Organic Repentance [Trinity 11]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Genesis 4:1-15

• 1 Corinthians 15:1-10

• St. Luke 18:9-14

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)
 
Today, we once again hear Christ speak to us, saying,
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”
 
The Tax Collector today stands far away from His God, Who has descended into His Temple on Earth, because the Tax Collector is afraid. He is afraid to be heard, afraid to be healed, and afraid all of this God stuff is actually real. Though he is looking for spiritual and physical healing of all his woes from the God Who promises it to him, he none the less remains afraid.
 
And this is the world in its sinfulness: the people are in an endless cat and mouse with a panacea. Panacea comes from the Greek and means “all healing”. Such a wonderful word of course becomes a Greek goddess, the granddaughter of Apollo even, who is a mixed bag himself, either destroying or purifying, which may be the same thing. Anyways, Panacea was said to have a potion with which she healed everyone.
 
This Greek myth still lives today, as we invest trillions into Healthcare and this elusive panacea for ourselves. Everyday we may get closer, but our wallets will not keep up. Though some good comes from the research, most of what’s invested serves to line corporate pockets, especially the killing they made this last year!
 
When the world doesn’t find its panacea, it looks to the super-spiritual, creating the scientism religion, idolizing medical practitioners and placing a burden on their human shoulders that should not be there. Some are happy to take up the cause for the good in a show of courage, but they come to realize that the natural world with natural cures cannot heal what needs healing. Others prolong the problems for cash and call their religion “medical science”, when it is not.
 
In fact, real science will not deny signs from heaven, though they will not call it that. They will say that there is a spiritual side to healing and without it, 90% of the time or so, all the natural and pharmaceutical remedies in the world will not heal a person. 
 
So contrary to their own statements of unbelief, the world does look to the supernatural. They look to heaven for a sign. Everyone came to Jesus for the same thing, seeking after a sign (Mt. 16:1). They wanted miracles, signs, military accomplishments for Israel. They wanted heaven to do something supernatural, say they will believe if it happens, but then go right back to grumbling.
 
Repent. We seek signs from heaven. We worship signs from heaven. We idolize signs from heaven and they are most always figments of our own imagination. While God is in the business of signs from heaven, He is not in the business of breaking His own rules (nature, science, etc.) to do so. Things work the way He made them and they will work well, by His decree.
 
In fact, we look up to heaven in sin as the disciples did on Ascension Day and got chewed out by the Angels then, just as Jesus chews out everyone of us in Matthew 16 saying, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (v. 2-4).
 
Notice how Jesus, the God-man, answers here. He answers the super-spiritual question about signs from heaven with things on earth, organic things if you will. And this is exactly where our sin lies. We look up into heaven, but God is working His wonders on earth. We ask from spectacular signs, but what God gives is the sign of repentance.
 
Yes, the signs that heaven gives are those able to be comprehended by humans. Not just comprehended, but understood and digested and useful for everyday life, not just extreme, once-in-a-lifetime, life. 
 
Look at the Pharisee from today’s Gospel. He is also just as afraid as the Tax Collector, though his is a fear of wasting his time. He also fears that this religious stuff could be real, but he is looking for the showy and flashy especially if it means he gets to participate in it. 
 
He overlooks God’s true work of earth: repentance, even being disgusted by the man who is repenting, the Tax Collector, who also has too small of faith. As Jesus says of both of them, “if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you”, in St. Matthew 17:20. It doesn’t move for them and it doesn’t move for us. 
 
Take our great hero of faith, Moses. God did what he asked all the time. Why? Because Moses asked for forgiveness for God’s people (Num 14:9-20). “God, be merciful to sinners”, he prayed. And God would relent and His people would repent. Not because of any lightning strike, but because the Holy Spirit worked repentance in them.
 
St. Mary is overlooked, the least likely candidate for what was done to her, yet she possessed, quite bodily, The Sign from Heaven. And what happened to that? He was made man.
 
Yes, the sign that was begged for from heaven has appeared as a newborn child. God is dwelling with and working with and alongside men. And proof of that; proof that the Holy Spirit is working, healing, and handing out the panacea of heaven is repentance in a life lived with Word and Sacrament.
 
The world overlooks Jesus because He is supposed to be, and makes Himself out to be, the one, true God. He has the ability to heal miraculously. He has the power to make the sun stand still, calm the storms, and transfigure as lightning is seen from the east to the west. In other words, the world says that if Jesus has the ability to do those things and doesn’t, then He is not God.
 
To this Jesus replies, “Many good works have I shown you from My Father. For which of those works do ye stone Me?” (Jn 10:32) and “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?” (Jn 18:23). But also says, “Wisdom is justified by her children” (Mt 11:19).
 
Which means He did nothing wrong and taught nothing evil. There is not one charge of lying or coercion, or anything a worldly court could convict Him of, even to this day. Yet His divinity and humanity remains and He did not change His work methods.
 
All panaceas today are merely snake oils, not working or only working if you take them 3 times with boosters later. Certainly a crime, but not Jesus’s crime. Jesus’s crime was making things too easy. Jesus crime was saying the natural could contain the supernatural. Jesus’ continued crime is that of making something out of nothing. Of making baptism out of water. Of making The Holy Supper out of bread and wine. Of making Saints out of sinners.
 
For Jesus is our overlooked third man in today’s parable. He is the man Who, better than the Pharisee, follows the laws and despises the sins of the unrighteous and their feigned repentance. He is the man Who begs for the mercy that is sacrificed in place of sinners. He is also the God-man Who can demand a sacrifice for sin, be the sacrifice for sin, and accomplish both completely.
 
And God does all this as a man. Not an angel in flaming armor. Not a super shiny, enlightened goddess. But as a man Whom you would pass by on the street. He does the extraordinary using ordinary means.
 
So when He tells you to repent of your sins, He is asking you to do a miracle. For not only do you not believe you need repentance, in your sin, but you are not thinking about it at all. When He tells you to be baptized, He is telling you to tear open heaven and loot its treasures. When He tells you to eat and drink the flesh and blood of the Son of God, He is demanding that you kill the Son and take over the inheritance.
 
As Gabriel says to St. Mary and as Jesus says to His Apostles: with man, this is impossible. But with God, all of His words are possible. It is possible to be forgiven, by His cry for repentance. It is possible to be saved, by His Word in and with the water. It is possible to find perfect healing, by His presence in Bread and Wine.
 

In our sinfulness, we despise our dull, ordinary God Who chooses to use immune systems, food from a grocery store, and words to accomplish His wonderful works of salvation. Could Jesus do things differently? Of course. But He doesn’t. He doesn’t because this is His best Way to show His love for you. 
 
Christian apologist and author, G. K. Chesterton puts it this way:

It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

 
Jesus has come Himself, God’s Word, that we might not only know what repentance is, but also know that after it we find a forgiving Father in heaven. And He continues to do the same thing every day, not because He is uncreative, but because we are in such dire need of physical and spiritual healing that He doesn’t want us to miss out on a single day of it.
 
He doesn’t want some gate-keeper or charlatan keeping things scarce or increasing the chaos here to such an extent that somehow you miss your chance to board His Ark. For the Panacea from heaven is free, is perfected in the resurrection, but is handed out now in front of you. 
 
His perfect life He gives to you. The life that is pleasing to God, because it is His. the life that is holy, that fasts, and gives tithes. The life of humble repentance and the life of demanding mercy. The life of Faith, hearing the Gospel, believing it, and being fed immortality through the sacraments. The ordinary performing the extraordinary.