ, but such acts of mercy are also to be done to all people, including our enemies. Yet, all too often we fail to do these acts of mercy related to the Fifth Commandment, even as we all fail to keep the other nine Commandments, for we are all sinful by nature. We not only do not do things that we should do, we also do things that we should not do. As God says through Isaiah, all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way.
The Lord is our Shepherd, most of us have learned from Psalm 23, and we like to think of Him preparing a table before us, of Him anointing our head with oil, and of our cup overflowing. But, today in both our Old Testament Reading and in our Gospel Reading we also have to deal with this Shepherd as the Judge of the living and the dead, Who gives as an inheritance to some the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world and sends others to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Note well that that fire was not prepared for us—God does not predestine people to hell; rather, people make themselves liable for hell. Also note that deniers of hell, either of the length of its torment or of its existence altogether, must, to be consistent, deny either the length or existence of heaven or the authority of God’s Word, for God’s Word, such as Gospel Reading this day, describes heaven and hell in parallel terms. Of course, Jesus teaches about the eternal punishment of hell so that we all repent—so that we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust God the Father to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. Now is the time to repent, before the Son of Man comes in His glory and it is too late. When we repent, God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. Then, we who repent rightly hear the words St. Peter wrote in his first letter: “You were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
That Shepherd and Overseer of our souls is Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Who, St. John’s Gospel account reminds us, out of His great love laid down His life for us sheep. Jesus calls Himself the “Son of Man”, a title that by way of the Old Testament book of Daniel points to His being more than man—His being also true God, and His having angels also points to His being God. At His transfiguration, three of Jesus’s disciples saw a glimpse of His glorious divine nature, and today’s Gospel Reading describes how we all will see that same glory when He finally comes with the angels and sits on His throne. A Shepherd-King like Moses and David before Him, Jesus’s first coming was much less glorious, especially considering His inglorious death on the cross for you and for me. On the cross, Jesus suffered the separation from the Father that we deserve on account of our sins—the same separation Jesus in the Gospel Reading describes the goats having to suffer. While separated from the Father, hanging dead on the cross, Jesus was identified by the Roman centurion standing there as the righteous One, and now Jesus declares all who believe in Him to be righteous, and, by that declaration, He makes us righteous. As the author of Hebrews writes, Jesus is the Great Shepherd of the Sheep brought back from the dead, and, as our Epistle Reading reminds us, He is the firstfruits of them that sleep—meaning all will be raised as He was. We will inherit the kingdom prepared for us not only before we existed but before the foundation of the world. We are blessed by our Father not because of what we have done but because of what He has done for us, namely forgiving our sins by grace through faith in Jesus.
Since Jesus ascended into heaven, the forgiveness of sins He won for us on the cross is distributed to His Church by the teaching-shepherds in the Office of the Holy Ministry, the pastoral office. Starting with the apostles down to their successors, pastors today, men like me bear Jesus’s Word and authority for your benefit. Jesus wants disciples made of all nations by baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but sadly, as we see in the Gospel Reading, not everyone of all those nations is willing to be a disciple. Some reject God’s resistible Word, including Baptism, Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. To some extent now there is already a separation like that in our Gospel Reading, as some commune here, elsewhere, or not at all. Here—in, with, and under bread and wine—we receive Jesus’s body and blood, given and shed for you and me for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. We have a foretaste of the eternal feast to come with the Lamb in His Kingdom that has no end. As God in the Old Testament Reading described seeking out His scattered flock, gathering it, and feeding it, He described the work I am here to do with you as the Church in this place. And, as God gives us faith and works new life in us, He produces in us the kind of acts of mercy our Gospel Reading describes.
This past week I received a telephone call here at the church from someone in Missouri with friends in our area who need help with the heating of their home. Apparently their central unit went out first, and then the window unit they were using gave out, and now the wiring in their home cannot seem to handle the electrical load of the space heaters they are using. Providing heating or air conditioning is not quite one of the six acts of mercy described in our Gospel Reading, but nevertheless I was thinking about the reading as I tried to find some help for this family in need. Right now the case is in the hands of the Salvation Army, but maybe we can consider helping out in some way if the Salvation Army cannot. Saving faith in Jesus Christ will produce such good works, and those good works, as evidence of the saving faith, are the basis for the separation on the last day. The sins of the believing sheep are not even mentioned: only their faith-produced good deeds are mentioned and the sins of the unbelieving goats. Since we who believe remain sinful in this world, we will still fail to produce all the good works we should, but, with faith in Jesus, we are forgiven those failures, too.
Those of you who were here for my installation last Sunday afternoon hopefully remember Pastor Keistman in the sermon saying how Christ crucified is to be at the center of every sermon I preach. I pray you can say that that has been true this Last Sunday of the Church Year in this “Inaugural Sermon”, as I have begun my work as your pastor, your under-shepherd of the Great Good Shepherd. I am here to bring you the forgiveness Christ won for you—that is my calling, and do not think that anything related to that forgiveness is ever an interruption of what I am doing or a waste of my time. Even though my service as your shepherd has only just begun, let us together eagerly await the end of all time, when believers are publicly vindicated before the world and receive eternal life. We who believe have no reason to fear that our Lord will then say to us, “Depart from Me, you cursed into the fire prepared for the devil and his evil angels.” Rather, we rejoice for we know by faith that He will say to us, “Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +