Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

Today is the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist.  Matthew was a tax collector who was called by our Lord to be a disciple (Matthew 9:9-13) and was then appointed as one of the twelve apostles (Matthew 10:2-4).  He is the author of the first Gospel in the New Testament.  There is uncertainty about the areas in which he worked (some traditions suggest Ethiopia or Persia) and whether he was martyred.

Scripture Reading:

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.  And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  (Matthew 9:9-13)

Collect of the Day:

O Son of God, our blessed Savior Jesus Christ, You called Matthew the tax collector to be an apostle and evangelist.  Through his faithful and inspired witness, grant that we also may follow You, leaving behind all covetous desires and love of riches; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity - Lk 7:11-17

                                                                                    Trinity 16

                                                                                    Lk 7:11-17

                                                                                    9/16/18

            In Genesis chapter one we are told, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”  Only man, created as male and female, was made in the image of God.  This immediately has important implications as God blesses them and says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

            Created in the image of God, man is not like all the other creatures.  We were created to be God’s representatives in the midst of creation. On the one hand, because of this, we were given dominion over creation.  And on the other hand, Adam was given the vocation to work the Garden of Eden and keep it.

            God told Adam in chapter two, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”  God provided everything to Adam and Eve, yet held one tree back.  This one tree was the means by which Adam and Eve kept the First Commandment.  It was the means by which they showed that God was God and they were his creatures. They were his most exalted creatures – created in his own image. But they were still creatures and not God.   

            However, tempted by the devil, Adam and Eve disobeyed God. In chapter three they sinned as they ate of that one tree. The Fall occurred.  After learning about the first sin in chapter three, next we hear about the first murder in chapter four. Sin does indeed bring death as Cain kills Abel. 

            And then the first verse of chapter five states: “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.”  We are provided with a list of Adam’s descendants that begins in Adam’s son Seth.  Yet in describing Seth, Genesis five states that Adam “fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image.”

            Adam was created in the image of God. Fallen Adam now fathers a son in his own image. In the Fall the image of God had been lost and the remainder of the chapter drives home what this means as it lists the descendants of Adam with the refrain “and he died … and he died … and he died … and he died.”  Just as God had warned Adam, sin brought death.

            We see this result in our Gospel lesson this morning.  Luke begins by telling us, “Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.”  As they drew near to the gate of the town, they encountered a funeral party that was leaving the city for a burial.  Luke tells us that it was a man who had died.  He was the only son of his mother, and she was already a widow.  Her husband had previously died. Now, her son had died, leaving her with no one to support her.  It was a terrible tragedy, and surely this was part of the reason that a considerable crowd from the town was with her.

            Under similar circumstances, the same thing would happen today.  When an obviously tragic death occurs, there will be a great turnout wherever the visitation takes place. There will be a large crowd at the funeral service.  People make the effort to be present in this way because we sense the tragedy and seek to show care and support.

            Yet there is also a difference.  You see, we don’t really think that death is going to occur.  Sure, we recognize that the elderly die, but we don’t really think that anyone else will, and we are surprised and even shocked when they do.

            We live at a time of incredible advances in medicine. New and ever better medications control harmful conditions, and allow us to live normal lives. Surgery is done on a person’s heart without ever opening their chest, and they go home.  Babies born prematurely are kept alive in the NICU and surgery is even done on these tiny patients to preserve their lives.

            These are all tremendous blessings, and having known them, I certainly wouldn’t want to be without them.  Yet they are just one set of factors that has removed death from our consciousness.  For example, you are not worried that there will be a famine.  Instead, you are worried about eating too much because you will gain weight.  You are not worried about war devastating the place you live.  Our circumstances mean that death is the exception, not the rule.

            However, this has come at a spiritual price.  When death was an ever present reality, Christians were constantly reminded about sin.  After all, Paul told the Romans that, “The wages of sin is death.”  Because death was always present, it forced people to consider the spiritual reality of their own sin.  Death and God’s judgment never seemed far away.  Most of you don’t really think that you could die any time soon.  I don’t either.  But thinking in this way causes us to ignore what our sin – and Jesus Christ - really mean for us.

            Death was a reality that the woman in our text could not avoid.  Her husband had died.  Now her only son had died. Yet as she went out of the city to bury him, she met Jesus Christ.  Luke tells us that when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.”

            Then Jesus came up and touched the bier, as the bearers stood still. This itself was shocking, because according to Leviticus, such an action would make a person ritually unclean. Yet instead of being contaminated by death, our Lord overcame it. He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise. Then the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 

            We may not contemplate death very often.  It may not be present around us in the ways that were constantly true for millennia. But the wages of sin are still death.  Sooner or later we will face it in the death of love ones and friends.  Sooner or later we will have to face our own death. And so we need the good news that is found in our Gospel lesson this morning.

            The crowd saw the miracle Jesus had performed – how he had raised the woman’s son from the dead.  Luke says that, “Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us!’ and ‘God has visited his people!’” They were right to see in Jesus’ miracle that he was a prophet.  As we saw in our Old Testament lesson today, the prophet Elijah had performed a similar miracle when he raised from the dead the son of another widow.

            And they were right that God had visited his people.  Filled with the Holy Spirit, Zachariah had said at the naming of John the Baptist, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.”  Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, Jesus was God’s saving visitation.

            Luke wants us to know that Jesus Christ was God’s great end time prophet.  But here’s the thing about prophets in the Old Testament.  They usually suffered because of their work.  They were often rejected. And sometimes they died because of God’s word that they proclaimed.

            Jesus came as God’s final great prophet in order to suffer and die. As Jesus was about to begin his last trip to Jerusalem he told his disciples, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”  The wages of sin is death.  Jesus had no sin. There was no need for him to die. But it was the Father’s will that he should die for you. And so on Good Friday he died for your sins.  He died to win you forgiveness.

            In our Old Testament lesson today, Elijah raises the widow’s son from the dead. In the Gospel lesson, Jesus raises another widow’s son from the dead.  Though returned to life, both would eventually die and stay dead.  They would because they were sinners, and the wages of sin is death.

            On the third day, God’s Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. But this resurrection was different. This was the resurrection of the One who can never die again. Jesus Christ had not cheated death.  He defeated it.  And the Spirit who raised him continues to give us a share in that victory.

            Jesus had compassion on the woman in our text.  He showed that he was the saving visitation of God as he reached out and touched the funeral bier and raised her son from the dead.  Our Lord’s saving visitation continues in our day as well.  Through Holy Baptism you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Because God’s Word was added to water, according Christ’s institution and command, baptism washed away your sins. That water poured on your head – on your body – provides the guarantee that your body will share in Jesus’ resurrection on the Last Day. Through this sacrament Christ’s saving visitation has touched you.  You have received salvation now.  You have received life now.

            We have those things now.  And because Jesus Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven we have hope as we look for his final visitation. We look for the Last Day when our Lord will return in glory.  We look for the day when we will share in Jesus’ own resurrection – when we will receive a body that can never die again. As Paul told the Philippians, “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

            The sin of the Fall brought death.  God’s visitation in Jesus Christ has defeated sin and death.  His continuing visitation through the Means of Grace keeps you as his own. The living hope of our Lord’s resurrection will carry us to the day of our own resurrection, when sin and death will be no more.

Holy Cross Day

Today is Holy Cross Day.  Holy Cross Day commemorates the cross of Christ and the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem that was built over the site of the crucifixion and tomb.  Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, was believed to have found the original cross on September 14, 320.  In conjunction with the dedication of Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Constantine made the festival day official in 335.  The day is called “The Exaltation of the Holy Cross” in the Eastern churches and the Roman Catholic church.  In the Byzantine church is it one of the twelve great feast days.

Scripture reading:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.  For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Collect of the Day:

Merciful God, Your Son, Jesus Christ, was lifted high upon the cross that He might bear the sins of the world and draw all people to Himself.  Grant that we who glory in His death and resurrection may faithfully heed His call to bear the cross and follow Him, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity - Gal 5:25-6:2

                                                                                                     Trinity 15

                                                                                                      Gal 5:25-6:2

                                                                                                      9/9/18

            “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” For the reader of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the phrase “and so fulfill the law of Christ” seems to be very jarring one.  It is not all what one expects here in the last chapter of the letter after reading all that Paul has said.  It makes you do a double take.  It would be like if I made reference to “my beloved St. Louis Cardinals.” Now that would certainly get your attention.

            The phrase “the law of Christ” gets the reader’s attention because thus far in the letter, Paul has had little to say about the law that is good.  In fact, for the most part, the law has been presented as something that is a hindrance to salvation.

            The apostle Paul had preached the Gospel and founded the churches in south central Asia Minor – modern day Turkey – during his first missionary journey.  Although there were some from a Jewish background, for the most part the members there were Gentiles.  There was no connection of their family to Abraham and Israel. They had not been part of God’s people. Paul’s proclamation of the Gospel had changed that. 

            However, sometime after Paul had left to preach the Gospel elsewhere, other Christian teachers had arrived.  Apparently these teachers came from Jerusalem.  At the very least, they were able to play up connections to the Jerusalem church, perhaps in an exaggerated way.

            They told the Galatians that Paul had only given them a start by proclaiming Christ.  If they really wanted to go all the way in being part of God’s people, they needed to begin doing the law of Moses – the Torah Yahweh gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai when he took them to be his covenant people.

            It may be that these men, usually described as “Judaizers”  because they were demanding that Gentiles live in Jewish ways, did not claim that the whole Torah had to be done by Gentiles. Instead it is likely that they focused on a few key parts of the law that distinguished Jews. Thus they demanded that the Galatian Christians be circumcised, follow Jewish food laws, and observe the Sabbath and other Jewish religious days.

            When Paul learned about what had happened, he was shocked.  Paul’s typical letter writing style is to begin his letters with an opening greeting followed by a statement of thanksgiving about the congregation he was writing.  Yet in Galatians, there is no thanksgiving.  Instead, Paul launches into a rather passionate address directed to the Galatians.  He wrote, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”

            Paul told the Galatians, “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”  It was faith in Christ that justified – that meant a person was forgiven and ready to be declared “not guilty” on the Last Day.  It was faith in Christ, and faith in Christ alone.

            While first century Judaism had a rather positive view of a person’s spiritual abilities, St. Paul did not.  He declared, “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin.”  Scripture reveals man’s true condition. We are slaves to sin. We are warped and twisted by it.  We are sinful and at heart are evil.

            A Washington, D.C. couple learned this the hard way – perhaps you heard about it.  Both had graduated from Georgetown University and worked for the federal government.  They didn’t want to “waste” their lives in front of computer screens. They believed that “evil” was something entirely made up because people are basically good. To demonstrate this fact they decided to ride bicycles around the world and share the experience on social media.  But in the central Asian nation of Tajikistan they were attacked and killed by men affiliated with ISIS.  In their last terrible moments that learned what sin has truly has done.

            Paul told the Galatians in his letter that Jesus Christ and the Law were both all or nothing.  Jesus Christ gave everything to the believer. The Law demanded everything.  And for those who could not answer it demands completely, it brought a curse.  The apostles said, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”

            In far less spectacular ways that the cyclists in Tajikistan, you learn daily about the presence of sin in your own life and what it means.  You are jealous and covet.  You lie when it can keep you out of trouble.  You lust and have adulterous thoughts.  Again and again you learn that if things are judged on the basis of doing, you are going to get nothing expect God’s curse.

            But in chapter three Paul went on to say, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’-- so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” God’s curse against your sin fell upon Jesus Christ.  Now by his death and resurrection you have been freed from the curse.  Or as Paul said at the beginning of this letter, Jesus is the One “who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

            Because of Jesus Christ, you have freedom.  But there is another side to this freedom, and it is something that we often overlook.  Paul says in chapter five, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

            Paul’s statement about love picks up what had just said a few verses earlier: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” The apostle says that faith created by the Spirit works through love. And he says that what the law was all about is fulfilled in love.

            It is here that we begin to understand what Paul means when he says, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  The law of Christ is the law of love.  It is the life of faith, because faith works through love.

            Note the subject at hand when Paul talks about the law of Christ. He says, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.” Bearing up another’s burdens in this case, is helping a person caught in transgression. 

            Now this is love.  And Paul says that restoration should happen with a spirit of gentleness.  But before restoration can happen sometimes this has to be tough love.  It is hard to tell someone that they are wrong; that they are sinning.  We would prefer not to do this.  And we certainly don’t want to do so when it is a family member who needs correction.

            But love cannot be silent.  Real love – real love in Christ – does not allow another Christian to walk the way of sin unhindered. Instead love speaks.  Love confronts.  Love speaks the truth.  Love speaks law when it is necessary.  It speaks this way with the goal of restoring the other person.

            Love speaks this way with the goal of working repentance.  Repentance doesn’t mean the person is sorry they got themselves into this mess.  It doesn’t mean the person is sorry that they disappointed or hurt other people.  Repentance confesses sin and then bears the fruit of repentance.  It leads to action that removes the sin and ends it.

            Where there is repentance and its fruits, love then also   should restore that person in a spirit of gentleness.  We in the the Church are nothing more than a bunch of sinners.  This is absolutely true. But we are repentant sinners.  We have confessed our sin. We are making every effort to turn away from it. And because of faith in Jesus Christ we are therefore forgiven sinners. We are saints.

            There is no reason for pride here.  How can one be proud about what you did not earn?  How can you be proud about something you received only as an unmerited gift?  Instead, receiving God’s grace and mercy in Christ means that the Spirit leads us to receive other repentant sinners in a spirit of gentleness.  We receive them as the same thing that we are – the same thing that Christ has made us to be.

            “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  Paul’s words surprise this morning.  Yet they are words that point us to faith.  Because we can’t do the law, we believe in Jesus Christ – his death and resurrection for us – and by faith receive the forgiveness and life we could never earn. 

            Yet this same faith created and sustained by the Holy Spirit now works through love.  Freed from having to do anything in order to be saved, it is now free to serve others.  It is free to fulfill the law of Christ, which is the law of love – it is faith working through love.