The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
15 October, Anno Domini 2017
St. Matthew 22:34-46
Pr. Kurt Ulmer
In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
God isn’t unreasonable. He doesn’t require you to do crazy things. He doesn’t make you sit on pillars and meditate until your mind is somehow lost in the divine. He doesn’t ask you to perform Herculean feats of strength. All He asks is that you fear Him and love Him as your God, that you never doubt Him or disobey His Word…ever. It’s really a pretty reasonable request. He created you. He provides you with your daily bread. He defends and protects you. Do we expect anything different from our own children? And when they don’t, when they mouth off, when they decide to do whatever it is they want, when they essentially reject us as their parents, we become angry and spankings, time outs, and other discipline ensue. “Why can’t you just do what I told you?!”
Repent. We are no different. Truth be told we are much worse. We have no problem blatantly disregarding the will of our heavenly Father. We arrogantly act as though we have outgrown our need for the Ten Commandments or that because we are God’s children we are somehow no longer obligated to them. We claim to love God, but in our own way, by our own self-appointed worship. We claim that we are strong in the faith and yet we despise prayer, God’s Word is seldom if ever heard in our homes, we are filled with endless excuses and justifications why other things are more important and necessary than the preaching of God’s Word and receiving the Holy Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood which He commands us for our salvation.
And what of the second great commandment – to love our neighbor, the fatherless, the widow, the sojourner, the homeless, the illegal immigrant, the murderer, the person next to us in the pew? Sure, it’s easy to love those who love you, who speak like you, who agree with you, who stroke your ego. Pagans do that. But what about the one who hates you, the one who would love nothing more than to see you fail and suffer? Do you love the people who openly advocate for your exclusion from society because of your confession or those who hold political views that are diametrically opposed to your own and who are pushing for policies that you believe will
put you and this nation in danger? Do you pray for them? Do you seek out their company? Is your heart filled with compassion for them or just bitterness?
There is a Pharisee in each and every one of us, straining every day to pretend that we are something we are not. We want to think of ourselves as good. We want a pat on the back for the helpful and selfless things we’ve done. But we are hypocrites and the divine Law is never going to let us get away with it. The Law isn’t satisfied with a simple outward act. It demands the affections of the heart. Love – love God and love your neighbor from the heart. It’s that simple but it’s also that impossible. Jesus would not play the Pharisees game and let them go on believing that they were holy. They did a very good job of pretending to love God on the outside but their hearts were far from Him because they trusted in themselves. And it was common knowledge that they were not loving of their neighbor. The Law, all of it, always applies.
That is why we are constantly trying to bend the Law to our will or avoid it all together. We really don’t want to know the Law because we don’t actually want to have to keep it and it has nothing good to say about us. It doesn’t sugar coat the selfish desires of our hearts as just preferences or alternative lifestyle choices. They are wickedness pure and simple. The Law isn’t just an academic exercise, a list of things that you need to know to pass a test. It is God’s unyielding and absolute will for your life as He has created you. God says do this and you must, perfectly. You must trust in no one than God alone for every good. You must receive His will in faith even when that means suffering and pain. You must never doubt His love for you or His promise to care for you. And then, with the same love with which He has loved you, you must love your neighbors, each and every one of them – without hesitation, without prejudice, without thought of reward. Their good, not yours. Their needs, not yours. Just love.
But we don’t. We live in constant fear that God is withholding good from us. We measure the love of God by our level of comfort that day rather than His promises. We believe that we are owed something because of our paltry good works. We fear men, we trust in ourselves, and we are forever trying to outdo our neighbor and help ourselves at his expense. It’s the real reason that we don’t look at the Ten Commandments every day – not because we already know them, but because we don’t want to face the truth of our rebellion and depravity.
But we must. We must see our sin for what it is. We must let it’s accusation crush our Old Adam into the dust. We must let the bright light of God’s Word expose the ugliness within. Not so that we can revel in how bad we are but so that we can know the indescribable joy of the Christ who is not just David’s Son but God’s Son. The Messiah, the Savior, isn’t just another figure in a long political dynasty. He is no war hero sought to oust the pagan Romans and re-establish a tiny nation on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s no help to you. He’s a worthless Christ if that’s all he does.
But that is most certainly not who Christ is or the work that He accomplishes. Yes, He is David’s Son, born of the house and lineage of David, Mary being David’s descendant. But He is also the sinless Son of the Most High God, David’s Lord, who came precisely because of what the Law reveals in your heart. He came to overthrow sin and death, not His but yours. The Christ, came for those who have tasted the bitter anguish of knowing that they have done everything but love God or their neighbor. He has come to open wide the gates of God’s gracious kingdom where life and joy and peace are the order of the day. He has come because without Him all of mankind can look forward to nothing but an eternity in the fires of hell’s judgment and a complete absence of God’s love and mercy.
These two natures of Christ are absolutely essential and we cannot meditate on the mystery that is Jesus, the God-man, enough. This clear teaching of Holy Scripture, affirmed by both the Old and New Testaments, is essential to our salvation and cannot be yielded without unraveling the whole of redemption. The Pharisees were correct. The Christ is David’s Son. Many times God promised to David that one of his descendants would sit on throne of Israel forever. And not only David heard such a promise. In Genesis 3:15, the proto evangelium, the first Gospel, the first promise of a Savior, God declares to Satan that it was the Seed of the Woman, the Christ, who would crush Satan’s head and free man from eternal judgment. To the patriarch Abraham, God promised that through his offspring (not offsprings) all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And the through the prophet Isaiah the Lord promised that the virgin would conceive and bear a son.
The Christ would and must be a man. That is absolutely necessary and unless He is, He cannot save us. We need a substitute. We need someone who can bear God’s wrath against our sin. We need a man who
can offer Himself up in our place as a propitiation to God. This is why the Old Testament sacrifices were never enough and had to be repeated over and over again. We aren’t goats or bulls or turtledoves. Those were only appointed for a time, as a reminder that the real sacrifice, the true Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, was still to come. But this Lamb didn’t walk on four legs nor was He covered in wool. He bore your flesh. He was like you in every way. He endured temptation. He hungered, thirsted, wept, and was tired. He suffered pain and ridicule. He was poor. He sweat and He died.
You have a high priest who sits at the right hand of God who can sympathize with all your weaknesses and troubles. He knew bitterness and abandonment. His heart was wrenched as He watched those whom He loved sleep the sleep of death. David’s Son, Mary’s Son, Jesus was every bit as human as you or me. Thanks be to God. His divinity in no way diminished His humanity. What comfort it is to know that the Messiah knows, Jesus knows. He has tasted your sadness, your loneliness, your pain. He knows the relentless assault of Satan. And this one offered Himself as the atoning sacrifice for you. He allowed His flesh to suffer your punishment. And He suffered the torment of God’s absence as He hung on the cross…something He didn’t deserve, but we certain did.
The only difference between Jesus and you is that He was also God. That sounds, and is significant but everything else about Him is just as you are. And because He was also God’s Son, the eternally-begotten Son of the Father, He was able to in the flesh what you and I could never hope to do because of our slavery to sin – He loved. He loved God perfectly with all His heart, soul, strength, and mind. He loved you, His wicked and hateful enemy as Himself. He kept the Law of God without every stumbling. And He did it for you. He loved God for you. He loved you for you. And thus being free of all sin, He offered Himself, God and man, as the complete and sufficient payment for all your sins. No mere man could do that. As Jesus’ very great grandfather in the flesh spoke through the Holy Spirit in Psalm 14 “No one among the sons of men are good. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” All must suffer the just punishment for their own sins. There is no one who could offer himself as payment for another. The price is too high.
And thus the Word of God, appointed by the Father before the foundations of the world, became flesh and dwelt among us so that He could atone for
you and for me and for the whole world. The one who ascended Golgatha and was pierced in hands and feet and side was both David’s Son and David’s Lord. He was both your brother and your Savior. He was fully God and fully man to offer His life for you and save you. This is why you can say with all confidence and yet without any understanding “God died”. Jesus, no less God than the Father and the Spirit, no less man than you and me, hung His head, breathed His last, and died. That death alone was sufficient to bear the sin of the whole world.
Likewise, the whole Jesus, God and man, descended into hell to tear down the gates of hell. The whole Jesus, God and man, stepped forth from the grave. The whole Jesus, God and man, visited and comforted the terrified disciples in the upper room and ate with them. And the whole Jesus, God and man, ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty where He rules over all things – still your brother, still your Lord. These two, the divine and the human will never be separated. It is blasphemous to speak of Jesus as just God or just man. That’s not the real Jesus. And because this is how Jesus is and always will be, when He comes to you, He comes God and man, brother and Lord, to heal you, to forgive you, to comfort you, to strengthen you, and to teach you. He doesn’t come in parts. He comes as Jesus. And He brings with Him every good and perfect benefit that He, the Christ, the anointed of God, has obtained for you. He comes with life and salvation. He comes with mercy. And all of this He gives you by giving you all of Himself – God and man – under the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Nothing is missing. Nothing is left out. All He is and has given to you to eat and to drink.
The demands of the Law may be great as is your failure to keep it. But the Christ, David’s Son and David’s Lord, is greater. He has kept the Law and He has suffered it’s judgment for you. There is only one Christ – Jesus – and He has conquered your enemies. He has eternally won the victory over your disobedience and your guilt. He prays to the Father for you, commending you into His gracious keeping. He sends His holy angels to attend to you, to guard you and protect. He sends the Holy Spirit to lead you in right paths and to keep you from the idolatry of works righteousness.
May God the Father grant you the peace of the Christ, the Son of Mary, the Son of God, through whom God pours out every good and every perfect gift to you, His beloved and baptized child.
In the Name of +Jesus. Amen.