Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity - October 11, 2009

The Church Season of Trinity
The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (October 11, 2009)

“Answered Questions”

Readings:
Psalm 34:8-22
Deuteronomy 10:12-21
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Matthew 22:34-46

Sermon Form Deductive

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the Gospel Lesson from the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew, especially the following verse(s):

Matthew 22:34-46 (ESV)

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 44 “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’? 45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

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

The Sadducees had failed with their attempts at tricking Jesus, now the Pharisees step up to the plate to try to snare Jesus. But as we heard in the reading of the Gospel lesson they two fail. We like that. We like that the Sadducees trip, we like that the Pharisees ultimately stumble. We like to see the bad guy get his due, to see them knocked down on their can where they belong. In fact, I think if the truth be told we really kind of love to hate the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We like to treat their utterances like bowling pins, we grab onto them and set them up just to get the pleasure of knocking them down. And they make it so easy, saying things which are contrary and not very well thought out, like when their questions are answered with questions that even they, the self proclaimed high and mighty can’t answer. Everybody likes it when they are silenced because everybody likes it when the bullies of the world are left speechless. And the best part of all is that they never seem to learn, so week after week we can hear them talk, we can build them up, and then we get the pleasure of knocking them down again.

The Pharisees were indeed experts on God’s Law. They’ve probably forgotten more Scripture than you and I will ever remember. Yet they could not rightly divide God’s Law from God’s Gospel. Worse yet, they refused to acknowledge the fulfillment of God’s prophecies standing before their eyes. The heavenly Father sends His only-begotten Son into their midst to teach them repentance toward the forgiveness of sins and instead of receiving Him with great joy, their hearts were hardened and their eyes refused to see the Word made flesh. The Pharisees thought they knew how to love their God and their neighbor. Unfortunately for them their god and neighbor happened to the same person they saw when they looked in the mirror.

But we all excel in loving ourselves. We bristle when we hear the Lord God speaking through Moses: “what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandment of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good.” (Dt. 10:12-13) Sure, we might nod our heads and think we do just as God commands. But Saint James reminds us, “ 22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”(James 1:22-25)

When we look long and hard into the mirror of the Law we see that it is good and wise, and that we are not. Our love has grown cold our love of God is lip service. There are weeks when we walk into church, make an effort to sing the hymns and the liturgy, listen to the sermon, receive Holy Communion, and walk out of church with no idea of what was said and done in that hour. To love of neighbor is almost impossible when we make it a priority to first love ourselves. We are raised to be self-sufficient. Yet we often turn self-sufficiency into a dictatorship of one. We think what pleases me must please God. When we hear Moses tell the Israelites “love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” (Dt. 10:19) we wonder who is that person who is qualified to be a stranger to us. Sounds just like that certain lawyer wondered aloud to Jesus who was his neighbor before Jesus set him straight with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Perhaps the greater sin of the Pharisees is more than not loving God and their neighbors. Perhaps it is the refusal to recognize Jesus as both King David’s son and King David’s Lord. When we, by our thoughts, words, and actions, refuse to love God and our neighbor, we refuse to recognize Jesus as both David’s son and David’s Lord. We cannot answer Jesus’ question put to the Pharisees. If Jesus isn’t God and man, divine and human, then He is either merely a man whose example should be followed in order to earn eternal life, or He is the God Who sets the bar of life so high through His doctrine and life that we could never jump over it to join Him in heaven and all that effort is just too much work.

We are the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and we are that one lawyer who try to trick our way into heaven. We outwardly treat our neighbors kindly, but speak about them with daggers on our tongues when they turn their back to us. We appear kind and godly hoping that this slight of neighbor is as effective as the slight of hand. Yet even with our best attempts at going astray, God is faithful to us. He wants to bring us back into his fold. We are treated just like those people who were gathered around Jesus. They did not put their best thoughts forward, yet Jesus did not call them out. Instead Jesus took the time to teach, so that they could see scripture and God’s Word as He meant it to be.

And God meant that Law to be in place to reflect our sin, and to guide us. Yet at the same time we are to realize that we will fall short and when we do God’s all sufficient grace is their to pick us up, and convey His grace to us. You were given that promise in the water combined with God’s Word in your Baptism. There in the baptismal font the Lord said to your Lord, God said to His Son, that this is where He will clothe you with His salvation. And today as you come to Holy Communion and partake of Christ’s true body and His true blood, that promise is made, so that you may know that your faith is renewed and refreshed, because God through Jesus Christ has granted you forgiveness of sins. And even though you may live here in time in a world which asks questions, and demands answers which we do not understand....even though your mind and body may be attacked from the outside and from the inside...Christ is still their for you. Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, and He will assure that when your final hour comes that their will be no more questions you will want or need to ask. In fact, from the very minute in the day that you leave this world all your questions will be answered, for you will be with your Lord forevermore. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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