Called to serve and to suffer like Christ, for now

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Festival of St. Bartholomew

2 Corinthians 4:7-10  +  Luke 22:24-30

There are some graphic depictions floating around out there of St. Bartholomew as he was being martyred, holding his own skin in his arms after being skinned alive. It may be that he died in such a gruesome way, but no one really knows, and honestly, it shouldn’t matter to us. It didn’t take long after the death of the apostles for Christians to begin glamorizing and sensationalizing the Church on earth, and especially the history of her apostles and bishops and clergy in general. It led to an unhealthy focus on men and their great achievements, even if those achievements were good and devout. How foolish. The kingdom of Christ has never been about exalting men. It’s about Christ. It’s always been about Christ, Christ and His humble service to us, Christ and His suffering for our sins, Christ and His resurrection from the dead.

That Christ, on the same night in which He was betrayed, taught His disciples a valuable lesson about what it means to be a Christian, and specifically, what it means to hold an ordained office within His kingdom, within His Church; what it means to occupy the office of the holy ministry. It means imitating Christ: serving as Christ served, and suffering as Christ suffered, for now.

We’re told that, on that Maundy Thursday, soon after Jesus had established the New Testament in His blood and instituted the Lord’s Supper, right after announcing to His disciples that He would be betrayed by one of them, they started arguing with one another—first, about who the betrayer would be. But then, they started arguing about which of them was the greatest, which one was the most important, which one should be able to give orders to the rest.

So Jesus very patiently instructs them about what it means to be office-holders in His kingdom. It’s very different than holding office in the secular realm. The kings of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them; and those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors Now, understand, this isn’t a bad thing in itself. There is a secular realm, established by God, and God approves of it, even if He doesn’t often approve of how the office-holders carry out their office. In the kingdoms of this world, in the secular government, there are degrees of authority, some are higher, some are lower. There are kings, lords, rulers, governors, presidents, sheriffs, mayors whose office it is to rule, to govern, to give lawful orders, and to enforce their lawful orders, and to punish by the sword those who disobey. Those who rule well and give orders well and govern well in the secular realm are called benefactors—doers of good—and they’re generally rewarded in this life with glory and fame. Even those who don’t rule well often live in mansions and are treated with reverence and get to be served by others. That’s generally the way it is, and there’s nothing wrong with it, in and of itself.

But that’s the secular realm. That’s earthly authority and worldly power. Christ’s kingdom—the Church—is much different. You shall not behave this way, Jesus said to His disciples. Instead, let him who is greatest among you be like the youngest; and let the one who leads be like the one who serves. Christ has a kingdom that’s separate from the State. In it, He alone reigns as King, and He has, through His Church, set certain men into offices of authority in His kingdom. Like Bartholomew. Like the other apostles. Like their successors—all who hold the office of the holy ministry. But unlike in the secular realm, all office-holders in the Church are equal, with the same authority. Unlike in the secular realm, office-holders in the Church are not given the sword with which to punish, are not given the right to use force or physical threats to get people to do things. Instead, they are given only the Word of God, to preach, teach, correct, rebuke, encourage, to threaten sinners with God’s wrath, and to comfort the penitent with God’s forgiveness. Unlike in the secular realm, the greatness of the office-holders in the Church is not in exercising authority from above, but in serving from beneath, as Christ served.

For who is greater, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.

How did Christ serve? He didn’t live in a mansion or have people waiting on Him hand and foot. Instead, He devoted His life to serving mankind. Serving, not by taking orders from people and doing whatever they wanted Him to do, but by giving His life to the people and for the people, by saying what they needed to hear, even when it hurt their feelings, even when it hurt His own popularity or caused Him to be hated. He served, not by the power of the sword, but by the power of the Word. He identified sin, and rebuked and condemned it. He showed the people God’s grace and love in sending His Son into the world to be a sacrifice for sin. He walked into the hands of those who hated Him and gave His life to make atonement for our sins. He did it all in service to mankind, which includes you and me. He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

Now, Christ says to His dear disciples, “All those who hold office in My kingdom must serve, as I served; and will suffer, as I suffered. If you’re looking for earthly splendor, for a comfortable life, for the praise of men, then seek it somewhere else. You can’t have that in My kingdom.” Yes, of course, there have been countless priests and pastors in the world who have not been faithful to Christ’s Word, who have told lies in Christ’s name, who have sought earthly greatness, who have ruled from above instead of serving from beneath. To them, Christ will say on the Last Day, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.” But those who serve and carry out their ministry well in Christ’s kingdom will have trouble, toil, and often ingratitude in this life. So be it. That’s the ministry that Christ instituted.

St. Paul’s life as an office-holder in the Church was a striking illustration of Jesus’ words. You heard in the Epistle of the service and the sufferings of Paul, together with his fellow ministers. The weakness of Christ’s ministers only serves to highlight the treasure of the cross of Christ and the power of God in gathering a kingdom to Himself, not by force or compulsion, but only by the power of His Word.

But, who would submit to such a life—to hold the office of Christ, to shun earthly glory and comfort, to live a life of humble service and to suffer in this ministry? Hear again the promise Jesus attached to this ministry: You are the ones who have continued with me in my trials. And I confer upon you a kingdom, as my Father has conferred it upon me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. You are those who have been with Me in My trials. You are those who have seen Me suffer as a result of My ministry. You know what it will be like for you. You get to be like Me. Like Me in My service. Like Me in My sufferings. But also like Me in glory. For all your trouble, toil, and earthly misfortune, you get a kingdom, the authority to reign—not separately from Me, but together with Me. But not in this world. Not here. Not now. Here you serve. Here you do not rule and reign and sit at the table. But there, in the next life, you will. You will sit with Me at My table. You will have thrones there, to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.

It was this promise that sustained Bartholomew and all the apostles in all their future hardships, and finally, in their martyrdom. It’s this promise that sustains all faithful pastors and preachers. And actually, it’s this promise that sustains the hearers of the Word, as well. Because, while not all Christians are office-holders in the Church, all Christians are clothed with Christ and called by the name of Christ. All Christians are called to serve one another in love. All Christians are children of God, and coheirs with Christ, and fellow sharers in the sufferings of Christ. As Paul said, not to the pastors in Rome, but to all the Christians in Rome, The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

So the promise to sit with Christ at His table is for all believers in Christ. The promise of an end to earthly shame and suffering and of an eternal banquet of glory and peace is for all who walk by the Spirit, who persevere in faith until the end.

Until the end, Christ continues to serve His whole Church through the mouths and hands of weak, sinful men. That’s what this office of the ministry is for in the first place, not to exalt the minister, but to step into the role of Jesus, to serve Christ’s holy people and to hold out to them the Word of life, the water of life, and the New Testament in the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. This office of Christ is the way He has chosen to serve you here on this earth, to teach you, to correct you, to forgive, comfort, and strengthen you. Don’t take this ministry for granted or allow the other items on your long to-do list bump Christ’s ministry down out of first place, where it belongs. Instead, rejoice that Christ wants to serve you and guide you through this life and feed your soul for eternal life.

Let us give thanks to God today, first for the service and the sufferings of Christ, our Savior, and then also for the service and sufferings of Bartholomew and of all Christ’s chosen ministers throughout the ages who have borne the office of Christ faithfully. The best way to thank God for these gifts is to make use of these gifts, to the glory of Christ Jesus, and to the edification of His holy Church. Amen.

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The Spirit works on our ears and tongues

Posted on August 22, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

Today’s Gospel deals with deafness and speechlessness. There are different kinds of deafness in the world, and different kinds of trouble speaking. There is the physical kind. And there is also a spiritual kind, a spiritual deafness and speechlessness that affects unbelievers, but that also affects believers. God has a lesson for all kinds of deafness and speechlessness in our Scripture readings today. So he who has ears to hear, let him hear!

A man who is physically deaf and physically unable to speak is brought to Jesus by some caring friends, friends whose ears worked, friends who had heard the word about Jesus and trusted in His power and kindness to help their deaf friend.

Since their friend’s ears didn’t work, he was at a serious disadvantage. Not only was it hard for him to get by in society, but being unable to hear, he lacked the primary means of receiving the Gospel and the working of the Holy Spirit. Faith comes by hearing, St. Paul says. The preaching Jesus was doing, even the reports of what He was preaching, were beyond the reach of the deaf man.

So his friends beg Jesus to lay His hands on the man and heal him. But Jesus does much more than that. He takes the man aside and communicates with him using signs, symbols, and actions that the man can receive through his working senses, in order to learn some key spiritual truths.

First, He puts His fingers in the man’s ears. Your ears can’t be healed from the inside, Jesus shows him. The finger of God has to enter into your ears. Faith in the heart comes by hearing the Gospel. And it’s no coincidence that Jesus elsewhere refers to the Holy Spirit as the “Finger of God,” because it’s the Holy Spirit who enters the ears through preaching to work faith in the heart.

Jesus spits and touches the man’s tongue. On another occasion, Jesus spat on the ground and made a paste out of saliva and dirt to rub on a blind man’s eyes. Here, Jesus apparently spits onto His own hand and touches the man’s tongue with it. (And here we are, worrying about breathing too close to other people!) Your bodily healing comes from the body of Jesus. So does your spiritual healing. Through His body and the word of His mouth, the man’s tongue would be healed. Through the suffering and death of Jesus body, and through the Word that goes out from His mouth, a sinner’s tongue is also healed, as the Spirit of Christ enters your ears through preaching and creates faith, by which He applies the bodily suffering and death of Jesus to you. He even places the body and blood of Jesus directly on your tongue in the Sacrament of the Altar, freeing your tongue to thank God, to praise God, and to confess Christ Jesus before men.

Jesus looks up to heaven and sighs. Sighing in Scripture is a symbol of the prayers we utter to God in our troubles and sorrows and sighings. Very simply, Jesus teaches the deaf man to look to God in faith in every trouble, to seek God’s mercy for the sake of Jesus, to cast all his sorrows onto the Lord, because the Lord cares for us.

And then Jesus speaks the word of healing which any lip-reading deaf person could easily discern, “Ephphatha!” Be opened! And the man’s ears were opened and his tongue was loosed. And the people were amazed.

But here we note a problem with the ears of the people who were there. Jesus commanded them sternly not to tell anyone about this healing. They heard His command with their ears. And then they went on to ignore it, and to use their tongues to do the opposite of what Jesus commanded. Now, we may think their intentions were noble. After all, they were telling everyone how Jesus “does all things well.” But, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Intentions are meaningless if the result is disobedience.

There are several lessons for us in this simple Gospel, in addition to the obvious, that is, yet another testimony and example of Jesus’ divinity and of Jesus’ kindness and compassion toward those in need.

First, as I already alluded to, we have here a beautiful picture of how God the Holy Spirit works on our natural spiritual deafness and speechlessness, on our natural inability to know God until He reveals Himself to us in His Word, our natural inability to believe the Word we hear, and our natural inability to call upon God in true faith, because of the sinful nature, the original sin with which we’re all born. But then the Finger of God, the Holy Spirit, enters through our ears through the Gospel. That’s why Paul, in today’s Epistle, refers to the New Testament ministry as the ministry “of the Spirit,” or the ministry that brings the Spirit. The Old Testament was written on stone tablets. It consisted in commandments and laws, and it brought condemnation and death to Old Testament Israel as the Law revealed their sins and their desperate need for a Savior. It does the same thing to us as it reveals our sins and our desperate need for a Savior. But the New Testament ministry proclaims the Gospel, that Christ suffered and died for our sins, that Christ is the propitiation for our sins, the thing that makes God the Father happy with us and that makes us acceptable to Him. The ministry that brings the Spirit proclaims faith in Christ, and then, as the Gospel enters our ears, the Spirit works the very faith that’s required for us to be reconciled to God. And then our tongues are also healed at the same time, to pray to God rightly, through faith in Christ, claiming only Christ as our Mediator and Advocate before God. Our tongues are freed to give thanks to God and to praise God and to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. As Paul writes to the Romans, For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. All that is the work of God the Holy Spirit, the Finger of God, to open our ears and to loose our tongues.

But there is also an application here for those who already believe, for those whose ears have already been opened and whose tongues have already been loosed.

It is entirely possible for ears that have once been opened to become shut again, and for tongues that have been loosed to become tied up again. If your mouth is full of rocks, there’s no room left for nutritious food, is there? So, too, with the ears. If your ears are full of earthly things, then there’s no room for the heavenly Word of God to enter. What do you listen to all day? What fills your ears and penetrates your thoughts? The news, that sounds worse and worse every day? The complaints of those around you? The false teaching of false teachers? The “sounds” that come from your own heart? The sounds of this life? How does it affect you? It can be depressing, can’t it? To the point of obsession, even. Sometimes we fail to hear God’s Word at all, and that’s dangerous for our faith.

Or, you can have a case like we have in our Gospel, where the crowds were actually listening to the Word of Jesus, commanding them to tell no one of the miracle He had just done. But it went in one ear and out the other, didn’t it? They heard, but they didn’t process. They heard, but they didn’t obey. They seemed to have some degree of faith in Jesus. “He does all things well!”, they cried. But that faith was weak, threatened by their ongoing deafness to what He actually said, and their refusal to do what He said. That’s how destructive false doctrine takes root, because people are sometimes eager to listen, but they filter it through their own human reason or through false beliefs that are lodged in their hearts. People are sometimes eager to listen, but their itching ears crave preaching that agrees with what they already believe, that agrees with what they want to hear.

And then there’s the tongues of believers. Tongues that may still be quick to criticize, quick to complain, quick to demean, to mock, to ridicule, quick to tear down, but slow to pray, slow to praise, slow to give thanks, slow to confess Christ before the world, slow to build up your neighbor, slow to encourage, slow to defend your neighbor, slow to speak up against the wrong and for the right in this world.

So we, too, need the ongoing ministry of the Spirit, the ministry that brings the Spirit, the ministry of the Gospel. That’s why our service is filled with the Word of God. That’s why the sermon is preached. So hear with your ears! Repent and believe! And then, obey God’s commandments! Receive the body and blood of Christ in your mouth and then use your loosened tongue to call upon God through Christ, to thank, to praise, and to confess! Use your tongue to encourage one another, and to defend your neighbor! Speak up for what’s right! Speak against the wrong! And know that, in all of it, you have the powerful Spirit of God working on you by His Word, and working through you as He dwells in your hearts by faith, giving you all the strength you need to believe and obey, to pray, to praise, and to confess Christ in the world. It may not seem like much to you, these simple acts of hearing and speaking. But they are the very instruments God will use to defeat the devil and to make His kingdom come. Amen.

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The Sixth Commandment

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 11

Small Catechism Review: The Sixth Commandment

The Fifth commandment taught us how God forbids us to dishonor human life with our thoughts, words, or deeds, and how He commands us to honor it. The Sixth Commandment teaches us how God forbids us to dishonor His institution of marriage with our thoughts, words, or deeds, and how He commands us to honor it.

You shall not commit adultery. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, that we lead a pure and chaste life in word and deed, and each one love and honor his spouse.

Just as there’s an obvious definition of murder, so there’s an obvious definition of adultery. It’s when a married person has sexual relations with someone other than his or her spouse. So, first and foremost, we’re talking about a husband’s sin against his wife or a wife’s sin against her husband by straying from the faithfulness they promised to each other when they took their marriage vows. We’re obviously also talking about the sin of the third party, the person with whom the husband or wife stepped outside of the marriage to commit sexual immorality.

We should say a few words about marriage before we go on. Scripture defines it as the joining of one man and one woman into a union that is to last “as long as they both shall live.” That union was established by God already in the Garden of Eden, when He presented the newly created Eve to the recently created Adam, and Adam declared, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And Jesus confirms that union, that oneness, when He says in Matthew 19, Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

The “one flesh” of marriage applies to the whole earthly life of husband and wife, including the body. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. And that oneness is to last until husband or wife dies. In other words, God forbids divorce, except in the extreme situations of actual adultery or malicious desertion.

We can identify three purposes that God intended for marriage. Marriage is designed to provide lifelong companionship for husband and wife. It’s God’s divinely instituted means of bringing children into the world, to give them a stable home, with a mom and a dad, devoted to one another, who will raise their children to know and to fear the Lord. And marriage provides a divinely created means to preserve chastity.

What is chastity? It’s the godly discipline of reserving all sexual relations for the loving use of husband and wife. It’s very simple. God has placed sexual desires into men and women, and God has provided the context of marriage for fulling those desires. Marriage is to be the context for all sexual relations. Apart from marriage, God provides no context for any sexual relations. On the contrary, He forbids them.

Anything that threatens or disturbs the sacredness of marriage is also forbidden by God and summarized with the commandment, You shall not commit adultery. As it says in Hebrews 13, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Now, the word “fornication” is a broad term in the Bible that applies to all sexual immorality, from sex between unmarried people, to indecent language and joking, to viewing pornography, to the sinful lust of the heart. Jesus clarified the Sixth Commandment for the Jews when He said, You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And Paul wrote to the Ephesians, But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

Then we come to the crass forms of sexual deviancy like homosexuality, and all this chaos over “gender”—men pretending to be women, and women pretending to be men, or something else entirely. These, too, are forms of adultery which God condemns both in the Old and the New Testaments. They’re perversions of God’s creation and of God’s institution of marriage, and they are the death of a society when they’re openly embraced, as they now are in most societies of the world. The world cannot survive much longer.

On the positive side, what does it look like to “lead a pure and chaste life,” where “each one loves and honors his spouse”? It looks like fleeing from sexual immorality, as Paul puts it to the Corinthians. It looks like honoring marriage, as instituted by God, in our hearts, in our speech, and in our actions. It looks like seeking a godly spouse with prayer and sound judgment, putting God’s Word and the worship of God before everything else. And it looks like husbands and wives being devoted to one another, as Christ and His beloved Church are devoted to one another.

That’s the pattern of a Christian marriage, as Paul writes in Ephesians 5: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her…So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.

Where have you failed to keep this Sixth Commandment? Where have you failed to lead a pure and chaste life, in your thoughts, in your words, in your actions? Where have you failed to treat marriage as something sacred and honorable? The Sixth Commandment, like the rest, shows us our sin and condemns us in the courtroom of God’s justice.

Which is another reason why only a fool would plead his case before God on the basis of how well he has kept the Sixth Commandment. Our only plea must be, God, have mercy on me, a sinner, for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, whose every thought, word, and deed were pure and chaste, who honored marriage and defended it in my place, and who suffered and died for my unchastity and loveless behavior! Then, clothed in Christ’s righteousness and having God’s forgiveness, let the Sixth Commandment guide you each day into the new obedience of God’s beloved children, to the glory of God and to the preservation of mutual love within marriage, and God-pleasing chastity within and without. Amen.

 

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Mary, Mother of God, Sister of All Christians

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Festival of St. Mary, Theotokos

Galatians 4:4-7  +  Luke 1:41-50

This is the first time we’ve ever celebrated a festival of St. Mary, at least, a festival on August 15th. We do have Mary’s Visitation on July 2nd, and that we’ve celebrated before. In fact, the Gospel we’re using today is just a shortened version of the Gospel for that day. August 15th has been observed for centuries as the Dormition of Mary, that is, the day when she “fell asleep” in the Lord. Or, it’s called the Assumption of Mary or the Ascension of Mary, either because her soul was taken up to heaven, as are the souls of all believers when they die, or based on a legend that her body, too, was taken up to heaven when she died. That’s the official doctrinal position of the Roman Catholic Church.

Luther celebrated this day, as did some Lutheran churches in the 16th century, although Luther made it clear that we don’t know anything about Mary’s body being taken up to heaven; it isn’t an article of faith. And the Gospel for that day was the Gospel of the sisters Mary and Martha when Jesus came to their house, so that’s what Luther preached on. Still, not all Lutherans continued the observance. Already in the early 1600’s Johann Gerhard, the great Lutheran theologian, didn’t include this festival among his festival sermons. And our 1941 hymnal, TLH, although it includes festivals for all the apostles and even for Mary Magdalene, didn’t include one for Mary, except for the Visitation.

That’s an understandable omission, not only because the “assumption of Mary” is based on legend, and Lutherans refuse to make anything an article of faith that isn’t taught in Holy Scripture, but also because, of all the saints, Mary is the one who has been most abused in the history of the Church. She has been worshiped. She has been prayed to. She has been feared, loved, and trusted in as much as God, and often times more than God. She is falsely claimed to have been “immaculate” from the time she was conceived, unspotted by sin. She’s referred to in Roman circles as co-redemptrix, that is co-redeemer, our “redeemer together with Christ.” And then there are the phony or demonic apparitions of her, like the Virgin of Guadalupe, who reportedly told Juan Diego to go build a shrine in her honor, saying, “Am I not here, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the fountain of your joy?”—a statement that is not only false, but robs God of His proper glory and honor. Modern Catholics still write things like this: “She stands on the threshold of divinity…The Virgin has always been honoured by a supereminent worship…Hence Mary is queen of the human race, queen of heaven, and is to be venerated by all. The title of Mother of God makes Mary all powerful with her Son.” In other words, Mary has been turned into an idol, a false god, by millions of deluded Christians over the centuries.

Given all this superstition and idolatry throughout Church history, it isn’t that surprising that Lutherans have often chosen not to celebrate a festival of Mary on August 15th.  The last thing we want is to participate in the idolatry of Mary, the worship of Mary, the superstitions about Mary, or the praying to Mary that is all still so common in the world. And yet, we don’t want to jump to the opposite extreme that many Protestant churches do, which is to ignore Mary, diminish her proper place in God’s plan of salvation, or even dishonor her. Once in a while, it’s good for us to remember, as Lutherans, that we still should and do hold her in high regard, and that we do, in fact, embrace the title by which she has come to be known, Theotokos, the God-bearer, or the Mother of God.

We turn to the Gospel. Elizabeth was about six months pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary had just recently become pregnant with Jesus after the angel Gabriel made that blessed annunciation to her that she would give birth to the Son of God. Mary went down from Nazareth to Judea to visit her pregnant-but-elderly relative, and as soon as she greeted Elizabeth, the baby leaped in Elizabeth’s womb. Now, 24-week-old babies kick and jump and squirm in their mother’s belly all the time. But this time was different. We’re told that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and so was able to know and to communicate accurately the reason for her baby’s jumping. As she says, As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy in my womb.

That makes sense that tiny baby John would react this way, because, if you recall, the angel Gabriel foretold this about John: He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. So John and his mother Elizabeth were prompted by the Holy Spirit to recognize and to rejoice in the God who had taken on human flesh in the womb of the virgin who was standing on their doorstep.

Elizabeth said to Mary, Blessed are you among women. “Blessed” here means “praised” or “praiseworthy,” worthy to be spoken well of. It’s where we get our word “eulogy” from. You are “to be eulogized” among women. Why? Because of her faith, in that she believed the word of the Lord, even the impossible word that was spoken to her that she, though a virgin, would conceive the Son of God in her womb. And because of her humble submission to the will of God, that she accepted this divinely given role meekly, humbly, and obediently, as she responded to the angel Gabriel, Behold, I am the Lord’s maidservant! Let it be to me according to your word.

And blessed is the fruit of your womb! The fruit of your womb is to be eulogized. Why? Because He is God! But also because He is the God who took on human flesh for the one and only purpose of saving human beings from sin, death, and the devil. As we heard in the Epistle, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

And how am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me?, Elizabeth asked. Notice, she says, the mother of my Lord. Which is no different than saying the mother of my God. “Mother of God” is a fitting description of Mary. Not that she is the source of the Holy Trinity, or the one who begot the Son of God in eternity. But she is the human source of the human flesh of the Son of God, who is truly God, truly divine, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Theotokos, the God-bearer, or the Mother of God is a title that is entirely correct. It’s a title that’s meant to confess the true divinity of Jesus, not any sort of divinity of Mary.

But it is a title that has been abused throughout history to give greater glory to Mary than she or God ever wanted her to be given. We see that clearly in her own words, in the song that we know as the Magnificat.

My soul magnifies the Lord. To magnify is to “make great,” to proclaim as great, to “increase the magnification” on someone or something so that we can see it better and see just how awesome it truly is. We learn from Mary to magnify, not ourselves, not our works, not her, not any other human being, but to magnify the Lord. We have to be careful not to fall into that trap of magnifying anyone or anything, including ourselves, to a position of such greatness, to think too highly of ourselves and what we can achieve and what we can do and how important we are. Let’s learn from Mary to magnify the Lord, and Him alone.

My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. What made Mary’s spirit glad? “God her Savior.” Only sinners need a Savior from sin. Mary was sinful like the rest of us, but through faith in God her Savior, her sins were forgiven, and she rejoiced. Through her, we also learn to acknowledge our need for a Savior, and we learn to rejoice in God for the salvation He has provided by the fruit of Mary’s womb.

For he has regarded the lowliness of his maidservant. Mary was nobody, living up there in Nazareth. She had no fame, no wealth, no importance. But God likes to regard the unimportant things of this world, to look upon the lowly to raise them up, in order to shame the wise. God certainly raised up Mary to an honored place in history, and from her we learn, not only to acknowledge our own lowliness, but to take comfort in the Lord’s mercy toward lowly people like us, to bask in His blessed condescension, in His desire to regard us in our lowliness and care for us as if we were the most important people in the world.

For, behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed. And so we do. We call her the “blessed virgin.” She was given a special place in God’s plan of salvation, not a divine place, and not a place that she keeps, either, as if Jesus still listens to her as His mother, or as if she sits as queen of heaven. She fulfilled a servant-role and was raised up, not to royalty, not to divinity. But to blessedness. Happiness. Like all the saints, like all believers. But unlike most believers, Mary and her confession of faith are actually known to all believers in Christ, and so we can all acknowledge her blessedness, whereas our own blessedness is much more hidden, known only to us and to those who can hear or learn about our confession of faith.

For he who is mighty has done great things to me, and holy is his name. Yes, God is the mighty one, not Mary. Her intercession is no more powerful or valuable than that of any child of God. And it’s God’s name that’s truly holy. We say “Saint” Mary, that is, holy Mary, just as we say “Saint” Paul or “Saint” anyone. But we know that our sainthood, the sainthood of believers, is only by imputation, by faith in the holy Lord Jesus. Only God is holy by nature.

And his mercy is on those who fear him, from generation to generation. Yes, God is merciful to all in giving sunshine and rain and harvest and beauty and daily care and rescue from so many dangers. But all of that He does in order to bring us to rely on Him for mercy before His judgment, to acknowledge the sinfulness and neediness of our soul and to approach Him who is merciful for the sake of Christ Jesus. For those who do, there is special mercy for His children, “for those who fear Him,” special care, special love, special faithfulness. And not just for a little while, but from generation to generation, for us and for our children, forever and ever, for all who fear Him.

The Magnificat doesn’t end there, but our Gospel for today does, maybe so that we can end on that very note of God’s mercy, toward Mary and toward us who fear Him. That’s what she was focused on, and if we would honor her rightly, then that will be our focus, too, the mercy of God in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary, who became the Mother of God and, not the mother, but the blessed sister of all who believe in her Son. Let us give thanks to God today for our sister Mary, both for her faith and for her example. May God help us to imitate them both. Amen.

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The Fifth Commandment

Posted on August 11, 2021 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 10

Small Catechism Review: The Fifth Commandment

The Fourth Commandment commands us to have the right heart and to do the right things with regard to our father and mother and those in authority over us, all out a genuine fear, love, and trust in God. The Fifth Commandment commands us to have the right heart and to do the right things with regard to human life, both our neighbor’s and our own.

You shall not murder. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body; but help and support him in every bodily need.

Let’s start with the obvious prohibition. Murdering. The KJV had Thou shalt not kill. But there are several words for “killing” in Hebrew, and the context of Scripture makes it clear that not every instance of killing is forbidden by God, so “murder” seems better here, that is, unlawful killing.

When is killing not unlawful? When is killing not “murder”? When God, the Author and Creator of life, authorizes it. Using Holy Scripture as our guide, we can identify those circumstances pretty easily. In the Old Testament, God authorized the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites in order to punish the wicked inhabitants of Canaan and to fulfill His covenant with Abraham. He also authorized the kings and armies of Israel to kill people of enemy nations that were physically threatening Israel. Those were specific commands to Old Testament Israel, as the nation God chose as the breeding ground for His Son, and they don’t necessarily apply to all people. But in both the Old and New Testaments, God authorizes the government to take the life of murderers and other evildoers. Already in Genesis 9, after the Flood was over, God said to Noah, Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And the secular authority does not bear the sword in vain, Paul writes, for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Finally, God authorized private citizens in the Old Testament to take a life in defense of themselves or their property, as in Exodus 22, If a thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed. Apart from those instances, no one has the right to take a human life. God’s commandment forbids it.

But it isn’t just unlawful killing that God forbids. The Old Testament Law makes it clear that injuring your neighbor was also a grave sin. That’s why the law was “an eye for an eye.” If you injured your neighbor’s eye, you forfeit your own eye. As Luther explains, We should fear and love God, that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body. Bodily hurt or harm falls into God’s category of murder.

More than that, Jesus reveals in the Sermon on the Mount that hurtful words fall into His category of murder. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. More than that, both Jesus and the Apostle John reveal that even apart from any emotional or physical harm we may do to our neighbor, the hatred and unrighteous anger we harbor toward our neighbor in our hearts also fall into His category of murder. Whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment…Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.

What are we to do instead? Luther explains, we are to help and support our neighbor in every bodily need.

Someone will ask, All right, I’m not to hurt my neighbor in any way, but help him in every bodily need. What about myself? What about my bodily life? Do I have the right to take my own life or do harm to my own body? Notice, it doesn’t say, “You shall not murder your neighbor.” It simply says, You shall not murder. How we treat our own bodies also falls under this commandment. Because “our own bodies” are only “our own bodies” in a certain sense, in that my body does not belong to you or to anyone else, nor yours to me or anyone else. But God, as the Creator of all things, remains the owner of all things, including your life and my life. More than that, God, as the Redeemer of all men who purchased us with His blood, is twice the owner of our bodies. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, You are not your own. For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

So in the Fifth Commandment, God is protecting the bodily life He has given us. Our lives are sacred gifts of God which are to be treated with respect and used for His honor and glory. He protects my neighbor’s life from me doing him harm, and He protects my life from my neighbor doing me harm. And He commands that even our inward thoughts and attitudes, and the words we speak, must be for the good of our neighbor’s life.

What are some common ways in which people break this commandment in their hearts? Well, seething in anger at someone. Wishing evil on someone. Wishing someone were dead. Holding onto bitterness. Holding a grudge. Hating your neighbor—but also hating yourself, hating the life God has given you.

What about our words? “You fool! I hate you! I wish you had never been born!” Snapping at people. The silent treatment! Threatening someone. These are ways of harming your neighbor’s life, even without lifting a finger.

What kinds of bodily harm are mentioned in Scripture? Killing (obviously), maiming someone, fighting/striking, gluttony (eating too much), excessive drinking of alcohol, rape, and other violent behavior. Suicide is clearly also a violation of this commandment, as is euthanasia—intentionally ending someone’s life to keep them from suffering—and abortion. We can easily add negligence to those things, failing to do your duty to keep your neighbor safe.

Now, that brings up a question that’s been raised quite a lot over the last year and a half. Is it sinful negligence if a Christian passes on a disease to someone, or harms his neighbor by spreading germs? Is it our Fifth-Commandment duty to take every conceivable precaution so that the air in our lungs doesn’t reach our neighbor, on the chance it may produce an infection in our neighbor, or to inject a vaccine into our bodies? Many people have claimed that, in the Fifth Commandment, God is commanding you to stay home or “social distance” or get a vaccine or wear a mask, even if you have no signs of sickness, so that you are as certain as you can be that you won’t share contaminated air with your neighbor. That, they say, is what Christian kindness and love requires.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: That is a false use of the Fifth Commandment. It has no basis in Scripture. It’s a manmade law and an idolization of science. No one in Scripture is ever accused of negligence for breathing or for passing on a disease; that’s not how the Bible ever talks about disease, or breathing. Breathing is not a form of violence, in God’s estimation. We are never cautioned about sharing air with one another. On the contrary, God made us breathing creatures, and He created us actually to share the air we breathe. Some would say that the Christian thing to do is to harm your own body, if necessary, in order to lessen the potential for harm to your neighbor’s body. But, first of all, there is a great difference between doing something that will benefit your neighbor and doing something that just might possibly benefit your neighbor. Secondly, the Law doesn’t say, “Love your neighbor more than yourself.” It says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It says, “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” In love for yourself, do you want other seemingly healthy people to keep their distance from you, to cover their face in front of you, to inject themselves with medicine they aren’t sure about in order to keep you safe at the expense of their own safety or happiness? I hope not! So, if you would love your neighbor as yourself, you’ll treat your neighbor as you want to be treated.

As we’ve seen, your bodily life is also a precious gift from God and is protected by God and honored by God. You should not despise your life, to view yourself as a constant threat to your neighbor. Your life should not be mistreated lightly. It is God-pleasing for people to honor their own bodies, too, and not to mistreat them. What’s more, we’ve also seen that it isn’t just the mechanism of the body that God protects in this commandment, but the life of the body, which includes more than just keeping the viruses out. It includes the soul, actually, and how the soul is affected by either hurtful words or by helpful words, by hurtful practices or by helpful ones. It includes joy, happiness, closeness, all of which are undoubtedly hampered and diminished if we’re interacting with one another with covered faces. Our lives, which God protects in this commandment, are more than our bodies. Much more. And the purpose of our life is much bigger than preventing the spread of this or that airborne illness.

So what are some practical ways of helping and supporting your neighbor in every bodily need? Well, if you know that you’re sick and contagious with something, it would be a loving thing to try not to expose a vulnerable person to it. Then there’s the obvious, giving help to the poor and needy, whether in the form of money or clothing or food, tending to the sick or to those who are otherwise in distress, as the Good Samaritan did. A kind word to your neighbor instead of a hurtful one. A parent changing a child’s diaper, providing food, clothing and shelter for their children, and all the many ways in which parents care for their children’s bodily needs. Taking care of an elderly parent or relative, which we also talked about under the Fourth Commandment. And, of course, a heart of love on the inside that truly wants what’s best for our neighbor and prays for God’s blessing on our neighbor’s life.

Where have you failed to do that? Where have you failed to help and support your neighbor in his bodily need? Where have you hated or despised yourself or someone else or been indifferent to your neighbor, as the rich man was to poor Lazarus? Where have you done harm, with words or with deeds?  The Fifth Commandment, like the rest, shows us our sin and condemns us in the courtroom of God’s justice.

Which is another reason why only a fool would plead his case before God on the basis of how well he has kept the Fifth Commandment. Our only plea must be, God, have mercy on me, a sinner, for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who did no harm to anyone, but cared for all human lives in my place, and who suffered and died for my harm and my lack of help! Then, clothed in Christ’s righteousness and having God’s forgiveness, let the Fifth Commandment guide you each day into the new obedience of God’s beloved children, to the glory of God and to the benefit of your neighbor’s bodily life. Amen.

 

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