READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 29:17-24
2 Corinthians 3:4-11
St. Mark 7:31-37
Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus, the Christ.
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His
Church, saying:
“And Jesus charged
them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they
proclaimed it.”
So apparently, these proclaimers were not paying attention.
Jesus said, in our Epistle, that it is not the letter that gives life, but the
Spirit. Yet they still proclaimed this miracle using words coming out of their
mouth which translates to letters, which according to some teachers out there,
cannot be the Good News, because the letter brings death.
So which is it?
We will focus on these letters of Jesus through Saint Paul
today for this reason, because many teachers of the faith will use this verse
to show us that organized religion is of the devil. It usually gets brought up
when there is a debate and someone wants to use Church history as a point. They
will then say, “the letter kills but the spirit gives life”.
What this means is that they want to win the point, no
matter if they contradict themselves, because they also use letters. It also
means they believe that the Holy Spirit does not use earthly means to save,
only spiritual. So, we are not real Christians because we have written
traditions, hymns, prayers, and sermons and those are all of the letter and so they
all bring death and so you are at the wrong church right now, my friends.
What is this letter that kills? In order to understand Jesus
as not contradicting Himself, we simply look ahead to how He explains it in the
next verse of the Epistle. The letters are the letters that are carved in
stone, belonging to the glory, glory!, of the Ministry of Death. And what was
written on stone, but the Ten Commands given to Moses! So God wrote and initiated
the Ministry of death?! And we teach it to our children??!
Yes they are written on stone and kept in the Ark of the
Covenant. They are also written on our hearts. Thus linking those stone tablets
with our hearts, which God says are made of stone, in Ezekiel 36:26. The
Letters, the Law, written on stone tablets given to Moses, also written on the
stone hearts which we all have, by the same finger of God. Hearts closed to God
and to our neighbor.
You don’t think so?
Let me prove it to you. We also have written letters of
death we call the laws of the land. Written by men, written on paper which can
be changed or erased at will. Recently, for the only reason being that
government programs need to continue to receive funding, the Trans-gender movement
has been out-pacing the homosexual movement. Interest in homosexuality has
plummeted and been replaced by trans-issues.
We think that once a law is written and codified, that
outrage ceases. Women’s suffrage, Civil rights, Roe v. Wade, and the Obergefell
case are all examples of the outrage culture getting their way and yet not
being happy with the results they wanted, because they just want to be
outraged.
But the trans-movement has officially erased them all. When
these “trans” laws, these letters, get on the books, no one will matter because
everyone is the same. There is no difference between men and women so there are
no women’s rights. These letters, written in the stones of our country aims at
death. The death of meaning and the deaths of all who disagree.
Repent! How did we get here? Whatever we have been doing for
our entire lives brought us here. No matter how noble or good we thought it to
be, those actions brought us to today. We may have had good intentions, did our
best, and tried to follow God, but here we are. Will blaming letters get us out
of it? No. That is the sin from which we need rescue.
That is the true meaning of Jesus’s words, because it has to
do with sin. The sin of glorifying anything that is not God. Sin makes it so that
when God shows up to confront it, only one survives and it won’t be sin. Jesus
calls it a ministry of death, not because it is a death ray just waiting for
someone to sin, but because when someone sins, they remove themselves from the
source of life: Christ.
Coming back to the Commands then, the same thing appears to
happen. Humanity is erased because the commands and demands of the letter of
the law are superhuman. They are at levels that describe something else, not
human. Just looking is adultery. Just being angry is murder. Just fearing is
idolatry. There might as well be a command against breathing, as high as that
bar is.
Is this really what Jesus is saying? First that religion is
of death and second that we can never reach righteousness?
The letter is the ministry of death only when sin reads,
marks, learns, and inwardly digests the things of God. The Glory and Holiness
of the Letter remains, even though it kills the sin and the sinner. Look again
at the Gospel. Jesus uses words, letters, and the very fingers that wrote out
the Commands on stone in order to right the sinful wrong of this deaf, mute
man.
What does that mean? It means that the many spirits of
humans attempting life, do not reach it. It means the spirit of sin is the
letter that causes death, as Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures, for in
them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.
But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” in John 5
(v.39-40).
That is, you search the letters in search of other letters
which you can use to justify your prejudice and your sin, instead of searching
for the letter that brings life, that is the Word of God, Jesus Christ. In the
sinful world, the perfect world is just one piece of legislation away. In God’s
World, the perfect world in found in His Man: the Messiah.
God has not changed His mind in Jesus, allowing Jesus’s
words and letters to give life. God’s Word has always given life. It gives
death to those without faith, for it is only faith that takes a hold of and
receives the things of God. The letter does not kill. The wages of sin is
death. The free gift of Faith is eternal life in The Word.
The reason why God’s fingers and letters do not cause death
is because God’s fingers and letters have been crucified. His fingers protrude
from nail-pierced hands that have carried the sin of the world. His letters
drip and ooze with forgiveness on account of His crucifixion.
In the resurrection of Jesus, the Spirit of God given is a
life-giving Spirit. Likewise, because of the suffering, death, and resurrection
of Jesus, the letters of God also give life. Along with the fingers of God, the
Hand of God, and the spit of God.
It is the letters of men that bring sin, death, and carry
the power of the devil. Men may have written the Bible, but those letters are
the Spirit-inspired Word of God. Men wrote our hymns, prayers, and sermons, but
any of that which agrees with the letters of God, also are good for teaching
the Gospel.
And that is the goal: gaining the free Gospel. Although the
Gospel given is spiritual, the mode by which it is given is human. Jesus, both
God and man, came to secure eternal life and salvation for all who believe.
Believe what? His word. How is that given? By hearing. Hearing what? Hearing
the words and the letters God used, in His body, to accomplish it.
God’s Word has gone out to all lands, through His Apostles.
Scripture does not say “to all spiritual lands” nor “through spiritual
Apostles”. These lands are your lands. These Apostles are your Apostles and
their teachings have been written that you may believe.
Thus the Church keeps and guards this eternal treasure, not
so that no one can find it, but so that no one can take it and mess it up. The
Church keeps and guards in order that we may always find Christ opening our
ears and tongue to His Word and Sacrament, and not our failed attempts at
purity in the doctrines of men.
Because it is not the doctrine of men that brings God into
communion with you. It is the fingers, ears, and tongue of God that does such
wonderful things. In Jesus, God comes to commune in Body, Blood, and Spirit.
None of them are separated. Christ retains His humanity and His divinity,
always, such that His Spirit and His letters give life.
In that communion, you are given such a miracle as to speak
plainly your confession in front of God and the whole world. The proclamation
that Christ lives, that He is eternal God, and that He has come to save you
through means. Means which you can grasp with ears, tongue, and heart.
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