Next year, in the Resurrection! [Trinity 18]

 WATCH AND LISTEN HERE.

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Deuteronomy 10:10-21
• 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
• St. Matthew 22:34-46

Dear Saints,

Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus, the Christ.

Jesus speaks to us today, saying,

“This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it...”

 One of the major take-aways from this spring, this year really, must be that we are aliens in an alien land, as our Old Testament reading today has taught us when Moses said, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” in verses 18-19.

 Sojourner of course being another word for not-belonging or alien. This is evident by the fact that the land in which we live thought nothing of cancelling our holy days, as if it had the power to do so, and is poised to cancel Thanksgiving as well. Since it has no respect for our holy days, it has no respect for us, which causes us to conclude that we don’t belong here.

 Jesus encounters this same issue today in the Gospel, for it appears as if He is doing and saying things that are contrary to the law of the land, laws and lands He created no less. He encounters a hard-hearted and stiff-necked people who have no need for His Word and no need for His forgiveness and mercy. He is questioned, interrogated precisely because they think He doesn’t belong.

 This is not the first time this has come up. No, on the very occasion of God ransoming His chosen people of Israel out of Egypt, He remarks on the same subject saying, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people” (Ex. 32:9). This coming immediately after the wonders of the plagues in Egypt and the passing through the Red Sea on dry ground, no less.

 In the same breath to Moses, Jesus even comments on the hardness of hearts of Israel, even back then saying, “He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’” (Matt 19:8).

 From the beginning, God’s chosen were liars. Do not think you are exempt. St. Paul warns you in Hebrews 4:7, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”, because he knows that you will.

 So when we listen to our rulers and those around us clamoring for the removal or skipping of holy days, we must begin to question, who is the stiff-necked and hard-hearted?

 One answer is the world. It does not understand the need for holy living so it does not understand the need for faithful hearts to need a yearly cycle. Well, in a sense the devil and the world do understand the need for cycles, which is the whole reason why they would bother attacking feast days in the first place. They have their cycles as well, their unholy, yearly cycles of taxation, government sponsored entertainment, elections, and so on.

 In reality, they have an endless job to disrupt the holy cycle. Hate as they might, they need to yearly obstruct these celebrations. Over and over again, because the cycle, even if interrupted, simply continues on as if nothing ever happened, and will simply celebrate its missed feasts the next year.

 In the feasts we missed this year, there are many lessons to learn. One of them we have mentioned, that we will come around again to that feast next year. Another is the constant lesson God gives to us: a reminder of our own sinful nature, our own failure to celebrate.

 For, we constantly fall for the Pharisee trap, always trying to trap Jesus in His Word. “Which is the greater command, Jesus” we ask, “to love myself, I mean my neighbor, or to be at church on a certain day?” In our sin, we think that there is a priority laid out in God’s commands and so we attempt to find it and catch God in the trap, as the Pharisees had hoped today.

 When we do that, however, we find nothing but disappointment. Not only do we not increase our holiness in attempting to fulfill this law, but Jesus also gives us a face-palm and says, “Let’s start over again from where I lost you.”

 Let’s start over again from Advent and find the place where you went astray. You missed the point of the greatest commandment, because it wasn’t about God or your neighbor primarily, it was about love. Love fulfills all of the law, but it must be a love that is pure and sacrificial. Something Pharisaical sinners such as ourselves do not have. Which is why Jesus continues to speak after He reveals that love fulfills the commands.

 What He goes on to speak of is what He is always speaking of: Himself. And we miss it. We are so caught up in “does God want this” or “Will He be happy with that” or the like, that we confuse God’s Law with God’s Gospel. We confuse “have to” with “get to”.

 Now, don’t get the wrong idea. The law will never go away. It is who God is, after all. But our mistake is thinking that we can do something about that.

 Because Jesus reveals another great commandment by His words, and yet its not a commandment at the same time. He reveals that it is a command to be able to recognize the Christ, the Messiah, and know whose son He is. It seems to even be the priority here and I would say that it is. But it is not a command, because it is on Jesus to reveal Himself. Thus it becomes a matter of love, not ours but God’s, to reveal Himself and give us faith to believe it.

 There you have it. The answer to the Pharisees and the answer to missed festivals is belief. The world has no need for Jesus’ Word because His work is alien to us. God’s proper work is to love and to save, God’s alien work is the work of the cross: to suffer, die, and rise again in order to produce faith in our unfaithful hearts.

 God’s proper work is to command and rule. God’s alien work is to serve sinners salvation. So when He encounters a stiff-necked, uncircumcised-in-heart-and-ears people (Acts 7:51), both works come into play. He comes to His own and His own receive Him not. Well, they do receive Him, but only through a cross.

 In order to keep God’s proper work on earth, we must put God to death. It is the law.

In order to keep God’s alien work on earth, we must become aliens and outcasts ourselves, enduring for a little while hardships, which include not always being able to gather as we wish or choosing not gathering because of our sin.

 Such is the gracious, proper, and alien work of our God that we are shown our sin and shown our Savior. That we are shown how sinful and afraid we really are of God working and communing among us and yet we are given grace to see another year and another chance to celebrate the wonder of His Resurrection.

 Even more than that, each Sunday in the church year is a little Easter. Each Sunday is the chance to hear again our Lord’s command and victory over death. Though the hymns are different, though the propers are different, Jesus tells us that Moses and all the prophets prophesied that the Son of Man should suffer and rise again (Lk. 24:46). 

 Every part of holy Scripture reveals Jesus’ Easter. The land that God swore to our fathers to give them is both geographic and heavenly, in the Resurrection. The gifts in Christ and the fellowship of Jesus, from our Epistle, is given through the risen Lord. Love is the end of the law to all who believe, when Jesus rises from the dead in triumph.

 Now that we have been baptized into His resurrection, we enjoy life in this corrupt world as victors who cannot be oppressed by fiat, jails, or even death. We enjoy, now, His victory as we enjoy the life of Faith in His Church, returning again and again to His person, Word, and work yearly.

 So we are sad and upset. There is always next year. That or we can chose to fear God rather than men and celebrate as we have decided to celebrate and when we have decided to celebrate in the Lectionary and the Liturgy. Both of which have been handed down to us, illegally, by aliens, saints that have gone before us and have worshipped and communed just as we do, in the midst of oppression and suffering. Which, providentially, is exactly how Jesus did it.