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Pastor Galler was in Canada this past week for the wedding of our member Aaron Clubb. Based on today's appointed Third Reading, he wrote the following sermon for his use at Resurrection Lutheran Church in St. Catharines, Ontario, where he is preaching this morning, and for our use here. Pastor Galler's sermon reads as follows:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
There may be various questions we would like to ask God, questions that we would genuinely like God to answer: questions such as, “What does a specific Bible passage mean?” or “Why did You allow this specific affliction to happen at that specific time?” In today’s Third Reading, there are two different questions, an expert in the law asks Jesus about the great commandment in the law, and Jesus asks the Pharisees about whose Son the Christ is. Those two questions prompt me to ask a third question: Which question matters more? Thus the title or theme for our reflection on the Third Reading this morning is “The Question that Matters More”.
You may recall that last week’s Gospel Reading told of the first in a series of Holy Week confrontations between various Jewish parties and the Lord Jesus. In that case, disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians asked Jesus about paying a specific tax to the Roman Emperor (Matthew 22:15-22). Next in the series, although we did not hear about it in this year of our three‑year series of Readings, the Sadducees asked Jesus about the resurrection of the dead (Matthew 22:23-33). Finally in the series, as we heard this morning, an expert in the law asked Jesus about the great commandment in the law, and Jesus asked the Pharisees about whose Son the Christ is. And so, I ask you: Which question matters more?
For the Jews of Jesus’s day, the question about the great commandment in the law was a real question. Apparently some Jews identified more than 600 individual commandments, with less than half commanding something positive and more than half forbidding something negative. But, apparently different Jewish teachers counted, ranked, and related the commandments differently. For example, the Sadducees, whom Jesus had silenced earlier that same day, counted only those commandments explicitly expressed in the first five books of the Old Testament. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus this question about the great commandment in the Law. The divinely‑inspired St. Matthew tells us that the lawyer, like the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians in last week’s Gospel Reading, asked Jesus the question in order to test Him, although St. Matthew’s Gospel account does not tell us exactly how the lawyer’s question tested Jesus, and different Bible commentators have different theories. (At a minimum the Pharisees’ intent appears to be evil, and they do not seem to have genuinely cared about Jesus’s answer.)
For us today, the question about the great commandment in the law also may be a real question. Most of us probably in some sense dismiss both the Old Testament’s ceremonial laws, since they are fulfilled in Christ, and the Old Testament’s civil laws, since we no longer have a theocracy. But, what about the remaining moral laws? Do all of them still apply? Certainly we see our society trying to wiggle out from under some moral laws. For example, society tries to wiggle out from under the moral law commanding sexual purity (as in the cases of heterosexual relationships outside of marriage and any and all homosexual activity), and society tries to wiggle out from under the moral law forbidding killing (as in the cases of abortion and euthanasia). What about within the Church? Do we similarly try to wiggle out from under any moral laws? Do we keep even whatever moral laws we might let remain?
In today’s Third Reading, Jesus answers the question about the great commandment in the law, saying “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Such love of God and neighbor with every globule of our whole being really does not exclude any commandment. Rather, as we heard in today’s First Reading, we are to be holy as the Lord our God is holy (Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18). Yet, too often we fail to love God as we should, and so we also fail to love our neighbors as we should. Even we who believe sin in these ways, for we are still sinful by nature. And, as St. Paul quotes from the Old Testament for the Galatians, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the Book of the Law and do them” (Galatians 3:10; confer Deuteronomy 27:26). We deserve death now and for eternity, but God loves us, does not want us to die in those ways, and so calls us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sin of failing to love Him as we should; God forgives our sin of failing to love our neighbor as we should; and God forgives our sinful natures themselves. God graciously forgives us for the sake of Jesus Christ, both His and David’s Son.
On Palm Sunday, two days before the event of today’s Third Reading, Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts hailing Him as the Son of David; even children in the Temple Courts cried out to Him in that way. And, when the chief priests and scribes were indignant and questioned Jesus about it, Jesus asked them about the Old Testament prophecy that infants and nursing babies would praise God (Matthew 21:1-17; confer Psalm 8:2). When, in today’s Third Reading, Jesus asks the Pharisees gathered together about whose Son the Christ (or Messiah) is, they give the obvious answer, which every Jewish child would have given: “The Son of David”, which was correct as far as it went. The Jewish leaders failed to recognize that the Christ was not only human but also divine, and they failed to recognize that Jesus was that human and divine Savior.
The Jewish leaders were too focused on the law to see the Gospel right before their eyes. In case you had not guessed by now, Jesus’s question about whose Son the Christ is matters more than the lawyer’s question about the great commandment in the law. And, love of God, which results in love of neighbor, is directed at God in the flesh of the man Jesus Christ. With His provocative follow‑up question and its quotation from the inter‑Trinitarian dialogue of Psalm 110 (v.1), Jesus tried to get the Jewish leaders to understand that the Christ was more than the human Son of David, but the Jewish leaders were not able to answer Him a word. And, when Jesus confessed to being the Christ, they called Him a blasphemer and condemned Him to die (Matthew 26:63-66). Indeed, Jesus died on the cross; He died there on account of your sins and mine, in order to save you and me. Jesus loved God with all His heart, soul, and mind, and He loved His neighbors as Himself. On the cross, Jesus effectively defeated His and our enemies, including sin, death, and our own sinful flesh. For that, His and essentially our human nature was enthroned at the right hand of God, though we have yet to experience that exaltation fully.
The experiences of our salvation that we do have now come in connection with God’s Word and Sacraments. In today’s Second Reading, for example, we heard St. Paul describe how the Thessalonians received his and his coworkers' words as the Word of God at work in them (1 Thessalonians 2:1-13). Likewise, in the Third Reading, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit inspiring David to speak prophetically of Jesus Himself (confer 2 Samuel 23:2). But, God’s inspired, inerrant, and still‑speaking Word also is combined with means. The Word is combined with water in Holy Baptism, where we die to sin and are made alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:1-11). When we privately confess our sins to our pastor, the Word effecting forgiveness is spoken from the pastor as from God Himself in individual Holy Absolution. And, the Word combined with bread and wine gives us the same body and blood that died on the cross and rose from the grave, strengthening us in faith toward God and in fervent love of one another.
In fact, we can say that Jesus Christ in us Himself brings about our love of God and neighbor. His perfect love of God and neighbor are more than examples for us! As Word and Sacrament bring us to believe in and be in Jesus, all that we think, say, and do is motivated by His love of God working through us. The love of God that the first three Commandments addresses trusts God confessed in the Creed and approached in the Lord’s prayer. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther teaches in the Small Catechism, we also believe and confess that our reverential fear and love of God leads us to love our neighbor in the various ways the other Commandments specify, including preserving life and keeping sexually pure. Our faith in Christ itself naturally leads to such good works! Since we at the same time still remain sinful, the law continues to accuse us of sin, even as the Gospel forgives our sin, but in Jesus Christ the tension between the law and the Gospel are resolved for us.
This day we have realized that “The Question that Matters More” is not the question about the great commandment in the law but the question about whose Son the Christ is. All the commandments show us our sin, but our knowing that Jesus is the human Son of David and the divine Son of God Who died to save us forgives our sin. Here and now, there may be various other questions we would like to ask God, questions that we would genuinely like God to answer. But, in heaven for eternity, we likely will have (or no longer care about) the answers to specific questions such as what a specific Bible passage means or why God allowed a specific affliction to happen at a specific time. For, as St. Paul writes the Corinthians, now we know in part, but then we will know fully, even as we are fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +