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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.
This past Thursday, Sharon and Barbara and I left the church office and had lunch over at Country Place Village on Chandler Street; the nursing home was serving baked potatoes as a fundraiser for an Alzheimer’s organization. The woman representing the organization spoke a little before we left, and she referred to Alzheimer’s patients’ caregivers as “angels”. Perhaps Alzheimer’s caregivers are “angels” in some sense, such as in their being “heaven-sent” or in their serving the patients, but Alzheimer’s caregivers are certainly not “angels” in a strict sense, the sense with which we today celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. Today’s Old Testament Reading (Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3) and Epistle Reading (Revelation 12:7-12) speak of the Archangel Michael, the defender of the nation of Israel and its successor the Church. And, today’s Gospel Reading speaks of other angels who always see the face of the Father in heaven. We consider the Gospel Reading and what it says about “Little Ones and Their Angels”.
What Jesus in the Gospel Reading says about angels really comes in passing, as He both answers His disciples’ question about greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven and speaks of the danger temptations, such as that to greatness, pose. Jesus essentially says the disciples and all of us believers are to be humble as children and not to cause anyone to fall into sin or away from the Church. For, God has compassion on, loves, and regards as important everyone, even the least in the Kingdom, as is evident by, Jesus says, their having angels who always see the face of His Father.
In St. Matthew’s divinely‑inspired Gospel account, from which today’s Gospel Reading comes, Jesus’s disciples had recent reasons to wonder about greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven. In the immediately preceding chapter, Jesus had taken only three of His disciples up a high mountain with Him where He was transfigured, and, when they came to Capernaum, He had miraculously provided a coin for Peter to pay the temple tax for the two of them, in order to not give those who collected the tax a reason not to believe in Jesus. As Jesus answered the disciples’ question about greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven, He makes clear to them and to us that such a question has the potential of keeping one out of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus gave them an object lesson in humility: a little child (perhaps a one-year-old toddler), whom no doubt they were least likely to think of as great. And Jesus said all who humbly receive the Kingdom like that little child are the greatest in the Kingdom. Thinking otherwise about children or anyone else can be a trap that can keep the children, anyone else, and even believers like us out of the life of Kingdom of Heaven and in the hell of eternal fire.
Are you and I like the disciples in thinking about greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven? Do we think more of ourselves because of what we say and do in our congregation or community? Do we think less of others because we somehow see them as worse sinners than we are? Our false ideas of greatness can ensnare ourselves and others in sin and ultimately cause us and them to fall from or stay away from the faith that brings one into the Kingdom. Likewise, other things we think, say, and do are sinful and can lead others to sin. Our hands, feet, eyes, and our other body parts are engaged in sin far more than we would ever care to admit to anyone else, much less admit to God. By nature, on account of the original sin we inherit, we all are outside of the Kingdom. The devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh indeed tempt us, but they do not relieve us of our responsibility for our own sin. Apart from God we deserve not eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, but we deserve the hell of eternal fire.
As children get older, they want to do more and more for themselves. And, older adults fear losing their independence and having to rely on others. Yet, in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus holds up for us child-like humility and dependence on Another. Jesus calls us to be turned and to become like children. He calls us to repent of our sin—our sin of thinking more of ourselves, our sin of thinking less of others, our sinful acts with hands, feet, eyes, and other body parts—He calls us to repent of all of our sin. He calls us to be sorry for our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives all our sin, whatever it might be; He forgives it for the sake of Jesus’s death and resurrection for us.
Yesterday at LeTourneau University’s “Coffee ’n’ Clergy” event, I spoke at length with a young man, in part about the book of Revelation, when he asked me how it is to be understood. Even today’s Epistle Reading from Revelation can raise all sorts of questions and even lead us to think too much of the Archangel Michael. However, when we listen carefully, we notice that the devil and his angels are conquered not by the strength of Michael and the other angels with him but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Because of Jesus’s death on the cross and because of the Gospel that tells us of that death and His resurrection for us, we can be turned and become like children. The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of the lost that Jesus came to accomplish. An angel proclaimed the birth of the Savior, God in human flesh, to shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night, and an angel proclaimed His resurrection from the dead to women who had come to anoint His crucified body. Those same Gospel truths are proclaimed to us by those God sends to us in our time, in a sense angels, as Revelation calls them, messengers, in every place His Church gathers as Church. Through their message God enables us to receive, to take openly and confidently, the salvation that He freely offers us with the forgiveness of sins. As we believe, as we trust in Him, He transforms us, from those concerned about greatness and sinning in other ways, to those who are humble like little children, with angels who always see the face of the Father in heaven.
God transforms us through His Gospel in all its forms: preaching, baptizing, absolving, and communing. At the baptismal font, believers of any age are received in His Name. So many in the community around us deny what is clearly evident in today’s Gospel Reading: that little children can and do believe in Jesus. By God’s mercy and grace, they can have actual faith, childlike trust in Him. In fact, in some ways little children have faith more easily than adults, whom Jesus says need to be turned and become like little children. Unless anyone is born from above by water and the Spirit he cannot see, much less enter, the Kingdom of Heaven. Today’s Gospel Reading can even be taken as indicating that those who keep little children from the waters of Holy Baptism suffer the loss of their own salvation! Those baptized believers who privately confess their sins and are individually absolved are then admitted to the Lord’s Supper. Here they in bread receive Jesus’s body and in wine receive His blood—the blood of the Lamb by which the devil and his evil angels are conquered. And, in this Holy Communion of Jesus’s body and blood and of all who believe in Him, baptized and absolved believers worship Him together with angels, and archangels, and all the company of heaven. The same Means of Grace enable us to live as Jesus would have us live.
God’s gift of modern medicine gives us great opportunities to extend earthly life, though often at the cost of painful treatment with debilitating side effects, sometimes even the sacrifice of one or more of the parts of our body. If people are willing to make such sacrifices for the survival of their bodies, how much more should we be willing to make such sacrifices for the survival of our souls? Through Church history, some have taken literally Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel Reading about cutting off and throwing away hand, foot, and eye—words that Jesus likely spoke as an extreme case in order to emphasize His point that at any cost we should avoid sinning and potentially losing our salvation, both for our own sake and for the sake of others. Our sinful flesh still remains with us. Even as believers we face inclinations to the utmost unbelief and to the coarsest sins, and we should resist those evil inclinations, crucifying our sinful nature but also, when we fail, humbly living, with daily repentance and faith, in the forgiveness of sins.
There are all sorts of popular conceptions about angels, all with varying degrees of accuracy; the woman from the Alzheimer’s group’s idea this past Thursday’s being just one example. Even some of the church’s conceptions about angels, such as those often based on today’s Gospel Reading, are perhaps best regarded as open questions. (Maybe sometime we will do a more comprehensive study of angels, since we can hardly cover everything in a sermon of reasonable length that also does justice to the Gospel Reading on which it is based!) As we today have considered “Little Ones and Their Angels”, we have realized our own individual needs to be turned and become like humble children and to receive the Kingdom of Heaven as a free gift. As evidence of God’s love for us, each of us “little ones” has an angel who always sees the face of the Father in heaven. And, by grace through the Spirit-wrought faith in His Son Jesus Christ, on the Last Eternal Day, we, who so believe, will see the Father’s face ourselves.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +