READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Jeremiah 7:1-11
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
- St. Luke 19:41-48
Grace to you all and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Phile 1:3)
Who speaks to you today, from His parallel Gospel of John
heard in His Church, saying:
“He made a whip
out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He
poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables”
And God wants you to hear St. John’s version of this
cleansing of the Temple by Jesus, in order that you see Jesus drawing a line in
the sand. There is good and evil in the world and therefore there are good guys
and there are bad guys. “Whoever is not with me is against me” Jesus
says in Luke 11:23. And yet, He also says it a bit softer in Mark 9:40, “the
one who is not against us is for us”.
We are to apply this to our lives by emphasizing and running
back to the Gospel at all times, not the Law. We are not good lawmakers or
law-enforcers; therefore, we would make a mess of God’s judgement, in our sin.
God does not call us for that job, anyway. He calls us to His Gospel, to repent
and believe. Therefore, that is also our call to the world.
We think, “what was so bad about eating from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil” in Eden, in the beginning? Knowing right from wrong
is Child Raising 101. However, because we have its fruit in our blood, we hear
today’s Gospel and call Jesus a sinner, a bad guy, a villain. In our sin, we
call good evil and evil, good (Isa 5:20).
Let me explain with a writing example. There is a way to
write a good villain into a story that is believable, entertaining, and
compelling. Exactly what you’d want in a book or a movie. There is also a bad
way. One that makes the character seem forced and unbelievable.
First, a good villain should have a relatable, simple
emotional pathway that led him to his bad choices. Instead of some supernatural
force changing their personality, as if they are the victim, we should see his
choices flow naturally. People make bad choices when they’re sad or mad or
stressed. We all do.
Next, is true competence. A real threat needs to be a real
threat or we just laugh them off. He must remain dangerous from start to
finish, think Jesus today. Which leads to ruthlessness. Along with that danger,
we should fear for it at every turn. Instead of just being comedic relief, you
want the audience to hold their breath each time the villain acts.
Then we should see all that in the attacks on the
protagonist. They should be personal conflicts. The hero must face his own
fears, values, and morality when facing off. Even if its just facing death. As
soon as the conflict centers around something inconsequential or magical, you
lose the plot.
Next, there must be payment. The villain must leave
permanent scars on the world or the protagonist. True value and morality costs
something and if you take your stand in them, you should be willing to pay for
their preservation in the face of the villain’s values and morality, which you
are trying to disprove.
Finally, pain can never be the excuse. The villain can have
a tragic past or a sob story, but it should never grant them a free pass. They
too were willing to put their life on the line for their choices and their
values. That should not be cheapened by throwing away the consequences for
those choices.
What does this have to do with good and evil in the world?
This same villain path sounds like the good guy path. The
good guy also has a simply, relatable emotional path that leads him to his
goodness. The good guy also be competent in what he does or else who will
follow or believe him? He should be ruthless in his goodness, meaning we should
fear him straying from the path at every turn, going back on his word.
He should be attacking his opposition, which we would call
evil, not accepting its ways but renouncing and denouncing them. And the
victory over evil should be lasting. Good should leave more goodness in the
world and a mark on evil so that it hesitates to attack again.
And finally, the good guy should be putting his life on the
line for his decisions. He should be invested, not detached. He should believe
where he stands with all his heart, because again, if he is good then he
wouldn’t change his mind.
Returning to our Gospel, this is the role Jesus is in, but
you can’t tell who is good and who is bad. These poor businessmen. They are
just trying to feed their families. Just trying to get by in this world they
did not choose to be born in. You cannot tell. The fruit of the Tree of the
knowledge of Good and Evil has failed to give you the wisdom necessary to
handle that knowledge.
Jesus has come to seek and save…who? The good guys? The wise
guys? The bad guys! Sinners. And sinners can be all those things. And because
sinners can be all those things, what does an absolute good God look like to
them?
He looks like the bad guy. He looks like someone to
criticize. He looks like a liar and a lunatic, not a lord. Jesus today is
destroying the Church.
"…the hand of God has struck me", Job
cries. In Ruth, Naomi despairingly says, “…the Almighty has brought me back
empty." And from Jeremiah, “He has turned his hand [against me]
again and again the whole day long." (Job 19:21; Ruth 1:21; Lam 3:3).
So we must take a stand and right now its either the bad
cop, the grabblers and the unbelievers, or the bad cop: God Who is angry. In
order to make that choice, I want you to ponder this Word of God through David.
King David has just sinned greatly, but in this instance the Lord allows him to
choose his punishment.
He says, “Choose what you will: either three years of
famine, or three months of devastation by your foes while the sword of your
enemies overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of the Lord, pestilence
on the land, with the Angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the territory
of Israel” (1 Chron 21:12). What a choice!
Now listen to David answer: “I am in great distress. Let
me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let
me fall into the hand of man.” (v.13)
Because man does not keep his word and is always the “bad
cop”, David choses the punishment the Lord Himself will enact. He makes this
choice because he knows and believes that it is the Lord’s will to show mercy.
He has faith that the Lord’s, though He punishes, “…anger is but for a
moment”, says Psalm 30:5, “but His favor is for a lifetime” (Ps 30:5)
In the Lord’s Mercy, that is in Jesus Christ Crucified for
you, we find the Good Cop, so to speak. But we must go through the Bad Cop to
get to the Good Cop. This, Jesus Himself teaches with His own Body and His
famous words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Sin is horrid and is horrid to get rid of. Christ on the
cross proves one end of that, then there is our end which does not need
surgery, but a death. For we have wed our sin. We have joined together with it
as one flesh. We have pledged our troth upon it, till death us do part.
To divorce from such thing, a homewrecker is necessary. To
us sinners, Jesus coming into the world looks just like that. He doesn’t care
about the life we’ve made for ourselves. He doesn’t care about our comfort. He
doesn’t care about how our sin has made us comfortable and sleepy in this
corrupt world ruled by satan. Jesus is invading.
There is a reason the prophesy in Isaiah 53 says, “He was
pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our
iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by
His stripes we are healed” (v.5).
So really, the Christian will never encounter the “bad cop”
Jesus, because He is our substitute. Before we even get there, Jesus is taking
our place in our sin. He is the villain character in the story that not only
becomes the curse set before God for us, but also the one Who disrupts our life
of sin, with His life of righteousness, which He freely gives to us.
In faith, that is trusting Christ’s person, Word, and work
for us we receive His punishment in baptism, having been baptized into His
death. The disciplines we encounter in this world, carrying our cross, are
nothing more than the death throes of our sin on the edge of defeat.
For God’s true enemies are known to us. Death is the last
enemy to be defeated (1 Cor 15:26). “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend
of the world makes himself an enemy of God”, says St. James 4:4. The
devil is God’s devil, of course, sowing weeds (Mt 13:39), and our own sinful
nature and unbelief.
To these, the Lord has become an enemy, and anyone who
fears, loves, and trusts in them (Lam 2:5). It is not humanity that is the
Lord’s enemy. This is proved by the Incarnation of Jesus. It is not humanity,
but what threatens humanity.
So Jesus comes. He comes as a man desiring mercy, no matter
what. A simple, relatable emotional pathway to His choices to come. And He is
competent. Not only is His life without reproach, but He can also perform
miracles and signs. These, even the demons fear at every step.
This He directs at His enemies, but we are in their camp. So
we must face our own fears and values, measuring them against Jesus, and find
them lacking. Jesus’s ultimate attack on us is His call to “Repent”!
The payment He makes leaves its marks on Him. The work of
nails and spear remain on His body. We too must be divorced and will have
cross-shaped scars when we are made righteous in Him.
And though the payment was the life of God, there is no
grudge. There is no repayment required. It was the Lord’s joy to offer Himself
in your place, in order that you know the Lord’s mercy and be redeemed.
According to the Law, you encounter God’s wrath, in your sin. According to the
Gospel, you encounter your Savior and the grace of God.
Amen.
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