Our Great Priest [Trinity 18]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Deuteronomy 10:10-21

• 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

• St. Matthew 22:34-46

 

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
 
Who speaks to you this morning saying,

“On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

 
And Jesus is our Prophet. Our Prophet, Priest, and King. Not just like the ones from our history, but the epitome of what it means to be those things. He is the King from Whom all the kings of the earth receive their kingship. He is the Prophet from Whom all prophets receive their prophecy. And He is the Priest from Whom all priests receive their pattern.
 
And what is a priest? Surprisingly, a priest has no real priestly powers or even significance in the grand scheme of things. For example, let’s say you have a disease and it is one of the forbidden ones that God lists. In order, to keep good order and purity within the cities and congregation, they could look at that person and declare them unclean, and maybe a little later find that they got better and declare them clean.
 
But that’s all they had: words. They could not heal the offending diseases nor could they offer anything to aid in healing. You had to heal on your own, you had to treat yourself, and you had to make sure you presented yourself at the proper place and time. 
 
The priest had no powers of precognition, cognition, or post-cognition. If you were getting sick, or were sick, or were hiding your health or your sin, he had no idea. Like your pastor today! 
 
As with everything, we go back to the beginning to find out just what a priest is good for. That means going to Aaron. And it just so happens our Introit today takes us right to him. In the last part, “O Lord, hear the prayer of Thy servants”, that verse goes on in the Book of Sirach to say, “according to the blessing of Aaron concerning Your people”.
 
At this verse, Aaron becomes not only important, but key to the people’s access to God. It sounds as if God will not hear their prayer unless they have believed and received Aaron’s blessing. That blessing you know so well, you could recite it in your sleep, which I hope you do, actually.
 
From Numbers 6:22-26, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.
So shall they put my Name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
 
Quite a few things happening here. “Face” and “countenance” are the same word, so God’s face is very important, in the matter. In that regard, when His face “shines”, it is not a lightbulb, but a revelation. To shine is to reveal in order to be seen. At Aaron’s words, the Face of God is revealed to all, and in so speaking, he has the unique vocation of placing the Name of God on the People of God.
 
Aaron, a man, is given the honor of revealing the Father’s face to all. However, being only a man, he is only given words to teach and declare. Jesus, being both God and man, can not only reveal the Father’s face, but can place His Name directly on those who believe.
 
Repent! In our sin, we believe a priest should be either completely magical and supernatural or completely useless. When presented with the supernatural, we grasp at it all, because we know what life in the flesh is like. When presented with disappointment, with no miraculous flash, we despise even the mention of a man in religion, because we know who we are all too well.
 
Liars, cheats, swindlers. We know our dark hearts and know others have it as well, so we distrust and suspect. We yell and shout when words get too close to our sins and we cower when they hit the mark. “I said in my despair all men are liars” (Ps 116:11).
 
Jesus is our Priest of priests, Who shows us what a priest is actually supposed to be capable of. First, is His active obedience. Where the priests could only declare God’s Law, Jesus fulfilled it perfectly, for us. In His divinity, He kept the Law, even as the Lord promises to keep us, in Aaron’s blessing.
 
Second, is Jesus’s passive obedience. Where the priests could only declare a sin or proclaim an illness or healing had happened, Jesus makes the sacrifice to forgive those sins and heal perfectly. In His humanity, He is able to suffer and die in order to secure the heavenly healing that the regular priests could not give. 
 
Third, is Jesus praying for us. At the Right Hand of the Father, Jesus holds all authority in heaven and on earth and He uses it to pray for you. Now, a man stands in heaven, the God-man, Jesus Christ, offering up your defense for all eternity. Where the priests were only men and maybe their prayers were heard, Jesus not only prays, but answers prayer according to His Will.
 
Finally, what is that will? That pure will of God is not just seen in the giving of words to men, but in the giving of men to preach as well. “Speak to Aaron and his sons” the Lord said. Don’t speak to the air, don’t publish a book, don’t let anyone willy-nilly preach this or that. The Lord gave the Word and great was the company of the preachers, called by Jesus Christ.
 
“As the Father sent me, so I am sending you”, Jesus says. Jesus sends men with His own Words of Authority to bless us, today. 
 
Here now is the teaching from our Gospel and why the question about the Greatest Command and David’s Son are paired together. First is Jesus’s command over the Law. He knows it inside and out, not just because He was the one Who gave it to Moses, Who’s finger wrote on the tablets, but because He is the Law. 
 
And not even just words written on stone, but the Word made flesh. God’s Law is His Word and Jesus is the Word. Thus, the Law Himself has come down to sanctify, not condemn. And He has come down as David’s Son. “The Lord said to my Lord”, is not God speaking to David, but the Father speaking to the Son.
 
This God of gods and Lord of lords Who is not partial and takes no bribes is Jesus Christ. This Jesus is your Halleluiah, says our Old Testament reading, our praise. The great and terrifying things He has done is His incarnation and His innocent suffering and death, for your eyes to see. The great and terrifying things He continues to do, even this day, are to baptize you, speak to you by His Son, and commune with you.
 
It is terrifying, because it is outside of comprehension and outside our corruption
. Not only do we not understand how water, bread, and wine can do such wonderful things, but that this is how He, the Word, chooses to do all things. Who you encounter today, at His Word, is none other than the Almighty. Who you handle and chew on today, is Who will sustain you to the end, guiltless on the Last Day.
 
As Jesus blesses and keeps you, so “the lips of the priest keep knowledge” says Malachi 2:7, “and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.” This is the strength of Aaron’s blessing. For it is not his, but God’s own, given to Aaron to do His wonders.
 
The wonders of justifying sinners by grace through the flesh and blood of a man, Who now rules all things at the right hand of God and yet comes to Church to commune with you. That is, to give you all of His glory and benefits in His Body and Blood.
 
And this Glory He puts into Word and Sacrament, for you. That you may not seek out your own glory or the glory of ghosts and spirits, He has given you priests. Priests that keep His Word, His Jesus, that you may find Him often and every time you seek Him. For He is not hidden or a mystery, but accessible and known in His Word.
 
Thus, at God’s Word, the priest is far from useless, for he gets to now declare healing that no doctor on earth could perform. He now gets to administer forgiveness as no blood of sacrifice could offer. He now is given God’s own Word on His lips, “O Lord open my lips, and my mouth with show forth Your Alleluia”, your Christ (Ps 51:15).
 
Though he is not the miracle worker Jesus is, the faith the priest teaches and the eternal life he gives are Christ’s own. And it is Jesus’s own Law that the pure Gospel be preached to all the earth and His Sacraments be administered according to it.
 
We seek the priest who has the Lord’s own knowledge. We seek that man Whom God ordained who preaches that pure Gospel, that we are justified by grace, through faith, for Christ’s sake. That we seek the place where he administers this, at God’s Command, in Word and Sacrament. For the Gospel tells us to be baptized, to commune, and to gather in His Name.
 
That is the knowledge of God in which is found all grace and blessing.
 

Your seat in Christ [Trinity 17]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Proverbs 25:6-14

• Ephesians 4:1-6

• St. Luke 14:1-11

 

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
 
Who speaks to you this morning saying,

“But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’”

 
Thus far from God’s Word, in which He wants us to think about a seat or a place in heaven. We are to know and believe that Christ takes the Judgement Seat and the Mercy Seat, in His Body, and know and believe we have a seat to be judged and to be shown mercy. This points us to run to Christ in His Word and Sacrament for Mercy and to view our own bodies as worthy of receiving such heavenly gifts.
 
Aren’t weddings fun? The mood, the atmosphere, the free beer? There are even games to be played. Dancing games, catch the flowers game, and the seating game. Going into the reception, you run to each table to find out where you get to sit, where your name is.
 
Table 1? Only if you got married that day. Table 2? Only if you’re family. Table 10? Table 20? All of a sudden you feel as if you are not in the right place. That you should have a seat closer to front. Why? You don’t know why. You only justify your feelings through “I deserve it” or “I’ve done so much for them to overlook me like this”.
 
But really, what is so special about the highest seat? If you think about it, you don’t deserve to be close to the wedding party if only because of all the work you didn’t put into their relationship and this wedding. Sure you were a friend and friends are important, but the stress, strain, and expense was all born by someone else.
 
And that someone else invited you. Invited you to share in a moment of happiness after months of planning and work. What’s so special about the highest seat?
 
King Solomon. There was the highest seat in the land. The wisest, the richest, the most prosperous king in history. Proverbs 25, our Old Testament reading today, was spoken by King Solomon from that highest seat. 
“Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth”, says 1 Kings 10:23. And Nehemiah 13:36:
“Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king”.
 
What was that seat like? Wars, politics, coups, wives, concubines. And ultimately, “his heart turned to other gods” (1 Ki 11:4). Sitting at the top, it was all Solomon could do to just sit. He did not have strength or honor enough to maintain dignity and morality. In his human frailty, he could only choose one or the other. Something had to be sacrificed.
 
That is the Highest Seat: sacrifice and death. The Place of Honor is such a chair that it drains the life out of the sinner. It demands all of your heart, all of your strength, all of your mind, and all of your soul. And all of that strain, all of that sacrifice, kills a man. And this is only an earthly seat!
 
Yet in our pride, that is the seat we believe we deserve. And that is the seat we believe Christ gives us, when we are good church-goers. We believe that if we just say the right church-things, sit in the right church-spot, and make sure everyone knows about it, then the place of honor is ours.
 
Repent. Aren’t weddings nice? Unless there’s no seat for you. This is the case from our Gospel reading. We don’t know which seat is lowest or highest. Will we be the life-long man with dropsy or the holier-than-thou Pharisees? It is only when Jesus sits down, do we know the difference. And when Jesus sits, He of course takes the Highest Seat.
 
Which, as we have just described, is the seat of sacrifice and death. This is why St. Luke put this parable just after a healing miracle and a violation of the Sabbath. If Jesus wants to maintain His dignity and honor of the Lord’s Sabbath, then He must not do any work on the Sabbath, of which healing is a part. If He wants to promote strength and morality, then He must help this man to the best of His ability, violating God’s Law.
 
Jesus reveals the highest and the lowest seat. As a man, where we fall short of God’s glory, He perfectly keeps the Law. As God, where we are unable to help our fellow men even on a Sabbath, Jesus takes this man’s infirmity into Himself. Higher than man’s sinfulness, yet lower than all the punishments of heavenly wrath.
Jesus, both God and man takes both seats.
 
In doing so, He also reveals your seat and there isn’t one. In fact, there’s only one, as our Epistle reading said. “there is one body and one Spirit”. One and it is the Lord’s. Revelation 7:10, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
 
There are others: 12 and 24. 12 for the Apostles to judge the nations (Mt 19:28) and 24 for the elders to fall and worship (Rev 4:4), but those are occupied. 
 
Another part of Ephesians, chapter 2, explains: “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (2:6). 
 
For one, this means we have access through Jesus Christ to all of heaven’s privileges and spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:3–14). The power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is available and working on our behalf as we walk in this world. We have the whole armor of God at our disposal to help us “stand against the devil’s schemes” and stand firm “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:11–12).
 
However, secondly, there are two humiliating lessons here. First, the one and only seat is Christ’s. Second, God must seat you. Humility is given, not found or earned. For Who is this Jesus Who shows you the seat? He is both God and man, in our flesh. 
St. John Chyrsostom writes in a letter to Leo the Great, “Let us learn to know which nature it is to which the Father said, Share My Seat. It is that nature to which it has been said, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.'” (Epistle 65).
 
According to the flesh of Christ, all authority in heaven and on earth is given to Him. According to the flesh of Christ, are the Apostles and Elders given to participate in the Divine Seat. According to His humanity, he gives baptism into that flesh. Our flesh He shares in.
 
And it is according to that flesh, that Body of Christ, that a man is ordained, on earth, to show it to you. For the Seat of Christ is also called the Mercy Seat. In His infinite mercy, He shows you to your seat, through a man. Whether it is the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, upon which you have been built, Christ Jesus being the Cornerstone, or your own pastor. You are led to mercy, in His Church.
 
Mercy found, not just in a future participation in power and authority, but a present communion in forgiveness and salvation. Right now, in your body, you are seated in Christ, in His seat. And it is the sacrament of baptism which accomplishes this communion.
 
Our Large Catechism teaches:
“let everyone esteem his Baptism as a daily dress in which he is to walk constantly, that he may ever be found in the faith and its fruits, that he suppress the old man and grow up in the new. For if we would be Christians, we must practice the work whereby we are Christians. But if any one fall away from it, let him again come into it. For just as Christ, the Mercy-seat, does not recede from us or forbid us to come to Him again, even though we sin, so all His treasure and gifts also remain. If, therefore, we have once in Baptism obtained forgiveness of sin, it will remain every day, as long as we live, that is, as long as we carry the old man about our neck” (LC IV:84).
 
Again, humility is given. In this case, in order to find your seat, you must submit to Baptism, learn baptism, and always remember your baptism. This is why we cross ourselves so much in Church, to remember. To remember what brought us here, to remember Who redeemed us here, and to remember that He makes us belong here.
 
And in order to submit, you must be shown where your Lord is and where He accomplishes all this. In His Word, which He has given to men to preach and teach (Rom 10), in His Baptism, which He has given to men in order to disciple all nations, and in His sacrament of the Altar, which He has given to men, to give to you.
 
Dear Christians, there is no call from God to take your assigned seats at the assigned time. The call is to withstand temptations. The temptations to find a place outside of God’s Way, outside of Christ’s Way, outside of sacrifice and death. 
 
Sacrifice in which the Blood of God fills our baptismal font, as Revelation 1 says, “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood”. And the death of God into which we are baptized. And “if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we will certainly also be united with Him in a resurrection like His” (Rom 6:5).
 
And at the Resurrection, the Feast. And at the Feast, the Wedding of the Bride and the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the World.