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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.)
Pope Francis made headlines two weeks ago for reiterating the Roman Catholic church’s teaching that homosexuality is not a crime, although the Pope and his church body apparently continue also to hold that acting on same-sex attraction is a sin. Other so-called “Christian” churches and their leaders long ago gave up the idea that anything homosexual is sinful, surely coming under the indictment of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, in today’s Gospel Reading, both Himself affirmed all of the Old Testament and warned those who might relax any of His doctrine and teach others to relax His doctrine. The fullest-possible appreciation of God’s law and our sin is necessary for the fullest-possible appreciation of God’s Gospel and His forgiveness. So, as we consider today’s Gospel Reading this morning, we direct our thoughts to the theme “Absolute law and Absolute Gospel”.
Today’s Gospel Reading picks up Jesus’s so-called “Sermon on the Mount” right where last Sunday’s Gospel Reading left off. You may recall from last Sunday that Jesus had told His disciples and us that, when we are persecuted for Christ’s sake, we are blessed, rejoice, and are glad. Undaunted by persecution, then, as we heard today, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, giving, as it were, the true “flavor” of Christ to other people, with the ultimate goal that they also would glorify our Father Who is in heaven. And so, Jesus went on to make clear what, as it were, the true “flavor” of Christ is.
By one interpretation of today’s Gospel Reading, as I mentioned, Jesus first rejects any idea that He had come to abolish the Old Testament Scriptures, and then He warns others against relaxing His own doctrine (Scaer, Sermon on the Mount, 101-105). Those first listening to Jesus on the mountain undoubtedly would have had a harder time than we have seeing the essential unity of the Old Testament and the New Testament, the consistency of both Testaments’ all‑condemning law and their all-forgiving Gospel. Arguably, Jesus says that not the smallest letter or even a part of a letter of either Testament is to pass away, before heaven and earth pass away and all is accomplished, if any part of the Word of the Lord ever passes away and does not remain forever (1 Peter 1:25; confer Matthew 24:35).
Today, who do we think are the holiest people? In Jesus’s day, the Jewish scribes and Pharisees at least thought of themselves as the holiest people, if the Jewish people did not also think of the Jewish leaders as the holiest people. A usual interpretation of today’s Gospel Reading and the verses that follow it is that Jesus is targeting the scribes and Pharisees as those who relax God’s briefly‑worded Ten Commandments and teach others to relax them, instead of doing God’s Ten Commandments and teaching others to do them, too. So, Jesus tells His followers that, unless their righteousness exceeds that of the Jewish leaders, there is not even the possibility that they will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
The same goes for us. We do not have to be guilty of homosexual activity to not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We do not have to be guilty of relaxing the Ten Commandments or teaching others to relax them. We do not have to be guilty, like the Jewish leaders and their ancestors we heard of in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 58:3-9a; Elliott, CPR 33:1, p.42), of having only a hypocritical outward righteousness. For, from our very conception we inherited our first parents’ loss of their original created righteousness (Psalm 51:5), and so we sin in all sorts of ways, and, when we fail in even one point of the law, we are guilty of all of it (James 2:10). From the “Absolute law”, we realize that by nature we are absolutely sinful, deserving temporal death and eternal torment, and so we are prepared for the absolute forgiveness of the “Absolute Gospel”.
Jesus did not abolish the Old Testament Scriptures, but He fulfilled them. Jesus both obeyed every commandment of God’s law and brought to completion every promise of God’s Gospel—that is the essence of Jesus’s own New Testament teaching. Jesus kept the law that we fail to keep, and Jesus died on the cross for our failure to keep the law. Out of God’s great love and mercy, Jesus died for us, in our place, the death that we otherwise deserve. Jesus offers us both the righteousness of His having kept the law for us and the righteousness of His having died for us. Enabled by the Holy Spirit, we who repent receive, by grace through faith, Christ’s righteousness, a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and so, absolutely forgiven of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we are able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
As we heard St. Paul say in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 2:1-16), his preaching to the Corinthians, of Christ and Him crucified, was not like the preaching of his opponents, with lofty speech or in plausible words of wisdom, but his preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that their faith might rest not in the wisdom of people but might rest in the power of God. The power of preaching does not depend on the preacher, but the power of preaching depends on Who and what are preached! The Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16), whether that Gospel is read and preached to groups such as this or whether the Gospel is applied individually with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, or with the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. As Jesus told Nicodemus, unless one is born from above of water and the Spirit, one cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:3, 5). And, those so baptized, confess to their pastors the sins that they know and feel in their hearts for the sake of receiving forgiveness from the pastor as from Christ Himself, and so they, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, as Jesus described in last Sunday’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 5:6), are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar and there satisfied, receiving forgiveness and so also receiving life and salvation. Such is the transformative power of God’s Word in all of its forms!
The Word of the Lord abides forever, and the gates of hell do not prevail against Christ’s Church (Matthew 16:18). No such promises are made either about the decrees of human teachers or about the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, much less its Texas District or our Circuit. Yet, that such human teaching and organizations might not last forever should not frighten us. Knowing that God’s Word and Church do last forever, by God’s grace, we endeavor to preach God’s Gospel purely and administer God’s Sacraments rightly. We regularly receive the Sacraments and attend to the Gospel, attend both to the Gospel’s preaching in the Divine Service and its teaching in Bible Classes and Bible Studies, regardless of what we think of the preacher or teacher, for, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, our faith rests not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
By way of God’s “Absolute law and Absolute Gospel”, with the fullest-possible appreciation of God’s law and our sin’s leading to the fullest-possible appreciation of God’s Gospel and His forgiveness, God transforms us so that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, with people’s ideally seeing the good works that God works in us and giving glory to our Father Who is in heaven. We do not do such good works in order to be seen by others (Matthew 6:1), nor do we do works to please others, much less to give offense to others. The spread of the Gospel by our good works is God’s intent and ultimately His work, and we do not despair if the Gospel does not appear to us to be spreading. We do not despair no matter our circumstances, for what God has done for us in His Son Jesus Christ “is enough”. As we will in today’s Closing Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 468), whose author J-J Möller, some time after he wrote the hymn, lost his eyesight but continued to serve as a pastor until he died, we can sing repeatedly, “I am content! I am content!” (Confer 2 Corinthians 12:10; Philippians 4:11.)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +