Trinity 20

 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +

    Well, it's that time of the Church Year where we start shifting our focus towards the end of this world, to Christ's Second Coming, to the resurrection of the Body and the Life of the World to come. And our lessons start to prepare us for the harder parts of the Christian life, the things that are perhaps darker or dangerous – putting up with hardship and trial and tribulation yet remaining faithful to Christ amidst these things. And at the base, today, all of our lessons revolve one idea, one theme. In this life, you will be confronted by temptations and schemes that seem to be wise but are in fact deadly. So the instruction for today is this: Dear Christian, don't be stupid.

    Don't be stupid, Pastor? Really? Well, yes. Don't be stupid. Until Christ returns you are going to be tempted in this world to jump into all sorts of harebrained idiocy, so don't be stupid and dive on in. Okay, if you want it to sound more formal, consider the Epistle Lesson. Paul says, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish.” Don't be unwise, lacking wisdom. Don't be foolish, literally without a mind. Don't wander off into all sorts of nonsensical schemes and plots and fights, because swirling all around you in this world full of evil will be the worst ideas imaginable, things that will do you harm, harm to your body and harm to your soul. So use your head, use your God given wisdom, and don't blunder on into them.

    Our Old Testament even gets on this theme, although it comes at it with some lovely poetic rhetoric. Isaiah writes, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in rich food.” It's a poetic image lamenting folly and stupidity. You waste your money, your hard work – you get so busy and caught up in all this drama and for what – for “not-bread” - for non-fulfillment. Why do you strive and strive after these silly games in the world? You're never filled up by them, you're never satisified by them, and yet you keep slaving away and breaking your back, and it's all for nothing. Okay, Isaiah's not saying, “Don't be stupid” - he's flat out saying, “Stop being stupid.” There's a chance, there's a way out of this stupidity – Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord that He may have compassion upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

    Seek the Lord while He may be found. This is one of the harder phrases of the Old Testament for us to understand in modern English, because it uses a Hebrew verbal trick we don't have. Hebrew has what is called a causitive mood – where the verb isn't just what you do, but what you make happen, what you cause to happen. When we hear “seek the Lord while He may be found” - this isn't saying that Jesus is playing Hide and Seek with us we've counted to 20 and now we have to go find Him. No, seek the Lord while He makes Himself present for you so that you can find Him – while He may, while He is able to be found. Seek the Lord while He's jumping up and down saying, “I'm over here. See, I'm here, I want to forgive.” When Jesus is calling, when Jesus is present for you, for your good – don't be stupid and run off after other things and miss out on Jesus and His forgiveness.

    This idea, the utter stupidity of rejecting and ignoring Jesus and instead chosing and serving folly is the background theme of our Gospel lesson, of the story Jesus tells in Holy Week to all the people in Jerusalem who were grousing about Him. Jesus says, “Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country.” So let's ponder the set up here – here we have a vineyard, and the vineyard needs to be tended to – but note, the hard work has already been done. The infrastructure is all set up – the vines are set up to go, it's protected, the wine press is there – it's all ready to go, all that's left is to gather the grapes, make wine, make money, and enjoy. And tenants are brought in – given grand opportunity – this is set up on a tee, this is a great gig, now knock it out of the park.

    Alas, they decide to be stupid. When the season for fruit drew near, [the master] sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Now, we live in an agricultural area – some of you work leased land, some of you lease land – the Church itself leases out land to be worked. What's to be gained here by these wicked tenants? Not much – you want to keep the rent price, and so you engage in murder. You don't really gain anything, why? Well, they keep at it. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Maybe it was a mistake, maybe they thought they were defending the vineyard from bandits, it was dark... no, no, this is just foolish wickedness. But the master is patient. Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.” And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Oh, and the plot is revealed. We will kill the heir, and then instead of just being tenants, we'll get to be the owners, we'll get to inherit the land. Instead of simply being tenants and enjoying the sweet job we have and all the benefits there of, we will plot and murder... to inherit the vineyard. That's not how anything works. What, is the master going to say, “Well, they killed my son – better scratch his name out of my will and write theirs in.”

    No – Jesus asks the very people who reject and complain about Jesus to finish the story. “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to Him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” Everyone knows that this story will end badly for those wicked tenants. You're done, you're out, you're dead – and someone else can enjoy that lovely vineyard and that nice set up instead.

    Of course, Jesus isn't telling a story about how to run a vineyard – Jesus is addressing the very people who are plotting to kill Him and will have Him killed by the end of the week. Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The Stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?” Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. Y'all are being stupid, and the consequences are come. You fight against Me and my preaching, and for what? Power in the temple – in God's house, that place given to you to be a blessing to you, and you turn it into a den of robbers, a petty political prize – all the while ignoring God's Word, ignoring forgiveness, ignoring love? Because that's the fruit of God's Word – forgiveness and love – and you don't care about that – so you won't get it. You won't get the temple, you won't get God's House anymore – other people will be there, and they'll have forgiveness and love to the full, and you, in your folly, in your stupidity, you'll get nothing but death and destruction.

    Whew. Ouch. Tell us what you really think, Jesus. This is the last call that Jesus gives to these Scribes and Pharisees and Chief Priests to abandon their silly plans, to not partake in this planned assassination of Jesus. Some hear Jesus; most don't. And Jesus knows He's speaking rough words, words that are hard to hear. And the one who falls on this Stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him. Jesus is here – and He calls the shots. Jesus is in control of reality – and the reality is this. You are caught up in sin and temptation, and while the big wigs and the movers and shakers and the smarty-pants reject Christ, He is the Cornerstone. You are trapped in sin and death, and the only way out of sin and death is this. Jesus dies, and Jesus rises. Jesus takes up sin, Jesus takes up the penalty for sin, and Jesus gives life. That's the way it goes. It has to go through Jesus. And whenever one believes this, whenever one falls upon Jesus – well, it will be painful sometimes. The Word of God will call you to the carpet for your sin. It will call you to repent, it will pull you away from the stupid things that are bad for you, the things that your sinful flesh calls out to you to get trapped in. God's Word will often break you, it will break you of your stupidity – because we're all sinners, and all sin is stupid, and we're all called away from the stupid, dumb, idiotic things that don't do us or anyone any good that we keep stumbling into. You know, all those “sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended God, and justly deserved God's temporal and eternal punishment” that we confess. We confess, we fall upon Christ – because Christ Jesus makes Himself to be found, to be found here in His Word of forgiveness, His Font, His Supper – found to forgive us, to renew us, to give us blessings now – real blessings, not the sham ones our temptations dangle in front of us – and to give us eternal life. The other option is to ignore Christ, to run after folly, and in the end to be crushed.

    And Jesus here is admitting something that is hard for us in the Church to hear. We here will need to confess real sins. There will be things in God's Word, in His Law, that hit really close to home, that aren't comfortable, that call us and our sin and our temptations out. The ones we like, the ones we hide. The light of God's Word will be shined upon them. There will be sermons here that make you a bit squeemish – and you think it's no fun sitting in a pew when the preacher does that, you try preaching a sermon when you yourself are squirming. But that's the way it has to be – sin has to be confessed with, sin has to be confessed – that's how forgiveness happens, that's how our rescue from sin happens. The chains that bind us must be broken, even when we find those claims appealing. Because Jesus doesn't want you crushed. Jesus doesn't want you terrified when He returns – He wants you forgiven and ready to be restored.

    So, don't be stupid. Don't wantonly wander into wickedness; instead be in Church, be in the Word. And when the Word of God calls out your sin, don't plug your ears, don't take your ball and go home, don't huff and puff and say, “Why I'd never.” Let the Holy Spirit do His job of conviciting with the Law, and confess your sins... and then there's the fruit. Then there's the fruit of forgiveness. There's the fruit of love – love and joy and peace and all those good things, truly good things that Jesus gives to you and works in you and through you to your neighbor. Jesus' plans for you are better than the pipe dreams that Satan and the world pedal to you. Live in Christ – He is here for you to find Him, to receive Him, to delight in Him, here in His church and in His Word of life. Amen. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit +

Trinity 19 Sermon

    It was love, pure and simple. It was love that motivated these people to bring this paralyzed man to Jesus. These nameless people in the text – we don’t even know if they were family or friends – whoever they were – out of love and concern they bring this man who can no longer walk to Jesus. In our Gospel lesson today, we see an incredible story of love – love shown to a poor paralyzed man. But we also see a tale of how often God’s love isn’t desired by man, how God's love is despised and rejected. So that is what we will do – we will compare our thoughts about love and about how to love with God’s Word and see what we learn about God’s love for us.

    And behold, some people brought to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, My son; your sins are forgiven.” When we hear this, we can think that there is something wrong. We can think that the solution doesn’t fit the problem. Your sins are forgiven? Jesus, the guy can’t walk! Who cares about his sin right now – heal him, make him walk! We can almost, if we dare admit it, get slightly annoyed with Jesus – oh, Jesus, just get to the point and heal the poor guy! You know what this means? It means that often our expectations of God’s love are wrong. We can think, “the chief problem here must be that the guy's body is broken – so fix it.” But note something from the text. And when Jesus saw their faith – when Jesus sees the faith of these people, the faith of this paralyzed man – sees their heart – that’s when Jesus tells this poor man that his sins are forgiven.

    Before this account, Matthew records many miracles – it seems almost routine. Jesus heals lots of folks of lots of things. Chapter 8 itself has a leper, the Centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, and two demon possessed men. Jesus is not shy about addressing the physical issue at hand, so maybe it’s not a case of Jesus missing the point here, but Jesus hitting things spot on. Think about, for a moment, the times when things go badly in your life – when things go wrong. How often does that thought creep in – “maybe I did something to anger God – maybe this is my sin coming back to bite me”? Remember not the sins of my youth, O Lord! How easily we can become burdened with guilt and shame! This was the case with this paralyzed fellow. The popular Jewish understanding what that if something bad happened to you, some tragedy, it was directly your fault. In John, when they see a blind man, the disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” So here you have this paralyzed man – and Christ sees his faith – sees the faith of the man’s friends – and our Lord speaks. Take heart – be enheartened – your sins are forgiven.

    This is the sadness of our day and age. We so often only see things in terms of this life – how much stuff we have, how good or poor our bodies are – we think with our stomachs and plan with our pocket books – and we so often miss the more important reality. This paralyzed man of faith didn’t have our weaknesses; he knew what was important. He was concerned that his sin condemned him, not just to a life stuck on a mat, but to an eternity of damnation and hell. And so Christ speaks a word of forgiveness to him, and he is enheartened! Would that our approach be the same as this paralyzed man! Would that our faith, our desire for forgiveness dominate our lives, whatever comes down the pike, be it sickness or health, wealth or poverty, droughts or floods! But too often we don’t think this way, we let the cares and concerns of this life push the things of faith and eternal life to the back burner. We let ourselves be filled with worry about this world instead of simply trusting God to remain God for us. So Christ says to you the same thing as he says to this paralyzed man. Take heart, your sins are forgiven. Take heart. Be encouraged – let nothing take your joy from you, for your sins are forgiven – and all these trials, all these troubles – they are temporary, they will pass away, but God’s love for you never passes away, the peace of forgiveness and the joy of Christ never pass away – for they are eternal, they are the things of eternal life. No tragedy, no trial of this life can overshadow this truth.

    But Satan will still try to overshadow this. This is what happens in the text. Some people clutch their pearls because Jesus asserts that He can forgive people. And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” There was a good reason they said this. One of the things we can forget about sin is that sin is always against God. If someone sins and it hurts us, we complain about what they have done to us. You’ve sinned against me. Yes. . . but that’s not the main thing. The main thing is that sin, all sin, is against God. When David gets caught in his adultery and murder, he doesn’t say, “Boy, I sure sinned against Uriah by killing him – boy, I sure sinned against Bathsheba by dragging her into adultery.” He had, I suppose, but that’s not the angle David takes. Instead, he says, “I have sinned against the LORD.” David then writes in Psalm 51 “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done what is evil in Your sight” and then begs for a clean heart and a right spirit. Sin is always, first and foremost, against God. When your neighbor sins against you, that isn’t primarily a sin against you – it's against God. When you sin against your neighbor, when you think poorly of them or speak ill of them or harm them in any way – that isn’t a sin primarily against your neighbor, but you are first and foremost sinning against God – the God who told you to love that person. This is what those Scribes knew – sin is always against God – and this is why they are shocked by what Jesus says. Sin is against God – so therefore, only God can forgive sins. If Jesus were just a man, this would be most blasphemous!

    So Jesus will respond to this. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk?’ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – He then said to the paralytic – “Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And he rose and went home. Jesus knows what these scribes are thinking – He sees their doubts, and He seeks to alleve them. Yes, Jesus can forgive sins, yes He has this authority. But how to show it, how to demonstrate it? Well, watch this. Hey guy, get up and go home. I am Christ Jesus, I have authority over the Body, and I have authority over the soul as well. The healing here – the man being cured of his paralysis, is only done to show that the Spiritual healing which Christ proclaimed was real. Christ wants to prove that when He says sins are forgiven that He has the authority to do so.

    Authority is a big, important word in Scripture, and in the New Testament authority is almost always tied to being able to forgive sins. And here is the thing – the idea that just confuses and shocks so many folks out there – Christ Jesus gives this authority to His Church in order that even to this day people would receive forgiveness here on earth and know that it is true and valid in heaven. For example, think about the Great Commission. Before Jesus sends out the Disciples to do their work, what does He say? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Do you see how it works? Christ says, “I have authority to forgive sins, and now I am sending you out to go forgive sins. You have My authority now, you speak My Word and act in My Name – go baptize people for the forgiveness of sins in My Name. Authority to forgive sins. Or in John 20 – what does Jesus say to the disciples? Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven.” Again – Jesus sends out the disciples, His Apostles – for that is what Apostle means – it means “sent one” – with a very specific mission – to exercise this authority to forgive sins.

    And this is what God’s Church is to be about to this day. This is why in the Nicene Creed we call it the Holy Christian and Apostolic Church – it’s the Church that does the same thing the Apostles did – shower out forgiveness upon people. And this is a marvel – that forgiveness is available. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men. That’s what we do even to this day – we glorify the God who gives forgiveness. You see, this is the heart of God’s love for you. Not in the temporary things that fade away, but in the fact that He constantly provides you the forgiveness won for you upon the Cross by Christ Jesus so that you may be cared for, not merely for a day or two, not just until the next crisis, but that you may be cared for for all eternity! God’s love for you is eternal. His love isn't fleeting but is for the long run; and thus He will focus your eyes upon His forgiveness and strengthen your faith so that you may stand and remain strong in the face of all trials in this life, large or small. His forgiveness is real, His love for you is real, and His Cross overshadows all things in your life. You are His, and nothing shall separate you from His love in Christ Jesus.

    And I mean that seriously. What is there in this world that can undo the promise that He made you to at the Font when by His authority you were baptized in the Name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit? That's a promise to you sworn by God Himself by His own name – what tops that? What has more power than that? Nothing. Jesus has His Word of forgiveness proclaimed to you today – the Word that called forth creation itself. What in this created world is going to top the Word of God that created it? Nothing. Jesus comes to you today, gives You His Holy Body and Blood for your forgiveness, as a pledge and token that yes, He has died and risen for you, for the forgiveness of your sins. What could tower over that? Nothing. So, whatever came at you this week, whatever sins clawed at you again, whatever fears loom large in this week to come – however serious and heart rending they maybe (let's face it, being paralyzed isn't a petty problem) – Jesus still reigns, and Jesus still loves you, and He says to you, take heart, my friend, your sins are forgiven. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit + Amen.