READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 1:10-14
Ephesians 4:7-16
- St. Matthew 9:9-13
Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus, the Christ.
Who speaks to you today as always, only through His Gospel
saying,
“Those who are
well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”
In our Lord’s words to us today, we hear it, at His bidding,
to see God’s desire for mercy, fully accomplished and given in Jesus Christ,
true God and true man. This should point us to the lack of merit and worthiness
in ourselves, not just in a negative way, but a positive. Negative being poor,
miserable sinners. Positive being, my worth depends on Christ and not myself.
We apply this to life by giving and speaking to others about this worthiness
Jesus offers to all.
Speaking of unworthiness, St. Matthew writes after the
events in his gospel. Why is that important? It is important because he
consciously chose to include the words heard today. Embarrassing words.
Shameful words about himself. Anyone writing for posterity would not include
these words, unless they added a caveat.
The caveat usually goes like this: yeah, I was bad and made
bad choices, but when I turned my life around, I did good-er and am thankful
for it. We quickly add the “good-er” part, because we want to make excuses for
the bad parts and not be judged, essentially saying, “I wasn’t that bad”. And
by doing so, we hope to fool God into looking past the sins of our youth, and
agreeing with us.
St. Matthew had no such fantasies, no such caveats. He lays
his life out there in the open and the horrid sins he committed before he was
called, as he was recalling and writing about Jesus. He allows the words of the
Pharisees to stand which place St. Matthew squarely in the party of the
sinners.
The same sinners of whom the Lord spoke in Genesis 13, “Now
the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord” (Gen 13:13).
The same sinners of which Samuel was told to prophesy, “And the Lord sent
you on a mission and said, ‘Go, devote to destruction the sinners’” (1 Sam
15:18). And from Psalm 104:35, “Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more!”
Hearing it directly from God’s mouth, of course the
Pharisees would have that same opinion in Jesus’s time. It is simply a matter
of justice and God is a God of Justice. If the sinner and his lawlessness were
allowed into heaven for eternity, it would be hell.
It would be no better than where we are at today, where the
wicked fill their bellies and get away with murder, theft, and wars. There
would be no point in promising heaven, no one would want to go, and God would
be labelled a false god, not worthy, Himself.
There would also be no point in following or paying
attention to anything St. Matthew wrote. How could you trust a man to claim to
have written a gospel book with a past like his? Did you hear what he tweeted
back in college?!
Repent. The United States’ favorite pastime is no longer
baseball, but character assassination. Breaking the Eighth Command is your
favorite hobby. You love to call into question the past of your opponents,
especially when it has nothing to do with the issues at hand. Because if you
can break their public image, you can break them.
If you can call attention to them, then no one will pay
attention to you.
If you point your finger, three point back at you…so just
point with five and you’ll be golden.
If Christianity were up to us, to build, to maintain, and to
increase, there would be no Christianity. If our worthiness were up to us, we
would forever remain unworthy. If Church were based on how well we portrayed it
to others, no one would be Christian.
St. Matthew knew this and wrote his gospel book thus in
order to teach just such a thing. We are disciples at St. Matthew’s feet and he
preaches to us saying, “Look. If I were making it up, why would I character
assassinate myself? Why wouldn’t I want you thinking so highly of me so that
you say, ‘truly he was a righteous man, worthy of God’s pen’”? How am I going
to fleece you of your cash, if I made a living fleecing others and you knew
it?!
And Jesus knows it. Therefore, He teaches, “He who
through faith is righteous shall live” (Rom 1:17). Jesus doesn’t want you
to believe in yourself. Jesus doesn’t want you to believe in St. Matthew. Jesus
wants you to believe in Him and His Worthiness.
St. Matthew wants your faith squarely on the crucified
shoulders of Jesus Christ, so he retains his sinful past to show that it was at
the Word of Jesus that he left his lucrative, comfy lifestyle, to pick up his
cross, and be hated and martyred for the Truth.
What the Lord did for St. Matthew, He can do for you for
just 30 easy installments of 99.99.
Or as St. Matthew actually said it, “the sick have need
of a physician; the sinners have need of a Savior.”
But a Savior cannot be worthy Who dirties Himself with sin,
Who stands in the way of sinners (Ps 1:1), as the more-righteous-than-you
Pharisees conclude. A proper Savior and Son of God does not enter in the path
of the wicked (Prov 4:14). But Jesus does. And He does so in two ways.
First, He does not commit sin. We usually read those verses
as speaking about us, not Jesus. And we have underlined them in our Bibles, in
order to come back and do them…later in life, because its all about me! Jesus
stands in the way of sinners by standing with sinners. That is, next to them,
with them in their life, going to where they are. That is how we should read
those verses.
He enters the path of the wicked in order to reach the
wicked, to talk with them, to reason with them. To discuss with them all that
should be done about justice. What should God do with all these sinners?
Therefore, secondly, Jesus stands in the way of sinners and
enters the path of the wicked in order to become sin and wickedness that He
would be condemned, suffer and die with all sin of all time and regenerate us
as righteous before God (2 Cor 5:21). He dives into the greatest and most
wretched hives of scum and villainy in order to rescue those who need rescuing.
How else is He supposed to remain good and upright? As Psalm
25 says, “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in
the way (Ps 25:8). If He cannot talk to sinners, touch sinners, be with
sinners, then they will be lost.
This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which
turns in the direction where it does not find good that it may enjoy, but where
it may confer good upon the bad and needy person. "It is more blessed
to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35), Jesus says. (AE 31:57)
This is the love of the Word Made Flesh; of the Lamb of God
Who takes away the sin of the world. That He Who was Most Worthy (Ps 145:3),
Who is above all, and through all, and in all (Eph 4:6) was emptied, made
Himself nothing (Phil 2:7) in order that you be full and complete and
overflowing (Jn 15:11).
St. Matthew’s worth, then, was not based on his ability to
keep up the appearance of a righteous, holy man. His worth was found, as
Abraham’s was found: he “believed God, and it was counted to him as
righteousness” (Gen 15:6).
Dr. Luther said, “He is not righteous who works much, but he
who, without work, believes much in Christ” (AE 31:55). In other words, the
righteous live by faith. Faith is the lifeblood which justifies and makes right
with God. And faith is a gift to those made worthy by the Blood of the Lamb.
The words "without work" should be understood in
the following manner: Not that the righteous person does nothing, but that his
works do not make him righteous, rather that his righteousness creates works.
For grace and faith are infused without our works. After they have been
imparted, the works follow. (AE 31:55-56)
Christ is our righteousness. Christ is St. Matthew’s
righteousness and in Whom we are to believe, if we have faith in St. Matthew’s
gospel.
Christ is our worth. Our Confessions state it this way:
“worthiness does not depend upon great or small weakness or
strength of faith, but upon the merit of Christ, which the distressed father of
little faith (Mark 9:24) enjoyed as well as Abraham, Paul, and others who have
a joyful and strong faith” (SD vii:71 ).
“For Christians who are of weak faith…troubled, and heartily
terrified because of the greatness and number of their sins, and think that in
this their great impurity they are not worthy of this precious treasure and the
benefits of Christ, and who feel and lament their weakness of faith, and from
their hearts desire that they may serve God with stronger, more joyful faith
and pure obedience, they are the truly worthy guests for whom this highly
venerable Sacrament [and sacred feast] has been especially instituted and
appointed; as Christ says…”They that be whole need not a physician, but they
that be sick”. Also “Him that is weak in the faith receives”…(Rom 14:3),
for God has received [you]. For whosoever believes in the Son of God, be it
with a strong or a weak faith, has eternal life (John 3:15)” (SD vii:69-70)
No comments:
Post a Comment