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+ + + 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.
“To-do lists”: all of us probably have them, even if we have never had any formal training in time management. We all seem to learn the art of first writing down things to do and later checking off things done, either because we have done them or because we have delegated them to someone else to do, moving them from our desk or in-box to their desk or inbox. There are short-term “to‑do lists” and long-term “to‑do lists”, work “to‑do lists” and home “to-do lists”, though maybe those are called “honey‑do” lists. In today’s Third Reading, the man who ran up to and knelt before Jesus essentially asked for a sort of “to‑do list” but we will realize that what he and we got was a “done list”.
In the Third Reading, Jesus was journeying in the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. The man who ran up to and knelt before Jesus maybe had heard, as we did last week, Jesus’s teaching, both His teaching about divorce and remarriage and His teaching about receiving the Kingdom of God like a child. In his calling Jesus “Good Teacher”, the man clearly recognized Jesus as some sort of authority, and, in his asking about inheriting eternal life, he clearly wanted to receive the Kingdom. But, the man also seems to have thought that he could do something in order to receive it, and the man further thought that, since perhaps the time of his Bar Mitzvah, when he became a son of the Law, he had kept all the Commandments, or at least all those of the Second Table of the Law. The man thought too highly of his ability and of himself as righteous.
Do you and I think too highly of our ability and of ourselves as righteous? Perhaps, as the man in the Third Reading may have thought, we think that if others do not see us, as adults, transgress the Commandments of the Second Table of the Law, then we are doing well, regardless of whether we are transgressing the Commandments of the First Table of the Law, chiefly by placing our trust in something other than the One True God. Such a failure to fear, love, and trust in God above all things leads us to break all the Commandments, including those related to loving everyone else as we love ourselves. We do not have to have great possessions in order to fail to use them either to help those around us in need or to let them get in the way of our following Jesus. Do we maybe think of ourselves at least as further along than the man in the Third Reading, because we recognize that by nature we have no ability to do anything to inherit eternal life and that as a result we have not kept the Commandments? Whether or not we admit such to ourselves, God knows, as the First Reading said, how many are our transgressions and how great are our sins. No matter one’s age, the whole world is accountable to God, God through St. Paul wrote to the Romans, and His law silences every mouth.
In the Third Reading, after Jesus granted for the sake of argument the man’s claim that he had kept the Fourth through the Tenth Commandments, Jesus silenced the man’s mouth by leading the man to recognize that he had not kept the First Commandment. And, the man, who had been so enthusiastic at the beginning, was disheartened and went away sorrowful, though not sorrowful enough to repent, which is what Jesus wanted the man to do. In fact, today’s Third Reading is reportedly the only time in any of the Gospel accounts that there is even an implicit refusal of Jesus’s invitation to follow Him. Do we more than implicitly refuse Jesus’s invitation to follow Him? Or, do you and I turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive it, and want to do better? The Second Reading rightly urges us to repent and to repent today, while there is still time.
In the Third Reading, even after the man claimed to have kept the Commandments, St. Mark by divine inspiration remarkably tells us that Jesus, looking at the man, loved him. Love is hardly the emotion one might expect from Jesus after such a claim. Yet, such love, sacrificial love, for the man and for us, is what drove Jesus—drove His taking on human flesh, in order to live the perfect life we fail to live, to die on the cross the death we deserve for our failures, and to rise from the grave to show that He has conquered sin and death. While we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us. Jesus perfectly loved God the Father and so obeyed His will to redeem us from our sins, and He perfectly loved us, giving Himself for us and for our salvation. In one sense, there is nothing left for us “to do”, for Jesus has “done” it all. Just as Jesus’s listing of the Commandments in the Reading might lead us to realize the great magnitude of our sin, Jesus’s listing of the Commandments can also lead us to realize the great magnitude of His forgiveness. In the Third Reading, Jesus tried to shift the man’s attention from the man’s works to God’s works. God alone is good, even in the person of the God-man Jesus Christ, and no one can forgive sins, except God alone, even in the person of the God-man Jesus Christ, and in the persons of those He sends with the authority to forgive sins in the specific ways He has appointed for forgiveness to be given.
In the Third Reading, what Jesus said to the man disheartened him, because Jesus spoke the law to the man in order to show the man his sin. But, if the man, had repented, Jesus would have spoken the Gospel to Him and by that speaking also forgiven the man’s sins. The words of the Gospel in all their forms effect that which they speak. The words with water in Holy Baptism forgive us as God’s children of our sin no matter our age, deliver us from death and the devil, and give eternal salvation to all who believe. The words of the pastor in Holy Absolution forgive our sins as validly and certainly as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself. And, the words with bread and wine in Holy Communion give Christ’s body and blood for forgiveness, life, and salvation.
There is an irony in today’s Third Reading—an irony that seems to have escaped most of the commentators on this Reading whom I read. The man comes asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Such an inheritance has a significant Old Testament background, where the Promised Land is in view. Such an inheritance is given only as a gift of God and as an irreversible, lasting possession. That the inheritance is an irreversible, lasting possession is not to say that one cannot fall from faith and fail to inherit eternal life, but it is to contrast the inheritance with the other sort of possessions the man in the Third Reading had: the kind that could be bought and sold for something of equal value, ironically the kind of possessions the man had in great quantity but apparently was unwilling to give up. The man in the Third Reading could not do anything in order to get such an inheritance, and neither can you or I. Such an inheritance comes only as God’s gracious gift, through faith, on account of what Jesus Christ has done.
Nobody really wants anything more on any of his or her “to‑do lists”. As we have realized this day, we receive a great blessing as a result of what is on Jesus’s “done list”. When you and I repent of our sin, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. As we remain in Him, we, too, have nothing left to do, He works in us the fruits of faith, and in Him we, too, have done all things. Though He has yet to come again to judge the living and the dead, all of us who believe have inherited eternal life, already now, even if our full‑appreciation of that inheritance is yet to come. Until then, we live each and every day with repentance and faith in that forgiveness, and we pray that God would enable us to forsake all trust in earthly gain and find in Him our heavenly treasure, which moth and rust cannot destroy and which thieves cannot break in and steal.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +