Homily for Trinity 10 - 2020

 "Peace in Both Realms"

Luke 19:41-47

Listen here.

When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, it’s both a spiritual thing and an earthly, political thing. On the one hand—the right hand—our Lord wept that His own chosen people did not know “the things that make for peace.” They did not know the time of their “visitation” by the One who came to bring peace between God and sinners. On the other hand—the left hand—Jesus wept that the earthly Jerusalem would be destroyed by enemies who would surround it, build a siege mound to invade it, and tear it down to the ground. This would happen in AD 70 under the Roman emperor Vespasian. God’s ancient city of peace, including the temple of stone—where God would come to visit His people—would be razed to the ground. So Jesus wept. He wept over lack of peace in both realms.

It’s most fitting to ponder the two kinds of government God has established among us humans. Luther said this about the first kind of government: “The one is spiritual; it has no sword, but it has the word, by means of which men are to become good and righteous, so that with this righteousness they may attain eternal life. He administers this righteousness through the word, which he has committed to the preachers.” We call this the “right-hand realm.” This is the Church.

Then Luther wrote of “the left-hand realm”: “The other kind is worldly government, which works through the sword so that those who do not want to be good and righteous to eternal life may be forced to become good and righteous in the eyes of the world.” This is the earthly, political realm. Righteousness in this left-hand realm does not lead to eternal life; only righteousness by faith in Christ can do that. But God does give us the left-hand realm so that we may have peace among people and enjoy other temporal blessings. Luther concludes: “Thus God himself is the founder, lord, master, protector, and rewarder of both kinds of righteousness” (AE 46:99-100).

Our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—does indeed rule over all things. He “has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Ps. 103:19). He rules over all people and the entire world as the Creator. In this reign of power He seeks to maintain and sustain His creation. But our God also reigns in grace over His Christians, His Church. This is His gracious and saving rule. It leads us to look forward to the resurrection of the body and the restoration of His creation when Jesus returns on the Last Day.

Until that day, though, we live, work, and play in the wild, hectic, messy intersection of God’s two realms—the earthly, political left-hand realm and the heavenly, spiritual right-hand realm. Now we might have a clue as to why 2020 has been so crazy! Not only are we dealing with the COVID pandemic, economic shut-down and reboot, destructive rioting and rising crime, but it also happens to be election season. What does that mean for life in the left-hand realm and in the right-hand realm? After all, we live in both realms at the same time.

In 1831, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville made a nine-month visit to the young United States of America. He wanted to study American social practices, laws, and politics. His book Democracy in America is the record of his journeys and the journal of his reflections. Tocqueville called a presidential election “a moment of crisis.” He compared it to a river overflowing its banks, as in a flash flood. Tocqueville wrote: “As the election draws near, intrigues intensify, and agitation increases and spreads. The citizens divide into several camps, each behind its candidate. A fever grips the entire nation. The election becomes the daily grist of the public papers, the subject of private conversations, the aim of all activity, the object of all thought, the sole interest of the moment.” Yep, still true! Nothing new under the sun. Then, Tocqueville says, after the verdict of voting is rendered, the river “returns peacefully to its bed” and calm is restored (pp. 151-153).

The question before us as God’s people in 2020, then, is this: how do we participate in this time of election-year “crisis”? How do we confess our Savior Jesus even as we weigh the issues and enter the voting booth? How do we vote “Christianly”? How do we keep in mind the things that make for peace in both realms?

In our Gospel, Jesus wept because His people had forgotten their God and His Word. They neglected God’s design in all of life—the vertical dimension of fearing and loving Him above all things and the horizontal dimension of loving their neighbors as themselves. They had the appearance of godliness but denied its power (2 Tim. 3:5). Since they focused only on the outward, earthly, political realm, they did not know their peace—Jesus in the flesh—nor the time of their visitation—His coming to bring the peace of sins forgiven.

In a similar fashion we too run the risk of not knowing the things that make for peace nor the time of our visitation from our Lord. We live in a culture that has forgotten God, where everyone turns to his own course and many hold fast to the deceit that humans rule and control the world. We breathe that same air and stew in those same juices. We set our hopes on vanquishing a new coronavirus, even though we still cannot cure the common cold. We believe the right policy will overcome oppression, crime and injustice, even though all wickedness comes from the fallen human heart within each of us. We look to political parties, candidates of choice, and campaign promises as the ultimate solutions to our problems rather than relying on the Savior who brings the only true peace in all things.

As Jesus wept over Jerusalem, though, He was on His way to achieving that peace between fallen, fearful human beings and the God who rules all things. When He cleansed the temple and drove out the money-changers, He also liberated the sacrificial animals. They would be needed no longer. You see, He came to be the temple of God in the flesh. He came to be the once and for all sacrifice to bring peace—the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, in both realms. He went to the cross outside the earthly Jerusalem to bring you into God’s gracious presence in the new Jerusalem, His Church.

Your Lord Jesus still comes for you to know the time of your visitation. Once He came in blessing, all our sins redressing. Now He comes to keep bestowing His forgiveness and peace by means of water, word, and meal. These are His things that make for peace.

And His peace leads you and I out into the earthly city. What do we do there? We bear witness to our Lord and the peace He brings. And if 2020 is any indication, the earthly city desperately needs some peace! You and I are called to take part in the political life of our nation. No, we do not seek to establish a specifically “Christian government” or enact a some uniquely “Christian agenda.” But we do seek to serve and love our fellow human beings. We take part in our nation’s civic life with the common sense that comes from God’s Truth.

In our time, we Christians are called to rise above the usual bitter divides of red vs. blue, Republican vs. Democrat, right-wing vs. left-wing. God’s peace in Jesus frees us to engage and vote based on God’s Truth. What do I mean? Instead of looking at life in the civic realm through red- or blue-colored lenses, we look at it through the prescription glasses of God’s commandments. After all, God’s commandments give us clarity in seeing His design for all of life. And when we follow that design the best we can in the civic realm, life runs more smoothly, more peacefully in the civic realm.

So we might want to ask questions such as:

• Does the candidate, the ticket, or the political party support and defend God’s gift of physical life, from womb to tomb and every moment in between?
• Does the candidate, the ticket, or the political party honor and promote God’s gift of marriage between one man and one woman? Do they safeguard the nuclear family?
• Does the candidate, the ticket, or the political party seek to let people improve and protect their possessions and income?
• Does the candidate, the ticket, or the political party strive for contentment over the baser urges of envy and jealousy?
• And, most of all, will the candidate, the ticket, or the political party at least acknowledge God Himself? Will they be at least okay with the worship of God, the calling on His name, the hearing of His Word and how all of that shapes and influences people to live out their lives in the civic realm?

Such are things that make for peace in the civic realm—God’s left-hand realm. Since you and I live at the receiving end of God’s peace in His right-hand realm—peace that comes only from Jesus once on the cross and Jesus now given in water, words and meal—we can live and labor for the peaceful benefit of those around us. Amen. 

 

Homily for Lent 3 Evening Prayer (2019)

"A God Exposed"
Genesis 3:7-21; John 19:1-5, 23-24

With complete credit and much appreciation to Rev. Jeff Hemmer and Concordia Publishing House's "Behold the Man!" Lenten series, and with slight revisions for my proclamation.

How things have changed. Naked once meant “innocent, selfless, and perfect.” The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed, Genesis 2 tells us. Shame is different from guilt. Shame includes an unhealthy preoccupation with oneself. It makes sense that Adam and his wife were unashamed even though they were naked. After all, they did not have that level of self-awareness that comes from sinful, selfish navel-gazing. But then, as soon as they sinned, their eyes were opened to a new reality. Sure, they knew good and evil, that knowledge their Creator had withheld purely for their good. But now they see that they are naked. Exposed. Vulnerable. And when their eyes turn toward themselves for the first time, they are ashamed. “Look at me,” Adam thinks. “Look at me,” his wife muses. But each of them is too preoccupied with himself or herself to notice the nakedness of the other. Sin does exactly that; it curves our gaze in on ourselves.

What could they do? Hide themselves, they hoped. Fig leaves hastily stitched together, before they fled from their Creator into the garden, were their garments of choice. But fig leaves cannot hide sin and guilt. So, after God exposes the couple in their ashamed hiding, gets them to acknowledge (though not confess) their sins, and doles out the curses to the two and the serpent, He then upgrades their wardrobes from bloodless fig leaves to garments made from skin. And they quickly learn that God was not wrong when He had threatened death the very moment they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But He mercifully stayed their executions by shedding the blood of some innocent animal, an animal whose skin would cover the sin and shame of the man and woman. Their nakedness would be covered at the cost of an even deeper nakedness. After all, what could be more exposed than an animal stripped of its skin? And so the first death, the first bloodshed, happened at the hands of the Creator Himself. God granted these rebels the luxury of hiding their shame behind the innocence of another creature.

You never want to admit it, but this is the true nature of sin—your sin. Instead, you want to hide it behind pious-seeming fig leaves, but fig leaves cannot do the job. No matter what you do to delete your browsing history, you cannot hide your shame or obscure your guilt from the eyes of an all-knowing God. No matter how you try to couch your gossip in thinly veiled requests to “pray for her,” those words remain reputation-damaging slander against your neighbor, and they render you guilty before a Holy God. Even if you call it “just getting what’s rightfully yours,” it’s still greed. Excuses for why you can’t make it to the week-after-week Sunday morning Divine Service don’t allow you to receive the gifts that God delivers there. And those excuses cannot hide your sin. Claiming “Everyone else is doing it” is a very flimsy fig leaf. Repent of these and all other fig-leaf attempts to hide your sin and trick yourself into thinking that you are blameless.

Sin can only be covered with skin.

No one knows what that animal was in the garden, the one whose innocent skin the Creator peeled away in order to hide the exposed, vulnerable parts of Adam and his wife. But, given how immature offspring of sheep are often selected to be sacrifices on Passover, in the tabernacle, in the temple, it might be a good guess that the first animal to die, flayed to fend off death for mankind, was a lamb.

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” John the Baptist proclaimed about Jesus (John 1:29). Behold, the fulfillment of every lamb with its throat slit and its blood spilt to render it a sacrifice in the temple. Behold, the fulfillment of every Passover lamb roasted and completely consumed the night before God brought His people out of slavery. Behold, the Lamb who is not actually a lamb but a man. Behold God with skin.

Behold the man scourged by the Roman soldiers with their evil flagrum, designed to shred the skin from the back and sides of the person whipped, tearing away flesh so deep that the internal organs are nearly exposed. Behold the man on whose head the soldiers pressed the crown woven of thorns to ridicule Him as a madman for His belief in being King. Behold the man on whom they drape a soldier’s dirty purple robe to intensify the joke. Behold the man whom Pilate brought forth to say, “This is no king!” Here is God, with skin, clothed in the mockery of sinful men.

Behold the man who, when He was nailed to the cross, was stripped naked. Behold the man whose clothes the soldiers divided amongst themselves. Behold the man whose seamless tunic was the prize for which the godless gambled. Behold the man, God with skin, whose skin is shamefully exposed for all passersby to mock. Behold the bare naked God.

Behold the man who will bear your sin and shame. Behold the man who will suffer in your place. Behold the man whose nakedness answers for Adam’s. Behold the man naked and unashamed, with nothing to hide, with no sin of His own to clothe in garments and rationalization. Behold the man stripped bare to bear your own sins. All of them. The ones you try to hide and obscure, the ones you pretend are not there, the ones that cause you the greatest shame. All of them hang there on the cross with this man, this God, Jesus, naked and dying for you.

Behold the man, stripped naked so He might clothe you in new skin. Behold the man who will hide your sin with His own righteousness. Behold the man who gives you Himself to wear. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Behold the man in whose washing of Holy Baptism you are clothed in the boundless perfection of His own righteousness. Behold the man who covers your sin with His own skin. Wear His garment. Wear Him. Your sin is gone. Your shame is removed. Your guilt is dissipated. Behold the man! Amen.

Homily for Trinity 6 - 2017

"Exceeding Righteousness"
Matthew 5:17-26

Jesus says something quite astonishing—quite frightening, really—when you stop and think about it. He says: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The frightening thing about these words is just how good and upright the scribes and Pharisees really were—at least when you saw their outward lives. They sure appeared to fear, love, and trust in God above all things. They certainly did not utter His name in vain. They very faithfully kept His holy day and even listened to and learned His holy Word. They respected their elders. They did not abuse their bodies by being drunkards or gluttons. They did not live in sexual immorality. They did not steal from God by holding back on their tithes. In fact, they gave even more than what God required in His Law. They fasted regularly—at least twice a week. To all outward appearances, they were very, very good people. They were the sort of people that you would delight to have as fellow church members and neighbors. They did not “play religion” at all; they were very sincere, very zealous, and it showed. Yet the Lord Jesus points to them and says to all who follow Him: “Your righteousness must be better even than that!” What on earth does He mean?

Thankfully, He goes on to tell us what He means. He takes up the Fifth Commandment as His first example: “You shall not murder.” Now, every scribe and Pharisee could pride himself in having kept that commandment. God said, “Don’t go around sticking knives in people,” and the scribes and Pharisees could say, “Thank God, we haven’t done that. We’ve kept that one.” But Jesus raises His eyebrow at such a bold claim and says, “Really? You think you’ve kept the Fifth Commandment?” Then He asks some pointed questions: “Have you ever been angry with your brother in your heart? Have you ever hurt another person with the names you’ve called them? Have you ever insulted or put down another human being with malice in your heart? Oh, you have, have you? Well, then, you have smashed the holy Fifth Commandment to smithereens.”

You see, we look at the outside and judge only by what we can see. There’s just one problem. That’s not how God looks at us. He does not judge by the outside, at least not by the outside alone. He looks at the inside. He looks at the inner life, at the heart. As the LORD told Samuel when he was searching for a king to replace Saul: “For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). That’s where Jesus’ real concern lies. Jesus even said, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mk. 7:21-23).

Now can you see why Jesus rejects all righteousness based on external behavior? We can certainly strive long and hard to do the right things and keep our evil inclinations in check. We can fight valiantly and somewhat successfully to not do what we would very much like to do at times. People around us may even think that we are good, upright, religious, and very pious. But we know the truth. We know what’s inside. We know what we would like to do at times. We know what we would do, if we thought we could get away with it. We know what we could do if the circumstances were just right and painting us into a corner. We just cannot quite control that heart and inner will so tainted by sinful self-serving.

So the real problem is our sinful hearts. We may have some limited control over our sinful actions; but over our hearts? Who can easily stop a fit of anger or jealousy or envy or pride by flexing the muscle of will power? No one! So, what is Jesus really saying? Is He saying that absolutely no one can enter the Kingdom of heaven?

Ah, but there is One Man from whose heart flowed nothing but pure love—pure love toward God above all things; pure love toward His every neighbor as Himself. Yes, there is One Man who has such a pure heart that He perfectly kept the Law without fail, and He lived all of His life in perfect love. There is one such perfect heart! And so there is also a perfect righteousness, a righteousness that did, and does, and always will exceed that of the Pharisees and scribes. That heart belongs to Jesus Christ, and so does the righteousness.

So, if we want to enter the Kingdom of heaven, we absolutely must have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. No, not a righteousness that is merely sort of like His. No, not a righteousness that only weakly imitates His. Not even a righteousness that says, “I tried.” You see, being “sort of like” or being “weak imitations” doesn’t cut it with God. Remember how Jesus summarized God’s will for us: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). If we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven, we need a perfect righteousness. We need the righteousness that belongs to Jesus alone—a righteousness that we can receive only by His grace and only by faith in Him.

St. Paul reminds us today that in Baptism we are joined to Christ Jesus—buried with Him into death and raised with Him to walk in newness of life. You see, Jesus freely gives you His righteousness. He who is totally sinless took upon Himself all of our sin, and the sin of the whole world. As He went to the cross, He owned all sin and every little sin we commit as His very own. He even divests Himself of His righteousness, His holiness, and He places it upon us in the water of Baptism. He clothes us in His very own perfection. What a blessed exchange! And now, because of the miraculous washing of Baptism, God looks upon us and sees not our sinful hearts, but rather the image and reflection of His beloved Son. He sees us clothed in the exceedingly perfect righteousness of His Son Jesus.

“But, Pastor,” you say, “my heart is still sinful. I still have those terrible desires, small and large. Sometimes I even act on those wretched thoughts! Surely, God doesn’t just overlook that, does He?” No, He doesn’t just overlook sin. But what does Scripture say? “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation—the covering, means of forgiveness—for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:1-2). That answers the question, doesn’t it? God wants to free us from our sin, and cleanse our hearts through faith—no two ways about it. And since that cleansing job is never finished this side of heaven, we joyously live under His pardon until the end. And His cleansing work just keeps going and going and going.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Let’s give thanks to our gracious God that our Lord Jesus Christ gives us what we could never come up with or accomplish on our own: an exceeding righteousness freely given to us, an exceeding righteousness placed on us through the washing of water and His Word in Baptism, an exceeding righteousness placed in us again today in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. As we keep learning to live from this gift of God, our lives will be transformed more and more into His perfect love. And on the Last Day, when our Baptism is fully completed, our lives will be like His—love, pure and simple. As we will soon sing:

We thank You, Christ; new life is ours,
New light, new hope, new strength, new pow’rs.
This grace our ev’ry way attend
Until we reach our journey’s end (LSB 562:6).

Amen.