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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. (Amen.)
As if we did not have enough polarized division in our world, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is publishing a book that has further polarized and divided our church body. The book contains an annotated text of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Large Catechism and more than fifty essays, by various authors, intended to “address and apply the Large Catechism in an increasingly complex contemporary world” (CPH). But, as some of you know, critics have questioned both the choices of some of the essays’ authors and the content of those authors’ essays (for example, Gottesdienst). Discussion of the book that I have seen and heard seemed to center particularly on the essays related to the Ten Commandments. And, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, controversy over correctly understanding and applying the Commandments is nothing new. Considering today’s Gospel Reading this morning, we direct our thoughts to the theme, expressed in Jesus’s preceding words (Matthew 5:19), “Doing and teaching the Commandments”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is another consecutive portion of Jesus’s so-called “Sermon on the Mount”, picking up right where last Sunday’s Gospel Reading left off (Mathew 5:13-20). Then Jesus seemingly condemned the scribes and Pharisees for “relaxing” the Ten Commandments and teaching others to do the same, and today Jesus apparently provides examples of Commandments that they had “relaxed”. In the process, Jesus correctly “stiffened” the Commandments’ application and revealed Himself to be the Divine author and so the correct interpreter of the Commandments, a point arguably echoed at the Transfiguration of Our Lord, as we will hear next week, when the Father’s voice from heaven told the disciples to listen to Jesus (Matthew 17:1-9; Quill, CPR 30:1, p.46) . (If next week were not the Transfiguration of Our Lord, we would hear the immediately following verses of the “Sermon on the Mount”, with additional examples of Jesus’s correcting the Jewish leaders’ false teaching and practice, in that case, related to retaliation and loving our enemies [Matthew 5:38‑48]).
Some preachers each week freely pick their own sermon texts and themes from anywhere in the whole Bible, arguably over time revealing their own “hobbyhorses”, or topics to which they constantly revert (Webster). Other preachers who generally limit themselves to preaching on one of the appointed Readings have fewer text and theme choices, and those of us who almost always preach on the appointed Gospel Reading have virtually no choice at all, and, if we were to choose not to preach on a Gospel Reading because we considered it too controversial, we might reveal our own cowardice. Far from revealing our own “hobbyhorses”, faithful preachers of the Gospel Reading if anything reflect the “biases” of those who selected the appointed Readings, or the “bias” of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who spoke the words, or the “bias” of the Holy Spirit, Who inspired the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s words.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the examples of the Commandments that both the Jewish leaders had “relaxed” and Jesus “stiffened” are the Commandments in general against murder, adultery, and false testimony, which Commandments we know as the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Commandments. As for the choice of those three Commandments, we might imagine an un‑reconciled married couple’s committing adultery and so breaking their marriage vows. Regardless, as we heard, Jesus makes clear that the Fifth Commandment forbids not only murderous acts but also insulting words and angry thoughts, and arguably Jesus makes clear that instead the Fifth Commandment calls for reconciliation between people (confer Matthew 18:15‑35). The Sixth Commandment forbids not only adulterous acts, such as divorce and remarriage (confer Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18; 1 Corinthians 7:10-11), but also sexually impure and indecent words and lustful thoughts, occasions to fall into sin or fall from faith so serious that they call for almost self-mutilation (confer Matthew 18:7-9). And the Eighth Commandment forbids not only vow‑breaking acts but also lying words and judgmental thoughts.
Regarding those same three Commandments, the Synod’s new Large Catechism book would have us also think of such things as “social justice”, “gender dysphoria”, and “truth‑telling in a changing world”. Regarding those same three Commandments, the Synod’s most-recent Explanation of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism would have us also think of such things as abortion and any form of suicide; incest and any form of pornography; gossiping and any form of bullying. But, we hardly need every possible application of even these three Commandments in order to realize that, in countless ways, sometimes at the same time, we all break these and all the other Commandments, and thus we all sin both against other people and against God, for we all are sinful by nature, and so we all justly deserve not only to die here and now but also to be thrown into the hell of fire on the Day of Judgment, from which prison we all can never get out, since we can never pay the debt of our sins, not the debt of our sins against other people, much less the much larger debt of our sins against God.
But, there is One Who has paid the debt of our sin, both the debt of our sins against other people and the much larger debt of our sins against God. That One is Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ is God in human flesh, and, He both perfectly kept God’s Commandments for us and paid for our failures to keep God’s Commandments perfectly. Out of God’s great love and mercy, Jesus gave His life as a ransom for all people (Matthew 20:28; confer Scaer, Sermon on the Mount, 111). On the cross, Jesus bore the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins, and there He died for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. And, then He rose from the dead, showing that God the Father had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. We do not presume that we are sinless or can save ourselves, nor do we despair of our salvation. We, who on account of our sins deserve death now and torment for eternity, end up damned only by our impenitence and unbelief. For, the Holy Spirit calls and thereby enables us to repent and believe, and, when we do so, then, by God’s grace for the sake of Jesus’s death, through faith, we are reconciled with the Father (Romans 5:10). God reconciles us to Himself through the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18‑21), that is, through His Word in all of its forms.
As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 3:1-9), different pastors are God’s fellow workers through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. God Himself gives spiritual growth as He creates and sustains faith and forgives sins through those workers. One worker may “plant” with the reading and preaching of God’s Word, another worker may “water” with the Word in Holy Baptism, and still another worker may “prune” and “fertilize” with the touch and Word of Holy Absolution and with the bread and wine and Word of the Sacrament of the Altar, that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. Through His Word and Sacraments, God forgives us all of our sins against the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Commandments, as well as all our sins against all of the other Commandments, and God forgives us our sinful nature. So forgiven, we have life and salvation and also the peace and joy that they bring. So forgiven, we also are empowered to at least want to keep the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Commandments, as well as all of the other Commandments.
As we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Deuteronomy 30:15-20), God sets before us, us whom He has sanctified, good and evil, blessing and curse, life and death. By God’s mercy and grace, we can either obey His Commandments and be blessed by Him, or we can turn away from Him and surely perish. So, we do not break the Fifth Commandment in thought, word, or deed, but, for example, we are reconciled to other people. We do not break the Sixth Commandment in thought, word, or deed, but, for example, with prayer, meditation, and “resolute repression of sinful desire, however painful the effort may be” (Roehrs‑Franzmann, ad loc Matthew 5:29-30, p.20), we present the members of our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness (Romans 6:13). We do not break the Eighth Commandment in thought, word, or deed, but, for example, like Jesus before us (for example, Matthew 26:63-64), we swear oaths only when necessary for the glory of God or the welfare of other people (confer 1991 Explanation, 2011 edition, #30, p.64). And, when we do break the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Commandments and all of the other Commandments, as we will break them, with daily repentance and faith, we live in the forgiveness of sins that God gives us for Jesus’s sake, including privately confessing to our pastor the sins that we know and feel in our hearts, those sins that particularly trouble us, confessing them for the sake of individual absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting but firmly believing that by the pastor’s absolution our sins are forgiven before God in heaven, for so they are.
In our polarized and divided world, the true unity of the Church is based on the Gospel and all of its articles, taught by Holy Scripture and expressed by the Lutheran Confessions. Most of us probably do not need to purchase the Synod’s controversial new book with the annotated Large Catechism and essays of contemporary applications. For, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus Himself speaks clearly about “Doing and teaching the Commandments”. By God’s mercy and grace, through His Word and Sacraments, we realize that we are sinners and are forgiven. Or, as the Antiphon of today’s Introit put it (Psalm 98:7-9; antiphon: v.2), “The Lord has made known His salvation, He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +