READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Exodus 20:1-17
Romans 6:3-11
St. Matthew 5:20-26
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you all from God the
Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love. (2 Jn 1)
Who speaks to you saying,
“For I tell you,
unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will
never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
And as we consider all of St. Matthew chapter 5, we remember
that Jesus says, in St. Matthew 4:17, “Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is
at hand”. He says this so that you know clearly what your relationship with
Him is. As in, your relationship with Him and with the Father is created by
repentance, and faith in His promised blessings found in the rest of St.
Matthew 5.
That your relationship with God is dependent on His
revelation to you of your sins and your Savior is an important belief to have,
because if not, The Beatitudes, and even the small section on righteousness
that we heard from the Gospel today, snowballs on us as we try our best to
fulfill it.
Primarily, we use it to change our lives drastically in
order to show everyone we mean what we believe and follow these new commands
from Jesus. But that’s not the half of it. The real kick in the gut, is when we
finally get one thing right, the neighbor we are doing it for doesn’t cooperate
or reciprocate and we lose it.
Hey pal. I just put all this work into loving you as myself
and not getting angry at you or murdering you, and you can’t return the
favor?
Instantly, there are lines drawn in your heart and war is
upon you. It is you vs. them. You who have the righteousness all wrapped up and
“them” who are not like you. And guess what? God has to be on your side because
you are following His Word, unlike your new-found-enemy. At that point, the
devil has done his job and has taken the good that God gives and made you
reshape it into a weapon pointed at your neighbor and God.
Because God also seems to not hold up His end of the bargain
when you do everything right. In fact, in all of Matthew chapter 5, nowhere
does God say He will be pleased if anything on His lists are accomplished.
Nowhere does He say that He will bless you if you get all or any of this done.
He only says He will be jealous, in the Old Testament reading from today, and
we don’t need that.
This is not what Jesus is hoping for here. What Jesus is
hoping for comes from just before our Gospel pericope in St. Matthew 5:19 which
says, “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and
teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever
does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Repent! self-absorbed, we completely miss the point of Jesus
words here. In our sin, we don’t just murder our neighbor but we murder God as
well, so that we are liable. And Judge, Jury, and Executioner is the Lord
Almighty Himself. You have angered your Brother and the dark, prison door
stands open to receive you.
But as you walk towards your cell, head down in shame, your
eyes spy another’s pair of feet and they are in your way from entering. “You
are baptized”, He says and shoves you out of the way. His cell door slams shut,
the lights go dark. They blaze on once again and the cell is empty, the bars
are torn asunder, and the walls are razed.
We are not learning about a holy life created by our
efforts. We are learning about Christ. Matthew 5:19 does not say whoever breaks
the commandments, but it says whoever looses them. In other words, whoever
lessens their importance and, most importantly, teaches other men to cheapen
them as well.
It is whoever teaches that will be great. And in the holy
Scriptures, Christ is teaching and it is His teaching that is the authority
now. St. Matthew 28:19-20 says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you”.
It is not for scribes or Pharisees or even your own heart to
read and interpret what the Bible is saying. It is for Jesus alone. Jesus alone
speaks authority. Jesus alone gives interpretation of Old and New Testaments.
Jesus alone has the right to teach. And here, in today’s Gospel, it is not the
commands of Moses, but Jesus’ teachings that are the norm for all who would
follow Him.
Let’s rewind just a bit and dissect this biblical word “command”.
Yet another VBS lesson has come upon us and when we hear that word we
immediately think the 10 Commandments and then some form or other of “marching
orders” that are imposed upon us, or else.
But this is not what Jesus teaches. Going back to Moses
receiving the 10 Commandments in Exodus, we hear what Jesus is truly teaching
and He says, “Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights...He
wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Words” (34:28).
From the outset, the Ten Commandments were teachings.
Teachings designed to reveal God and His Christ. They were words God spoke to
His people in order that they may better know Him and understand their
situation. For, though Moses was given the Ten Words, he had faith that one day
soon those words would be fulfilled by the Word, the Word made flesh (Jn 1:14).
Thus, the Ten Words reveal the Word made flesh. So when we
then come to the “commands” written in our Gospel reading from St. Matthew, we
find our murder directed at the Son of God and we are liable to judgement, the
council, and the hell of fire.
However, it is the Word made Flesh Who, upon hearing of our
immanent condemnation, leaves His gift at His Father’s heavenly Altar and goes
to where His “brother”, all of sinful creation, waits for Him: at the cross.
Jesus, there, comes to terms with His accuser, sinners agreeing with Satan,
that it is He to be imprisoned behind the gates of death. It is He Who should
suffer and die for the sake of this “perfection” God seeks.
And they are right. For it is only in the Word made Flesh
dying, that the full payment and sentence for sin is commuted. It is only in
the fulfillment of all the murder and murdering spirits in the crucifixion of
God, that true righteousness can be created. A righteousness that exceeds the
scribes and the Pharisees.
God is our righteousness that gains us entrance into heaven.
He is our righteousness that exceeds and surpasses all understanding. It is a
gift and this is what Jesus is teaching: Our Righteousness (Jer. 23:6). And
Jeremiah 23 goes on, “’Therefore, behold, the days are coming,’ says the
Lord, ‘that they shall no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the
children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ 8 but, ‘As the
Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel from
the north country and from all the countries where I had driven them.’ And they
shall dwell in their own land’” (v.7-8).
So the Lord is our Righteousness. Nice. But how does His
righteousness become our righteousness? Of course our Epistle reading marries
us to the Word made flesh. In baptism, death towards sin is ours so that it no
longer rules us. In baptism, resurrected life in Christ is ours and the
righteousness necessary for heaven be given to us, perfectly.
Now, if we want to “teach men all things that Jesus has
commended” we preach Christ Crucified year in and year out. We place our
confidence in the Gospel, that is the forgiveness of sins. We get to hold fast
to all of God’s commands, in Christ, the greatest and the least, because now
the clean heart and Right Spirit placed within us lets us do no other thing.
If we wish to “do all God commands us”, it must be done in
righteousness. righteousness inside and out. We must be immersed in it. It must
flow from our pores. It must have free course in our lives and the way to do
that is to stuff our ears with the preaching of Our Righteousness, bathe our
uncleanness in His baptismal grace, and feed on His forgiveness such that, what
is true on the outside becomes true on the inside.
From the beginning, dependence on God was the plan. Not just
in a wicked overlord way, with strict submission or else. But in a way which
reveals God’s love to us, for the fulfillment of all the commands, of the Word,
is Love. not our love, mind you, but God’s love towards us which offers up the
Word, His only begotten Son, not to condemn the world, but that through the
Word made flesh, all would come to repentance and receive eternal life.
The Last Days have come upon us, as Jeremiah foretold. We
are the descendants of the house of Israel by faith (Gal 3:29) and Jesus has
brought us out of the country of sin, death, and the devil. His Holy Spirit
calls, gathers, enlightens, and keeps us in the one true faith by the power of
Word and Sacrament. These are the teachings we learn by heart and these are the
teachings we treasure in order that they may be readily available for us and
for all you hunger and thirst for Righteousness.
Thus the Word teaches us in our Introit today that the Lord
is the strength of His people and the saving strength of His Christ. He has
saved His people and through faith, blessed His inheritance. He feeds them His
Body and Blood and lifts them up forever in the baptism of death and
resurrection by grace, for Christ’s sake.
Alleluia! Deliver me in Your Righteousness! Alleluia!
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