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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.
With the coronavirus pandemic’s at least initial emphasis on practicing good hygiene, such good hygiene might at least initially appear to be an obvious connection between the coronavirus pandemic and today’s Gospel Reading, with its question from some Jewish leaders about why Jesus’s disciples ate loaves of bread with unwashed hands. Of course, today’s Gospel Reading is less about good hygiene than it is about ritual observances, and today’s Gospel Reading is arguably more about interpretations of God’s law that lead to vain worship of God, which is not to say that there is no coronavirus connection to today’s Gospel Reading. This morning as we consider primarily today’s Gospel Reading, we do so under the theme “Not vain but true worship”.
After three Sundays of hearing Jesus’s teaching about Himself as the Bread of Life recorded in St. John’s Gospel account, we have returned to St. Mark’s Gospel account for today’s Gospel Reading, picking up right where we left off, after Jesus had miraculously fed more than five-thousand people with five loaves and two fish (Mark 6:30-44), walked on the sea, and healed the sick in Gennesaret (Mark 6:45-56). As we heard, a group of Jewish leaders questioned Jesus about His disciples’ not walking according to the tradition of the elders, prompting at least a two-fold answer from Jesus attacking their tradition: first a general statement and then a specific example, each with a passage of Old Testament Scripture and a conclusion that contrasted the Word of God with the Jewish tradition.
No doubt that the Jewish leaders would have disagreed with Jesus’s two conclusions: that they left the commandment of God and held to the tradition of men and that they made void the Word of God by their tradition that they had handed down. Bible commentators say a great deal about Jewish traditions, but perhaps most-relevant for our purposes today are that the Jews in many cases may have thought that their traditions were serving God’s Commandments and that the Jews to some extent gave their traditions authority equal to God’s Word. Jesus criticizes both of those ideas, showing that the Jews essentially rejected the commandment of God in order to establish their tradition and saying that their worship of God ended up being in vain.
We may not have as elaborate of a system of traditions ostensibly based on the law as the Jews had, but that lack of an elaborate system of traditions ostensibly based on the law does not mean that we do not sin in similar ways to how they sinned, namely, by misinterpreting and misapplying the law. For example, today many who would claim the title “Christian”, including some Lutherans, try to bind themselves and others to their own applications of God’s Commandments to the coronavirus, requiring not only hand-washing and other good-hygiene but also face-masks, social-distancing, and experimental-vaccines. Well-intended or not, doubtful Biblical interpretation may be based on doubtful supporting science. Regardless, like the Jewish leaders, people may falsely think of themselves as holier than others on the basis of what they do or do not do, in some cases even missing the greater point of God’s law that, as our Sunday Adult Bible Class is reminding us, through the law comes knowledge of sin. God’s law silences every mouth, showing us that by our own works of the law we are not righteous in the sight of God, to whom we all are held accountable. (Romans 3:19-20.) Not an external ritual defilement separates us from God but our underlying sinful nature and actual sin, which leave our lips and hearts mis-aligned. For our underlying sinful nature and actual sin, we deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless we heed God’s empowering call to worship Him not vainly but truly, with the meekness and poverty of repentance and faith, seeking and receiving God’s forgiveness of sins, for the sake of Jesus Christ, in the ways that God offers to forgive us.
When Jesus in the Gospel Reading finds God’s centuries-earlier prophecy through Isaiah fulfilled in the Jews of His own day, Jesus quotes a portion of a larger section of Isaiah that we heard as today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 29:11-19). Intended to be implicitly included in the Gospel Reading or not, that larger context is important, for, even as God spoke of His judgment on the rebellious people of Judah, God promised a great reversal for the meek and poor in the Lord. Jesus truly fulfills that prophecy, as the Divinely-inspired St. Mark goes on to narrate in the verses and chapters that follow. God in human flesh, Jesus’s heart was as close as it could be to God, and Jesus’s lips honored God perfectly. Jesus not only taught as doctrines the Commandments of God, but He also kept them perfectly and made up for our failures to keep them perfectly. As we heard St. Paul describe in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 5:22-33), Jesus Christ is the Savior of the Church: He loved the Church and gave Himself up for Her. Jesus took the sins of the world to the cross, and there He died on behalf of all people, including you and me; He died for us the death that we otherwise would have deserved. When we repent of our sin and trust God graciously to forgive us for the sake of the crucified and resurrected Jesus, then God does forgive us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us through His Means of Grace.
In today’s Gospel Reading, St. Mark uniquely explains the ritual practices of the Jews, and, in so doing, he uses two Greek words that otherwise are generally translated “baptize” and “baptism”, though we did not hear them translated that way in the E-S-V. More than a ceremonial immersion or sprinkling of cups and pots, kettles and couches, which we discussed last week in our Midweek Bible Study, Baptism is, as St. Paul described it in the Epistle Reading, the washing of water with the word, which makes the Church holy. So washed, we eat not regular bread but the bread of the Sacrament of the Altar that is the Body of Christ given for us, and we drink wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—such is true worship of God! Unlike the Jews’ holding to their tradition and letting go of the commandment of God, in Baptism, individual Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar the focus of the holding or releasing is our sin.
Having our sins as necessary held or released, we are, as we permit it, transformed by God. We recognize that God’s law first and foremost shows us our sin and that it also describes our new life in Him. We know that we are not righteous before God on account of what we do for ourselves but on account of what Jesus has done for us. Our hearts and lips are aligned: believing that God raised Jesus from the dead and being justified and confessing that Jesus is Lord and being saved (Romans 10:9-10). The confessions and other “traditions” that we receive and hand down, like Luther’s Catechism mentioned in today’s Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 865), do not make void the Word of God but are faithful testimonies to His truth. Given our own individual circumstances and consciences, we may or may not choose to wear face-masks, practice social‑distancing, and receive experimental-vaccine, and, regardless, we do not judge those who choose otherwise. (Hopefully we all practice some extent of good hygiene!) When we fail to live as we should live, as we will fail so to live, then we live in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and in turn extend to one another.
Ultimately, God works in us to produce “Not vain but true worship”, with the meekness and poverty of repentance and faith, seeking and receiving God’s forgiveness of sins, for the sake of Jesus Christ, in the ways that God offers to forgive us. As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, God defends His Church from all false teaching and error, so that His faithful people may confess Him to be the only true God and rejoice in His good gifts of life and salvation. And, no matter what comes with the coronavirus, the economy, the evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan, or any other troubling situation in the world around us—no matter what comes, we do rejoice in God’s good gifts of life and salvation; we rejoice both now and for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +