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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. (Amen.)
We probably can safely imagine that anyone who deals with trees and other landscaping, either at work or at home, would love to be able simply to command trees and the like to be uprooted from one place and planted in another place. So, Jesus’s statement in today’s Gospel Reading about what His apostles could do if they had faith like a grain of mustard seed might so attract our attention when we hear today’s Gospel Reading that we essentially miss the rest of what Jesus says. What Jesus says in today’s Gospel Reading—about “temptations”, forgiveness, faith, and the “appreciation” of servants—seems to be inter‑connected, and, despite what some say, there is an essential unity to today’s Gospel Reading. Considering the Gospel Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme “Doing what is commanded”.
The apostles’ potentially telling the especially-firm and deeply-rooted mulberry tree to “be uprooted” and “be planted” in the sea are, in fact, only two of a total of ten “commands” in today’s Gospel Reading. The other eight “commands” are these: Jesus’s telling His disciples to “pay attention to themselves”, to “rebuke” a brother who sins against them, and to “forgive” the brother if he repents; the apostles’ asking the Lord to “increase” their faith; the master’s not telling his servant to “recline” at table but to “prepare” supper and “serve” him; and Jesus’s telling the apostles who might have done all that they were commanded to “say” that they were unworthy servants who only had done what was their duty.
These “ten commandments” in today’s Gospel Reading come right after last Sunday’s Gospel Reading (Luke 16:19‑31), which at the end essentially said that the Holy Scriptures are sufficient in order to lead people to repent and believe. So, the line of thought flows from there to Jesus’s concern at the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading about “temptations to sin”—or, perhaps better, things that cause people to fall from faith altogether. In short, we are to “pay attention” to ourselves so that we do not cause spiritual problems for our fellow believers. And, if our fellow believers sin against us, we are to “rebuke” them so that they might repent and, if they do repent, then we are to “forgive” them as often as they repent. Jesus’s apostles rightly understood that faith is needed in order to do what Jesus was commanding, and then, as uniquely recorded by the Divinely-inspired St. Luke, Jesus also arguably made clear that when they do what Jesus was commanding they should do, they should not expect appreciation for it. (Rather, as we will hear next Sunday, we all should be thanking God for what He does for us [Luke 17:11-19].)
As we each let the Holy Spirit apply today’s Gospel Reading to us as individuals, we recognize that, while, because of the existence of evil in the world, it is in some sense impossible that there not be things that cause people to fall into sin or from faith, in no way is such falling into sin or from faith excused or condoned, nor is our being a cause of another’s fall into sin or from faith in any way okay. We recognize that we sometimes fail to rebuke our fellow believers who sin against us, and we often fail to forgive them when they repent. We recognize that we do not use, as we should, God’s Word and Sacraments, by which He increases faith. And, we recognize that, if we ever even do any of the things expected of us, we may wrongly expect to be appreciated for doing them. We truly are servants who are unworthy of thanks and who are instead “worthy” of—worse than being cast into the sea with a millstone around our neck—being cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 25:30). But, God calls and so enables us to repent and, when we do repent, then He forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 62; antiphon: v.1), our salvation and our hope are from God. God in human flesh, Jesus did all that He was commanded, and He suffered on the cross for all of our failures to do what we were commanded. We could never fulfill our obligations to God and pay our debt of sin, but Jesus did all that needed to be done and paid our debt for us. We needed God’s mercy and grace, and, out of God’s great love and mercy, Jesus’s righteousness is given to us, when we repent and believe. As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4), the righteous live by faith. We are not saved because of our faith, not that faith is even our own, because faith is a gift of God. Faith in and of itself is not powerful, but right faith is in an all-powerful God. Not because of what we have done, but because of what He has done, God treats us not as the unworthy servants who we are by nature, but God treats us as the beloved sons whom He makes us to be, as His children who inherit His Kingdom.
God makes us His children with the water and the Word of Holy Baptism, as Quan experienced for himself today. So baptized, with daily contrition and repentance our sinful nature is drowned and dies, and our redeemed nature daily emerges and arises to live before God. When we know and feel sins in our heart, we baptized children privately confess them to our pastors, our father confessors, for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, so absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us, and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so they give us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Through those whom God calls and ordains—like Timothy in today’s Epistle Reading (2 Timothy 1:1-14), those who plow, keep sheep, and serve in other ways—our Lord Himself prepares the Holy Supper, and, dressing properly (confer John 13:4), He Himself serves us who come to His table, whatever our physical posture when we are here. And, here, out of His love, mercy, and grace, we have fellowship (or “communion”) at the same time not only with Him but also with one another (confer 1 Corinthians 11:21, 33).
Baptized, absolved, and communed, we are transformed. God’s Word and Sacraments are the means by which He increases our faith and brings about in us at least the desire to do all the things that we are commanded to do. So, to some extent we do pay attention to ourselves so we are not the cause of a fellow-believer’s falling into sin or from faith. When they sin against us, we do warn our fellow‑believers, and, when they repent, we do forgive them. We use God’s Word and Sacraments so He always can increase our faith. And, we do still other good works according to our various callings in life, and we do not expect any thanks for doing them or boast about them. But, daily we live in repentance over our failure to do fully all that we are commanded, and so daily 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. Thus, we have peace and joy already now, even if we do not experience it fully until the Last Day.
Bible commentators go around and around the mulberry tree in today’s Gospel Reading. For example, one commentator says that we are not told to command trees to be uprooted and replanted and so that to command trees would be to test God (Arndt, ad loc Luke 17:6, pp.368‑369; confer Just, ad loc Luke 17:5-6, p.645 n.10), and another commentator interprets the uprooting and replanting figuratively of the Kingdom of God from the Jews to the Gentiles (Lenski, ad loc Luke 17:6, pp.868-869). Regardless, we know that our God, Who is capable of so uprooting and replanting both literal and figurative trees, and Who has done for us all that needs to be done for our salvation—we know that He will for us, as for St. Paul and St. Timothy in the Epistle Reading, guard the good deposit that He has entrusted to each one of us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +