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.
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