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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.
Despite a strong demand for employees across the nation, the Labor Department’s September jobs’ report that came out Friday indicates that fewer people in our country are working or looking for work. Some of us might disagree on the problem’s cause, but I imagine that we all at least would agree that someone’s wanting to work is a good thing. The man in today’s Gospel Reading in a sense wanted to work, as, having run up to and knelt before Jesus, the man was asking Jesus what he must do in order to inherit eternal life. Yet, when Jesus essentially told the man what to do, having become disheartened by what Jesus said, the man went away sorrowful, apparently unwilling to do what Jesus told him to do.
As the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark reports the encounter, the man called Jesus “Good Teacher”, and, perhaps trying to shift the man’s focus, Jesus asked the man why he was saying that Jesus was good when no one is good except God. Then, like God, Jesus repeated some of the Commandments that Jesus said that the man already knew: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud—perhaps a form of coveting specifically suited to a man who had great possessions, likely including land and the necessary employees—and, finally, honor your father and mother. Then the man was saying to Jesus that he had kept all those from his youth, and Jesus said to him that he lacked one thing, essentially not having his many possessions as his false god but devoting his heart to the one true God, one of the Commandments not mentioned.
You and I arguably are not told to go, sell all that we have, and give to the poor, although that we are not told to do those things does not mean that we do not have possessions or something else as our false gods. At least some people to whom God spoke through Amos in today’s Old Testament Reading (Amos 5:6-7, 10-15) apparently, like the man in the Gospel Reading, enjoyed material prosperity and trusted in that prosperity for their ultimate good, and so may we enjoy material prosperity and trust in that prosperity for our ultimate good (Baye, CPR 31:4, p.34). In the Gospel Reading, Jesus told the man that no one is good except God alone, which should have reminded him and should remind us that all people by nature are not good but evil, not only from our youth, as it were (Genesis 8:21), but even from the moment of our conception and birth (Psalm 51:5; 58:3). We may wrongly think that we can do something to inherit eternal life, and we may wrongly think that in some sense we have kept the Commandments, whether just those Commandments regarding our loving our neighbors or also those Commandments regarding our loving God, whether just not doing what the Commandments prohibit or also doing what the Commandments prescribe. To be sure, we do not keep all of God’s Commandments, not even in terms of our deeds, much less in terms of our words and our thoughts. On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both to die here and now and to be tormented in hell for eternity, unless, of course, we repent.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus can be understood as calling and so enabling the man to repent, trying to get him to recognize that he could not do anything to inherit eternal life and that he had not kept the Commandments. The man became disheartened and went away sorrowful, sorrowful not in repentance (2 Corinthians 7:9) but sorrowful apparently because he was unwilling to part with his great possessions, to give up his false god, not sorrowful because of his sinful nature and all of his sin. When, called and so enabled by God, we do not harden our hearts as the Epistle Reading warns us against (Hebrews 3:12-19), but we are sorrowful because of our sinful nature and all of our sin, and we trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God forgives us, and we are not dis‑heartened, but we take heart.
We can take heart, we can be encouraged, not because of our own love for God or our own love for our neighbors but because of Jesus’s love for God and Jesus’s love for His neighbors, including us. In the Gospel Reading, we are told that, having looked at the man, Jesus loved him. God in human flesh, Jesus looked at the man with His all-knowing mind and considered who the man was as a sinner otherwise dead in his trespasses and sins. Jesus loved the man and loves us not because of what Jesus saw in that man or because of what Jesus sees in us but because of Who Jesus is in relationship to that man and in relationship to us. Jesus loves the world with a love that was willing to take all of our sins to the cross and there die for us, die in our place, die the death that we otherwise deserved. Jesus perfectly loved God the Father by obeying the Father’s will that Jesus die on the cross, and Jesus perfectly loved us His neighbors by dying on the cross for us (Scaer, CLD VIII:73). God, Who alone is good, alone forgives sins (Mark 2:7). When we are sorrowful because of our sinful nature and all of our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, then God forgives us. God forgives us through His Word in all of its forms.
Given that children generally are the ones who receive inheritances, we might think especially of Holy Baptism, in which water and God’s Word are applied to us individually and we are reborn as God’s children. When we know and feel sins in our hearts, we may confess those sins privately to our father confessors for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, so baptized and absolved, we are admitted to the family meal, the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. Individually we each receive forgiveness, life, and salvation, but we are also joined to one another as we are all joined to Christ, Who died for us and rose from the grave, and Who especially in this way shares His life with us. And, in all of these ways, God, Who has loved us not for who we were, changes us so that we are as He would have us be.
The man in the Gospel Reading is said to be the only example in the Gospel accounts of someone whom Jesus specifically called to follow Him who refused that call, and so the man is a good reminder that not everyone who even Jesus tried to save in the end was saved. Yet, even if the man in the Gospel Reading had gone, sold all that he had, and given to the poor as Jesus had told him to do, the man still would not have done anything in order to inherit eternal life but would have received treasure in heaven as a gracious gift, by first trusting not in his possessions but in God. Still, the man’s faith would have led him to do good works, as our faith leads us to do good works: good works in keeping with our vocations; good works that can include giving of the abundance God gives us to support both the preaching of God’s Word to the spiritually poor and the giving material of aid to the literally poor. While we do not say that good works are strictly required for our salvation, good works are in a more general sense required as evidence of our having faith through which we are saved. We imitate Christ, loving God the Father and loving our neighbors. In the words of today’s Introit (Psalm 112:3-6; antiphon: v.1), we are blessed as we fear the Lord with faith and delight greatly in His Commandments. With daily sorrow over our sinful nature and all of our sin and trust in God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, we live both in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and in the forgiveness of sins that we in turn extend to one another. Ultimately, we fully experience the eternal life that we inherit in resurrected and glorified bodies on a new or restored earth under a new or restored sky.
The Labor Department’s September jobs report is being given various spins by economists, politicians, and the like. We know that ultimately God rules over the U-S economy and all things for the sake of His Church (Ephesians 1:22). In the Church, the question is not what we must do but what Christ has done, and we know that, out of His great love, He has done it all, and done it all for us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +