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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.
No doubt each of us has our own memories of playing outside in public with friends, whether in our own yards, surrounding neighborhoods, school playgrounds, or city or other parks. We may remember disagreements over who could play, what games to play, the rules of the games, and who won the games in the end. Our Lord Jesus may well have had similar experiences during His boyhood in Nazareth, or as an adult He may have watched other children in the marketplaces. In the latter portion of today’s Gospel Reading, He may be drawing on such memories or observations, or He may be quoting what for His original hearers may have been a more-familiar saying about children at play. Regardless, as we this morning consider the latter portion of today’s Gospel Reading, we realize that “The Son of Man is sinners’ perfect friend”.
The use on Reformation Day of only the prior portion of today’s Gospel Reading has some historical precedent, though the expansion of the Reformation Gospel to include the latter portion apparently is at least new to the Missouri Synod with, if not unique to, Lutheran Service Book’s option. No matter: the so-called “Parable of the Children in the Marketplace” applies well not only to the people of John’s and Jesus’s day but also to the people of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s day, as well as to the people of our day, including us. Already in the eleventh chapter of St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, Jesus’s identity as the Christ had been established (Matthew 11:2-6), which identity of Jesus as the Christ makes authoritative His statements about John the Baptizer’s identity as the Second Elijah (Matthew 11:7-15), and leads to the matter of how people in any day respond to their messages (confer Davies and Allison, ad loc Matthew 11:16-19, II:259).
Jesus calls those who have ears to hear, and then Jesus seems to go on to describe how, instead of hearing, the people in His generation, to whom the Messiah’s forerunner and the Messiah Himself had finally come, responded to them with dissatisfaction. Like boys complaining that their playmates would not imitate their fathers’ joyful dance at a wedding, and like girls complaining that their playmates would not imitate their mothers’ mournful laments at a funeral, the people of that generation complained both that John the Baptizer and his message calling for repentance were not more joyful and that Jesus and His message of the Gospel’s forgiveness were not more mournful.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther got similar responses to his repeating John and Jesus’s messages: preaching the law that condemned sin, calling for repentance from that sin, and declaring forgiveness of that sin. And, people similarly complained about Luther himself, for example, that he was too mournful or too joyful, or too extreme in some other way or its opposite, and they complained even when Luther confessed to his being too bold or too humble, leading Luther to say that no matter how he dealt with his opponents it was not right to them.
Faithful pastors and lay-people today can encounter similar responses: that they are too conservative or too liberal; that liturgy or hymns are too mournful or too joyful; that their messages contain too much law or too much Gospel; so that, no matter what we do, it is not right to somebody. That we experience responses similar to John and Jesus, and to Luther and to the other Reformers, should not surprise us, for all those responding and we ourselves are part of the same generation that by nature is crooked, evil, and perverse; sin‑ful and faith‑less; not wanting either to be told that we are sinners or to be comforted over our sin; essentially rejecting both John and Jesus; deserving both to die here and now and to be tormented in hell for eternity. Unless, we heed God’s enabling call through faithful preachers such as John and Jesus to turn from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and to want to stop sinning.
In the latter portion of the Gospel Reading, Jesus reports His critics’ labeling Him a friend of sinners, and we are realizing that Jesus “The Son of Man is sinners’ perfect friend”. John and Jesus were not who their critics wanted them to be, but they were who God sent them to be. Like the Kingdom of Heaven, John and Jesus both suffered violence, and the violence that Jesus suffered paid the price for the sins of the world. Out of God’s great love for us, Jesus died on the cross for us; He died in our place, the death that we deserved. The Gospel of the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus is, as we heard in the First Reading (Revelation 14:6-7), the eternal Gospel proclaimed to all those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people, and we who believe rightly receive it by fearing God and giving Him glory. As we heard in the Epistle Reading (Romans 3:19-28), there is no distinction: all who believe are justified (forgiven) by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Like the sinners of John’s and Jesus’s day, Luther’s day, and every other day, when we repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us through His Word in all of its forms.
The Gospel is read and preached to groups such as this one, and the Gospel is applied to individuals in its sacramental forms: with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion and so give the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In John’s and Jesus’s day, those who rejected them and their message refused to be baptized, but those who repented and believed were baptized, and even little children like those in the marketplaces were so welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven. We are realizing that Jesus “The Son of Man is sinners’ perfect friend”; and Jesus not only received sinners, but He also ate with them (Luke 15:2), and still today Jesus receives and welcomes sinners to eat with them and to feed them on Himself. Not gluttonous or drunk (1 Corinthians 11:20-22), as we feast on His Body and Blood we are strengthened and preserved in body and soul to life everlasting, and so also to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9), in His Kingdom that has no end.
Five hundred and four years ago this very day, in what some consider to be the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation in what we today know as Germany, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther nailed and mailed (or, posted and posted), his Ninety-five Theses for a debate on the power and efficacy of indulgences. The first of those Theses was that the entire life of believers is to be one of repentance (AE 31:25). Truly! For, we sin daily and so with daily repentance and faith we live in God’s forgiveness of sins and in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from and extend to one another. John’s and Jesus’s messages are still to be heard, as repeated by Luther and by faithful Lutheran pastors and lay‑people still today, even if the responses are not what they are supposed to be, and even if the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence as a result, as persecution has come to faithful preachers and lay-people throughout the history of the Church. Yet, the mourning of repentance leads to the joy of forgiveness. As the Divinely‑inspired writer of Ecclesiastes put it, there is both a time to mourn and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4). As the psalmist David put it, God looses our sackcloth and clothes us with gladness (Psalm 30:11; compare Lamentations 5:15; confer Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 11:17, p.573).
Among our memories of childhood public play, we may recall playmates whom we let be as they were, as we should let John the Baptizer and Jesus be who they were. Jesus “The Son of Man is sinners’ perfect friend”. He does not let us remain as we are, however, but He transforms us with His Gospel and Sacraments, which God some 500 years ago restored to their proper place in His Church through the work of Martin Luther and others. May God continue to preserve His Gospel and Sacraments among us and those who come after us, that our transformations may be complete and our mourning turned into dancing for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +