Jesus speaks to us today saying,
“Be merciful, even as
your Father is merciful.”
There was a time when the flag of the United States stood for liberty and
justice for all. A time when men were proud to sacrifice their lives for the
rights protected by the constitution and upheld by civil servants, but that age
is quickly coming to a close. The flag is now coming to represent a people that
is hostile towards the Church.
Indeed, the world has betrayed you. It promised you life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It promised to uphold your inalienable
rights, but has instead decided that those sorts of things only get in the way
of progress. The world is all too happy to prove its point to you at the edge
of a sword or in federal court.
The devil has betrayed you. He has told you that the world
is at peace. He has told you that marriage is about self-fulfillment and that
sex has nothing to do with marriage or procreation. Just take this pill or get
a divorce. Oh, and don’t worry, allowing these things won’t destroy or alter
any one’s morals or values.
You have lied to yourself. You have told yourself that this
is all someone else’s fault when, in fact, god-fearing heterosexuals have been
destroying marriage all by themselves. Gay Americans only make up less than 2%
of the population. Who do you think is changing the government? The people supporting
these extreme movements are not radicals, but folks just like you and many in
good standing with the Lutheran church.
Repent. America
is not a Christian nation and you are unmerciful. In your attempt to make the
Church an American institution, you have cast aside your neighbor. In your
patriotic zeal, you make the Church a political arena where only mercy is shown
to republican voters or those like-minded.
It is time to wake up. Jesus demands your mercy no matter
what and He demands it now. The political and legal climate of the country has
little to do with God’s mercy that is only found in Christ Jesus and you are
withholding it, comfortable in peacetime.
Christ is Lord of the Church forever and always. Jesus knows
that the world hates the Gospel and His mercy, yet regardless of nation or
flags, Jesus has mercy. For true mercy is only found in the humiliation and
suffering of God on the cross.
Being merciful does not mean “live and let live”. Being
merciful does not mean playing nice nor does it mean placing acts of mercy over
the Word of God. The command from God is not “make yourself merciful”, but “be
merciful”. Right now, be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful.
Perfectly merciful.
This is the mercy Jesus offers to you. In baptism, you are
placed into this mercy and are made as merciful as your Father in heaven.
Regardless of who rules over you, how many times you are hauled in front of the
judge, or how much you fail, Jesus is merciful and promises mercy. In the
Office of the Keys, you receive this.
In this special Office, God shows you and the whole world
His mercy. The Keys is that special authority Jesus gives to His Church on
earth to forgive the sins of the repentant sinner, but to withhold forgiveness
from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.
In St. John
chapter 20, we hear that Jesus breathed on His disciples and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are
forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Americans can pass any law they like. God’s words and
promises remain unchanged. Whether its marriage, abortion, or defining what
good is, the Word will always demand our confession that all our works,
thoughts, votes, and associations are sinful and worthy of condemnation.
Before God, we are guilty of all sins; known and unknown.
But confession has two parts. First that we confess our sins and second, that
we receive Absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God
Himself, not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven
before God in heaven.
This wonderful, merciful gift is given to us, in Christ. America is not
Christian and it doesn’t have to be. The flag is not a symbol of all that is
good in the world and it doesn’t have to be. You do not have to have a
constitution in order to receive absolution.
For you believe that when the Called ministers of Christ
deal with you by His divine command in particular, when they exclude openly
unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who
repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain,
as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.
You are baptized into Christ. You may have been born in Iraq and yet
Jesus would still feed you His true Body and Blood for your salvation. As we
heard last week, Jesus is not just everywhere, He is somewhere. He is where His
Gospel is preached in its purity and the Sacraments are administered according
to the Gospel.
Jesus does not wait for you to be ready or ask Him to come
into your life. Jesus does not have to wait for the right law to be voted on in
order to rule heaven and earth. Jesus is not searching for these things.
Jesus seeks out the unmerciful in order to make them
merciful. Jesus looks for the judged, the condemned, and the blind in order to
give them His righteousness. On the cross, we see Jesus judged and condemned in
our place. He falls into the enemy’s pit in order to bring us back out with
Him. He takes our planks of sin, fashions them into a cross and dies to sin, never
to die again.
Fear not, dear Christians. Jesus does provide and He will
provide for us. His Church, purchased and won in His Blood, is prepped for any
future. She is well provisioned with heavenly store and secured against any and
all disasters. Because the Word of God dwells with us rightly, heaven and earth
may pass away, but in Christ we will remain forever.
In Christ, the Word remains and though devils all the world
should fill, all eager to devour us; we tremble not, we fear no ill, they shall
not overpower us. This world’s Prince may still scowl fierce as he will, he can
harm us none. He’s judged; the deed is done; one little word can fell him.
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