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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.
Some of you may have noticed that the federal government earlier this month announced new national rules that would effectively shut down payday lenders, such as those we see around our area, whose commercials on television and radio are almost ubiquitous. The lenders are being targeted because they allegedly charge an annualized interest rate of 400 percent or more and compound fees when loans are not paid back right away. (Boston Globe) Such lenders are nothing new, of course, for, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus uses such a moneylender as part of a parable to deal with “Two kinds of debtors”: one whose larger financial debt is cancelled and so loves the lender more, and the other whose smaller financial debt is cancelled and so loves the lender less. The “Two kinds of debtors” relate to two different kinds of sinners: on the one hand, a proud Pharisee, who does not understand his situation in relation to God, and, on the other hand, a humble woman, who does understand her situation in relation to God (confer Hauck, TDNT 5:562-563). This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Two kinds of debtors”.
For today’s Gospel Reading, we have skipped forward in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, from Jesus’s raising from the dead the son of the widow of Nain in last week’s Gospel Reading (Luke 7:11-17), over John the Baptizer’s sending disciples to ask Jesus if He was the one to come, over Jesus’s answering by pointing to such things as raising people from the dead, and over Jesus’s speaking to the crowds about John, which included Jesus’s criticizing those who both said John had a demon, since he did not eat bread or drink wine, and who called Jesus, Who ate and drank, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Luke 7:18-35).
So, we come to today’s Gospel Reading, and in today’s Gospel Reading, the proud Pharisee, Simon, thought that he was better than the humble woman, who showed both her repentance from her sin and her love for Jesus by wetting His feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair, by kissing His feet, and by anointing His feet with myrrh—each deed narrated and then recounted as Jesus contrasted the woman to Simon after the parable of a moneylender who cancelled the debts of two debtors. In good Biblical fashion, the debts in this case relate to sin against God (compare Matthew 6:12 and Luke 11:4), and the comparative size of the debts— two months worth of wages compared to a year and one half’s worth of wages (Buls cited by Chryst)—is said to relate not to the number of sins forgiven but to the debtors’ consciousness or awareness of their sin and its forgiveness (confer Lenski, ad loc Lk 7:41, 429). Simon seemed to be unaware of any sin for which he even needed forgiveness from Jesus (so he was not forgiven at all and did not love at all), while the woman was aware of the forgiveness for all of her sin that she received from Jesus and so loved Jesus much as a result.
Jesus used the parable of the “Two kinds of debtors” to show Simon his sin, just as, in today’s Old Testament Reading (2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-14), the prophet Nathan used the parable of the rich man who stole the little lamb to show David his sin. David realized his sin, but we are not told whether Simon ever realized his. How about you and me? How aware are we of our sin? How much do we love as a result of our sins’ being forgiven? Despite the different quantity of cancelled debts, there was no qualitative difference between the two debtors, or between Simon and the woman, or between any of us. We all are sinful by nature, and we all commit countless actual sins, even those of us who are aware of our sins and who try to love God and our neighbor as a result of being forgiven. Apart from faith in Jesus, on account of our sins, we all deserve punishment here in time and torment eternally in hell. But, God calls and enables us to repent of our sin and to believe in Him so He can forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake.
A payday lender’s cancelling someone’s debt may be hard to imagine, but the moneylender in the parable cancelled the debts, and likewise God forgives the sinful nature and actual sins of all those who repent and believe. God shows Himself to be merciful and gracious (confer Hauck, TDNT 5:562-563), by freely forgiving our sin, through faith, by grace for the sake of Jesus Christ, Who died on the cross for the sin of the whole world, including your sin and mine. As Jesus was resurrected, God made us who believe, who were dead in our sins, alive together with Jesus, having forgiven us all our sins (Colossians 2:13). The differences between Simon and the woman are humble repentance and faith in Who Jesus is. Simon arguably treated Jesus as an inferior (Arndt, 220), while the woman treated Jesus a superior, namely, her forgiving God in human flesh (see Weiss, TDNT 6:628-631). Although Jesus’s human needs and in some sense living off the love of others might conceal His Divine majesty (Pieper, II:302), He nevertheless is God in human flesh, the God to Whom all of us are indebted, the God Who forgives the sin of those who repent and believe, and the God Who receives the love and worship of those so forgiven. As St. Paul describes in today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 2:15-21; 3:10-14), Jesus became the curse we deserved and gave Himself for us that we might be justified not by works of the law but through faith. As we sang in today’s Psalm (32:1-7; antiphon v.5), our afflictions lead us from covering up to acknowledging and confessing our sin, so that our sin may be forgiven and covered with Christ’s righteousness, and we may be blessed as God counts no iniquity against us. For Jesus’s sake, God objectively forgives all people, but that forgiveness only subjectively saves those who receive His forgiveness in faith, through His Means of Grace.
Proud Pharisees such as Simon had rejected God’s purpose for them by not being baptized by John (Luke 7:30), but the humble woman apparently had heard Jesus’s Gospel of forgiveness and so came to Jesus, repentant and thankful. Jesus went about proclaiming and bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God, and so He individually absolved her, reinstating her to the fellowship of believers, and Jesus told her to go in peace, even as Nathan individually absolved David, and even as Jesus, through His called and ordained servants, dismisses us in peace from individual Absolution and from the Sacrament of the Altar. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus say He actively forgives anyone, but those who were at table with Him correctly understood that Jesus’s statement to the woman that her sins were forgiven essentially meant that He forgave her (confer Luke 5:20-21). Not only the God-man Jesus has such authority to forgive sins, but also those men whom Jesus sends have such authority (Matthew 9:8). The forgiveness and salvation Jesus won on the cross is given to us, on His commission and in His Name, especially in Baptism, individual Absolution, and with His Body and Blood, as we in repentance and faith affirm God’s judgment on us and so are renewed, body and soul (confer Bultmann, TDNT 1:509-512).
The faith God gives us so receives His saving forgiveness, and our love of God follows. The Gospel Reading as a whole makes perfectly clear both that faith is the cause and that love is the result. We may not wet Jesus’s feet with our tears and wipe them with our hair (if we even have any hair), we may not kiss Jesus’s feet, and we may not anoint Jesus’s feet with myrrh, but, with Christ living in us as St. Paul described, we love and serve Jesus in other ways, including receiving His forgiveness and supporting the ministry of the Gospel with our time, talents, and treasure, as did the women named in the Gospel Reading. As Eve was intended for Adam, they in a sense were for Jesus helpers fit (Arndt, 224), providing for Him and for His disciples out of their own means, and maybe also cooking for them, as in a month we will hear Martha did (Luke 10:40), and maybe even sewing for them. But, surely most importantly, these women were at Jesus’s cross and tomb and told the Twelve of His resurrection (Luke 23:49; 24:10).
News commentators speculate what will happen if the federal government gets its way and effectively shuts-down payday lenders. Evidence from states that have banned such loans suggests households will bounce more checks, endure more harassment from debt collectors, and be more likely to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, not to mention having their utilities shut off, if they do not first seek more-illicit loans. The one kind of debtors, which repentant and believing sinners are, have no such worries about losing their credit in Christ. The Church always remains, making available to all who repent and believe God’s forgiveness that results in love. As we did in the Hymn of the Day, we pray now (Lutheran Service Book 834:4):
O Spirit, Who didst once restore / Thy Church that it might be again
The bringer of good news to men,
Breathe on Thy cloven Church once more,
That in these gray and latter days / There may be those whose life is praise
Each life a high doxology / To Father, Son, and unto Thee.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +