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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.
Something extraordinary happened in a Dallas courtroom this past Wednesday. Maybe you read or heard about a man’s forgiving and hugging his brother’s murderer and the judge in the case’s hugging the convict, too (Faithwire). Regardless of what the case says or does not say about race and police relations, the forgiveness that the victim’s brother showed the convict sure seems to be a dramatic demonstration of what the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ can do. People commenting online wondered how the brother could forgive the convict and whether they would be able to do so if they were in his place, but, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, forgiving our brothers and sisters in Christ is exactly what Jesus enables us to do.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus makes what at first listen might seem to be unrelated statements about not causing people to fall from their faith, about rebuking and forgiving a brother or sister who sins and repents, about a little faith’s tapping into the great power of God, and about not thanking servants who have only done their duty. However, all of those statements can be taken as being about forgiveness: about one’s not forgiving another person’s being a spiritual deathtrap, about what enables one to forgive another person, and about what one should or should not expect after one has forgiven another person. What Jesus said to His disciples applies also to us: we should forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ who sin against us.
Like some of those commenting online about the Dallas courtroom scene, and like the apostles in today’s Gospel Reading, we ourselves might wonder about our ability to forgive those who sin against us. To be sure, the apostles apparently thought that they did not have enough faith for such forgiveness, as they asked Jesus to increase their faith. Although not so obvious in its English translation, the original Greek of today’s Gospel Reading is often taken to suggest that, for His part, Jesus does not think that they have enough faith either: Jesus says if they had faith like a grain of mustard seed then they could speak a mulberry tree into the sea, which statement is then taken to mean that Jesus did not think the apostles had such faith. Certainly the Bible does not record anyone so uprooting and replanting trees, and we do not see such things happening today, either, not that God commands us to do so or assures us that He wills such miracles with mulberry trees actually to occur.
When we seriously “pay attention to ourselves” in light of today’s Gospel Reading, we perhaps should wonder about more than our ability to forgive those who sin against us. For, we might also wrongly cause one of the least of our brothers and sisters in Christ to fall from faith if we fail to forgive them. We might also wrongly reach a limit on the number of times we rebuke and forgive a brother or sister in Christ who sins against us and repents. We might also wrongly think that we should be thanked or are worthy of something else because in forgiving them we have done what was our duty. We sin in those and countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. For such sin and for our sinful nature, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment. But, God calls us and by that call enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
As was the case with Habakkuk in today’s Old Testament Reading (Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1‑4), often cited by New Testament authors (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38), the righteous shall live by faith. The size of that faith does not seem to matter, as long as it trusts in the merits of the God-man Jesus Christ. Out of His love for us, Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we otherwise would have deserved. There, on the cross, Jesus, in the words of today’s Epistle Reading (2 Timothy 1:1-14), abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. More than anyone else, Jesus, in the words of the Gospel Reading, did all that He was commanded to do and so suffered for our failures to do all that we were commanded to do. We who otherwise are un‑righteous receive His righteousness by faith, receiving both that faith and His righteousness through His Word in all of its forms.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s “parable” of a sort, about a servant plowing or keeping sheep who comes in from the field and prepares supper, dresses properly, and serves, certainly can make us think of God’s instituting the Office of the Holy Ministry, that is, providing the Gospel and the Sacraments, in order for us to obtain saving faith in His Son, Jesus Christ (Augsburg Confession V:1). For, plowing, keeping sheep, preparing supper, dressing properly, and serving are all expressions for the ministry used elsewhere in Holy Scripture. Through the Gospel and the Sacraments—through Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion—God gives the Holy Spirit, Who works faith, when and where He pleases, in those who hear the Gospel (Augsburg Confession V:2). So, by God’s working through our pastors, as through Saints Paul and Timothy before them, we are washed into the Church with the water and Word of Holy Baptism, we are freed from the sins we know and feel in our hearts by the pastor’s touch and Word of Holy Absolution, and we are fed and nourished with bread and wine that are the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion, giving us also forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation.
Through His Gospel in all of its forms, God changes our lives. He gives us faith that taps into His great power that we exercise in the miraculous ways that God commands and assures us that He wills, such as by our forgiving one another, as He has forgiven us (Colossians 3:13). The seven times in the day that Jesus mentions in the Gospel Reading is not a literal number but, like the seventy-seven times Jesus mentions elsewhere (Matthew 18:22), it is a figurative number for the complete or perfect number of times that we forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ. As many times as they sin against us, so many times we rebuke them, and, if they turn to us and repent, so many times we forgive them. The English Standard Version read made an imperative command out of one of Jesus’s verbs that was, in fact, a future-tense verb indicating what we “will” do as God’s transformed people, although, to be sure, our forgiving one another is both something we are elsewhere commanded to do and part of our duty for which we should not expect to be thanked.
Today’s Gospel Reading arguably focuses on, as we have considered this morning, “Forgiving our brothers and sisters”. The extraordinary event in a Dallas courtroom this past week provided a good example of that particular fruit of faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us and for all people. With daily repentance and faith, we live in His forgiveness of sins that we in turn extend to those around us. So, we can say with the psalmist, as we did in today’s Psalm (Psalm 62; antiphon: v.1), that in God alone we wait and hope, that we trust in God at all times, and that we pour out our hearts before Him, for power and steadfast love belong to Him, and, both now and for eternity, He is a refuge for us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +