Speaker: Aaron Richert

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. Language is a funny thing, especially English. Take the sentence, I cannot bear to bear the bare bear. In that sentence, the word bear means to tolerate. I cannot bear it means to carry. I cannot bear to bear it means naked or uncovered, and it means a big scary animal with massive teeth. I cannot bear to bear the bare bear. I mean all the spellings are different, but if you were to look it up on dictionary.com the word bear has over 30 meanings. Language can be confusing. Even more confusing is the way the meaning of a word can change over the course of time. Think about the language of the internet. Web used to be the place where spiders lived, surf used to be associated with sand and beaches and waves, net used to be for catching prey. Cookies were snack food, snap was a sound you made with your fingers, and posts were those vertical supports for the fence in your backyard. Language changes over time. That’s pretty obvious. That makes reading old things difficult sometimes. Think about Romeo and Juliet and Juliet ‘s famous line from the balcony,  “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo.” I remember several times reading that and thinking, Juliet just doesn’t know where Romeo is, after all she’s on the balcony alone. The word wherefore says where right in it. That’s got to be what it means, right? But in reality the word wherefore doesn’t mean where, it means why. Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo? Why are you a Montague, the son of my enemy? Why did I have to fall in love with you? Knowing what the word means helps you understand what the line is actually trying to communicate. Language changes over time. We deal with a similar word today, a word whose real meaning has been obscured throughout the course of history, and that word is saint. Today is All Saints Day. The feast of All Saints. What does that word saint actually mean? What are we celebrating today? Most of the time when we hear the word saint, we think of two things. Most commonly we think of someone who’s been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and probably has a high school named after them, Saint Luke’s, Saint Pius, St. Francis and the like. These Saints are men and women who have met certain criteria, according to the Roman Catholic Church, they’ve LED an especially godly life, they’ve been credited with doing documented miraculous deeds of some kind. They’re Christians who are put forward as best examples of the most holy and most virtuous followers of God. But the other way that we typically think about the word saint is in reference to anyone, Christian or not, who leads a good life. She’s a saint, we say about the relentlessly patient mother of five, the person who volunteers all their time at the soup kitchen, the homeless shelter. Or, on the other hand we look at the girl with a bit of a wild side and say well she’s no saint. In either case we have associated the sainthood with the behavior. The case of the virtuous mother, the case of a faithful Christian, the word saint has been tied to actions. Those who live right, we call Saints. Those who don’t, we call something else. Just like Juliet’s, wherefore, the word saint means something different in the scriptures. Just like knowing the right definition of wherefore helps us understand what Juliet is actually saying, knowing the definition of the word saint, sheds some light on what we’re actually celebrating today. The word saint in scripture, the Greek word there is Agios and it literally means holy one. To be a saint is to be a holy person, which of course raises the next question, what does it mean to be a holy person, and we often associate holiness with behavior, which is probably why we’re so often associating saints with behavior. We call a person holier than thou based on that person’s behavior, how it makes us feel about our own. We tend to think of holiness as if one way of life is holier than another, which I suppose is technically true, that’s not because of the actions that are involved. No, in the scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, the word holy is applied to more than just behaviors. It’s applied to furniture, like the temple, the holy candle stands, and the holy tables. And it’s applied to places like Jerusalem, the Holy City or Zion, the Holy Mountain of God. It’s applied to things like oil, food, or incense. That’s because holiness is not ultimately determined by actions, but  by ownership. To be holy is to belong to God, to be set apart by Him for His own, set apart for His purposes, and this holiness was not earned by acting or living in a certain way as if a mountain or a bottle of oil could do anything to make itself holy. No, this holiness is something that God gives as a gift. Something becomes holy when it comes into contact with the God who is holy. The temple was holy because, that’s where God dwelled among his people. Mount Zion was holy because that’s where the temple was, where God was. And holy food, and holy oil, and holy candlesticks were holy because they had come into contact with the God who is holy. In the Old Testament, holiness worked something like King Midas’ touch. Just like everything Midas touches turns to gold, the touch of God makes you holy. Nothing was holy until it was touched by the God who was holy. The holy God touched the holy altar and started the holy fire, then the priests, who had been made holy by the holy sacrifices, would turn around and take the Israelites sacrifices to the altar of God, making the Israelites holy, by placing them on God’s holy altar. Holiness in the Old Testament, it’s like real estate. It’s all about location. Those who were in the presence of God’s holiness, were made holy by it. Those who were outside of God’s presence, were not holy. Those who were in Israel were a royal priesthood, a holy nation, because they were a people belonging to God. Saints. What exactly is a saint? Well, the saint is the holy one, one who has been made holy by being in the presence of the holy God. Nothing to do with ethical living, nothing to do with being extra moral, or extra virtuous, or better than the guy next to you. Nothing to do with our actions at all. It has everything to do with the God who makes us holy, the God who put his holy name on us in baptism, the God who adopted us into his Holy Family, giving us the gift of new creation, one that shares in His Holiness. Holiness comes to the actions of the holy God who gives you His holy body to eat and to drink from this very altar literally filling you with His Holiness so that you can be holy in this life of sin. Holiness comes to you through the proclamation of God’s holy word, spoken from the mouth of a sinner like me, someone whom you have called to proclaim, in the stead and by the command of the holy Lord Jesus Christ, that your sins are forgiven, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the holy name of God. God’s holiness is all over this place, and it’s coming to you as a gift to you, to make you holy, to make you a saint of God. It does not depend on our living. If our holiness was up to us, if it was somehow up to our decision making, we would be in pretty rough shape, for our lives and our hearts are far from holy. I mean sometimes we do the right thing, but usually not for the right motive. Often, it’s just to cover our own backside, to preemptively paint ourselves in a more favorable light. We may sometimes say the right things but often it’s just an attempt to make ourselves look better in the eyes of the people around us. Our motivations are never totally pure, never fully selfless, and beyond that we cannot control the thoughts and the desires of our hearts. We may have learned to keep our sins at bay during the daytime, but we have no control over that which fills our dreams, the lust we indulge while we sleep, the greed and the hatred that season our daydreams, the excuses that we bend over backwards to make for ourselves, while demanding absolute perfection from others. No, if our holiness was up to us to accomplish, all hope would be lost because none of us, no human being who ever lived could live such a way, except for one that is, the holy one, Jesus himself. And so today, we celebrate All Saint’s Day, a day set aside to remember those who have gone before us in the faith, to celebrate their sainthood. But their sainthood, their holiness, comes not from the things they did in this life, but from what our Lord Jesus did for them on the cross, and what he continued to do for them through His Word, and through His sacrament, all the days of their life. And our holiness comes from the same place, it comes from Jesus. The world does not see us as saints. The world does not understand us, but we should expect nothing less, at least that’s what John tells us. The reason the world does not know us, is that it did not know him. They considered him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. The world esteemed Him not, but the world’s estimation of Jesus doesn’t change who Jesus really is, and it does not change what He did 2000 years ago on the cross, does not change what He’s still doing among us today. My estimation of something, doesn’t change the reality of that thing. How many times have you been convinced that someone was telling the truth, only to find out later they were lying. How many times have you been convinced that the rumors about a certain celebrity or coworker simply had to be lies, only to be disappointed when the truth came out. The world these days, the world in the days that John wrote his epistle, the world looks at Jesus sees a failed Messiah, one who couldn’t stop the soldiers from nailing him to the cross, one who couldn’t get himself down when they did. The world looks at Jesus and sees maybe a moral teacher at best, one who might be worth, you know, including with the likes of Buddha, or Confucius, or Gandhi, or Mohammed, but certainly not God. But the world’s opinion of Jesus doesn’t change the reality of who He really is. He is the holy Messiah of the holy God, the one sent to be the sacrifice to cover the sin of the world so that we might be made holy through Him. It’s not about morality. It’s about being forgiven, so that we can stand in the presence of the holy God. And that’s who you are in Him. You are forgiven, you are holy, you are a saint. The reason the world does not know that, is that it did not know Him. The world does not know God’s holiness. The world laughs at bread and wine. The world laughs at water and Word, calls them superstitions, calls us gullible. But take heart dear Saints. Behold the kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God, that we should take part in His Holiness. That’s who we are. He has made us holy. Take heart dear Saints, for you have been touched by God, His holy name placed on your forehead with a splash of water. Take heart dear Saints, for though for a while you struggle through this life, one day the world shall see you for who you truly are, one day you will see yourself for who you truly are. One day you will see that white robe of salvation, washed in the blood of the Lamb. One day you will be holding palm branches and standing before the throne of God, serving him day and night in His temple, while the one who sits on the throne shelters you with His holy presence. You will hunger no more, neither will you thirst, neither will the sun or any scorching heat harm you. The lamb who sits on the throne is your Shepherd and He will guide you to streams of living water. He will wipe away every tear from your eyes, for you are His people. You are his saints. You are His holy ones. You belong to Him. In Jesus name, Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. The number of people in here wearing red means that, no doubt, you know what today is, and you know that on October 31st 1517, the then monk Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, and that event started a chain reaction that led to the church we are familiar with today. Now certainly Luther wasn’t the only one involved. There were many faithful men and women who contributed along the way, but if Doc Brown and Marty McFly we’re going to get in their DeLorean and go back to the one event that started the whole thing, if they wanted to change the course of Reformation history, well the church door would be the one. So here we sit just over 500 years later, just over 5000 miles away from the Castle Church in Wittenberg, sitting in a church of our own, a church that bears the name of Luther, Grace Lutheran Church of northeast Albuquerque. We call ourselves Lutherans, and we do so not because we hold the man Martin in such high regard, but because of the way he relentlessly pointed people to the gospel, and  the gospel of forgiveness reconciliation. Here we sit, half a Millennium later, singing A Mighty Fortress, celebrating the well-known Reformation confession, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, received through scripture alone. Here we stand, a living object lesson, illustrating the point that Jesus is trying to get us to see in today’s gospel reading: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” “If you abide in my word,” says Jesus, and any good Lutheran would of course ask what does this mean? What does it mean to abide in the word of God? Some translations render the phrase, if you continue in my word, abiding, continuing. These are words that describe an ongoing reality. That’s precisely the point that Jesus is trying to make. I’ve probably told you before, I feel like the amount of time we spend watching television and movies has taught us to see our existence like it’s a movie. Sometimes we stir up drama, just as a plot for today. Other times, we approach life like we’re waiting for the credits to roll. It’s like we approach our problems and difficulties as if there will come a point when everything will wrap up neatly in the end. We approach politics as if once we get the right person elected, our world’s problems will all be fixed from Bush to Clinton, Clinton to Bush, Bush to Obama Obama to Trump, Trump to Biden, and Biden to whoever comes next. Political division runs more deeply than ever. The rhetoric is harsher and more cutting, because it’s more absolute, because we assumed that once we got the right person in place all of our problems would go away, and then they didn’t. Most commercials and pundits speak as if choosing the wrong person, well that’s just going to bring an end to America as we know it, and conversely, choosing the right person will be the dawn of the age of prosperity. But we’ve heard that before, and despite all the Chicken Little panic, somehow, life continues to March forward getting the right person into the right political office, in the right election, well that’s not the end. Because time marches on. We approach our relationships in the same way we approach marriage in the same way. As if life is just one romantic comedy in which bride and groom, struggle with a few things, but eventually move happily along to the altar, overcoming whatever obstacles stood in their way, until they finally say “I do” and then the credits roll. At least they do in the movies, but not in real life, because real life, and real love, and real marriage last well beyond the wedding reception. The words, happily ever after, may be etched on the photography album, but once the celebration is over, the bride and groom must continue as husband and wife, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as they both shall live. You speak words of promise on your wedding day, but then you spend the rest of your life continuing in those words, abiding in those words. So Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Luther may have driven the nail into the church door over 500 years ago, and there may have been some much needed and important changes that happened in the church as a result, but here we are today half a Millennium later. The credits have not yet rolled on the story of God’s church. Time marches forward. Life goes on, and we continue. We continue in God’s word, because our life as the children of God is lived as a journey, not a destination.  A journey through the trials and temptations of a fallen world, a journey through the sadness, and the heartache of watching loved ones suffer, maybe even die, a journey through a world, filled with injustice and hatred and bigotry and betrayal, a journey through a world that at every turn seems to take the idea of a loving and merciful God and throw it back in your face. “How,” the world asks, “How,” we ask ourselves, “How can I believe in a loving God, when my child has cancer? How can I believe in a loving God, when I see those, whose lives have been ripped apart by abuse, when I see the way that the people in our country are being torn apart by bitterness? How can I believe in a loving God, when there’s so much evil and pain in the world?” And Jesus answers our question with the same words that He spoke to the Jews who had believed in him. “When you continue in my word, you know the truth.” Continue in God’s word. That means we live in it, we study it, we meditate on it, we allow it to be the lens through which we view and understand reality. To abide in God’s word is to listen when He says to you in that word “Take heart. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” Or when He compares the suffering of this life to the refiners fire, so that the genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes, when it’s tested by fire, the genuineness of your faith may be found to result in praise and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. To listen when He assures you that the sufferings of this present age are not even worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us. To continue in the word of God is to know the truth that sets you free and here is the truth: the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, 1 John, chapter 3, verse eight. We continue in the promises of God’s word. We may not see the final results yet, but we have the promises, and because we continue in that promise, because we continue in that word, we know the truth, the truth sets us free from the burden of doubt. Yes, of course, the world could be a painful place to live, but we’re waiting for the new heavens and the new earth. Because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, we know that the truth of our salvation will not fail. We are free to be people of hope in a world of sadness. For the truth has set us free, but maybe we misunderstand freedom. Maybe we misunderstand and confuse freedom with autonomy. Maybe we try to use our freedom like a spoiled toddler, always demanding his own way, or better yet, or maybe worse yet, we try to use our freedom like a new high school graduate, who has left home for the first time, without the watchful eye of parental supervision. These young men and women often give in to the whims and the temptations of whatever comes next, they’re free to do whatever they want for the first time in their lives. So they think. But their freedom often ends in crippling debt, disease, broken relationships, any number of emotional scars. Why does that happen? Well because doing whatever I want is a pretty awful definition of freedom and it’s certainly not the freedom that Jesus is talking about today. I once heard a seminary professor describe it like this. He said freedom is like a young eaglet who fell out of her nest and landed in a gopher hole. And so, the eagle was raised as a gopher, living in the tunnels. Of course, her developing talons and her beak were not great for tunneling and digging, but she did alright. And she didn’t really enjoy the vegetarian gopher diet and her growing wings were making it harder and harder to get through the tunnels each day, but she was surviving. Then one day she found a tunnel that led to the surface. One day she crawled out of that tunnel, covered in matted dirt. When the fresh air hit her nostrils, somehow, she knew exactly what to do. She knew what those wings were for, so she spread them out, and soared into the heavens, finally free. Soaring majestically above the clouds, the eyes of a huntress spotting prey from high above, the sharp talons snatching fresh fish instead of whatever it is gophers eat. Her freedom was not found in some mythical autonomy to do whatever she wanted or be whatever she wanted. No, her freedom was found in being who she was created to be, because that is true freedom. That’s the freedom that Jesus is talking about today. The freedom that comes from abiding in His word, from continuing in His word, from being shaped by His word. You don’t set a fish free from the water. The fish’s freedom is found in the water, being who it was created to be. So also, our freedom in Christ. “If you continue in my word you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The truth of our sin, the truth of our salvation, truth that Luther recognized, posted as the very first of those 95 theses, all those years ago, the entire life of the believers lived in repentance, rejoicing in the gift of forgiveness, the truth that our righteousness comes to us as a gift from a merciful God, the righteousness that God gives to us, the truth that there is nothing we could ever do to hope to save ourselves, trying to win our own salvation, is like a fish trying to live as an eagle, or eagle trying to live as a fish. The fish would suffocate in the eagle’s nest, and the eagle would drown in the fish’s bed. Their freedom is found in being who God created them to be. Our freedom is found in the same place, living as the people God created us to be. Even more importantly, living as the people God redeemed us to be. Continuing in His word of forgiveness, abiding in the words of new creation spoken over us in the water of baptism, confessing our sin, being free from the burden of guilt that would suffocate us, being free to forgive those who have sinned against us, free from wallowing in the bitterness and hatred that would drown us. Our freedom is found in spreading the wings of compassion, living in self-sacrifice towards the people around us. Freedom is not an excuse to selfish living. Freedom is finally being released from shallow and short-sighted mentality of the world, to live as the people of God. Credits haven’t rolled yet. Life goes on, so we march on as the people of God, continuing in His word, continuing in the message of Reformation. Faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone, Christ alone. Continuing in His word. That’s what makes us free. In Jesus name, Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen.  Over the last several years, the term click bate has become common in our everyday social conversations, maybe not for you. For those who don’t know, click bait refers to headlines, maybe a picture, some sort of article that’s written in such a way that you just have to click it to see what’s in there, only to discover there’s really not much in there: celebrity scandals, sports rumors political rumblings. The main purpose of clickbait is simply to attract attention, it’s not to deliver news, and in many ways, the conversation about Cesar in today’s gospel reading is nothing more than first century click bait. Matthew includes this conversation, along with two other questions that people come to ask Jesus during Holy Week, and none of these questions are asked from a place of honest curiosity. No one is simply looking for Jesus’ guidance. Every single one of these questions is just an effort to get Jesus to say something that would get him in trouble, to say something scandalous, to say something illegal. It’s all just clickbait. There’s the Sadducees. The Sadducees don’t even believe in the resurrection. The Sadducees don’t even believe in the new creation, and they come to Jesus to ask him a hypothetical question about a woman who had seven husbands on earth. Whose husband will be her husband in heaven? They don’t really want to know. They don’t think heaven is even a real thing. They just want Jesus to look foolish in front of the crowds. Then you have the Pharisees, of course. The Pharisees consider themselves to be the experts in God’s law, and so they asked Jesus “What’s the most important Bible verse?” “Which is the greatest commandment?” They’re not asking from a place of curiosity. They think they’re ready to pick apart whatever answer He gives. It’s all just clickbait. And so also the question in today’s text. The question about taxes to Caesar is not an honest question from people just trying to figure out how to navigate a complicated life in a broken world. No, it’s just clickbait. Look at who it’s asked by. A couple of really strange allies, the Pharisees and the Herodians. We know who the Pharisees are. They come up all the time in the gospels. They’re a group of people who believe that the Messiah would come once enough of Israel was pure, once enough of God’s people kept enough of God’s law, just good enough to bring about a certain level of purity into the promised land, and so they hate the Romans and the impurity that the Romans bring. The Pharisees are a constant opponent of John the Baptist and of Jesus, so we know who the Pharisees are, but the Herodians, now there is a new group. They’re actually only mentioned in the entire New Testament in this story both, in Matthew and in Mark. Now we’re also told in Mark, very early in the ministry of Jesus, that the Herodians and the Pharisees were working together to silence Jesus. But think about them. We don’t know much about them beyond their name, but their name speaks volumes. The Herodians, named after King Herod. King Herod, a man who became king by allying himself to His Roman overlords. And so the Pharisees, who saw the presence of the Romans as an impediment, stopping the arrival of the Messiah, joined forces with the Herodians, who were in league with those very same Romans. It’s been said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Apparently, nothing brings rivals together more than a shared hatred for the Son of God in human flesh. These strange allies come to Jesus with all kinds of flattery, but Jesus sees right through it, because Jesus knows. They comment that He’s not swayed by appearances. Now that’s actually something both the Pharisees and Herodians are guilty of. The Pharisees who practice their righteousness, so as to be seen by men, and the Herodians who betrayed their people so they could live in palaces built by the Romans, they comment that Jesus is true, that He teaches the truth. Something our Lord demonstrates by His response to them, “Why do you put me to the test you hypocrites?” He speak the truth. He sees right through, and there is in His response a word of judgment for the flatterers, but also a word of comfort for us. Something that’s not even really the main point of the story, but it’s worth a moments reflection this morning. And it’s simply this. Jesus knows. He knows. He knew what was in their hearts. He knew what was behind their flattery. He wasn’t fooled. He wasn’t lulled into a false sense of friendship only to be blindsided when they spring their trap. No Jesus knows. He knew them. He knows us. The caution is that Jesus knows all too well what lies behind our flatteries too. He knows what lies behind our false promises, our attempts to earn His favor, or earn His blessing. He knows what we really want to say, but that’s also the comfort. He invites us to say it. More than just caution there’s comfort in knowing that our Lord knows what we need even before we ask it. He knows the frustration that’s on our hearts. We don’t need to gussy it up with fancy words. He knows when we’re getting tired of praying for the same thing over and over again, feeling like no one’s listening. He invites us to pray anyway. He knows when we’re angry, He knows when we’re hurt, He knows when we’re upset, He knows every situation in our life. He knows and He invites us to pray anyway. And because He already knows, we can pray with boldness and with confidence. We’re bold in our prayer because He’s the one who told us to pray. We’re bold because we’re not telling him anything He doesn’t already know anyway. We’re bold because He understands our prayer even when we can’t put it into words quite the way we want to. And we’re confident. We’re confident that He hears us. We’re confident that He loves us. We’re confident that He is the only one who can truly help us. We’re confident that He will answer according to His gracious will. Jesus knows and so we are free to pray with boldness and with confidence. Go back to the question that they actually asked Him. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or is it not.” The Pharisees are ready to pounce if Jesus supports and defends the Romans, and the Herodians are there ready to pounce if Jesus speaks against the tax, but Jesus won’t play their game. He’s not boxed in by their false dichotomy, their either/or. Jesus says “No render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Render to God the things that are God’s”. With these words our Lord reminds us that we are in fact citizens of two kingdoms, but He is Lord of both. The things that are Caesars aren’t really Caesars, as if they didn’t first belong to the king of the universe. It is the Lord of all creation who is ultimately in control of all things. That’s what we learned from Isaiah today, as we saw in that reading, He’s even been known to use earthly rulers to accomplish His will even when those earthly rulers have no idea that they’re being used as part of God’s plan. Even when those earthly rulers laugh in the face of God. Nebuchadnezzar did not know that in capturing Jerusalem He was being used as the Lord’s hand of judgment. And neither did Cyrus know that by returning the remnant back to Jerusalem he was acting as the Lord’s hand of restoration. But God used them anyway. We cannot say, with the same level of certainty, whether the Lord is maneuvering any political events in our own day, the same way that He did with Cyrus, but we can say with certainty that He is the king of all creation, and that all things are ultimately in His hand. That then serves as the foundation for how we live as citizens of whatever earthly nation we have to be part of. We render to Caesar the things that are appropriate to his office, we honor our offices, we honor the offices of our leaders, even if we don’t agree with the person holding that office, pay our taxes, advocate for justice and morality according to God’s design for creation, participate in elections. Some Christians even run for office, fill other vocations in government. That’s all well and good, but we always do it remembering the perspective that our Lord has given us in His word. Take Psalm 146. That Psalm exhorts us not to put our trust in princes or in the sons of man, but there is no salvation there. Princes die and when their breath departs, on that very day their plans perish. In the United States we don’t even have to wait for the rulers to die, we just wait until the next election. Soon the plans and visions of the American leaders come undone as a new group takes office.  Psalm 20 reminds us not to trust in chariots and horses. The war horse is a vain hope for salvation. Much of the world around us has looked to politics and earthly governments as if they can be sources of strength, hope, and comfort. Those hopes will collapse. Those hopes will fall because those governments and those leaders will eventually collapse and fall. But the Word of the Lord it stands forever. And Psalm 33 proclaims that the Lord can bring the plans of the earthly rulers to nothing. He can frustrate all people’s plans because He sees all and He knows all, and He’s not intimidated by the size of someone’s army, He’s not swayed by public opinion, by popularity. He is righteous and He is merciful, and He is our only hope of salvation. When times are good, or when times are bad, He alone is the Lord. So we render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, but we render to God the things that are God’s. We fear, love, and trust in Him above all things especially, above all earthly princes. We fear the one who can destroy body and soul in hell more than we fear the one who can imprison us, or the one who can oppress us, or the one who can tax us. We love the one who demonstrated His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, He died to make us His own. We love Him more than we love the one who flatters us to get our vote, who supports us with the tax credit, and we trust the one who sees through the flattery of men, the one who is not swayed by public opinion, the one who has promised to work all things together for the good of those who follow him. We fear, love, and trust in God above all things, and we ask our Lord to make the words of our closing hymn true in our lives, that Jesus would be our truest treasure, that we would prize Him above the flattery and praise of the world, that we would see our Savior and His gift of salvation as our true wealth. He is our life, He is our health, He is our joy, He is our crown. So that we always live as citizens of the Kingdom of God trusting in our Lord at every turn. May God grant it, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen.  The Lord’s prophet Ezekiel was given a vision. Now to understand that vision we have to remember back to the days of king Solomon, actually David before him, even as far back as Moses before him. When the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, the Lord acted upon the promises that He had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He visited and redeemed his people, setting them free from Pharaoh’s yoke and He did so by taking the form not of a mighty warrior, but that of a pillar, a pillar of smoldering holiness. Like the embers of a campfire, it glowed in the dark of night but it was ashen and smoky in the sunlight, appearing as would a cloud. The glory of the Lord was in the pillar of cloud and fire, which came to be known as the Glory Cloud. When Moses finished the building the Lord’s Tabernacle, that Glory Cloud took its place in the tent of meeting, resting on the Ark of the Covenant, between the angels carved on either side, enthroned between the cherubim. And so, the Lord dwelled among his people to bless them. He was truly Immanual, God with us. The present of God. In the days of King David, the Lord greatly blessed his people. Jerusalem became a thriving city, and David lived in a beautiful palace. The Glory of the Lord still lived in a tent, even though David lived in luxury, and so David sought to fix that situation. He sought to build the Lord a temple, a palace fitting for the king of the universe, but the Lord told David no; that task was given to David’s son Solomon. Upon the completion of Solomon’s temple, the Glory of the Lord left the tent of meeting, and once again entered the Holy of Holies, once again enthroned between the cherubim, but still a Emmanual, always God with his people. But the Lord’s people continued to live in blatant sin for too long, and so no longer was the smoke of their sacrifices and aroma pleasing to Him. It was odious in his nostrils. The time had come for his people to be handed over to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. About 400 years after Solomon built the temple, Babylon destroyed it, but God would not be taken prisoner of war by Babylon, and so the Lord’s prophet, Ezekiel was given a vision. And he watched. He watched as the Glory of the Lord, the Pillar of Cloud and Fire left the temple in Jerusalem before it’s destruction, exiting out the Eastern Gate, passing across the Kidron Valley, and heading out over the Mount of Olives. Later, the prophet Ezekiel would be given a vision of the future temple being restored, a new temple, a better temple, and as part of that vision he saw the Glory of the Lord returning along the same path that it had left. Back over the Mount of Olives, back through the Kidron Valley, entering the Eastern Gate of the Lord’s temple. Emmanuel returning to be with his people once, never to depart. Some 500 years later Ezekiel ‘s second vision began to be fulfilled. The Word became flesh and dwelt among his people, tabernacled among His people and His people beheld His glory, the Glory Cloud, the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, and when the Son of God grew, John no longer referred to his body as His tabernacle, but Jesus Himself calls it His temple that would be destroyed, and restored in three days. And then, when the time was right, Ezekiel’s prophecy came to pass. The Glory of the Lord returns to the temple, riding on a donkey this time. Over the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron Valley, entering by the Eastern Gate, just as the prophet had foretold. But here’s where the confusion sets in. You see, Ezekiel was given a vision of restoration. He did not see the Glory of the Lord returned to his temple in judgment, he saw the Lord return to his temple to be Emmanuel, to be God with His people once again. And yet, as we’ve heard over the last few weeks, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, through the Eastern Gate, Matthew records for us several acts of judgment. The cleansing of the temple, flipping over tables, chasing people out, the cursing of the fig tree, and the three parables that have been our gospel readings for the last three Sundays, the parable of the two sons, the parable of the wicked tenants, the parable of the wedding feast that we heard today. In these parables, the chief priests and the religious leaders are chastised for their failure. They are the son who refused to do the Father’s will, after promising that they would. They are the tenants who beat and killed the Master’s servants, and even his own Son, and they are the invited guests who were not worthy to join the King’s celebrating His Son.  How is it that Ezekiel can foretell the Lord returning to his temple in restoration, but Jesus seems to do so in judgment. Perhaps the solution can be found in five simple words from today’s parable. Those invited were not worthy. And in the context of the parable itself, that really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Just think about the story. It doesn’t fit the story. In the parable, the people did not attend because they have excuses. They have schedule conflicts. One went off to his farm. One went off to his business. The rest seized the king’s servants and as did those in the parable before this, treated them shamefully and even killed them. But that sounds more like they’re absent by choice, rather than they were somehow unworthy of being in the King’s presence. But a moment’s reflection shows that this is the third parable, the third parable of judgement against the religious leaders, and even though it’s a parable of judgment, Ezekiel ‘s vision of restoration holds true. You see ultimately the Lord is not returning to his temple in judgment, He comes to restore His people for their blessing. As we hear the gospel John, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. And that’s the point Jesus is trying to make. In the midst of all this judgment, the flipping over tables, the cursing of trees, the parables against the religious leaders; in the midst of all of it, Jesus wants to remind us that what’s actually happening here is a cause for celebration. The son of God has finally come to fulfill His work as Savior of the nations. He has invited all the nations to celebrate with Him. In this morning’s parable, our Lord offers us a word of caution, and also a word of hope, a word of law and of gospel. First the parable reminds us that the events of Holy Week, beginning with the Glory of the Lord returning to the Eastern Gate, riding on a donkey are a cause for celebration, not just for the Israelites who were first invited, but for all people. As the King says in the parable, as many as you can find out in the streets, both good and bad. That means that this feast is for you. The King of the universe has invited you to join him in celebrating the death and resurrection of his Son. That’s the gospel of this parable. The gracious invitation of the King is for you and that invitation has made you worthy. You are not worthy because of your accomplishments, you’re not worthy because of your personality, you’re not worthy because you attend church, or give to charitable causes, or help little old ladies with their groceries. You’re worthy because on that cross, God shed His blood for you. The death of Jesus in your place has forgiven your sin. The blood of Jesus has covered your unrighteousness. The son of God has declared you worthy. You are invited to the feast. In the parable, those who were declared worthy to celebrate with the king, despised his generosity. They refused to live as what the King had declared them to be, they refused to live as His guests, people worthy to be in His presence. They came up with lame excuses. But excuses aren’t the point. The point is their attitude toward the generosity of the King. All He wanted to do was celebrate with them, to feed the a feast of rich food full of marrow and aged wine, well refined, but they said no.  And by rejecting the King’s invitation, they made themselves unworthy. Accepting the invitation would not have made them worthy, they were already worthy.  The King had already seen to that. But their rejection does make them unworthy. Instead of being in the presence of a generous host, at a heavenly banquet, they end up facing the wrath of a scorned and a dishonored royal. That’s the warning in the parable. So also for you so also for me. We don’t make ourselves worthy of God’s generosity. We don’t make ourselves worthy to be in His presence by accepting his invitation. The invitation itself has already made us worthy. Jesus made us worthy through His life death and resurrection in our place. Jesus is the groom; we are His bride the church. Being joined to His, name we are covered in His righteousness. When the son of God came in human flesh, it was like He had proposed marriage to the world. The Son of God was betrothed to the world, each day bringing Him one day closer to the wedding. But now the engagement is over. The wedding has happened. The groom did not wear a golden ring around His finger, but a ring of thorns around His head, and He did not seal His promise with the words “I do” but with the anguished cry “It is finished.” To use the image of the parable, now that the wedding has happened, it’s time for the feast. You’re on the guest list. There’s a chair for you, wine glass for you. This little tent-folded name card with your name on it. The King has invited you to celebrate the marriage of His Son, the celebration of His Son. And I know that we as Lutherans get uncomfortable with language like invitation, and rightfully so. I mean, after all, there are Christians around the world who have misunderstood and misapplied the language of invitation, teaching people that the cause of their salvation is not the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, but rather an act of their own will that make a decision to give their lives to Jesus, to accept Him as their personal Lord and Savior, and it’s true that such a false misunderstanding must be refuted, because it robs people of the gift of certainty and of confidence and it robs God of His grace. And so, we cannot and should not leave false teaching unchallenged, but neither should we let the misuse of a word or concept rob us of the gospel in this parable, because it’s beautiful. The language of invitation in this parable makes it abundantly clear that you are included in the Lord’s feast. You are on God’s guest list. Of course, we don’t make ourselves worthy to attend the feast. There’s nothing left for us to do. You’ve already been included. The King took care of that. All that’s left is to join the celebration, approaching our Lord’s altar to participate in his feast, to be fed with heavenly food by our Lord in his Supper, receiving from Him the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation, and anticipating the day when we will together, with all his Saints celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end. So remember the quote from Luther that we heard last week: “You get the god that you asked for.” We have a God who is taking care of everything for us. He has forgiven our sin and made us worthy to be in his presence. He has set a table before us, in the presence of our enemies, a table of a celebration of His Son. He has given us the gift of His Spirit to the proclamation of his Word so that we can receive this invitation with joy and with repentance, and He himself said, there is much rejoicing in heaven when sinners repent and participate in the marriage feast of the Lamb. And so that’s what we do. Ezekiel’s vision has been fulfilled. The glory of the Lord has returned to His temple and entered through the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem to die for the sin of the world. And it’s here among us today in the gifts of bread wine on this very altar. The Lamb’s high feast is ready. You are invited. So lay down the excuses, set aside the pride, rejoice in the gifts of the King. Welcome to the Lord’s feast. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. You woke up this morning and it’s October. You know it’s October because temperatures are cooling off a little bit. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, there’s about to be a whole lot more balloons in the air and tourist’s feet on the ground. You’ve seen the Halloween decorations out around homes, you’ve seen the candy out in the stores, you’ve seen the Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations out too, no doubt. This is your friendly reminder that Christmas music is only about a month away and so given our current cultural calendar thoughts of Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday might be nowhere near the front of your mind, but as we continue to walk through Matthew’s gospel that’s exactly where we are. The events of today’s gospel reading take place on Monday of Holy Week, the day after Palm Sunday. That’s important for a few reasons. First, as you read the gospels it becomes very clear that the closer you get to the cross, the more direct and more intense the opposition to Jesus becomes. Their questions get more loaded, their attacks get more blatant, and that should make sense, and the crucifixion, it didn’t just happen out of the blue out of nowhere, it was a slow build to the execution of Jesus over the span of three years.  So, it makes sense that by the time you get to those days, right before it happened, the pressure building in the opposition has built up to the point of bursting and the fact it will burst on Thursday when they arrest Jesus, but it’s also significant because as the opposition to Jesus gets more direct his ministry takes on a tone of judgment not really seen to this point. We’ve seen glimpses of it. We saw it a little bit in the parable of the unforgiving servant when he says that anyone who doesn’t forgive with his heart will be thrown into the jailers by the heavenly Father. We saw glimpses of it in the parable of the workers in the vineyard which ended with the question “Look buddy, am I not allowed to do what I want with what belongs to me. Are your eyes burdened by my generosity?” We’ve seen glimpses, but with the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, Jesus moves beyond mere glimpses. His first stop when he got off the donkey was at the temple and he didn’t go into the temple to worship and offer sacrifices, no he went in to flip over tables and to chase people out, proclaiming that God’s house is supposed to be a place of prayer and they had made it into a den of thieves. Strong language. And then after spending the night outside the city, on the way back into Jerusalem on Monday morning, Jesus stops by a fig tree that’s not bearing fruit, and he curses it. Says it will never bear fruit again. Kind of a visual parable to those who are paying attention, a warning to the chief priests and the leaders of the people that what happened to this fig tree, will also happen to them because they are not bearing the fruit that God expected from them. And after cursing the fig tree, Jesus once again goes back to the temple which is where today’s reading picks up. The chief priests and the elders of the people came to challenge Jesus publicly in the temple, for all the crowds to see. Jesus refuses to fall into their trap instead setting a trap of His own. The baptism of John, He asks, “From where did it come? Is it from heaven or is it from man?” Now if Jesus’ is opponents acknowledged that John’s baptism came from heaven, they would also be acknowledging that Jesus’ authority comes from heaven. Just follow the train of thought. John called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. John baptized Jesus, an event accompanied by the voice of God from heaven and the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove. John said that Jesus was the greater one whose sandals he was not worthy to untie. John very clearly confessed Jesus is the Christ, and so to acknowledge that the ministry of John is from heaven, is also to acknowledge that the one that John points us to must also be from heaven. But the opponents of Jesus clearly cannot choose that option, but neither can they choose the other, because if they say that John’s ministry is simply the work of a man, apart from the call or the authority of God, the people will riot. But notice the implication this is actually what they believe. They do believe that John and Jesus are just men, not sent from God. Their hesitation is not due to uncertainty. Their hesitation is due to fear. Fear that they might say the wrong thing and create a riot amongst the crowds. And Jesus knowing the unbelief that’s in their hearts tells them this parable. A man had two sons and he told the first son to go work in the vineyard and the son said “No”, but later changed his mind, and he went. He told the second son to go work in the vineyard and that son said “Yes”, but when the time came, he did not go. The meaning of the parable is so simple and straightforward and clear that even Jesus’ opponents are forced to acknowledge what he’s saying. The Gentiles, the sinners who are like the son who said he would not live according to the father’s will, are in fact entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the Pharisees, and the scribes, and the chief priests, and the leaders of the people because they are like the son who promised to live out his father’s will but are not actually doing so. For John came in the way of righteousness, Jesus says, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did and even when you saw it Jesus says even when you saw how it changed their lives you still did not change your mind and believe John. So, Jesus makes clear two things that he wants his opponents, two things but he wants the crowds the temple, two things that he wants us to hear very clearly today. The first is simply that John and came in the way of righteousness but more importantly the way of righteousness is the way of repentance. It’s clear that John came in the way of righteousness and that means that John came as a part of God’s plan to restore creation. God had a plan. God had a plan to forgive sins, to undo the power of death, to fulfill the promise he made to Adam and Eve in the garden that he would send one who would crush the serpent’s head. God had a plan to fulfill the promise he made to Abraham that through his descendants all the nations of earth would be blessed. God had a plan to fulfill the countless prophecies, the sacrificial system. God had a plan that he had been implementing since the moment of the fall, putting all the pieces in place and when the time was right, the time had fully come, God sent his son as the climax in fulfillment of that plan. The plan that would bring God’s righteousness to creation is a gift and John was part of that plan to restore righteousness. Jesus even told John it was fitting for John to baptize him in order that they might fulfill all righteousness. John had a place in God’s plan. But his place was to preach repentance. His place was to point people to Jesus. That’s what Jesus means when he says that John came in the way of righteousness. He came preaching repentance. The chief priests and the rulers of the people did not believe him and even when they saw the way repentance changed the lives that did listen to John, they harden their hearts against John and against the one to whom John pointed. That’s what Jesus wants his opponents to see, and that’s the message to us today too. The way of righteousness is the way of repentance. That was John’s message. Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near.  The good son in the parable is the one who repents, turns his back on his former way of life, his former choice, and does the will of his father. And the tax collectors and the prostitutes are held up as examples, because of their repentance, because they left behind the sin of their old lives to follow Jesus instead. Jesus even tells his opponents that this change ought to have inspired such a change in their own lives. Repentance is all over this text. The ministry of Jesus began with John telling people to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Now at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he curses the fig tree for not seeing that fruit, and tells a parable about repentance. The way of righteousness is the way of repentance. John was sent to prepare it. Jesus was sent to fulfill it. And now we are called to live in it. We’re in October, so reformation is on the horizon. The banners are up in the narthex. The very first of Martin Luther ‘s 95 theses says “When our Lord and master Jesus Christ said repent, he willed that the entire life of the believer be one of repentance.” Our Lord calls us to a life of repentance, a life shaped by his law and his gospel. As he did with the tax collectors and prostitutes and Matthew’s gospel, our Lord calls out to us in our sin today and he calls us out of a life of greed, to turn our back on a life of manipulation. He calls us to abandon pride and self-righteousness. He calls us to give up self-indulgence, to give up immorality, calls us to repentance. And his very words that call us, are what put to death in us that which is sinful.  His words that show us our sin, fill us with contrition, a recognition for our sin being what it is and the consequences for it. A contrition that knows not only have I sinned against God, but I deserve punishment for it. Are the ways of the Lord really unjust, oh Israel when he punishes us for our sin? That’s what we deserve. We deserve punishment. We deserve abandonment. We deserve death, and yet our Lord comes to us with his Word of law to show us this reality and to work contrition and repentance in our hearts and in our lives. But he doesn’t stop there because true repentance doesn’t stop there. True repentance doesn’t stop at the terror of God’s judgment. True repentance also trusts in the deliverance of Jesus. This parable takes place during Holy Week and true repentance always remembers and trusts what happened at the end of Holy Week, believes that what happened on that cross happened for me, and for my salvation, and it happened for you. On that cross, the wrath of God was satisfied. On that cross my sin is forgiven and so is yours. Sin forgiven by the entire life death and resurrection of Jesus. Faith that trusts that when Jesus cries out “It is finished” He meant it. That is the truth. This is the life our Lord has given us in his church. Not a life of chasing our own righteousness. A life of repentance, rejoicing in the righteousness that God gives to me as a gift, and a life of living in that righteousness through repentance. Not some one-time event that just marks the beginning of our Christian life. Repentance isn’t some tedious listing of all the sins I have committed, all the sins I can remember. Repentance is an outlook. It’s a way of living. It’s a way of looking at the world. It’s a way of looking at myself, it’s a way of looking at God, who He is, what he expects from me, because ultimately, he expects me to listen to him, and to trust him. And he provides for me the very things he expects. He calls me to listen, so he proclaims to me his Word through the voice of his church. He calls me to trust, so through that very same word He gives me his spirit to create and sustain that faith in my heart. And He does the same for you. In that listening, He creates contrition and faith and works a life of repentance in us. Through that same word He works repentance in my life, with the sorrow over my sin and the trust in His forgiveness. This is life in our Lord’s church. This is the way of righteousness. We hear God’s law, and believe what it says. We hear God’s gospel; we trust it’s promises. It really is that simple. So as we continue to follow Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew, thanks be to God for this gift of repentance. Thanks be to God for the reconciliation He brings to us. Thanks be to God for the way of righteousness, and may you continue to guide us in that way all of our days in this life and into the life to come. In Jesus name, Amen.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, open our ears, that your Word may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. The disciples asked Jesus a question and that question was “Who is The greatest in The Kingdom of heaven?” and Jesus answered with an object lesson, calling a little child into his midst, telling them whoever humbles himself like this child will be the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven, because children are dependent on their parents for everything, for food, clothing, for shelter, for love, for everything else. So Jesus’s message is simple and straightforward. Set aside your own claim to greatness, humble yourself, let the Lord provide everything you need. And true to form, Peter’s response misses the mark. “Jesus how often shall I forgive my brother? Seven times?” Now it’s important to note that Peter thought He was being generous. Peter thought He was going to go above and beyond. Perhaps Peter had in mind the common symbolism of the number seven in the Bible, thinking he was offering full and complete forgiveness. Perhaps Peter was referring to the commonly held view at the time that you needed to forgive your brother three times, offering to do twice as many plus one, but whatever the case, Peter did think he was going to receive a favorable response from Jesus, and instead Jesus first multiplies Peter’s number from 7 to 77 or more likely 70 times 7. But either way, the confusion about what number Jesus has in mind, is quickly cleared up the simple message of one of the most straightforward parables in all of the gospels. The message is simple. Forgiveness is not something to be counted. Forgiveness is not something to be measured. Be always willing, be always ready to forgive. It truly is a simple parable. The danger of preaching the parables is over preaching the parables and preaching the meaning right out of them. Instead, today we’ll just let the parable speak for itself. It’s divided into three simple parts. The master forgives the servant. The servant refuses to forgive his fellow servant.  And so the master revokes his earlier forgiveness, and the first servant is punished. It’s very simple. There are a few details that help clarify the message. The first is the size of the two debts that Jesus mentioned. The first debt the servant owed is actually a ridiculous amount. It’s absurd. It would be unbelievable that this would actually happen in real life. The first servant owes his master 10,000 talents. What is a talent? Good question. I’m glad you asked. The talent is 6000 denarii. What’s a denarius? Good question. Glad you asked. A denarius is a full day’s labor for an hourly worker. So, if you want to put that into our context, minimum wage in New Mexico according to Google on Saturday afternoon is $12.00 an hour. So, a denarius for an 8-hour work day in New Mexico, is $96 which means that one talent in New Mexico is approximately $576,000.  And this servant owed his master 10,000 talents.  $5.76 billion with a B that is. That is the debt that this is servant owed.  A debt to be repaid by someone who makes $12.00 an hour.  Now a person who works six days a week, over the span of 60 years, without ever taking any vacation time, which I believe is a very generous estimate, that person works fewer than 20,000 days in their entire life But that person would have to work 60 million days, and hand over every penny, without buying food without paying rent, without spending anything on anything else, 60 million days to pay off that debt. It’s such a large debt that it’s absurd. But that’s the point. The second debt: the second servant owes the first servant 100 denarii or 100 days wages, and, as we just said the denarius is about $96.00, so about $100. So, 100 denarii would be about $10,000. I think there’s actually two points Jesus is making here. First, $10,000 is not nothing, especially not to someone who makes $12.00 an hour, working an hourly wage. But the second point, the $10,000 is still nothing compared to 5.76 billion. $10,000 is a lot of money, but it’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the debt that that first servant was forgiven. I think that’s one of the points Jesus wants to make for us this morning. It’s as simple as that. The sins that other people commit against us, they’re not nothing.  They cause pain. They cause damage. Emotional damage, maybe physical damage, financial damage. When other people sin against me they can hurt my reputation. They fill us with guilt. They fill us with embarrassment or shame. They wreak havoc. They sweep through our lives like a tornado, leaving a string of damage behind them, or maybe it’s more like slowly chipping away at us making, us feel like a rusted out old truck frame sitting out in the sun. Either way, the sins other people commit against us are definitely not nothing, but their cost pales in comparison to the debt that we owe our master. Just think about it. To start with, every single sin that we commit against another person is also a sin against God. To use the metaphor of the parable, I may have sinned against you, to the tune of a $10,000 debt, but I’ve also sinned against another and another and another and another and another, and all those debts add up, piled upon each, other creating a number so big that it would be absurd for me to try to repay it. There’s also the sins that I commit that don’t even harm other people, those are still sins against God. I owe him for those too, and then there’s the internal sins that don’t cause any direct harm to anything. The lustful dream. The hateful thought. The prideful self-righteousness. All added on to the tab of the already absurdly large debt that I owe my master. Yes, someone may owe me for the sin they have committed against me. What they owe me pales in comparison to the debt that I owe God. But you didn’t need me to explain that to you because Jesus speaks clearly, and neither is it difficult to understand what happens next. The first servant cries out for mercy, mercy in the form of patience. Just give me time. Have patience with me and I will repay you everything. Now given the amount of debt that’s owed, it’s hard to see how this could be anything other than empty words. How could an hourly worker be expected to pay back a multibillion dollar debt? All the patience in the world is not going to allow for enough days to accumulate that kind of cash, but regardless, the master responds in mercy. Actually, the Greek there says the master responded in pity, splagchnizomai, again.  Forgiving the multibillion dollar debt, sending the servant away with a new lease on life, all because of the splagchnizomai of the master.  A new lease on life. Think about your own debt, if you have any. If someone came up to you and cancelled all your student loans, someone came up to you and cancelled all your medical debt, if you woke up tomorrow didn’t have a mortgage, woke up tomorrow didn’t have a car payment, how would your life be different? What kind of freedom would you feel? A forgiven debt is a new chance at life. It’s a chance to live a new kind of life, and that’s exactly what this servant got. So what did He do with it? Verse 28 says he goes out and he finds another servant who owes him money. This was not a chance meeting. They didn’t stumble across each other in the marketplace. He went out and sought out his brother, and upon finding him, he demanded payment for the debt. No, getting $10,000 is not nothing, especially for an hourly worker, but it is nothing compared to 5.76 billion. The second servant pleads for pity with almost the exact same words as the first. Have patience with me. I will repay you. While the master responded with splagchnizomai the servant does not. He has his other servant put in prison until the debt can be paid. Now how, you might ask, is he supposed to earn money to repay the debt if he’s in prison. I don’t know, but I think that’s kind of the point. He wasn’t ever going to get his money back. Maybe he didn’t even want his money back. Maybe he just wanted to see his fellow servant punished, and there, I think, is the main question Jesus is putting before Peter, putting before his disciples, putting before us. In this parable, how do you see yourself? When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see someone who has been forgiven an absurd debt or do you see someone who is owed something by the world around you, by the people around you? The truth is, at least according to the parable, that you’re both, but which one shapes your day-to-day interactions, which one is shapes the way you approach life? Remember this parable is part of a larger conversation of Matthew chapter 18. Unless you humble yourselves and become like a child you will not see the kingdom of heaven Jesus says. Jesus responds to a question about greatness by pointing us to humility, and when Peter follows up that point well, the question that would still allow him some sort of greatness to cling to of his own, the greatness of his forgiveness, of his own generosity, Jesus answers with a parable demonstrating that the people of God are people who have been given or forgiven a debt of such absurd magnitude we could never have hope to repay it ourselves. There is no greatness of our own to stand on, so when I look in the mirror, what do I see? A child of God who relies on Him to survive or one who still has some sliver of personal greatness to stand on my own? What is my attitude towards life, and what is yours. One who rejoices in the forgiveness and the pity and the splagchnizomai of the master or one who treats that mercy as if it was mine by right, turning around and demanding justice and payment and punishment on those who have sinned against me. There’s an old  notion that you’ll see what you look for in life. So Jesus calls us to see ourselves for what we truly are, people who have been forgiven a ridiculously large debt, people who have been forgiven a debt we could never have hoped to repay for ourselves, people who are now free to live in the joy and the freedom that comes from having that debt relieved. Through the forgiveness we have received, the Holy Spirit is at work in us, empowering us to forgive others. As the parable makes clear, the hurt and the real consequences in my life that are the result of someone’s sin against me, those aren’t nothing. I don’t have to pretend like it doesn’t hurt. The emotions that I feel when I’m the victim of someone else’s sin are real emotions and they’re complicated. The hurt may never go away. The emotions won’t go away just because I tell them to. That’s the thing about forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that I rid myself of all my hurt feelings. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that I make myself happy about a bad situation. Forgiveness means that I set aside the right for the pursuit of vengeance. It means that I released that person from whatever retribution or retaliation that I might want to take, which maybe even they deserve. I turn my back on that and I look to Jesus. The emotions involved will certainly be complicated. The hurt may never go away. The memory of what happened may forever change the way that I relate to that person, how much access to my life I give them, how close I allow them to be. But forgiveness is releasing the pursuit of vengeance. The message of Jesus’s parable doesn’t change. You have been forgiven more than you can imagine. God does not pursue you in vengeance, God pursues you to forgive you. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him. That’s who Jesus is for you, and Jesus invites us to live in that forgiveness. It’s not a punishment. It’s freedom. Freedom to embrace each day as a gift given to me by the hand of a God who’s forgiven a ridiculously large debt that I owed. That’s what this parable is truly about. The parable about the forgiveness of the master, included in a larger section of Matthew, emphasizing how our Lord provides for all our needs of body and soul as his children. So today let’s keep the message simple. We rejoice in the forgiveness that we have received; we pray that the Holy Spirit would work through God’s Word and God’s gifts to renew our hearts so that we can be just as quick to forgive others too, and share the joy and the freedom that comes from being a child of God. May God grant that to us here for Jesus’s sake, Amen.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. If you’re a fan of the Mandalorian you probably thought of the show as soon as you saw the sermon title. Then if you’re not a fan of the Mandalorian, let me give you just a little bit of background. You see the phrase “This is the way” is common in that show.  Mandalorians are a group of people who have all agreed to live according to a specific code, very rigid code, and the Mandalorian character himself, throughout the series says “This is the way” as his justification for how he’s behaving whenever someone asks him why he’s doing what he’s doing. Why won’t you take off your helmet? Well, because Mandalorians don’t take off their helmet. “This is the way.” It’s just another way of saying that’s just the way it is. Now the phrase has become common in pop culture. I actually think it’s a fairly decent summary of the message Jesus has for his disciples in today’s reading. The message that Jesus has for us. “That’s just the way it is.”  This is the way. Peter had just confessed that Jesus was Messiah. Peter had just confessed that Jesus was the Christ and from that time on Matthew tells us Jesus began to show his disciples that it was necessary, it was required for the Messiah to depart for Jerusalem, to suffer many things, to be killed, and to be raised. And Jesus also said, if anyone wants to follow him well then that person must deny himself and take up his cross. It is necessary. That’s just the way it is. This is the way for Jesus. This is the way for me, and this is the way for you. Today’s text marks a significant turning point in Matthew’s gospel. Up until this point Jesus has been revealing himself to be Messiah to the people around him, and with last week’s text, Peter proclaimed Jesus to be the Christ, and Jesus agreed. But now Jesus shows his disciples exactly what the Christ came to do. Up until this point, whenever Jesus faced conflict, Jesus withdrew from that conflict. When Herod wanted him dead, Jesus went to the wilderness to be alone. When the Pharisees, and Sadducees, and scribes would seek out Jesus to challenge him, Jesus would withdraw. He left for Gentile regions, like Tyre and Sidon. But now that’s all about change. To use Luke’s description of the same thing, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem. The time has come for Jesus to face his opponents head on, and so the tone of his preaching is about to change, which will result in more opposition. The tone of his parables is about to change, with even more emphasis on the judgment that is coming to the Jews who have rejected him. He will remind his disciples multiple times over the next few chapters, but every day he is now one day closer to death, and he will tell them repeatedly that death is not the end. Last week Peter was the voice of truth. Last week Peter was the one confessing Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, but not this week. No this week Peter is the voice of Satan trying to keep Jesus off of the cross. One commentator noted that the interesting thing about Peter’s words is that it shows us that despite the wide variety of different expectations people had for the Messiah, apparently nobody thought the Messiah would be the suffering servant. Would He be a great warrior? Of course, some said. Would He be a political powerhouse? That made sense to people. Would He be a wise or inspiring teacher, sure. But would he be humiliated? Would He be defeated? Would He be hanging on a cross? Well certainly not that. Far be it from the Messiah for may that never happened to Him, but how often are Peter’s words our own. How often do we have the same response to the suffering of our Lord. The cross continues to be a scandal, even for Christians 2000 years after. There are large segments of the church today who don’t like to see the body of Jesus on the cross. They don’t like to see the body of Jesus crucified and broken. It’s easier to contemplate the victorious king than the crucified one, but even in the scriptures themselves, in the glorious coronation scene of Revelation chapters four and five, when Jesus ascends into heaven to take His place at the right hand of the Father, as we confess in the creeds, John says he does so as the Lamb who was slain, still bearing in his body the marks of death, even though he now lives. The Messiah is the crucified Messiah, the resurrected one. Peter’s words, his reaction to the thought of the death of Jesus put a significant question before us. What do we expect our Lord to look like? How do we expect the Messiah to work in our lives? Are we looking for financial security? Are we looking for the Jesus who will give us whatever we declare in his name, like a promotion, or a new house, or cure of a terminal illness? Are we looking for the Messiah who will overthrow the Romans of our day, one who will bring about a truly Christian nation where all those sinners and heretics are finally going to get what’s coming to them. Well, if so, then Jesus’s words to Peter are also his words to us. “Get behind me Satan.” Don’t try to keep Jesus off the cross. Don’t try to turn Jesus into something that he’s not. Don’t try to confuse the clear and simple message that Jesus placed before his disciples in today’s text, because he’s placing it before us too. Yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and to be Messiah, to be the Christ of God means to take up the cross, to go to the cross for the sin of the world. That’s the plain and simple message of this text. The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Jesus himself walked it, and anyone who desires to follow him must walk it too. When Peter corrected Jesus, Jesus’s response was that He must take up his cross, He must finish the atoning work that He was sent to do, and not only that, Peter will have to carry his own cross. Every disciple will. Just as Jesus carried His cross, so also anyone following Him must carry His own cross. This is the way.  What does it mean? What does it mean for us to carry our own crosses? A big part of that answer is found simply in the disciples experience of watching other people carry their cross in the first century. Remember at this point they didn’t know that Jesus was going to carry His cross through the streets of Jerusalem, eventually being nailed to it at Calvary. But they had almost certainly seen other people carry crosses. They had been there as criminals carried their crosses through shouts and ridicule, through scorn, through mockery, through people looking down on them through condescending eyes. To carry your cross was a mark of humiliation. It was embarrassment as the one carrying the cross marched toward their own destruction. At lease in part, that is what Jesus is telling His disciples. That’s what He is telling us. That to follow Him is to walk a path that will bring us scorn and ridicule and maybe even looks of pity from the world around us. When the world sees Christians walking in God’s design for marriage, in chastity, the world laughs at us, the world ridicules, the world spews hateful rhetoric, call us bigots. But we walk anyway. We follow Jesus because Jesus is the way. When the world see Christians walking the way of self denial, self control, the world laughs at us, tells us all the things we’re missing out on, but we walk anyway, follow Jesus because this is the way. And when we take up our cross, and walk our life’s journey being outcasts in the eyes of the world, walk as people who are looking at us think they are better than us, smarter than us, more sophisticated than us, whatever the case may be, we walk anyway because that’s what it means to follow Jesus. This is the way, the way of the Christian life this side of heaven, is the way of the cross. It is the way of self denial. To use Paul’s language, it’s the way of abhorring what is evil, denying ourselves from indulging the evil within and clinging instead to that which is good. Rather than listening to our world and our own sinful flesh as they spur us on in the desire to get even with those who have wronged us, it is the way of blessing not cursing those who persecute us. And as far as it depends on us, living at harmony at peace with all people. Rather than taking the easy road of isolating ourselves in the cocoon of our own choosing, pretending we are a kingdom unto ourselves, instead we live outside of ourselves, contributing to the needs of the saints, seeking to show hospitality, building a community within the body of Christ in this place and being so connected to it, we care enough about what happens to the people around us, that we weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. And none of this comes naturally to our fallen nature, but this is the way for the people of God. To take up our cross daily, even though it means the world will look down on us. To deny ourselves, even though it’s hard, for what good would it be to gain the whole world and forfeit our lives. I hear that and I think of the look on Gollum face when he finally has the ring of power as he’s sinking into the lava beneath mountain doom. Living by the world standards of success and failures, is no different. What good is it to gain the whole world, to find acceptance in the eyes of the world, but to forfeit our lives. We may get what we think we want but it won’t give us what we need, and so we walk the way of the cross. That is the life of the Christian. Jesus is not telling us to go find a cross, to pick it up and carry it. He’s just simply telling us this is what it will be like. To follow me is to carry your cross. And so we do so, but as we do so, we don’t lose sight of the fact that Jesus is teaching us about our crosses, is actually sandwiched in between two mentions of his cross. His cross comes first, and His cross comes last. The text begins with Jesus telling his disciples it is necessary for him to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die and be raised again, and then the text ends with Jesus promising that some of those listening would not die until they saw the Son of man coming with his Kingdom, that happens on the cross, that happens during the events of Holy Week. We can unpack those details later, but the point for today is this: whatever crosses we have to bear in this life, not one of them will forgive my sin, not one of them would give me my salvation. It’s only the cross of Jesus that does that, and that’s why it was indeed necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, to bear that cross. Because He is the Savior. Because He took on human flesh, in order to sacrifice that flesh for the sin of the world. So we always keep our crosses in context. Whatever little crosses I have to bear in my daily life it’s worth it. But it’s only worth it because of the cross that Jesus carried first. The cross that he was nailed to, the cross from which he declared “It is finished”, the cross upon which he gave up his spirit. It’s His death that forgives our sin. It’s His resurrection that is our hope, and so we walked away at the cross with confidence, not because it makes us better Christians, not because it’s going to get me a better seat when I get to heaven. Simply because Jesus told me this is the way. That’s the way he walked first and it’s the way he walks with me, and the way he walks with you today. To be a Christian is to bear your cross. But you do not bear it alone, for you have now been crucified with Christ. It is no longer you who lives but Christ who lives in you. But even more than that, to walk the way of the cross, to be a Christian, is to belong to the one who first bore His cross for you, and nothing can snatch you out of his hand. So may our gracious Lord who willingly endured the agony and the shame of the cross for our redemption, may He grant us courage to take up our cross daily, to follow Him wherever he leads, may we walk with Him all the way. In Jesus name, Amen.

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.  Let us pray.  O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears, that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. If you’re a fan of the Mandalorian you probably thought of the show as soon as you saw the sermon title. Then if you’re not a fan of the Mandalorian, let me give you just a little bit of background. You see the phrase “This is the way” is common in that show.  Mandalorians are a group of people who have all agreed to live according to a specific code, very rigid code, and the Mandalorian character himself, throughout the series says “This is the way” as his justification for how he’s behaving whenever someone asks him why he’s doing what he’s doing. Why won’t you take off your helmet? Well, because Mandalorians don’t take off their helmet. “This is the way.” It’s just another way of saying that’s just the way it is. Now the phrase has become common in pop culture. I actually think it’s a fairly decent summary of the message Jesus has for his disciples in today’s reading. The message that Jesus has for us. “That’s just the way it is.”  This is the way. Peter had just confessed that Jesus was Messiah. Peter had just confessed that Jesus was the Christ and from that time on Matthew tells us Jesus began to show his disciples that it was necessary, it was required for the Messiah to depart for Jerusalem, to suffer many things, to be killed, and to be raised. And Jesus also said, if anyone wants to follow him well then that person must deny himself and take up his cross. It is necessary. That’s just the way it is. This is the way for Jesus. This is the way for me, and this is the way for you. Today’s text marks a significant turning point in Matthew’s gospel. Up until this point Jesus has been revealing himself to be Messiah to the people around him, and with last week’s text, Peter proclaimed Jesus to be the Christ, and Jesus agreed. But now Jesus shows his disciples exactly what the Christ came to do. Up until this point, whenever Jesus faced conflict, Jesus withdrew from that conflict. When Herod wanted him dead, Jesus went to the wilderness to be alone. When the Pharisees, and Sadducees, and scribes would seek out Jesus to challenge him, Jesus would withdraw. He left for Gentile regions, like Tyre and Sidon. But now that’s all about change. To use Luke’s description of the same thing, Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem. The time has come for Jesus to face his opponents head on, and so the tone of his preaching is about to change, which will result in more opposition. The tone of his parables is about to change, with even more emphasis on the judgment that is coming to the Jews who have rejected him. He will remind his disciples multiple times over the next few chapters, but every day he is now one day closer to death, and he will tell them repeatedly that death is not the end. Last week Peter was the voice of truth. Last week Peter was the one confessing Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, but not this week. No this week Peter is the voice of Satan trying to keep Jesus off of the cross. One commentator noted that the interesting thing about Peter’s words is that it shows us that despite the wide variety of different expectations people had for the Messiah, apparently nobody thought the Messiah would be the suffering servant. Would He be a great warrior? Of course, some said. Would He be a political powerhouse? That made sense to people. Would He be a wise or inspiring teacher, sure. But would he be humiliated? Would He be defeated? Would He be hanging on a cross? Well certainly not that. Far be it from the Messiah for may that never happened to Him, but how often are Peter’s words our own. How often do we have the same response to the suffering of our Lord. The cross continues to be a scandal, even for Christians 2000 years after. There are large segments of the church today who don’t like to see the body of Jesus on the cross. They don’t like to see the body of Jesus crucified and broken. It’s easier to contemplate the victorious king than the crucified one, but even in the scriptures themselves, in the glorious coronation scene of Revelation chapters four and five, when Jesus ascends into heaven to take His place at the right hand of the Father, as we confess in the creeds, John says he does so as the Lamb who was slain, still bearing in his body the marks of death, even though he now lives. The Messiah is the crucified Messiah, the resurrected one. Peter’s words, his reaction to the thought of the death of Jesus put a significant question before us. What do we expect our Lord to look like? How do we expect the Messiah to work in our lives? Are we looking for financial security? Are we looking for the Jesus who will give us whatever we declare in his name, like a promotion, or a new house, or cure of a terminal illness? Are we looking for the Messiah who will overthrow the Romans of our day, one who will bring about a truly Christian nation where all those sinners and heretics are finally going to get what’s coming to them. Well, if so, then Jesus’s words to Peter are also his words to us. “Get behind me Satan.” Don’t try to keep Jesus off the cross. Don’t try to turn Jesus into something that he’s not. Don’t try to confuse the clear and simple message that Jesus placed before his disciples in today’s text, because he’s placing it before us too. Yes, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and to be Messiah, to be the Christ of God means to take up the cross, to go to the cross for the sin of the world. That’s the plain and simple message of this text. The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Jesus himself walked it, and anyone who desires to follow him must walk it too. When Peter corrected Jesus, Jesus’s response was that He must take up his cross, He must finish the atoning work that He was sent to do, and not only that, Peter will have to carry his own cross. Every disciple will. Just as Jesus carried His cross, so also anyone following Him must carry His own cross. This is the way.  What does it mean? What does it mean for us to carry our own crosses? A big part of that answer is found simply in the disciples experience of watching other people carry their cross in the first century. Remember at this point they didn’t know that Jesus was going to carry His cross through the streets of Jerusalem, eventually being nailed to it at Calvary. But they had almost certainly seen other people carry crosses. They had been there as criminals carried their crosses through shouts and ridicule, through scorn, through mockery, through people looking down on them through condescending eyes. To carry your cross was a mark of humiliation. It was embarrassment as the one carrying the cross marched toward their own destruction. At lease in part, that is what Jesus is telling His disciples. That’s what He is telling us. That to follow Him is to walk a path that will bring us scorn and ridicule and maybe even looks of pity from the world around us. When the world sees Christians walking in God’s design for marriage, in chastity, the world laughs at us, the world ridicules, the world spews hateful rhetoric, call us bigots. But we walk anyway. We follow Jesus because Jesus is the way. When the world see Christians walking the way of self denial, self control, the world laughs at us, tells us all the things we’re missing out on, but we walk anyway, follow Jesus because this is the way. And when we take up our cross, and walk our life’s journey being outcasts in the eyes of the world, walk as people who are looking at us think they are better than us, smarter than us, more sophisticated than us, whatever the case may be, we walk anyway because that’s what it means to follow Jesus. This is the way, the way of the Christian life this side of heaven, is the way of the cross. It is the way of self denial. To use Paul’s language, it’s the way of abhorring what is evil, denying ourselves from indulging the evil within and clinging instead to that which is good. Rather than listening to our world and our own sinful flesh as they spur us on in the desire to get even with those who have wronged us, it is the way of blessing not cursing those who persecute us. And as far as it depends on us, living at harmony at peace with all people. Rather than taking the easy road of isolating ourselves in the cocoon of our own choosing, pretending we are a kingdom unto ourselves, instead we live outside of ourselves, contributing to the needs of the saints, seeking to show hospitality, building a community within the body of Christ in this place and being so connected to it, we care enough about what happens to the people around us, that we weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. And none of this comes naturally to our fallen nature, but this is the way for the people of God. To take up our cross daily, even though it means the world will look down on us. To deny ourselves, even though it’s hard, for what good would it be to gain the whole world and forfeit our lives. I hear that and I think of the look on Gollum face when he finally has the ring of power as he’s sinking into the lava beneath mountain doom. Living by the world standards of success and failures, is no different. What good is it to gain the whole world, to find acceptance in the eyes of the world, but to forfeit our lives. We may get what we think we want but it won’t give us what we need, and so we walk the way of the cross. That is the life of the Christian. Jesus is not telling us to go find a cross, to pick it up and carry it. He’s just simply telling us this is what it will be like. To follow me is to carry your cross. And so we do so, but as we do so, we don’t lose sight of the fact that Jesus is teaching us about our crosses, is actually sandwiched in between two mentions of his cross. His cross comes first, and His cross comes last. The text begins with Jesus telling his disciples it is necessary for him to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die and be raised again, and then the text ends with Jesus promising that some of those listening would not die until they saw the Son of man coming with his Kingdom, that happens on the cross, that happens during the events of Holy Week. We can unpack those details later, but the point for today is this: whatever crosses we have to bear in this life, not one of them will forgive my sin, not one of them would give me my salvation. It’s only the cross of Jesus that does that, and that’s why it was indeed necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, to bear that cross. Because He is the Savior. Because He took on human flesh, in order to sacrifice that flesh for the sin of the world. So we always keep our crosses in context. Whatever little crosses I have to bear in my daily life it’s worth it. But it’s only worth it because of the cross that Jesus carried first. The cross that he was nailed to, the cross from which he declared “It is finished”, the cross upon which he gave up his spirit. It’s His death that forgives our sin. It’s His resurrection that is our hope, and so we walked away at the cross with confidence, not because it makes us better Christians, not because it’s going to get me a better seat when I get to heaven. Simply because Jesus told me this is the way. That’s the way he walked first and it’s the way he walks with me, and the way he walks with you today. To be a Christian is to bear your cross. But you do not bear it alone, for you have now been crucified with Christ. It is no longer you who lives but Christ who lives in you. But even more than that, to walk the way of the cross, to be a Christian, is to belong to the one who first bore His cross for you, and nothing can snatch you out of his hand. So may our gracious Lord who willingly endured the agony and the shame of the cross for our redemption, may He grant us courage to take up our cross daily, to follow Him wherever he leads, may we walk with Him all the way. In Jesus name, Amen.

 

Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, send forth your Word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. One of the great moments in movies or TV shows, or books or plays is that moment that we might call the epiphany moment.  That moment when the character finally realizes something they’ve been searching for all along. I think for example, of the usual suspects, if you’ve seen that movie a couple of years old now, but I’ve seen at the end when the detective finally puts all the pieces together, or maybe like The Sixth Sense, when the audience finally realizes what the little boy knew all along. Epiphany moments are powerful moments, and while Matthew, I don’t think intends the identity of Jesus as Christ to come as a surprise to you, he does actually dedicate an entire section of his gospel, six full chapters, to forcing his readers, us, to forcing us to struggle with the question, “Who is Jesus?” It started way back in Matthew Chapter 11. The first several chapters of Matthew introduced Jesus as a great teacher, like the sermon on the mount, one who does miraculous signs and healings. Sort of lays the groundwork, and then Matthew records messengers from John the Baptist coming to Jesus and asking him “Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another?” It’s another way of the messengers asking Jesus “Are you the Christ or should we wait for another?” and Jesus’s response is telling. He says go tell John what you hear and see: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them. Here’s the key phrase and “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Blessed is the one that Jesus says to John’s messengers blessed is the one who is not offended that I am in fact the Christ, the chosen one sent by God. Fast forward six chapters to today’s reading and Jesus asks his disciples, “ Who do people say that I am?” and they give their litany of answers that you just heard, and then he asks the disciples “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter speaking on behalf of the whole group says “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” and Jesus’s response, true to John, true to his response, the disciples of John, he looks at Peter and he says “Blessed are you Simon. Blessed are you for confessing that I am the Christ.” The climactic moment of the entire middle section of Matthew’s gospel, something Matthew’s been building towards for six chapters, the point towards which he’s been driving. So everything that we’ve heard this entire summer has been building towards this moment. Jesus is the Christ. What have we seen along the way? Well we learned, that Jesus was a God, of compassion that God is compassionate to you, that Jesus is the Savior who invites you to come and learn from him, that he has true rest, that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, that he is the great healer who has compassion on the crowds that are brought to him over and over again, healing their sick, casting out their demons, bringing sight to the blind, that he is the almighty who has compassion on his disciples by walking out to them in the midst of the storm to rescue them, He is the great new provider who has compassion on the multitudes by feeding them, and miraculously a couple of times first of five small loaves of bread and two small fish with 12 baskets leftover, and then with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish with seven baskets leftover. Matthew presents Jesus as a compassionate God and that’s exactly who Jesus is. He is your compassionate God. He has rest for you. Rest for your soul and the forgiveness of your sins, and the new life that is yours through the waters of baptism. He has freed you from the burden of trying to save yourself. He has freed you from the burden of trying to be good enough to rid yourself, or to rid your life of shame. Jesus gives you rest and he provides for your needs of body and soul, feeding you each day with your daily bread, providing his means of grace for the nourishment of your soul, in abundance, yes, Jesus is the compassionate God who has compassion on you. But Matthew also showed us that there would always be those who would oppose Jesus. The Pharisees attack Jesus for plucking grain heads on the Sabbath, or for not making his disciples wash their hands the right way before meals. The people of his hometown accused him of being a lunatic. King Herod beheads John the Baptist and sets his sight now on silencing Jesus. not all received Jesus’s message with open arms, and so also today, not all will confess him as Lord, but as Jesus taught in his parables, he tolerates the presence of the weeds out of compassion for the wheat. And then, not all seed sown will produce fruit, but He sows anyway. We sow anyway, leaving growth in the hands of God. Which transitions smoothly into the next thing that Matthew would have us remember about Jesus from these chapters, that Jesus rules his Kingdom in unexpected ways. Yet however unexpected, it is, He’s ruling it for you. Like yeast hidden in dough, so also the work of God is hidden from our sight, like a mustard seed that grows into an unexpectedly large tree, so also the work of God produces results that we never saw coming, like the Savior provides for the bodies and souls of the crowds, so also he provides for our needs of body and soul through unimpressive things like simple spoken words, splash of water, or a meal of basic bread and wine. Matthew spends 6 chapters weaving all of these truths together building up to today’s climactic exchange. The final and the ultimate point Matthew wants us to see about Jesus is this: Jesus is the Christ, the promised one sent by God, chosen by him, anointed by him. That’s what the word Christ means. This whole section begins with the chapter, this whole section begins with the question, “Are you the coming one, Jesus. Are you the Christ?” and for over 5 chapters Matthew has been asking us to wrestle with the identity of Jesus and here it concludes with Peter’s dramatic confession, speaking not only for himself, but speaking as a mouthpiece of the group, answering the question. Is Jesus the Christ Peter says “Yes you are the Christ, the son of the living God, the chosen one of Israel.” This is actually the first time in Matthew’s gospel that anyone calls Jesus the Christ. Matthew himself as the writer, as the narrator has done it multiple times and multiple times the disciples have confessed Jesus to be things like the son of David, or the son of God. But this is the first time someone explicitly calls Jesus the Christ and that language is important here because Christ means Jesus was sent to do something. Christ means the chosen one. He was chosen for something, chosen to do something. He is the chosen prophet, the great prophet sent by God to deliver his ultimate message of truth, the message that confuses the scribes and the Pharisees, because it turns their expectations upside down, it challenges their conception of what God should do, who God should be, and how God should act. That doesn’t make it any less true. So also for us. His message still confuses and offends both our sinful flesh and our self-righteous nature. It offends our sinful flesh by knocking down every attempt at self justification, by exposing sin for what it is. By calling us to repentance. He offends our self righteousness by taking away all of our crutches, by undercutting our pride. Just as he challenged and destroyed all the systems and the traditions of the Pharisees, so also he takes away every crutch that we would lean on, that we would try to prop ourselves up against before him, until we are left lying on the ground next to the Canaanite woman, begging for His mercy. And that’s when he rejoices. To show us how merciful He truly is, just as He was merciful to her. Jesus is the Christ, the great priest, offering His sacrifice in the heavenly places, interceding for us as Israel’s priest stood before God on behalf of the people for generations, proclaiming the good news of reconciliation to us as the priests of Israel announced God’s blessing and favor over the people for generations. Jesus is the Christ, the great prophet, the great priest, the great king of all creation, ascended to sit at the right hand of His Father, seated on the throne of the universe, governing and guiding all things for the sake of His gospel, for the preservation of his church. That’s what Jesus says. Jesus is the Christ and the gates of hell will not overcome his church. Jesus is acknowledging before the disciples and before us that life, this side of heaven, is spiritual warfare. In fact Matthew’s gospel is about to make a significant turn, which will start next week, a significant shift into highlighting the events that are going to directly lead to Jesus being executed and crucified for all to see. If the disciples thought they had faced opposition to this point, Jesus is basically telling them, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Prepare yourself to see the Son of Man arrested by the leaders of God’s own people. Prepare to see the son of God falsely accused and falsely convicted. Prepare to see God’s chosen one, God’s Christ tortured, humiliated, mocked, ridiculed, stripped naked, killed for all to see. Prepare to see what it feels like to believe that all hope has been lost, and in that moment, remember the gates of hell will not win in the end. Death is just a doorway to resurrection life. Satan may think that he wins. Satan may parade around as if he’s won, but in the end, the victory was always in God’s hands. The gates of hell will not prevail because Jesus is the Christ. So also our lives 2000 years later, our lives as the children of God today, are still spiritual warfare. Our continued return to pet sins threatens to fill us with an overwhelming dread and shame, as if Jesus couldn’t possibly save someone like me, but the kingdom of hell doesn’t win. In the end, our fear, our sadness, our panic at the state of the world around us tempts us to believe that Satan and his demon army are winning, that they’re winning the day in politics, or in culture, or in entertainment, but Jesus is the Christ. The kingdom of Satan does not win in the end, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, the people of God will walk free in the Kingdom of God, in the life to come. This fills us with confidence. This fills us with hope, for Jesus is the Christ, and he has given to his church the keys to heaven itself. What are those keys? Everything that Jesus has been doing and teaching, everything Matthew has been emphasizing over the last six chapters, its the reality that Jesus is the Christ, sent by God, sent to bring about the forgiveness of sins, and to give the proclamation of that forgiveness to the mouth of his church. Sent to raise us to new life in him, sent to comfort us with the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail, sent to comfort us with the promise that he will continue to always provide for all our needs of body and soul, sent to comfort us with the promise that he gives us a Sabbath rest, like it was meant to be enjoyed, not simply avoiding work, but the peace and the fullness that comes from resting safely in the arms of the God who loves us, the God who has provided us with everything that we need. When we stand next to Peter and the other disciples confessing, not from our own flesh, but from the father who is in heaven that Jesus is in fact the Christ, the gates of heaven are wide open to us, too. We experience a small taste of heaven on earth right now, as we live in the freedom of the gospel, knowing that we are right with God because of Jesus, regardless of whether my day was marked by success or failure, knowing that death will not get the last word, that death will not destroy us. We are already living the eternal life, today, by being united to the eternal body and blood of Jesus himself in the sacrament of this altar, knowing that whatever bodily or spiritual ailments might plague us day-to-day, they will all be set right by Jesus in the new creation, just as He healed so many when he walked among them in this creation, in the flesh. The Kingdom of heaven is not just a future reality waiting for you one day. There’s a glimmer of it that already marks your life, right here and right now, because Jesus is the Christ, and he has opened the gates of heaven to you, so rejoice, relax, find your confidence in the truth of Peter’s confession. Yes. “Jesus is the Christ.” The gates of hell will not overcome Him or His people, including you. Jesus is the Son of the living God. Jesus is the compassionate one. The Christ who provides for all your needs of body and soul, the one who gives you rest, the one who has opened the gates of heaven to you and you belong to him. Find comfort in that, find your peace in that, stand on the rock of Jesus. May God grant it in Jesus name Amen.

 

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray.  Lord sent forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives. In Jesus name Amen. Well, if you’ve been with us since I started you’ve heard a lot of the Gospel of Matthew, been working our way through especially Matthew chapters 13 and 14 and in those chapters we’ve heard over and over again an emphasis on the mercy and the compassion of Jesus and also on the unexpected way that he will reign in his Kingdom. Today we move into chapter 15 and it’s no exception. Now we actually skipped over a big chunk of chapter 15 before we got to today’s text and then the story just before today’s reading Jesus is confronted by a group of Pharisees who have come to challenge him. Now we’re told that these Pharisees are Pharisees from Jerusalem but Jesus is up on the northern edge of the sea of Galilee, so imagine somebody who lives in Taos or Angel Fire being confronted by officials from Santa Fe. These are not the local cops. These are the feds, the big guns who have been called in to question Jesus, and they questioned Jesus about purity laws, about ceremonial hand washing, and they wonder why the disciples aren’t washing their hands the right way before they eat. Now this is a requirement not found in the laws that God gave on Mount Sinai to Moses and to the Israelites. This is a requirement found in the tradition of the rabbis, in a tradition of the Pharisees, so Jesus puts these Pharisees in their place by pointing out that they have added to God’s law. They placed the traditions of men above the word of God and then Jesus offers a final memorable teaching, the most recognizable part of that entire text. He tells them “It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but what comes out it”. I’m sure you’ve heard those words before and then later when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them what that means, to help them understand Jesus says “What comes out of the mouth proceeds first from the heart and out of the heart comes all manner of evil.” So simply put, if you want to know what’s going on in a person’s heart, don’t look at what goes into their mouth, look at what comes out. Now perhaps you can see where this is going and why Matthew put this story here. You have an emphasis on Jesus revealing himself as the God of compassion, you have the teaching that what comes out of a mouth shows what’s in a person’s heart, you have Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees from Jerusalem, and then you have today’s text, where Jesus left the northern promised land and he entered into Pagan land, where he went to Tyre and Sidon and when he was there a Canaanite woman comes out to him. Now we shouldn’t gloss over the fact that she’s identified as a Canaanite because, in Bible trivia, this is the only place in the New Testament where the word Canaanite is used. Canaanite is an Old Testament word. The Canaanites were the people who lived in the promised land before the Israelites, the people the Israelites were supposed to drive out in the days of Joshua. This is the only place in the New Testament where anyone is ever called a Canaanite, which means when we hear this story we’re supposed to remember the events of Moses, remember the events in the days of Joshua, remember what happened in that region this Canaanite woman, one who is unclean one, who is descended from the enemies of Israel, one who was at war with Israel’s God, comes out and cries out, in mercy to Israel’s Messiah, “ Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.” The contrast is clear from the start. The Pharisees who are supposed to be the religious teachers, and the religious leaders of God’s people, well they came to God’s Messiah not to seek mercy from him but to challenge him to put him in his place. It’s the Canaanite, the enemy of God’s people who comes and cries out for mercy. So great is her cry that she refuses to give up even when Jesus ignores her. Her second cry “Lord help me”. The force of that word is like someone hearing a cry for help in the distance and running to aid, like a child who’s stuck on top of a slide crying out “Mommy come get me” or a rock climber whose harness breaks under dangling off the side of a cliff and they cry out, “Someone come to me and help me”. This woman looks at Jesus and says “Lord come to me quickly and help me.” It’s not what goes into a person’s mouth that defiles them, but what comes out. The words of the Pharisees, the mouth of the Pharisees, shows pride in their hearts, and the words from the mouth of the Canaanite woman show what’s in hers. The question before us today: what are the words that come out of my mouth, what are the words that come out of yours? What’s in our hearts? Do we attempt to stand before the Lord on the basis of our own character, on the basis of our own righteousness? “Lord help me. I’ve been faithful in my church attendance for years upon years. Lord save me for not only have I tithed, I’ve given above and beyond. Lord help me. I don’t gossip. I’ve been faithful to my spouse. I voted for the right person. I protested the right injustice. I sent my kids to the right school. Lord help me. I’m a good person. If we try to stand before God on the basis of our own righteousness we will leave as empty and as embarrassed as the Pharisees who confronted Jesus. So how should we stand before God? We don’t. We don’t stand before God. When the woman first cried out for mercy, Jesus answered her nothing. When the disciples tried to send her away. She would have none of it. She threw herself at the feet of Jesus. Today’s translation says that she knelt at the feet of Jesus but more literally, the Greek says she prostrated herself before him, she fell down to the ground before him in a posture of worship, and when she was rebuked by Jesus, and told that the gifts of the children of Israel ought not be given to their enemies like Canaanites, to the pagan dogs, she agrees. “Yes Lord,” She says, “I know I’m not one of the chosen people. Yes Lord I know I don’t deserve a place at your table. I’m not asking for a full plate Lord, a simple crumb would be enough.” Jesus replies, “Great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire.” Now at this point it might be easy to think the text is telling us to be humbler or be diligent in prayer. Those are good things. I don’t think that’s the point of Matthew putting this story right here in his gospel. That would still make God’s mercy dependent on my behavior somehow. No I think this is a text about who Jesus is, not one about who we are supposed to be. We’ve heard it a lot over the last few weeks. Jesus is a God of mercy. Jesus is a God of compassion, and that’s definitely in this text too, but this text also beautifully, poignantly illustrates our Lord’s desire to work in surprising and unexpected ways. The Pharisees of Jesus day, they were the ones that God’s people looked up to as the religious examples. They were the ones people wanted to be like, not like this Canaanite woman. Not like this pagan. Not like this unclean person who had never kept the ceremonial law for a day in her life, and yet she, not the religious elite, she is held forth as the example of one out of whose mouth flows words of praise, flows words crying out for mercy. She is presented as the one who is truly clean. That’s an unexpected turn. She’s another in a long line of figures in the Gospel of Matthew, who are these unlikely examples, the unlikely heroes. The magi from the east who recognized the birth of the Messiah well before the scholars of Israel do, or the Roman centurion whose faith outshines any that Jesus has seen in all of Israel. This Canaanite woman who confesses Jesus to be the son of David right after the Pharisees attack the disciples about it and right after the disciples looked at Jesus in doubt and confusion, this woman is written into the gospel of Matthew in this place as the embodiment of what Jesus just said,  it’s what comes out of the mouth that shows whether a person is truly clean. And that is unexpected. But that’s how the Kingdom of God works. The Kingdom of God works in unexpected ways, like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds which grows into a ridiculously large tree so big that birds can even come and nest in its branches. So also, the Kingdom of God works in ways that people do not expect, or like leaven, kneaded in dough. It’s hidden from sight. You don’t see it working until ultimately the bread rises in the end. So also we shouldn’t try to measure the Kingdom of God through what we can see, rather, we rejoice in the unexpected ways our Lord comes to us in the unexpected ways our Lord gives himself to us. A splash of water on your forehead that unites you to the death of Jesus so that you can certainly be united with him in a resurrection like His. Simple words spoken, sung, preached, heard in this room or in your home or in your car, the words of the living God that create in you a new and living faith. Simple bread. Simple wine. Joined to God’s work. Joined to God’s promise of forgiveness, life, and salvation for you. Scraps from the master’s table. Crumbs in the eyes of the world. They look like nothing from outward appearances, but they are truly the gifts of immortality and we are blessed today to gather around those scraps. In just a few moments, we’ll feast once again on those scraps. A morsel of bread so small that would hardly fill the belly of the goldfish much less than that of a grown adult. A sip of wine so small that it doesn’t often even wipe the bread off your tongue. And yet through these means of grace, Jesus is here for you. Jesus unites himself to you. Jesus now lives in you. Like a dog under the chair of a toddler, faith eagerly devours whatever scraps they can get, and the great gift of this faith is that through these simple scraps, through these simple crumbs, Jesus now lives in you making, you truly clean. To the simple crumb of bread and wine, simple splash of baptismal water, the seemingly innocuous proclamation of God’s word, through these things, we are now adopted into the family of God. We who are filthy in our sin have been covered with the robe of Christ’s righteousness, made truly clean by the crumbs that fall from our master’s table. For now we gather as God’s family around these crumbs, until the day we take our seat at the masters table and the marriage feast of the lamb and his Kingdom which has no end. Until that day, we rejoice that Israel’s Messiah works in simple and unexpected ways. So what matters is not whether we have washed our hands like the Pharisees want us to. What matters is not whether or not we voted for the right person or supported the right cause. What matters is who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for you. We take our place beside the Canaanite woman, prostrate before our Lord, ready to devour the crumbs that fall from His table, for those are the things that make us truly clean, and with each crumb falls our way, we get more than we could ever hope for. So may God grant us the faith to devour the crumbs of his salvation in, Jesus name Amen.