The Kingdom of means [Lent 1]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Genesis 3:1-21

• 2 Corinthians 6:1-10

• St. Matthew 4:1-11

 

Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
 
Jesus speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory”

 
Thus far from God’s Word. And He wants it written for us to hear of His Kingdom, which He has promised to bring to earth. Instead of hearing and believing every joe-schmoe talk about the kingdom being this or that, God wants us to believe His kingdom is with His only begotten Son. This points us to return to Church often and to lead others to find the true Kingdom which is not of this earth.
 
In our Gospel today: what may not be a temptation for God is a temptation for man. Thus, the devil confessing that Jesus is the Son of Man, tempts Jesus with all the kingdoms of the earth. By “all the kingdoms”, I can only assume he showed all of them from all time, maybe even all possible kingdoms, for you string theory fans. You know, the ones we pray for today.
 
The utopias, the paradises, the kingdoms where everyone votes like us. These are the tyrant kingdoms of so-called peace, where you are going to be peaceful, or else. For, “of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive…those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience”, C.S. Lewis has said (God in the Dock).
 
These are the sorts of kingdoms we imagine could envelope the whole earth and unite us all. We believe that if Jesus had just implemented this sort of kingdom, everything would have turned out better and we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today. Do not be so quick to judge another’s idea of the kingdom, until yours is examined fully.
 
But you attach the name “Jesus” to it. You say, in it’s constitution, that Jesus is king, one nation under God, and rights and love. So yours is truly the kingdom because of that. 
“Here, Jesus. Here’s this kingdom we made just for you. Why aren’t you happy with that?”
 
In your sin, everything you offer to God may as well come from the devil himself, because in our offerings we attach strings. Maybe not consciously all the time, but they are there. If I give this much, then God will…whatever it is. Or you say, “God I always come to church, I give this much to these people, and have done my best, so You just gotta…”
 
The other part of our sin here, is that we are trying to break into God’s Kingdom. We know He has one, because He talks about it, but we just don’t know what it looks like or where the entrance is. It’s not that it’s hidden either, for the devil knows of it too, and as an angel he should definitely know where it is. So what is the issue?
 
As always, the issue is faith. It comes down to faith, if you want to see the kingdom, for Jesus has hidden it. And yet, it is discoverable, but those who wish to violently take it by force will never come across it. To seek power or control in any shape or form will only leave you empty. Faith alone opens and closes the doors to the kingdom.
 
We get our clues from the Lord’s own prayer, when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come”. And it is in defining the kingdom that the blessed Dr. Luther interprets Jesus’s words, “My kingdom is not of this world” for us. Dr. Luther teaches that the Kingdom comes when the Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His Grace, we believe His Holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity. The complete opposite of us demanding power and control in our lives.
 
With faith, comes belief. With belief, comes godly living. And with all of that comes the kingdom of God. Through what? The giving of the Holy Spirit. And the giving of the Holy Spirit is none other than the preaching of the pure Gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to it. 
 
“But when the Helper comes”, says Jesus on the 7th Sunday of Easter, “whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me” (John 15:26). “He will lead you in all truth” and “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 16:13, 14)
 
Now you see why we, in our sin, and the devil cannot find the Kingdom: it is with Jesus only, where there is no more sin. More than that, it is wrapped up in the glory of Jesus. And the hour of the Son’s Glory, given by the Father, is the hour of Jesus’s crucifixion. 
 
Thus, in trying to locate the kingdom of God, we have inadvertently, but divinely, pulled on the strings of heaven. In searching for the kingdom we have run into the cross of Christ; we have run into the Sabbath Day, where we are to hold sacred the preaching and God’s Word; and we have run through our Lord’s Prayer, where we are taught about the Kingdom of Faith. 
 
And we have ultimately come upon God’s greatest work in all of history: the salvation of sinners by grace lone, through faith alone, for Christ’s sake alone. Not Christ on a banner or the word “Christ” on our lips, but the living-breathing-resurrected-Savior-Who-communes-with-His-Church, Christ.
 
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the standard of the Kingdom of God and so no one can see it, because they do not believe the Almighty would lower Himself to a Servant of sinners. Notice how the last words of Jesus parallel the temptations He endured under the devil. 
 
At the temptation of bodily need of hunger by the devil, Jesus proclaims His thirst on the cross. At the temptation of rescue from impending peril of death by the devil of being thrown from the heights, Jesus is lifted up high on the cross of His death. At the temptation of all the kingdoms in the world by the devil, Jesus completes His own Kingdom in His Body and Blood, saying, “It is finished”.
 
Of course our Lord’s kingdom is not of this world. His Kingdom is a kingdom of grace alone, through faith alone, for Christ’s sake alone and that is not found on earth. On earth, it is always who is more right, who has more might, and fight or flight. 
 
And yet, in mercy, our Lord Jesus Christ brings His kingdom to earth. Literally, brings it with Him. Where the King is there is the Kingdom. It is not about how well we enact or create a kingdom for God, but how whether or not we find Jesus. 
 
For the 3rd Article of the Creed teaches, the Holy Spirit must call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the whole Christian Church on earth and keep it with Jesus Christ in the one, true faith. That is His job. The kingdom comes when we are given the Holy Spirit.
 
When and how is that accomplished, exactly? Jesus first unleashed the Holy Spirit on the cross saying, “Father into Your hands I commit my Spirit”. The Spirit is His own and His to give, absolutely. Holy Scripture plainly saith:
In Acts 16:7, "...and they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them".
In Philippians 1:19, "...for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance".
Galatians 4:6, "...God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and now you can call God your dear Father".
And Romans 8:9, "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him"
 
Why is it so important to believe the Spirit is with Jesus? So that we can’t think of silly ways to grab the Spirit on our own. Like a silly incantation, a vow, or anything else outside His Holy Word. Apart from the Word of God, there is no Spirit for us. His work is only in and through the Word.
 
And that answers our second question as to how the Holy Spirit is given to us: through the preaching of the Word, as our 3rd Command already taught us. But those who preach must be sent by God. Not just anyone gets to stand in front of God’s people and speak. The devil tries that one today and is shut down. 
 
At the Word of Jesus we gain what it says we gain and therein lies the kingdom: in His Promise. And He promises to speak to you His Spirit. He promises to wash you in His Spirit. And He promises to feed you His Spirit. 
 
And His Spirit, when here, will point us to those things mightily, because there we find our answers to all our questions. Jesus is enough. His cross is enough. His kingdom, in the means He chooses to give it, is enough. Their glory is their shame. Our glory is Christ Crucified and the Kingdom He brings in Word and Sacrament.

Follow blindly [Quinquagesima]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 1 Samuel 16:1-13

• 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

• St. Luke 18:31-43

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Phil 1)

 

Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.’”

 

I see said the blind man to his deaf wife as he picked up his hammer and saw.

What we do not “saw” is our sin. Even less, we do not see a way to fight against sin, when we do see it. What we think is our sin is what everyone else sees in the public. Our public persona becomes how we gauge where our sin-o-meter is at and that is not why Jesus died on the cross.

 

Now, while it is extremely important to be at peace with all people if possible, it is also extremely important to confess your sins (Rom 12:8). For if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). And since Jesus’s main message is “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand”, maybe we should take that a bit seriously.

 

And it starts with understanding our outward appearance. As we said, loving our neighbors, who are in public, is eternally important, but maintaining that is no great cross. It is not hard to fool people into thinking you are a nice person. We can put on our suit, we can put on our hat, we can put on our mask and be ready for God’s Will.

 

Except for when the mask slips. One of the times it slips is when we are sick. Even then we are given the benefit of the doubt to those around us. “Oh he’s dealing with a lot” or “he’s just exhausted from being sick”, they’ll say and we’re absolved from whatever we did. But we are not sick all the time.

 

Another time it slips is when we are angry. They say you see who a person truly is when they are under pressure. Then there is no time to hold the mask on. You must act, you must speak, and you must do it yesterday. The public understands this and so, just a little bit, you can control deadlines, meetings, and decorum.

 

However, the closer our sins come to our obsessions and compulsions, the more difficult it is to say no. There we get into relationships where resistance compounds desire. I say, "I'm not going to sin." Then I start thinking about sinning. Then I'm thinking about thinking about sinning. 

 

And pretty soon I'm on my way to the cupboard and once I've gotten past that point, it's easy for me to go past that point again, and again, and again, and again. We get into our own compulsions and the law is useless. I can say to myself over and over again, you shall not, you shall not, you shall not. But it just makes me thirsty. 

 

And so the commandment is not going to be sufficient. What good are the commandments doing for this blind man in today’s gospel? The commandment will teach you to cheat. It'll teach you hypocrisy. It'll teach you deceit. It'll teach you to get what you want all the while fooling everyone and fooling God.

 

And so one of the ways we fight back against sin, sin, death, and the devil, is by learning habits that are helpful. Looking at the 4th through 10th commands, the Second Table of the Law, we can find there study habits, habits of hygiene, habits in relationships, habits that serve us. And that's all helpful because when issues like that come up, you're not sitting thinking, well, I guess I have to make a choice all over again. 

 

I mean, do I really want to brush my teeth? Can I brush my teeth with godly integrity? Or am I being a hypocrite again? And should I leave my teeth unbrushed today so that I can at least be honest and let everyone know I’m a sinner? None of that malarkey. Brush your teeth. That's enough to fix my problems. There you go.

 

However, the First Table of the Law is where we encounter our bondage. Commands 1 through 3 do not provide habits or behavior solutions which we can easily practice. When God says there’s only one of Him, we have to wait on Him to fill in the rest of the blank and answer questions like, well who are You then?

 

When He says to not take His Name in Vain, He has to answer what that Name is and how it compares to other names. When He says Remember the Sabbath, well what is the Sabbath, how is it remembered, and what’s the big deal, anyway?

 

The temptation is enthusiasm. The temptation is to treat the law as though it's been conquered so that I can do that which I please. This is because the Law is placed in flesh and blood. God chooses to use our neighbor to embody His Law so that we can see right away our failures.

 

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother,” declares St. John, “he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). Now we are moved from public to private, for when we face our wife or husband, there we find the cross. In those family faces we find our God staring at us, killing us, as we fail to stand up to even one of His commands.

 

Repent, O fearless man, full of righteousness. How will you fight against that? How will you fight against the sins and temptations dealing with spouse, children, and kindred? You can blame God, as Adam did, for giving you such a family or you could blame others, as Eve did, for making you do such things.

 

In both cases, Jesus is passing by and you have three choices, per our Gospel reading. You can be like the Twelve and have no understanding to what is said, fall into despair, and curse God. You can be like “those in front” who judge their neighbor as “less”, curse him, curse God, and despair.

 

The third choice is no better, according to the sinner. There we must be vulnerable and admit our weakness in front of everyone. This blind man shouts and begs all day, which is embarrassing, so to have him shout and beg now, we see no difference. He just wants a handout. He just wants attention. He could care less about the words Jesus is speaking. 

 

The third choice is to deny ourselves and admit that we cannot choose it. We do not have the strength, the reason, or the fortitude to refuse sin and temptation. No more can this blind man make himself see, than we can rid ourselves of our sins. And for our struggles, the Lord gives us the cross.

 

Jesus doesn’t just heal this man in order that he can go home and start writing his memoirs of “How Jesus healed me”. Jesus brought this man back from the dead to follow Him. He lifted him out of his sins, forgiving him, and let his will be done in giving him what he asked for, seeing eyes. And then the Holy Spirit continues to work, in calling the man to follow Jesus.

 

How does one follow Jesus? To best understand, let’s go to when Lazarus died, in St. John 11. The news came to Jesus that Lazarus was on the verge of dying, yet He did not go to him. The news finally came to Jesus that Lazarus had died and Jesus says, Now, let us go to him.

 

St. Thomas gives us our answer, “Let us follow him that we may die with Him” (Jn 11:16).

4 days later, Jesus finally arrives and raises Lazarus from the grave. To follow Jesus is to dog His steps to see what He will do, not to show off our Bible skills. To follow Jesus is to follow to the cross, where we die. To follow Jesus is to be given the Holy Spirit that we might hear His call from our own grave of sin and death, and be raised with Him.

 

Jesus is not here as our coach or our Santa Claus. He does not write His own book that we may find there “self help”. He does not go about raising the dead and performing miracles just for us to implement socialism and call it God’s Will.

 

Jesus goes to the cross. It is His habit, though He only needed to do it once. The purpose of preaching morality and a new life before God is to be delivered over to the Gentiles, mocked, shamefully treated, and spit upon. The purpose of giving the blind man his sight is that He would be flogged and killed.

 

On Jesus hangs all the Law and the prophets and Jesus hangs on a cross. Not that He is still there, but that it is there that He accomplished all the work He set out to do from Genesis 1. On the cross we see the Law fulfilled, completed, finished. It is in the Lord’s innocent suffering and death, that we find our redemption. It is in His holy, precious Blood that we find our new life.

 

Everything we have dies at the foot of the cross, because nothing we have lives through such an act. For who is as righteous as Jesus, Who lives a perfect life to God? And who is as sinful as Jesus, Who bears the sin of the world on the cross, though not His own?

 

In faith, we pick up that cross, because we have been called out by the Gospel. “Jesus alone” leaves no room for “change of life” to have any say in the matter. However, “Jesus alone” does give us new habitats and new habits.

 

The new habitat the baptized, forgiven sinner sees himself in is the Church. The Church of what Jesus is doing now. The blind man was brought back to the world of sight to see the Crucifixion and the Resurrection and then the Apostolic work after that. The blind man was not set free to go do what he wanted. He was set free to live his life of faith.

 

Faith that wants to hear the story over and over again. His own story, sure, because now he was in the Way of Jesus. Jesus did heal him, in order that he go and worship Him. Just as Israel was freed from Egypt to make a “three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God” (Ex 3:18), so too are we freed from our sin to worship.

 

To follow Jesus to His betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection. To follow Him as He sets His Apostles over us to teach, to pray, and to break bread. To follow today as He continues that work baptizing, communing, and forgiving.

To follow God is to go where He is working and He is working in Word and Sacrament.

 

Thus, we have been gifted a new habit, in this habitation of our Lord’s work for us. The habit of Church. That is the yearly readings of the Word to attend and hold sacred. The preaching to gladly hear and learn. The work of God, given and shed for you, habitually offered at this Altar to receive.

 

All this activity gives little room for sin, because the Lord is working and you must be still and be silent to receive it. Though daily we continue to be assaulted by our temptations and sins, we can now replace it with God’s own Work, for us. 

 

So we give up. We give up trying to fight. We give up trying to resist. We give up and give to Jesus. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”, says St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:5. Before we take action, we give it to Jesus to see what He will do with it. And He will always kill it at His cross.

 

And to be raised again with Jesus, we don’t look to ourselves for proof, but see if we have confessed our sins. He continues in 2 Corinthians saying, “You are judging by appearances. If anyone is confident that they belong to Christ, they should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as they do” (10:7). 

 

That is, can your neighbor belong to Christ just as much as you do? Can your wife, husband, son, daughter, father, mother, brothers, sisters be loved by Jesus just as much as you can? Can your enemies?

 

Those who set at naught and sold Him, pierced and nailed Him to the tree, deeply wailing shall their true Messiah see (LSB 336). Jesus sits us at the cross and doesn’t let us leave. Not that He is still on it, but that we still need that sacrifice every second of every day or we will go astray. We need the habitus of His Church, His Bride, that we might hold the forgiveness of sins sacred, not as a license to sin, but as a condemnation and a resurrection in His Body and Blood.

 

 

Good Enough Follower [Sexagesima]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 55:10-13

• 2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9

• St. Luke 8:4-15

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Phil 1)

 

Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“And … a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him”

 

The crowds, the crowds. Whether its Palm Sunday or any other time Jesus is walking about, there is always a crowd coming after Him. They like His bread. They like His miracles. They like His words. Whatever it is, a great crowd gathers around Jesus. Even today, there are no end to people claiming to follow Jesus. Can they all be telling the truth?

 

Why do people follow Jesus and can we hope to do the same, but better because we want to be believers and followers??

 

St. Luke begins chapter 8 with many people being close to Jesus. He lists the 12, some female disciples, and many others who provided for the cause. Next is the parable for today where St. Luke tells of a great crowd. All have come to see and hear Jesus, hoping for a miracle of their own, and there are many of them.

 

As the chapter continues, Jesus begins to make divisions. It starts with the 4 types of ground, described, and moves on to His family, where He declares His real family are those who hear and believe, not necessarily flesh and blood. What we thought, on the Last Sunday of the Church Year, was just a 50-50 division between sheep and goats, has become a 75-25 division, with only one out of the 4 soils making the cut.

 

He embarks on a boat with only the 12, after this, and calms the storm. It is here Jesus calls the disciples’ faith into question. “Where is it?” He asks. Where is your faith? Suggesting that the size of the in-crowd is now less than 12. 

 

He then goes on to exorcise a legion of demons from only one man, heal only one woman with a flow of blood, and raise only one daughter that had died. Now, in order to be with Jesus we must have one of these experiences. If we don’t, then how can we be sure of authentic faith being in us? 

 

The real deal-ender here, is that no one has these experiences anymore because Jesus is not among us any more, as He was then. And because we know and believe that, we have replaced Jesus’s work with “good enoughs”.

 

Its good enough that I have A/C in the summer and heat in the winter, those are types of miracles right? Its good enough that we can have or are having children. Its the miracle of birth, right? The sun rises, the seeds grow, and there is kindness in the world. Good enough. Those can be miracles.

 

Because, as we well know, even a miracle needs a hand. We'll help our Maker to make our dreams come true. You hope and I'll hurry, you pray and I'll plan. We'll do what's necessary. You love and I'll labor, you sit and I'll stand, get help from our next-door neighbor, 'cause even a miracle needs a hand.

 

This is all of us working together. This is the world, coming together, to do good. And this is the promise Jesus made, right? To gather us, to unite us to Himself, but since you can’t literally be united to someone, what He meant was doing the same things as Him and calling “good enough”. 

 

So we are gathered to Jesus, but with whom are we gathered? His spiritual allies who work with Jesus in spirit only? His political allies who seek to gain a heavenly kingdom on earth? His cultural allies who live by murder and deceit in God’s Name? His religious allies who only give lip service, but don’t actually believe His mumbo-jumbo? 

 

“What are we to do?”, say the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together in council, John 11. “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” (John 11:47-48)

 

What happens to our loyalty when Jesus doesn’t lend us a hand anymore, when He appears to go against our dreams and efforts, and when He takes the “other side”?

 

Being the descendants of Abraham, the chief priests and Pharisees knew best and felt this alleged betrayal from God. No glory cloud in Temple worship, after the return from Babylon. No pure line of David on the throne, at the time of Jesus. No rewards for being faithful to the Law. Now God has come down in the flesh and we are spoken against and offended.

 

“What are we to do?” 

We will follow Jesus. “So from that day on they plotted to take His life”, John 11:53 continues. And not just Jesus, but everything He touched. They plotted to kill Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead. They plotted to pay Judas, who follows Him, to betray Him. They plotted to send the world after Jesus, in order that the world find Him the betrayer and crucify Him.

 

“For”, St. John records in chapter 12, “they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43). What is the glory that comes from man and what is the glory that comes from God? 

 

The glory that comes from God? Isn’t that Abraham glory? Success, large family, and many people serving him? Isn’t it Noah glory, being given the whole world all to himself? Isn’t it Solomon glory, victory over neighbor, conquest, and riches? That’s all biblical so it must be God’s glory, if only we follow after it.

 

We don’t know what the glory of the Lord is! No one does. If the “good enoughs” are good enough, then glory is not so much heavenly as it is humanly: riches, wealth, fame. If the “good enoughs” are good enough, then the Way of the Lord is not so divine, as it is human. Even the Muslims back political morality, agreeing with the “right” on many issues.

 

The Glory of God is in the Sower’s hands and that’s what we miss. The “good enough” from the parable is that Jesus has revealed some deep truth about hearing the Word, some prescription that if we just follow that, we will be following the Lord and be able to gain His glory, the right way.

 

But Jesus is not content with “good enough”. Jesus is gathering, but when He gathers, not every one likes it. For example, John 6 is where Jesus tells all His followers that to truly be a part of Him and share His glory, you must eat and drink His flesh and blood. “After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (Jn 6:66).

 

When Jesus proclaims that He is the fulfillment of God’s Word, specifically in Isaiah’s words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Lk 4:18-19), they intend to kill Him and drive Him off a cliff.

 

From this we see, that the offense and the glory are the same and it is the cross. There is no food for the ravens or the devil, if it isn’t handed out by the Sower. There is no root to shrivel if the rocks are not given the seed. There is no sprout to throttle, if the thorns do not receive it. There is no hundred-fold fruit, unless the seed is buried and dies.

 

And if the glory of God is the Cross of Christ, then there is no room for earthly glory, even though we perceive it as heavenly glory. And we are not to look for it either or trust in anything else but God’s own Word. So when we gather in Jesus’s Name, we do not get to self-declare that simply because we gather, that we are Church.

 

In fact, we do not even gather on our own. Just as how we don’t know the Glory of the Lord until He reveals it to us, neither do we know the Church to gather at, until He reveals it to us. And He promises to reveal it to us. He does not leave us grasping at the air to come up with “church” on our own.

 

He reveals it first in His 3rd Command: Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. We remember not as a date on a calendar, but by giving our attention and heart to preaching and the Word. That means something is done to us. Something and someone outside of ourselves, is acting on us, using a voice to form words that register in our eardrums and head straight to the heart.

 

The Holy Spirit promises to work faith through the Word only, thus we find Jesus in His Word. We find Him, hold Him sacred, and gladly hear and learn Him. It is not on a whim that Jesus divides. His division is at His Word. Of such is the Word of God, that it waters the earth, gives seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, says our Old Testament reading.

 

How? By scattering it purposefully. By handing it out, mercifully. By preaching it, with His own voice. The seed is the Word of God and the Word of God is flesh and blood, Jesus Christ. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 Jn 4:2).

 

We cannot escape the great crowd that follows Jesus. We cannot escape the fact that we are just another face in the crowd, so to speak. We are no different than any other in this crowd, either the devoted or the sincere, because the crowd that follows Jesus is a crowd of sin, death, and the power of the devil. Even the devil himself, is there.

 

And yet, we are different. Though we retain our sin, we have been sown by the Sower Himself. Sown heedfully. As in, not just tossed and scattered, hoping for a harvest, but planted, watered, and given increase on purpose.

 

And Holy Scripture plainly saith, “I planted”, says St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:6-9, “Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.”

 

God’s own Temple, He goes on to reveal in that epistle. Baptized into the Temple, the Body of Christ, you are not like the crowd. At one point you were, rebelling and not caring for the Word, but now you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:11)

 

So we stay in the crowd, awaiting His return. We move through the crowd in the Spirit of Jesus, trusting our Baptism, incensed with the Body and Blood of Jesus. We stay where we are planted: His Church. And we grow where we are planted: His Word and Sacrament. The true miracle revealed is that God dwells with man, in Jesus, and justifies them in His Name.

 

 

Vineyard of Value [Septuagesima]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Daniel 9:2-10

• 1 Corinthians 9:24-10:4

• St. Matthew 20:1-16

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Phil 1)

 

Who speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?”

 

So the new Archbishop of Canterbury, that’s England, is a woman, churches owned by private individuals must accept uninvited trespassers, and there are gay babies. All of these are fruits of the Church of the Current Year, as they say. The new confession of faith. Either be a part of the new sensation or get out of the way. Such has the Lord’s Vineyard been abused.

 

It is a well-known Lutheran fact, and will now be here also, that the papal bulletin, issued against Luther in 1520, appealed to the Lord’s Vineyard. It reads (partly) as follows:

BULLETIN AGAINST THE ERRORS OF MARTIN LUTHER AND HIS FOLLOWERS

Leo Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God

For the perpetual memory of the event.

Arise, O Lord, and judge thy cause; remember thy reproaches, which are made by fools all the day long; incline thine ear to our prayers, for foxes have risen up, seeking to destroy the vineyard, whose winepress thou alone hast trodden, and which, when thou art about to ascend to the Father, thou hast committed the care, government, and administration thereof to Peter, as to thy head and vicar, and to his successors, as to the Church triumphant: the wild boar of the forest striveth to destroy it, and the wild beast alone to devour it. Rise up, Peter…Rise up also, we beseech you, Paul…[rise up] all the saints and the rest of the universal Church, whose true interpretation of the sacred writings has been neglected, some, whose minds the father of lies has blinded”, etc. etc.

 

What we get from this is how the Church interpreted “vineyard” from the Bible. That it represented the Church; a fertile ground of growth the Lord places all His care and concern upon. Isaiah 5 speaks of this vineyard, saying, “Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes” (v.1-2).

 

But what is going on in the vineyard is not good. Isaiah continues, “He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded thorns”. Indeed, as Pope Leo noted from Song of Solomon 2:15, there are foxes ruining the vineyards. Maybe even Samson’s foxes with torches tied to their tails (Judges 15:4). 

 

On top of the wild boar, referenced from Psalm 80, we can’t help but maybe think vineyards are cursed. And they were, all the way back in Genesis 3 where the Lord says, “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:17-19). 

 

Maybe this is part of the problem of finding workers in the parable from the Gospel today. That the promise of work does not outweigh the despair of overwork for too little pay and suffering for nothing. The workers know the ground is cursed, thus are reluctant to approach the Master of the House. 

 

This is also the problem in our workforce today. Its not that the new generation of workers are lazy, there are lazy people in every generation, but that the incentive to work is below the reward of work. Suffering is not incentive. Long hours are not incentive. Abuse and turmoil are not incentives to return to work day after day.

 

This is not to excuse, but to illuminate us that we may begin to understand. Because this exact thinking has infiltrated the Church, like foxes and boars. Not as the Blessed Dr. Luther, but as fear and offense.

 

Look at how the workers talk to the Master at the end of the day. They are offended, because what they feared from the beginning is coming true. They were overworked and underappreciated, not in a spoiled-brat kind of way, but in a “now I won’t be able to live off this paycheck” kind of way.

 

This is your problem with the Lord’s Church, His Vineyard, today. You logically and reasonably conclude that you are suffering in your relationship with the Lord. He is the Creator, sure, but when it comes to the work, He stands far off and makes you do it, with no praise but only a “now that that’s finished, here’s this” and producing a never-ending list of chores.

 

Thus we see the Church as not worth it. The pope had to mold the church into his own image, in order for it to be worth it to him, making nations bow to him.  We, and the world, in our sin cannot stand the Lord’s vineyard, but neither can we get enough of it on our own terms. 

 

There is another vineyard of great interest to us, in 1 Kings 21. Evil Ahab is king of Israel and Jezebel his wife. There is a man who owns a vineyard right against the king’s palace, named Naboth. Ahab covets the vineyard, but Naboth refuses to sell or trade away his ancestor’s vineyard.

 

Jezebel learns of her husband’s interactions with Naboth. So “she wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal, and she sent the letters to the elders and the leaders who lived with Naboth in his city. And she wrote in the letters, ‘Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth at the head of the people. And set two worthless men opposite him, and let them bring a charge against him, saying, ‘You have cursed God and the king.’ Then take him out and stone him to death.’” 

 

Ahab, the sinner, was able to acquire the Vineyard, the Church, through the sacrificing of another man, the owner.

 

Now that story goes on and Ahab pays for his sin, but I hope you’ve seen the point. When the Lord plants a Vineyard, it is not something as sterile as we are used to. All we think of is cost and goods and maintenance. These are normal things and can be gained, lost, and regained. No big deal.

 

When the Lord plants a vineyard, not only does He create it out of nothing, but He puts His life on the line to supply it with life and to defend it. When the Lord gives a gift, it is Himself, no matter the form it takes. And the Vineyard is no different.

 

The saying goes, “if you want to make a million dollars off a vineyard, start with 2”. It is a losing venture from the start. Thus God does not only bring two million to His vineyard, He brings Himself. 

 

Now, if God has a vineyard, then it is self-sustaining, completely. He can just command the watering, command the growth, command the harvest and it will be finished perfectly. In other words, there is no logical reason for God to open up His vineyard to Adam, Ahab, Jezebel, Naboth, or any of the workers from today’s Gospel.

 

Jesus reveals this in the words, “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?” But Jesus is not the stingy workers who will not take reward or even another vineyard for their troubles. He is allowed to do what He wants with His stuff. And He chooses to give it away.

 

For through the false condemnation of two witnesses on either side of Him and His crucifixion, Jesus opens His vineyard to sinners. He brings His 2 million-dollar natures, God and man, and works in His own vineyard. He endures thirsting, hungering, anguishing. In His humanity, He feels the full weight of the Holy Law which forbids Him grapes and hands Him a crown of thorns.

 

Found guilty of our sin, falsely accused, and tortured Jesus demands better pay for His workers from the Father. He was made our ransom, our bargaining chip on God’s own table. In His suffering, death, and resurrection, Jesus is our payment to God.

 

With bloodless blood, sin entered the world. For though Adam and Eve’s struggle with the devil shed no blood, what they lost was greater: the Image of God in their blood. Death now reigned. No wonder only thorns and tears come out of the cursed ground. 

 

With bloodied blood, sin is removed from this world. For Jesus strove with God and man and prevailed. He strove with God, bargaining His Body and Blood as payment for sin, death, and the power of the devil and He strove with man, proving that His Vineyard is not a trap, but an invitation.

 

For this is not some movie set vineyard, or a spare God has lying around. It is His own Vineyard. How do we know? Because the Vine is there and there is only one. The Vine that Lord planted, back in Psalm 80 has taken root and begun to fruit. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

 

Listen to Psalm 80:

“You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.

It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River.” (v.8-11)

 

Jesus came out of Egypt upon His return to Nazareth, in His Youth. And it is now in His Gospel, that growth happens beyond the normal. For the spreading of the Vine is happening, and being the Son of God Himself, all fall under His dominion.

 

Jesus is the Vine. He is the fruitful soil and the Creator. The Vineyard is His beloved. The place where He chooses to lose everything in order to win everything for His Bride. He causes His Name to dwell there. He appoints His servants, the prophets to speak there. He declares His Justification there, in His Blood, daring any to say He has not kept His Word.

 

So yes, to the sinner, the vineyard is a waste, because it is filled with Christ Crucified. He is not investing in their 401ks, neither is He treating them fairly. Indeed, we thank God that Jesus is not fair. If He were fair, we’d get nothing. If He were fair, we’d be on the cross. If He were fair, we would logically and reasonably be cut off and left to the thorns.

 

But Jesus unfairly offers His Vineyard to you. He invites you to work in it, yes, but He first invites you in. He calls out to you with His Gospel, enlightening you with His gifts, in order that you see the true wonder of the Vineyard. Like St. Paul, He removes the scales of sin from your eyes and you see.

 

You see the wonder, you see the Grace, you see the working of the forgiveness of sins, the granting of faith, and the bestowing of eternal life. That is the work of the Vineyard, that is the fruit of the Vineyard, and that is the Master of the Vineyard. The payment is the same, because Jesus can only give you all of Himself and no more than that. If that is not enough, well…

 

So what is so great about grapes and the Vineyard? It is where Jesus has promised to do His work and there are no substitutions, exchanges, or refunds. It is His and we have no say in the matter. He loves us and continues to offer Himself daily, for our sins, that we might arise as a new man, to live in Him and His vineyard.

 

And we find the Lord here, as He promised. We hear His words as from the song of Songs, “My beloved speaks and says to me, ‘Arise my love, my beautiful one…for the fig tree ripens and the vines are in blossom” (2:10, 13), we are washed in His righteousness, and are fed from the Vine as branches.

 

The Lord is ours and we are the Lord’s and what He chooses for us is life, in His Word and Sacrament.