READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Proverbs 25:6-14
Ephesians 4:1-6
- St. Luke 14:1-11
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)
Who speaks to you today, in your hearing, saying:
“And Jesus
responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the
Sabbath, or not?’”
When Jesus asks this question, He demands an answer from
you. Not answering is an answer, but its not one you want to give to God. So
you quickly agree with Jesus, not really understanding why. This is also what
you don’t want to happen, because Jesus gives you two parables to teach you
“why”.
So today, we go after ceremonies in the Church, in order to
understand what our Lord wants us to in healing and in the Sabbath. This is
important, because God’s Word has already spoken on this issue through Moses in
Exodus 20. You know it well:
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you
shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the
Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your
daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor
your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh
day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Ex 20:8-11).
But everyone’s real favorite is the enforcer verse, because
we are all disguised dictators. Exodus 34 says: “Whoever does any work on
the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Therefore the children of
Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their
generations as a perpetual covenant” (v. 15-16).
This is the injunction hanging over everyone’s head as
everyone is watching Jesus carefully, not only in the Gospel, but today. for
the question still remains: does Jesus do things the right way or the wrong
way? Is He a consistent God or does He contradict Himself and disqualify
Himself from being God?
One place the world looks to discredit Jesus is in His
ceremonies that He instituted in the Old Testament, such as the Sabbath Day.
And as the Old Testament has shown us, ceremonies are important to God, so it
makes sense for us and the Pharisees to critique God, or at least a man
claiming to be God, on this point. Does what Jesus do line up with what God
does?
First, what is “ceremony”, more specifically “ceremonial
law”, as that is how the Pharisees are using it? Ceremony and Ceremonial Law
can easily be put together and defined thus: They are the outward and external
arrangement of sacrifices and the entire culture surrounding the Temple.
Meaning everything that went on within Temple grounds was ceremony commanded by
God.
Within this culture, the Lord ordered and disciplined His
people to especially separate them from other, false religious cultures. The
Lord’s good order kept a solid line between false worship and true worship and
His discipline made sure to keep those boundaries closed. Ceremony literally is
proper order and wholesome discipline.
Why so strict? Because eventually all false religions
degrade into flesh fests and the basest of emotions. Islam, though they speak
of Jesus, has a prophet who condoned sexual deviancy. The Mormons went the same
way. Even those who call themselves “christian” have regressed to emotional
induced flailing in praise music.
Point is, ceremony keeps us on the right path. The Church is
to be in the world not of it and should not look like the world or take on its
sinful characteristics. The Church will stand out and it should.
So, ceremony can also be divided into two parts: Sacrament
and Sacrifice. The sacrifice part we get. It is what we bring to God: thanks,
praise, song, and offering. These things we love because these things we can
do. It makes God easier to comprehend. The Sacrament part complicates things if
only because of its seeming impossibility.
A sacrament is a ceremony or work, whereby God gives us
that, which the divine promise
attached to this ceremony, offers. Here, we are getting to
the crux of the matter. Without sacrament, there is no sacrifice. Without a God
making the ceremony valid, all the praise bands in the world will not open us
His ears.
This is even in the Lord’s command on the Sabbath. Yes there
is “death” attached to it, but He says this in Exodus 31:13, “Surely My Sabbaths
you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your
generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”
Repent! The only way you know your efforts are worth it is
if God has commanded it. But you only know if God accepts it if you don’t die.
And we all die.
However, as Exodus told us, it is God’s efforts that are
important. If God is sanctifying, before we do any work, then our work is valid
and pleasing to Him. More importantly, God is doing His work with His own Body
and His own, rational soul. Which means two things: God will offer an Atoning
sacrifice and that faith is necessary for that ceremony.
So Jesus, both God and man, comes to live and act out His
own ceremonies and in so doing give us the real and true purpose of them. For
Jesus, God made man, is our sanctification from God. “But of Him you are in
Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him
glory in the Lord”, says 1 Corinthians 1:30-31.
In St. Mark 2:27-28, our Sanctification says, “The Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also
Lord of the Sabbath.” This is not an excuse to ignore it, but an invitation to
observe the Sabbath, and all ceremonies, correctly. As in, the Sabbath was made
for your rest. It is an appeal to a God who cares so much for you, that He
builds a weekend break into the fabric of Creation itself.
And what does the Christ do on the Sabbaths He celebrates?
What are His ceremonies? Yes, He heals on the Sabbath, but we know and believe
that healing from Jesus means salvation. Jesus works salvation on the Sabbath.
For this, sinners want Him dead, as Israel accomplishes on Good Friday.
But in an ultimate “gatcha”, Jesus observes the Sabbath
perfectly on Holy Saturday with His rest in the tomb. On that 7th Day, the Lord
of all Creation finally perfects and completes His work that He began so long
ago. The Ceremony of Salvation that started in Genesis, is finished on the
cross with God’s Sacrifice of Atonement.
And because Christ observed the Sabbath ceremony perfectly
and because He fulfilled all the Law perfectly, God raised Him to life again.
So even though it looked as if Christ suffered the death penalty for His
apparent transgressions against the Sabbath, of which He was falsely accused
and condemned, God delivered Him because He delighted in Him.
The ceremony that God commands is the ceremony that God
finishes in Christ. the Sacrament and the Sacrifice, such that there is no work
left for us to do which then makes us also observe the Sabbath perfectly as
well!!!
Jesus does this, not by taking away work, but by giving
faith. Faith that all the work necessary for pleasing God has been accomplished
and is freely given in Christ’s Body and Blood. Faith is the key to making
ceremonies “work”. Without faith, there is nothing.
Colossians 2 says: “So let no one judge you in food or in
drink, or regarding a feast day or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow
of things to come, but Christ’s body makes the shadow.
Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in
false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has
not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the
Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and
ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.”
Our Sabbath, and all our God-given ceremonies are kept in
Christ. If we are not “in His rest”, as Psalm 95:11 says, then we do not keep
God’s Word nor follow our Savior. But now that the New Day of Resurrection has
overtaken the ceremonial day of the Sabbath, today, if you hear His voice
crying from His resurrected flesh and blood, do not harden your hearts (Ps
95:8).
Do not harden your hearts to the Sacrament, the place where
God sanctifies people and work, promising to give all of His Kingdom to all who
believe. The ceremony God now interacts in is Communion and Baptism. The
instruction and institution is given by the Gospel. The ceremonies have
necessarily changed because of that, but again, the ceremonies are there for
us, not for God.
So when it comes to ceremony in Church, there is freedom.
Freedom in how we proclaim and magnify God’s Sacrifice and God’s Sacrament.
This is why Jesus moves on in the Gospel to places of honor at the Feast. the
Feast being His Supper.
Where is the focus, He asks? Who has the honor? Is it not
the one who is served at the feast that has the position of honor and not the
one who serves? But behold Christ is among you as the One Who serves. Jesus is
in the highest place, sanctifying for His Name’s sake, and He is in the lowest
place sacrificing Himself on behalf of the people.
All that’s left, is to honor you who have heard the Word and
believe. All that’s left to do is to bestow the forgiveness of sins to those
who believe it. All that’s left is to eat, drink, and depart in the peace of
God’s ceremonies perfected for you. Christ at the center is the ultimate
understanding of any ceremonies offered in the Church.
For, if God is only “in us” and not in the externals, then
we are the guests of honor. If God uses means, then He has the honor.
White-washed churches equal idol-filled hearts, striving to keep the Sabbath
and all other ceremonial laws with their own two hands, closing the gates of
heaven for all who are not like them.
what they can’t believe, or don’t believe, is that the
ceremonies have all been abolished, for Christ’s sake. Those outwards works
were instituted, not forever, but only in Israel’s generations, as we heard in
Exodus 34:16, and as is said in other places. They have also been abolished
because they were only a shadow of the coming Christ, as we have already said, “a
shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of” God made man
(Heb 10:1).
And finally, because God himself promised a new covenant. “Behold
the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel, and the house of Judah” (Jer 31:31) and “In that he
saith a new covenant, he hath made the first old” (Heb. 8 : 13).
We celebrate ceremony in faith and the freedom of Christ.
the core, which does not change, is the doctrine of Christ and His Sacraments.
The outward works that surround that doctrine, do change, as you notice in the
Divine Service offered here.
Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? In other words, is it
lawful to perform acts of mercy, kindness, and piety on the Sabbath? You agree
with Jesus because He is raised from the dead on a sabbath, will raise you from
the dead, and comes to you in Word and Sacrament.
This is why the correct observance of the Sabbath is not
based on you, but Jesus. For on a true Sabbath you are to not despise preaching
and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.
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