READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 15:1-6
1 John 4:16-21
- St. Luke 16:19-31
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Savior. (Titus 1:4)
Who speaks to you today, saying:
“The poor man died
and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was
buried”
The sin of the rich man is not being rich. It is believing
that his clothing and his feasting are equal to or better than God’s. God
includes this in His Word to reveal the pride and humility of His Son, Jesus,
in order that it point us to our own life of faith in His Church and humility
towards our prideful neighbor.
The currency of pride is attention. In the case of our rich
man today, the wealth of his attention is spent and gained in his house. Not
only away from the social problems of his neighbors, but also away from the
fine clothes and feasts of His God. Note his Church language to father Abraham:
“have mercy”, “dip in water”, “send someone back from the dead”.
Though he used the right words, he did not believe them, and
instead “feasted sumptuously”, or “made good for himself” alone. In his pride,
he relocated and reallocated the Lord’s Feast to his own table and excluded
those whom God included: i.e. Lazarus. It was pride that he held onto even
while in torment, as he ordered Abraham and Lazarus around, instead of
repenting.
This is what Jesus means when He says in Romans 1:22-24, “Claiming
to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,
to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.”
Pride is the fear, love, and trust in the stability of
earthly things. Life will always be this way and it is not changing no matter
how much I despise God’s laws and violate human rights. It seems as if God
permits men to fall into grievous sin in order to be put to shame in his own
eyes and the eyes of all men. Not only as an example, but in order that he
might have a chance to repent. That he might become aware of his wickedness,
turn from it, and live.
If we remember Pharaoh chasing after all Israel in the
middle of the Red Sea, we see the sin of pride win out. Pharaoh refuses to
repent and let the people go and God urges him on down the path of his own
carefully and expertly planned wisdom: to destruction. God says to Pharaoh, ok,
thy will be done.
There is also another sinful side to pride, as if there is
anything else to it. It is unique among the vices in that all the other vices
are practiced in evil works: greed, wrath, gluttony. But Pride is done in and
through good works. It is the love of glory and self-satisfaction that
outshines even God Himself, in doing good.
Love is love, how dare you say different. You’re not being
loving towards your neighbor. Don’t you want everyone to be who they want to be
and live their life? You’re taking away my rights. Can’t you see you’re hurting
me?
Repent. Pride is in all of us and it is the last sin you
will ever face off against. Death is the last enemy to be defeated, pride is
the last sin to be engaged. This is because it infects everything we do and all
other sins. Our sinful nature cannot help it. When we do bad, its out of pride.
When we do good, it is out of pride. We get puffed up. We love to be noticed.
We love to paint it on walls and roads: we do good things.
Yes, beloved, pride even affects your elite-level pastor,
who is never wrong. Sadness.
The Law of God, which demands these good works, these works
of love towards your neighbor, is holy. That is, you must do them, regardless
of who your neighbor is. Every gift of God, my eyes and ears and all my members
my reason and all my senses, is good. Everything that He has created is
exceedingly good, as said in Genesis.
However, without the theology of the cross you misuse the
best in the worst way. Whoever has not been brought low, reduced to nothing
through suffering and the cross, takes credit for works and wisdom and does not
give credit to God. This is the misuse and defilement of God’s gifts.
Can’t I be proud to be a Christian?
Dear Christians, we do not live in our own world. We did not
create it. We do not live in our own bodies either. We did not make them,
neither do we know how any of it works. We can observe to some extent, but
beyond our senses we are at a loss. This is why there is no call to have pride
or to boast in ourselves.
So what do we do about pride? We kill it with kindness. How?
By dying and rising again.
Jesus, the proud God of all that He made and accomplished, “did
not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by
taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being
found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed
on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil
2:6-11)
Humility may be the antibody for pride, but humility can do
nothing without the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the point of
Jesus. That is Abraham’s point, in today’s parable. Both men died, true. Both
were even resurrected to eternal life, you following? The difference is, there
is life in the Blood of Jesus alone, not in purple robes or feastings.
For the Purple Robe is the Robe of the King of kings. But
the True King does not wallow in the purple robe of prosperity. He is robed in
the Purple of joyful suffering for His prideful creatures. From St. Mark, “They
clothed him with purple, and weaving a crown of thorns, they put it on him”
(15:17). The Purple robe is the Robe of crucifixion.
The Feast is also only the Feast of the True King. But the
true King does not give secondary, created food that melts in the morning sun
or rots away from worms. True, heavenly food is from the pierced side of the
Lamb of God, roasted over the fire of the cross, with His blood on the
foreheads and hearts of believers.
The Feast is not celebrated until the last person who will
be called is invited and the call goes out to the streets, the lanes, the
outermost parts of the region, and to the gates. Lazarus was invited and was
only admitted at the Resurrection. So it is, that the Robe and the Feast become
gifts. Though they are marks of Jesus Christ, His final mark is to give them
away, to you.
Isaiah 61, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul
shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he
has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself
like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with
her jewels” (v. 10).
Dear Christians, the joy of the rich man’s robe is in giving
it away, not having it for oneself. The joy of the Feast is in giving it away,
not making oneself fat from it. The joy of our Servant God comes from giving
His Kingdom to sinners He has made righteous, by His shed Blood on the
cross.
This is what we are to boast in: the works of Christ which
last for eternity. Not His work in our life, not His coaching us in a tough
spot, and not even His making us morally straight. Our boast, our pride is to
rely and rest in the accomplished salvation of Jesus. We should have a godly
pride and arrogance in knowing Christ in His Word and Sacrament.
This is the sanctified pride. The bold insistence that we
are safe and secure in Christ in the face of sin, death, and the devil. No
amount of road graffiti or protest signs accomplish such pride. Only the
glorying of our crucified and risen Savior, Who has done all good things for
us.
We accomplish nothing with our sinful humility, but praising
the Christ who is in us and is granting us grace is a different matter. This we
should do by all means, especially in light of the proud array of the Bride of
Christ, the Church.
All of us should chiefly strive to learn to know Christ well
that we may proudly claim for ourselves the triumph and the majesty we have in
Christ and that we may bid farewell to the devil, however indignant and furious
he may be. For in the glory of God we should be proud, not in the filth of our
works and merits.
We should be proud, because the omnipotent Bridegroom is in
His Church of Word and Sacrament, which, though burdened with many evils, yet
has a Bridegroom who assumes them all and bestows His power and glory on
her.
Jesus does not just say, “Pride cometh before the fall”,
but He shatters that darkness with His Love. He does not just say that He “opposes
the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5), but He takes your
sin of pride and humiliates Himself on the cross, for your benefit.
Pride is a forgivable sin. Your sin is forgivable. Your
neighbor’s sin is forgivable, regardless of his lifestyle. You cast judgement
in your pride and so you fall. Instead cast forgiveness upon your neighbor and
upon your enemy. That is, give them the same Christ and His Gospel of the free
forgiveness of sins that you have.
It is the Lord’s job to judge and to exact vengeance. It is
your job to glorify the Only Begotten Son of God Who is the pride of Jacob, our
heritage, and the One Whom God loves (Ps 47:4). For today, Moses and the
Prophets have spoken to you, begged you to believe. God Himself, in the flesh,
has preached to you and, risen from the dead, communes with you.
There is no more room for hate. There is no room for pride.
You have to invite it back in, but do not! Jesus fills all, even you. And He
does it in this way:
In order that our Father in heaven would not look upon our
sins, nor deny our prayers because of them; for we are neither worthy of the
things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them; but that He would grant
them all to us by grace; for we daily sin much, and indeed deserve nothing but
punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who
sin against us. (Small Catechism, 5th Petition)
Our currency is Christ and He gives Himself in abundance.
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