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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.
When our Sunday morning Adult Bible Class recently focused on “Last Things”—such as temporal death, the intermediate state of the soul, and the bodily resurrection of the dead—we talked a little about how the teaching of the bodily resurrection of the dead was found in the Old Testament, including passages in which we might not as readily as others see the bodily resurrection of the dead. In that context we discussed today’s Gospel Reading, in which Jesus points to the passage we heard as today’s Old Testament Reading (Exodus 3:1-15), where the Lord, speaking from the bush, identifies Himself as the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. On that passage Jesus bases the statement that God is not God of the dead but of the living, and so Jesus demonstrates from that passage that the dead are raised bodily. Considering today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we realize that our Lord Jesus Himself provides us an example of “Rightly understanding what Scripture shows”.
Today as we draw nearer to the end of the Church Year, the appointed Gospel Reading comes from near the end of our Lord’s public teaching as recorded in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account. Our Wednesday evening Midweek Bible Study recently focused on the series of exchanges that representatives of the various groups of the Jews had with Jesus those days after Palm Sunday and before the night on which Jesus was betrayed. The exchange we heard today involving the Sadducees, who denied not only that there is a resurrection but also the existence of angels (Acts 23:8) and the bulk of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, was the last one initiated by representatives of the Jews’ daring to ask Jesus questions, and this last exchange gives evidence of the rivalry between the different groups, such as the scribes, who at the end of this exchange praised Jesus for His answer against the Sadducees.
The Sadducees apparently thought that their hypothetical question implied that the bodily resurrection contradicted the law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5) and therefore that the bodily resurrection could not be a true belief (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Matthew 22:23-28, 36, cross-referenced at Luke 20:27-40, p.78). The Sadducees, however, did not rightly understand what Scripture shows. St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s parallel Gospel accounts include Jesus’s more‑sharply rebuking the Sadducees for being quite wrong because they did not know Scripture or the power of God (Matthew 22:29; Mark 12:27). Certainly the Sadducees are not alone in not rightly knowing Scripture.
At the Sixth Annual Symposium in Kilgore last Sunday, the discussion of Christianity as it relates to the L-G-B-T-Q-plus community revealed a number of others who also did not rightly understand what Scripture shows, whether it was what Scripture shows regarding women’s head coverings, what Scripture shows regarding women’s eligibility for the Office of the Holy Ministry, or what Scripture shows regarding God’s creation of men and women for an eternity of one heterosexual relationship, such as the marriage referred to in today’s Gospel Reading. Yet, whether tempted by the devil as Eve was in the Garden (Genesis 3:1‑24) or our Lord was in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13) or whether tempted by the world or our own sinful flesh, at one time or another, all of us are guilty of misinterpreting or otherwise trying to explain away what Scripture says, often so that we can do something that we want to do that God tells us not to do. We may wrongly think that a passage of Scripture was only written for those people then, or that it otherwise does not apply to us, or that it needs to change with the times. We sin in this and in countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. For our sinful nature and for all of our actual sin, we deserve temporal and eternal death, apart from the repentance and faith to which God calls us and thereby enables us to receive His forgiveness for the sake of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,.
The God-man Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected for us, so that we also could be resurrected unto eternal life with our God. Jesus died on the cross in our place, the death that we deserved. By grace for Jesus’s sake, through faith in Him, we are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the bodily resurrection from the dead. As the Lord said speaking from the bush in the Old Testament Reading, He saw our affliction and heard our cry; He knew our sufferings and came down to deliver us and to bring us to the promised land of heaven. We are, as we heard the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul describe the Thessalonians in the Epistle Reading (2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, 13-17), beloved by the Lord, because God chose us to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, so that we could obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit works that sanctification, that making us holy, through His Word in all of its forms. The Holy Spirit uses the Word read and preached to groups such as this one to apply both His law that shows us our sin and His Gospel that forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake. The Holy Spirit applies that Gospel to us individually with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar that are Christ’s Body and Blood, given and shed for you and for me, for the forgiveness of our sins and so also for life and salvation. In Holy Baptism we are baptized into Christ’s death and so can be sure that we will be united with Him in a resurrection like His, and, because of that connection to Christ, already now we walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-5). When we know and feel particular sins in our hearts, we confess them privately for the sake of Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting.
Forgiven by God through His Word and Sacraments, we at least try to rightly understand what Scripture shows. We read the Bible daily and participate in Sunday morning Adult Bible Class and Wednesday evening Midweek Bible Study. We do not misinterpret or otherwise try to explain away what Scripture says, so that we can do something that we want to do that God tells us not to do. Rather, even when what Scripture says might hurt our feelings, we recognize that its law and Gospel are intended to keep us from a far worse eternity of torment in hell. When we fail in those regards and others, as we will fail, with daily repentance and faith, we live in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God, and in turn we extend our forgiveness to one another. Ultimately, God will bring us through temporal death and the intermediate state of the souls already living in His presence to the bodily resurrection of the dead. Then, we will be “equal to” (or, perhaps better, “like”) the angels—not that we will have wings and halos, for not even the angels have those, but—we will be like the angels in that there will be a fixed number of us, not taking wives or being given to husbands for procreation to fill the earth but nevertheless having the same constitution of our bodies and the never‑ending one‑flesh marriage‑relationships that we might have had in this age.
In God’s way and time, by His mercy and grace, we will experience the last things and the fullness of the peace and joy that come with them. Until then we follow our Lord in “Rightly understanding what Scripture shows”. Like the angels in today’s Psalm (Psalm 148; antiphon: v.13), we join all creation in praising the Lord now and forever, not only because He commanded and we were created but also because in Jesus Christ He has raised up a horn of salvation for His people.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +