Trinity 4 – Luke 6 – July 13th,
2014
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +
We have to do something!
There is wickedness, there are bad people out there! Cheats!
Liars! People trying to take away
our liberty! Terrorists! Sharia Law!
You know how that business is – we better boycott them and close them
up! The world is messed up, and by
George we’ve got to do something, we’ve got to fix these problems, and by
fixing I mean swinging the heavy hand of the hammer, crushing our enemies and
driving them back into the shadows away from good, God Fearing American
Society! Heard any of that lately? Thought any of that lately? Or for those of you with a more liberal bent,
we could decry the war on women, the rich stealing our health care, the evils
of the 1%, out with the pitchforks, we need the glorious revolution! Occupy, Occupy, Occupy! Oh, and boycott that
business as well! That’s the chatter of
the world – that’s what the talking heads tell us. And it’s also what we end up thinking, it can
be how we approach things closer to home.
Did you hear about what he did…well, I never. Oh, you know what she is like. I can’t believe they would be so stupid. We have been trained with an “eagle” eye to
scope out flaws and errors, to beat people down for them, to shun them, to
belittle them – and maybe even to crush them.
“Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged;
condemn not and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven,
give, and it will be given to you.” What
is your life to be, oh Christian? What
is your day to look like? What is to
dominate your thoughts – mercy or condemnation?
Forgiveness or judgment? You see,
when our Lord says that we are to be in the world but not of the world, He is
not speaking merely to abstaining from vile and gross and open sin – it’s not
merely “Don’t kill, don’t have affairs, don’t rob banks”. He is calling you away from the world, the
way the world thinks, the way the world operates. He is calling you away from a life, an
approach of judgment and condemnation.
Let us be honest. We
love judgment, we love condemnation. If
a report of a heinous crime comes across the news, and the perpetrator is
caught and sentenced, are we more apt to
say “oh, that punishment was far too harsh” or wish that he had gotten
something a bit more severe? If we watch
a movie, don’t we want, expect the bad guy to get it in the end? We love the comeuppance, the folks getting
what they deserve. We’ll even us that
language – I hope they get what they deserve, I hope they get what’s coming to
them – with nary a though about what we ourselves by rights deserve. The self-righteous indignation flares up – we
view ourselves as better than them, less worthy of condemnation, and so we are
willing to dish it out, to hope for the worst for them, to just let them have
it with both barrels. Take that, you
miserable sinner! “For with the measure you use it
will be measured back to you.”
Do you see how poorly the world and our flesh train us to live?
Christ tells us a parable.
“Can a blind man lead a blind man?
Will they not both fall into a pit?” Do you not realize, o Christian, that you
yourself are a sinner? It’s not that you
are wise and know everything and have everything figured out, and thus you can
tell people how it ought to be and smack them down when they don’t listen. Do you not realize that you too are
blind? That the flaws you see in them
you yourself have? “A disciple is not above his
teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.” We listen to the ways of the world, we let
the shrill and angry guide and shape us into being shrill and angry, we let the
judgmental and condemnatory teach us to judge and condemn because we are not in
fact above them, not better than them… even though we so often think we
are. We fall in to the same traps as the
rest of the world, the same sins. And in
fact, not just the same sins – sins more vile than theirs. “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother,
let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you do not see the log
that is in your own eye? You hypocrite,
first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take
out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.’” The speck of your neighbor, or the log of
yourself? The dust particle floating
through the air, while ignoring the beam of wood as big as the doorframes in
the back? This is the depiction, the
description of who we are according to our sinful flesh, what the world tries
to shape us and mold us into being.
Harsh and full of condemnation and disdain – and yet worthy of
condemnation and eternal disdain ourselves.
“Be merciful, even as your Father in heaven in merciful.” God is not out to get you. His ways are above our ways – and while we in
our earthly wisdom love punishment and destruction, the foolishness of God is
wiser than the wisdom of man, and this is for your own good. Your Father in heaven is merciful to
you. He has sent Christ Jesus to take up
your sin, to bear the weight and shame and guilt of it all upon the cross, to
suffer and die for you, in your place, in your stead. And now there is no more judgment left, no
more condemnation left. Now
there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus – that’s how
Paul puts it in Romans. Our Lord Jesus
here is not merely going off on a finger wagging law kick here, telling you
what you yourself need to do. If that
were the case, we would all be without hope, for we all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God. But Christ
Jesus has come, and He has borne the weight, the punishment of your sin in your
place. God is merciful to you, and so
Christ was judged in your place, He was condemned on account of your
condemnation – and all the judgment in the world, all the condemnation in the
universe is used up, filled up. What
then is left here? Remove the judgment
and condemnation from these verses and what do we hear? Mercy and forgiveness. While the world shouts at you, “Judge, condemn,
dish out punishment,” Christ steps in, and He says, “I have taken all that, and
only mercy and forgiveness remain.”
And this He pours into your lap, this He gives you in good measure, overflowing, full, pressed down without any little air pockets of sin not covered. You are forgiven, forgiven in full. You are baptized, and all your sin is washed away. You are forgiven, for Christ and Him Crucified is proclaimed to you here, now, today. You are forgiven, for Christ and shed His blood for you and gives it to you in His Supper – this is reality. He has called you out of the darkness of the world into His marvelous light. He has made you to be not the world’s disciple, but His disciple. “A disciple is not above His teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful.” Christ Jesus is your Lord and He has purchased and won you from Sin, death, and this loud braying world with His precious blood – and He is now your Master, your Teacher. And He will make you to be like Him. When the world yells around you with hatred and anger and vengeance and destruction, when the would blind you with all this – He calls out to you again, and He fixes your eyes upon Himself. You will be like Christ, because He is your teacher. You will be merciful, because you are baptized and God is your Father. You who were blind will be made to see, for Christ Jesus is risen from the dead, and He will make you to rise as well. This is the promise, the is the reality that we look forward to on the Last Day, at the resurrection of the dead. Then, mercy and forgiveness will be all that we see.
And in the meantime, what does Christ do to us? “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother,
let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you do not see the log
that is in your own eye? You hypocrite,
first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take
out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.’” Christ knows sin – He was nailed to that log
in your eye, the log of the Cross. He
bore your sin, He knows it far better than you do – He took it up from you even
before you were born. He has taken it
away from you, He has forgiven you. And
now, with the log out of your own eye, you see clearly. You see clearly not to condemn, not to decry
how terrible it is that these people keep getting specks in their eyes. You see clearly so as to forgive. The Son of Man came into the world not to
condemn the world, but that it might be saved through Him. Likewise, you who have Christ as your brother
by the gift of baptism, who participate in His Body and Blood, you realize that
the only reason you even know of any of your neighbor’s sin is so that you will
love them and in mercy may forgive them, may restore them, may proclaim the
realities of Christ to them. You are
forgiven, and you are now forgiveness people.
You have been mercied, and you are now mercy people. This is the reality, this is what this place
is. You’ve been in the world with its
junk and hatred and anger all week – forget all that, and remember who Christ
says you are. You are forgiven – that is
the great reality, greater than anything you saw on the news or in your
neighbor last week, greater than anything you will see in yourself in this week
to come.
And so dear friends, it is true, you and I are indeed poor
miserable sinners, and by rights, we deserve nothing but condemnation. But God in His mercy has chosen not to
condemn you – Christ Jesus your Lord deals with condemnation for you upon the
Cross. You are out of that business
now. Rather, you are forgiven, redeemed,
sanctified by Him. And yes, the world,
Satan, even your sinful flesh will try to make you forget that, try to sucker
you back into their condemning games.
And often enough they will succeed.
But you are forgiven, that is the great truth, and one day Christ will
come again, and that true will be all that we see. Come quickly, Lord Jesus! Amen.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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