READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 1:10-14
Ephesians 4:7-16
- St. Matthew 9:9-13
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God
and of Jesus our Lord.
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.”
With these and similar words, Jesus creates His one holy, catholic,
and Apostolic Church on earth. Or at least He gives us the way to identify Her.
In this case, it will be filled with sinners. Thus, when we look for a church
to attend, we don’t just look for sinners, but the cross. Are there sinners,
sure, but are they bearing their crosses; are they The Sick in search of the
true Physician of Body and soul?
It has now spread throughout the country on the tiktoks, the
YouTubes, and I even heard it on American Family Radio that you should find a
different church. They said that if you did not talk about a certain,
prominent, murdered man last Sunday in church, that you should find a new
church. If your pastor did not bring up this certain man’s influence on this
generation, His great method of speaking to the hearts of people, and His
unjust treatment in front of a great crowd, then that church is not a godly church.
And I agree. If your church did not speak of Jesus last
Sunday, you should leave that false church and find an actual church that shows
you Jesus. Which is not what they meant, but you get it.
For today, St. Matthew the Apostle, is our teacher, who I’m
sure had been told things like, “if your synagogue didn’t teach you to swindle
the goy and give it as tithes to God, then you should leave” or maybe even “eat
the rich” or “you earned the money you took, it was their own fault for falling
for it” and other such self-justifications.
Today, St. Matthew hears a new teaching. The two main words
we’ll focus on, from the Gospel today, are “sinner” and “disciple”. Disciple is
interesting, because it is a play on St. Matthew’s name. Matthew, in Hebrew
means gift of God, but in the Greek it is almost the same as the word for
“disciple” or “learner”.
As for sinner, we think we know already what a sinner is.
We’ve probably heard that it means “one who misses the mark”, as in Romans
3:23, “All have fallen short of the glory of God”. And its true, our
works, done in sin because we are sinners, miss God’s mark of perfection. But
some preachers teach that sin is something that makes you a sinner, so “sinner”
becomes something that is removable from you.
If we let God speak, He speaks of sin as death. From
Ephesians 2:1, “you were dead in your sins”. Far from being something
curable or removable, sin is a killer. An instant killer. The moment you sin in
mind, body, strength, or soul you are dead to God. Not His choice, but yours.
You have found something more valuable than God. That is sin.
Thus, the word for sin in the Greek, means undead, or
without a martyr. Two things here: first, we are the walking dead. Our sin
remains and yet Christ has covered it. The believer in Christ goes through life
as a sinner and a saint, constantly dying and being reborn, as is the gift of
forgiveness.
Second, if we remain in sin, there is no longer a sacrifice
for sin for us, no longer a martyr for us (Heb 10:26). That is, if we choose
our sins over Christ, then we remain dead in them and Jesus is no longer our
Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the World. We must live and face
judgement without the true martyr: Jesus Christ.
This, St. Matthew does not allow and writes his gospel book
accordingly. In it, he makes sure that there is no doubt who the sinner is and
Who the Savior is. Such that, when we look to find His Church on earth, we find
it preaching Jesus Christ, not anything or anyone else.
We will conclude Service today with “Rise again ye
lion-hearted”. This lion-heart is the heart of Jesus. We misrepresent this
heart by thinking it must be here to work us into a fever or a fervor. That
unless we are changing the world, our country, or fighting for the latest
cause, then that must mean the heart is not with us.
But that is not what honoring the saints and apostles is all
about. We do not honor them by making new ones for ourselves, but by believing
as they did. This is St. Matthew’s gospel in a nutshell. In his writing, we see
Jesus taught to us and learned by us, as in catechism class. I believe St.
Matthew’s greatest line is where Jesus is given a new name, The Crucified (Mt
28:5).
This is, then, what the Apostles teach. St. Paul says in 1
Corinthians, “We preach Christ Crucified” and from last week “I glory
only in the cross of Christ”, Galatians 2:20.
From Hebrews 12:2, “for the joy set before Him, He
endured the cross” and St. James repeats that in the first chapter of his
epistle.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that
we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been
healed”, says St. Peter (1 Peter 2:24).
From St. John, Jesus came by blood, blood and water (1 John
5:6).
“keep yourselves in God’s love”, says St. Jude, “as
you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life”
(1:21), and Jesus is Love.
When the Apostles went to church they were expecting the
cross. If the cross was not there, then it was a false church. Plain and
simple. They were expecting to hold sacred, and gladly hear and learn of Jesus,
for them.
“What did Jesus do for me?” That’s talking about yourself,
not Jesus.
What did Jesus expect to be in His Church? We can quickly
point to the time when Jesus went in and flipped tables and see what He was not
expecting. But what was supposed to be there? Prayer? Mercy?
Jesus doesn’t just flip the Tables, but replaces them with
Himself. Since the beginning of a visible sign of God’s presence among His
people, it was always Himself. In the Tabernacle, the precursor to the Temple,
Jesus promised Moses: make an Ark, and “There, above the cover between the
two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you”
(Ex 25:22). And the sins brought there and the sacrifice made there, will
be forgiven.
The Presence of Jesus in His Church, is His Presence to
forgive. You can see this in Genesis, when Jesus walked with Adam before and
after the Fall. The Promise of all the Prophets is the Promise of the New
Covenant which will be the forgiveness of sins.
And since Jesus teaches that “without the shedding of
blood there is no forgiveness”, even the prophets preached the cross of
Jesus (Heb 9:22). And that cross is not only a piece of wood, it holds meaning.
Meaning in Body and Blood.
Thus, when Jesus comes to Church He expects to suffer, die,
and rise again for the unrighteous, for those who are sick. He expects to atone
for the sins of the world. He expects to find sinners, despairing in their sin,
begging for mercy at the Mercy Seat. For in His Presence is “the fullness of
joy” over one sinner who repents (Ps 16:11, Lk 15:7).
Thus, St. Matthew and all the Apostles, conclude that the
Body and Blood of Christ be present in the Church. When St. Matthew is called
away from tax collecting, it is not an inner conviction that raises him up, but
the Word of God made flesh.
So what is it you should be looking for in church? What are
the signs that scream: church?
The Word, the Supper, the Baptism, the Forgiveness, the
prayers and thanks, the Pastor, and the Cross, which purchased and won all
this, for sinners, that they may repent and live.
St. Matthew had already found a cause to live and die for,
in his tax collecting. Another cause or movement was not going to move him or
rescue him. It would take a man, a man with the authority of God Himself, to
baptize St. Matthew into death, that he would be free from the guilt of the
Law, and into His Resurection, that he would be free to live at Jesus’s side
forever.
There is no other Name, in heaven or earth or under the
earth, that is Holy on the Sabbath of the Lord. Jesus Christ Crucified, our
Martyr, is Who we are to hold sacred, and gladly hear and learn, especially
when He once more presents Himself on this Altar, offering sacrifice as our
Martyr, for the forgiveness of sins.
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