Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 17

Ephesians 4:1-6  +  Luke 14:1-11

Our Gospel today highlights the contrast in how people view themselves. There are essentially two ways. Do you view yourself highly or do you view yourself lowly? To view yourself highly means you think you deserve to be honored by God and man. We might use the word haughty to describe such a person. If you were paying attention, you saw this attitude once again on display this week a big part of our country looked down their noses again at our nation’s president when he was diagnosed with coronavirus. Some laughed. Some mocked. Some came right out and said they hoped he would die. But one comment I read was really just as bad. It read simply, “Zero sympathy.” Why do people react that way? Well, hatred ultimately is behind it, and the demons are behind that. But people react that way because they think of themselves highly, as being far better, far more godly, far more honorable than the president of the United States. He deserves to be humbled, while they deserve to be exalted.

On the other side, the “conservative” side, you may rightly be appalled at such a reaction. But watch out! Because what’s the natural reaction to such hatred? “Those terrible people! How could they be so hateful? I certainly would never hope death on anyone. I’m much better than those people.” And, you see, the high, haughty view of oneself has simply taken a different form.

Then there’s the lowly view of oneself. To view yourself lowly doesn’t mean you don’t recognize bad behavior in other people. And it doesn’t mean you think you’re worthless. It means you aren’t thinking about yourself at all. You aren’t thinking about how honorable you are, about being honored by anyone, by God or man, but about how you might serve and honor both God and man. We might use the word humble to describe such a person, humble in the Biblical sense. What a difference in perspective! And a what a difference your perspective will make! It will have an enormous impact on how you behave toward God and man. And ultimately, it will mean the difference between being eternally condemned or eternally saved. In the words of Jesus, whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Let’s meditate on God’s Word this morning and consider the end of the haughty and of the humble.

The whole Gospel takes place at a Sabbath meal to which Jesus had been invited. There are two parts to the Gospel, two “events,” the healing of the man with dropsy and the parable Jesus told about the invited guests. But both parts teach us the same lesson about haughtiness and humility.

The meal took place at the home of a prominent Pharisee, and we’re told that the invitation wasn’t out of the goodness of the Pharisee’s heart. They were watching Jesus closely. Not watching Him to learn from Him, not watching Him to see how they might serve Him. But watching Him in order to find a way to condemn Him, watching Him as those who were above Him. That’s an example of haughtiness on their part, a high view of themselves as Law keepers, guardians of the Law, champions of tradition, men who deserved to be honored by God and man for how good they were.

But Jesus exposes their haughtiness, their high view of themselves with a simple question. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Is it lawful to help your fellow man, your Israelite brother who is suffering, if you have the power to help him? Their silence spoke volumes. Now, of course it was lawful. The Sabbath law requiring rest on the Sabbath day didn’t prevent helping a man in his time of need, and they knew it. And Jesus proved that they knew it with the example He gave: Which of you, if your ox or donkey fell into a pit, would not immediately pull it out on the Sabbath day? But they said nothing, because they weren’t thinking about helping their neighbor. “Zero sympathy.” And they didn’t want to say anything that might make Jesus look good, because that would make them look bad. They were thinking only about themselves and how to preserve their own honor and reputation, and that way of thinking prevented them from doing good, toward God and man.

Jesus, on the other hand, the very Son of God who deserves glory and honor from all men, wasn’t thinking about Himself at all. He was thinking only of God, His Father, of bringing glory to His Father’s name, and about the man who was suffering with His illness and needed help, and about the Pharisees who were there, how He might open their eyes to see their own sins, so that they might look to Him and be saved. That’s the humility that God seeks in us all. And there was Christ, showing it perfectly in our place, as our Substitute. As a result, His humility is now part of the righteousness that covers all who believe in Him.

In the second part of our Gospel, Jesus picks up on this theme of haughtiness vs. humility. He watched as the guests at the dinner chose the seats of honor for themselves, the highest, most important seats they could find. Why? Because they thought they deserved to be honored by the host of the dinner and by their fellow guests. So He spoke a parable to them. Notice, Luke calls it a parable, a story with a deeper meaning. He wasn’t just teaching people about haughtiness and humility at a wedding reception. He was teaching them—and us—about haughtiness and humility before God and the consequences of both.

When you are invited by someone to a wedding, do not sit down in the place of honor. Otherwise, if someone more honorable than you has been invited by him, the one who invited you both may come and say to you, ‘Give this man your place.’ Then, with shame, you will proceed to take the last place.

That makes sense, doesn’t it? You may think pretty highly of yourself. You may think you deserve a place of honor. But it isn’t your opinion that counts, is it? You’re not the host. You’re not the judge. It’s the opinion, it’s the decision of the one who invited you that counts. And knowing God, He doesn’t like it when people think highly of themselves, when people think they deserve to be honored by Him. It’s very likely that when He comes and sees you’ve chosen a place of honor for yourself, He’ll strip you of your self-assumed honor and send you away in shame. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.

Instead, Jesus says, when you are invited, go and sit down in the last place, so that, when the one who invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher!’ Then you will have honor in front of all those who are sitting at the table with you. Go sit down in the last place. In other words, when God invites you into His Church, acknowledge before God that you are a sinner who deserves nothing from Him but temporal and eternal punishment. But at the same time, trust in Him to deal with you according to His mercy, not according to what you deserve. Go and sit down in the last place. That is, don’t for a moment consider your worth in relation to other people. Don’t consider yourself at all. In humility look away from yourself, and look to Christ instead! For whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Such a view of yourself, such an attitude toward God will  lead you to focus, not on how your fellow guests are treating you, but on how you might serve your fellow guests. This is what St. Paul calls on all members of the one, holy, Christian, and apostolic Church to do. I, the prisoner in the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all humility and meekness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. The calling with which you were called is the call of God to poor, undeserving sinners, to repent and believe in Christ Jesus, who humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even the death of a cross, in order that God may lift you up from condemnation to acquittal, from the devil’s family to God’s family, from darkness to light, from despair to hope—again, not because you deserved His help, but precisely because you didn’t deserve His help, and so He took pity on you. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, By grace you have been saved, through faith—and this, not from yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one may boast.

Since that’s the calling with which you were called, to walk in a manner worthy of it is to walk with the same humility and meekness you had when you acknowledged your utter unworthiness before God, when you were first called to faith, lifted up by God, and brought into God’s holy Church. Now, as you live in this Church, with all its members, continue in that same humility. Continue in that same view of yourself where you don’t look for any honor for yourself, where you don’t think about what you deserve, but about how you can serve your fellow Christians.

Why does Paul need to write this to Christians? Because the sinful self, the Old Man, still clings to us, and that self still wants to be honored, still wants, not to serve, but to be served, still wants to be acknowledged, thanked, recognized, and respected. But that’s not what we learned from Christ. From Him we’ve learned humility, true Christian humility that doesn’t shrink back from speaking the truth to our brother or sister, even if that truth hurts, but it speaks the truth in love. It speaks the truth as one who isn’t interested in showing off or in being proved right or in appearing to be better than anyone. It speaks the truth in service to one’s fellow Christian.

And if we are to be humble and to behave humbly toward our fellow Christians, then it only makes sense that we practice the same meekness in our dealings with the world, to show the world what the humility of Christ looks like by imitating Him in this world. Let people see that kind of humility and meekness in you, the lowly view of yourself and not the high view. Be different, be separate from the world in that way. Oh, you’ll still be hated by the world, no matter how humble you are, just as Christ was, no matter how humble He was. But just as He was exalted in the end by His Father, so will all those be who followed in His steps.

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Therefore, as St. Peter writes, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 16

Ephesians 3:13-21  +  Luke 7:11-17

Of all the experiences human beings share in common, the one that we all share in common, without fail, is death. You might think, well, there’s also birth. But tragically, that’s not the case. You know that there is a powerful movement in the world, a movement of pure, demonic evil called abortion that has denied even that experience to tens of millions of children. No, not even birth unites all human beings. But death does.

Death is the universally common fate that awaits every single human being—except only for those who are still alive when the Lord Jesus comes again, and may He come quickly! Otherwise, for as much as people like to ignore it, we’re all heading toward death, which is why it has been said that the Church exists, not so much to help people to live well, but to help people to die well.

If we remember that death is the fate we’re all heading toward, if we remember that we’re mortal, it will have a profound effect on how we live. What is one of the most dangerous aspects of youth, but that young people often live as if they think they’re invincible, as if they’re immortal? For thousands of years people have recognized the value of remembering our mortality, even creating symbols to remind people of their mortality. Like a skull or a skeleton. Those symbols have a Latin name: Memento mori. We might call them “reminders that you’re going to die.”

Does that sound morbid? Actually, we’re coming up on Halloween, aren’t we? In a way, Halloween is a sort of memento mori, with its skulls and skeletons and gravestones. Reminders of death can be useful things, if we view death rightly, from a Christian perspective. As Moses prays in Psalm 90, Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90 is a memento mori, as is the book of Ecclesiastes.

The Holy Spirit holds His own memento mori before our eyes in today’s Gospel, at least momentarily. But it’s much more than that, isn’t it? It’s the reality of death combined with God’s one-of-a-kind solution to it. Who would have thought death even had a solution? That’s not part of the human experience. And yet, where Jesus is, there even death becomes a temporary, feeble thing.

The scene that unfolds in our Gospel was truly a memento mori. When an elderly person dies, it’s still wrong; it’s still not how things were meant to be; it’s still sad. The vast majority of COVID deaths, for example—80%! —have been men and women over the age of 65, and of course they are to be mourned. But we all know death is coming, and we all know that the older we get, into our 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, the more likely it is that we will meet our earthly end, in one way or another. We don’t get to live much beyond that. Death is inevitable.

But the man in our text who died is called a “young man” by Jesus, and that makes it worse, doesn’t it?, because he didn’t even reach the normal lifespan of human beings. His life was truly cut short. And worse than that, he was the only son of his mother. And worse than that, the young man’s father had already died, leaving his mother a widow, so that she’s now completely alone.

There was a procession coming out of the city, with the dead man’s body being carried in a coffin or on a sort of stretcher. Memento mori. But it was just at that moment that He in whom is Life, He who is the way, the truth, and the life, stepped forward and met the procession.

Luke tells us that Jesus had compassion on the young man’s mother. Don’t overlook that simple statement. It shows us that God is not oblivious to our suffering. He is the one who placed our race under the curse of death, but only after warning our first parents what the consequence of their sin would be. That sin that lives in all of us, the sin with which we’re born and the sins of which we’ve been guilty ever since, are the just cause of our suffering and death. But God takes no pleasure in it. On the contrary, He has compassion. Sympathy. Pity. And His pity moved Him to do the one thing that can break the curse: to make His own Son one of us, our human Brother, and then to lay the curse upon Him for us all.

But even before He bore that curse on the cross, He showed His compassion—God’s compassion—to those who were suffering, like the grieving mother in our text. Do not weep. Why? Because death is nothing to weep over? No. But because the Son of God was there. And He was going to fix it. He was going to fix the problem of death.

Jesus touched the coffin in which the young man was lying, the terrible memento mori that pictured for everyone there what their own future held in store. And then He spoke a word of command: Young man, I say to you, arise! It was a command for the body to heal itself and for the man’s soul to be reunited with his body. We note that faith played no part in this miracle, as it often did. How often Jesus said to those whom He healed, Your faith has saved you!, a picture of justification, the healing or the forgiveness of sin that takes place by the authority of Christ, through faith in Christ. Not here. Here Jesus uses His omnipotence, His almighty power over creation, as when He brought the heavens and the earth into existence, as when He turned water into wine or commanded the storm to be still or the demons to depart, as it will be on the Last Day, when both believers and unbelievers will have their souls and bodies reunited by the almighty word of Christ.

And the dead man sat up and began to speak. Just like that, death was fixed. Life was restored.

And fear came upon them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and, “God has visited his people!” Remember, in all the history of Israel up to this point, only two resurrections had taken place, one through the great prophet Elijah, the other through his successor, the great prophet Elisha, some 800 years before the time of Christ. With good reason the people recognized Jesus as a “great prophet.” And with good reason they recognized that God had visited, had come to help His people, although they probably didn’t know just how right they were. They thought God was working through Jesus as He had done through the prophets. They didn’t know that Jesus was God in the flesh, God who had literally come to visit His people with salvation, salvation, not just from physical death, but from eternal death and condemnation.

But, for the most part, not in that order. In our text, Jesus shows His power over physical death. But that was rare. He only raised a handful of people from physical death during His earthly ministry, and all of them would die again one day. He didn’t come the first time to undo the death of our bodies. He came to free us from the curse and condemnation that are the power and sting of death, by receiving our curse and condemnation in His body. And then He rose from the dead in order to apply His sacrificial death to believers, and to govern this world from the right hand of God, from where He will come to judge the living and the dead and to undo death forever for those who are found believing in Him.

But we don’t see that now. We don’t see Jesus undoing death. What we see now are constant reminders of death. Memento mori. Every death that we witness, of course, is a reminder of our own imminent death. But also every report of death in the news. Every illness. Every ache and pain. Every gray hair. Reminding us that we’re going to die. As if that weren’t enough, we’re given a memento mori with every face mask and with the multiple, daily COVID reports. The godless world has learned to manipulate people with these constant reminders of death, because they know that the more death is held before our eyes, the more people will be eagerly searching for some way to avoid death a little longer, ready to do just about anything for the one who promises a moment’s relief or escape. You see, reminders of death have a profound effect on how people live.

But for you, Christians, believers in Christ, there is a memento mori that matters much more: it’s the crucifix itself. It stands before our eyes as the ultimate memento mori, a continual reminder of the death we deserved for our sins, but also as a continual reminder of the death our Lord Jesus Christ chose to suffer as the ransom for the sins of the world, but also as a continual reminder that the same Lord who died on the cross conquered death on the third day and now lives and reigns for all eternity. And therefore, it serves also as a continual reminder of the resurrection and the eternal life He has promised to all who cling to Christ crucified in faith. So the crucifix is both memento mori and memento vivere, a reminder that, through Christ, you are going to live!

That life after death is pictured for us in Revelation chapter 7: They are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

But even before then, you get to live. You were dead in sins and trespasses, but you have been made alive in Christ; by grace you have been saved. You have been born again. You will never see death, Jesus says. He who lives and believes in Me will never die.

That’s the promise of the Gospel. That’s the promise of Holy Baptism. The baptismal font is another memento mori. As Paul writes to the Romans, We were buried with Christ through Baptism into death. But it’s also a memento vivere, a reminder of life, as Paul goes on, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we, too, should walk in a new life.

Knowing that will have an effect on how you live. No longer can you live for this dying world. No longer can you practice dead works in service to death. No longer do you need to live in fear or dread, or hang your hopes on any man or manmade solution. Because the knowledge of Christ crucified has prepared you for death. And the certainty of the risen Christ will be your hope. And the faithfulness of Christ’s promise will be the steady foundation under your feet.

Memento mori. Yes, remember that you are going to die. But let every reminder of death point you to the baptismal font and to the crucifix, so that you remember Him who died for you, and where you were united with His death. And then memento vivere. Remember that Christ was raised from the dead, and that, through Him, you also will live! Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 14

Galatians 5:16-24  +  Luke 17:11-19

Today’s Epistle and Gospel have us thinking about diseases. I know, disease is already on our minds, but, while it’s hard to believe with the current hype, many diseases have threatened and still threaten the human race besides COVID-19. Bacterial diseases. Viral diseases. Fungal diseases. Genetic diseases. Some are fatal, some aren’t. Some cause much suffering, some cause little, and some cause none. Some are contagious in one way; some are contagious in another way; some aren’t contagious at all. Why do such diseases exist? The truth is, they all exist as secondary infections, caused by another disease, a primary infection that infects every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth, a disease that always causes suffering, a disease with a 100% mortality rate. It’s the disease of the flesh—the sinful flesh, sometimes called Original Sin, that we all inherited from our parents, and they from theirs, all the way back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. It’s the disease of our very nature, which includes both the lack of something and the presence of something. It includes the lack of true fear of God, love for God, and trust in God. And it includes the presence of evil desires, desires that run contrary to God’s will, desires that are always self-serving.

You can’t see this disease, not the disease itself. But you can always see some of the symptoms it produces, some of its “works.” St. Paul writes in the Epistle: the works of the flesh are obvious: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, indecency, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, murders, drunkenness, debauchery, and things like these. Just how deadly is this disease of the flesh which produces such symptoms? Again, Paul answers, I tell you ahead of time, just as I told you in the past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. “Will not inherit the kingdom of God.” That means this disease isn’t only deadly for our bodies, but for our eternal souls.

God, in the Old Testament, taught the people of Israel many things through object lessons, through visual aids and symbols and external rites. In order to teach them—to teach us! —about this extremely deadly, unseen disease of our flesh, the disease that’s behind every actual sin we commit, He used the visible disease of the flesh called leprosy. A person’s flesh would visibly become deformed and discolored and would sometimes rot away. Not only was it ugly, not only was it painful, but God’s own laws forced lepers away from society, away from the temple, away from their fellow citizens, away from the worship of God. To be isolated from society and from worship—we’ve gotten just a tiny taste of that over the last six months, haven’t we? You know how the quarantines and isolation have affected us all. Imagine being a leper, not just confined to your house, but kicked out of your house and home and city. What a terrible lesson God was teaching through that outward illness, a vital lesson that we all absolutely have to learn, that the disease of the flesh is the disease that threatens us all, that threatens us most.

The ten lepers in our Gospel had been living with that disease and its imposed isolation for we don’t know how long. But then they heard of a man named Jesus who could heal disease, and who was good and merciful and always ready to help any who came to Him. In fact, Jesus abounded in all the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in the Epistle: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and temperance. He was the only man on earth who had all those good fruits, and none of the works of the flesh. A perfect man. A man without the disease of the flesh, since He wasn’t born in the natural way, of a man and a woman.

The little bit of the Gospel that the lepers had heard was enough to kindle faith in their hearts. See how powerful the Word of God is! See what a powerful thing faith is! Although they suffer outwardly, they don’t despair. Instead, they have the faith and the courage to seek help in the one place where it is to be found. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! The cry of the needy. The cry of faith.

And He did have mercy on them, once again, with a unique response. Go show yourselves to the priests. Why? Because the Law of Moses required it of those who were cleansed of leprosy; the priests were the ones designated by God to pronounce a leper unclean in the first place, and then to pronounce him clean and to perform the rites for ceremonial cleansing required by the Law. But the ten men weren’t cleansed at that very moment. They had to take Jesus at His word. They had to demonstrate more faith. And they did. They started off toward the priests who could examine them and get them back into society again, hoping in faith that they would be healed by the time they got there.

They must have been checking their skin every so often as they journeyed. At some point, they realized they were healed. But at that point, at that very moment of joy, the flesh took over again for nine out of ten. Their bodily flesh had been healed, but the disease of the flesh, their original sin was still there, urging them away from the God who had healed them, pressing them back to their own life, their earthly life. The faith they had shown just moments before shriveled up and died. Only one of the ten continued to battle against his diseased sinful flesh. Only one believed in Jesus, not just as a healer of the body, but as the true God and Healer of the soul.

And he was a Samaritan, Luke tells us, as Luke is often the Evangelist who points out Jesus’ mercy to the Gentiles, and the faith of the Gentiles contrasted with the unbelief of the Jews. Just as in last week’s Gospel we encountered a Samaritan showing his faith-righteousness by his righteous deeds, so today it’s a Samaritan who shows his faith by his deed of returning to give thanks to God at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus’ reaction is significant. Were not all ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found to return and give glory to God except for this foreigner? He was not pleased with those nine who gave in to their diseased sinful flesh and decided they had more important things to do than to give thanks to God for the great gift they had received from Him. He knew that the faith worked by His Spirit would produce thankfulness to God through the same Spirit. And notice, Jesus didn’t just expect them to give thanks to God wherever they were; He expected them to return to where He was to give thanks to God. People often think, “Why, I can give thanks to God anywhere, anytime. God is everywhere. God hears my thanks. I don’t need to go to church to give thanks to God.” It’s true, you can give thanks anywhere, anytime, and God will hear it. But if God has established a place on earth where He promises to be present, then He also expects that you’ll go and give thanks to Him there. And where has Jesus promised to be in a special way? Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them. Or, This is My body. This is My blood, referring to the Holy Sacrament administered in His Church. Yes, the parable of the ten lepers teaches us, among other things, that God wants us to gather together for worship, to seek His mercy and to give thanks to Jesus for the great healing He has granted in the place where His Word is preached and His Sacraments are administered.

The one man in our Gospel did that, and Jesus gladly received his worship. He said to him, “Rise and go. Your faith has saved you.” How had it saved him? It saved him in three ways, actually.

First, it saved him from his leprosy, because it brought him together with Jesus. Second, it saved him from the condemnation he deserved because of his diseased sinful flesh and because of all the actual sins it had led him to commit. It saved him from condemnation, because it united him to Christ, the Mediator, the perfect man, who would give His innocent, undiseased life on the cross as payment for the world’s sins, and so through faith the man was forgiven by God and accepted as a son of God. Finally, his faith also saved him by keeping him from being dragged by his still-diseased flesh back into the works of the flesh, including thanklessness and self-centeredness. It kept him close to Jesus, and so it continued to support the New Man who walks in the Spirit.

As I said at the beginning, all of us are infected with the disease of the flesh, lacking by nature true fear of God, love for God, and trust in God, and inclined toward evil. Now, this disease isn’t like COVID, where people want you to assume you’re infected even if you’re asymptomatic. Because, with this disease, no one is asymptomatic. Again, the works of the flesh are obvious. In addition to the ones Paul mentioned in today’s Epistle, we could add nastiness, snobbery, worry, apathy toward God’s Word, and ingratitude.

God’s Word to mankind is, “You’re infected! You need help! And you will find it in Christ!” In him there is forgiveness, both for your actual sins and for the disease of original sin. That healing takes place immediately. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved!

But having sought and received His merciful forgiveness, understand that you still carry around the diseased sinful flesh, the “Old Man,” as Scripture sometimes refers to him. Your sinful flesh is never healed. It’s always godless, always proud. Your flesh is always fickle. Your flesh is always forgetful of the benefits of God. Your flesh is always thankless. It doesn’t need to be healed. It needs to be crucified, daily. It needs to be drowned daily and die—signified in Holy Baptism! —until it is sloughed off entirely when you die, never to plague you again. There is a warning in today’s Gospel not to receive God’s grace in vain. You have died to sin. How can you live in it any longer? How can you go back to thanklessness and serving yourself first? If you belong to Christ, then you have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. Don’t let them rule you! Don’t let them drag you away from Christ!

Instead, keep returning to Jesus for mercy. Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!, as we say every week in the Kyrie, and we mean it, don’t we? Keep returning to Jesus in thanksgiving. We do that in our Divine Service, too, but not only here. Let your thanksgiving lead to walking daily with the Spirit, rejecting the filthy works of the diseased flesh and thinking constantly about how the New Man can arise daily, how to apply the fruits of the Spirit to the situation at hand. Don’t think of the fruit of the Spirit as something you have to produce from yourself. He is the one who produces it in you. Think of it as something that the Holy Spirit has given you in order to put it into practice. Where can you put love into practice? Or joy? Or peace? Patience? Etc. Use these things, apply these things in your daily life. But always with a cry for mercy on your lips, and always with thanksgiving, on your lips and in your heart.

In this life, you won’t be rid of the disease that threatens us most, the disease of the flesh. But in Christ you have the healing of forgiveness, and by His Spirit you have the help you need in your daily struggle against the Old, thankless Man to hold onto faith, to hold onto Christ, and so also to live a life of thankfulness until we’re finally freed from every form of disease and trouble in the life to come. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 13

Galatians 3:15-22  +  Luke 10:23-37

Everyone knows what a “good Samaritan” is. It’s a person who shows kindness to a stranger in need. This is what most people take away from Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, if they even know anymore that the Bible is where we get the term from. It is one of the lessons Jesus was teaching, that His Christians should “go and do likewise,” as the Samaritan in the parable did. But it isn’t the only thing Jesus was teaching, and it’s far from the most important thing He was teaching, as the Epistle from Galatians 3 makes perfectly clear. There’s a beautiful harmony between today’s Epistle and Gospel, and so we’ll blend them together a little bit in today’s sermon as well. With the help of the Epistle, we’ll see that the parable of the Good Samaritan does three things: First, it shows our sins. Then it shows our Savior. And finally, it guides our behavior.

Let’s turn first to the Epistle from Galatians 3, where St. Paul does an outstanding job explaining the Gospel and its relationship to the Old Testament Law. He reminds us that, long before the Ten Commandments were given through Moses on Mount Sinai—430 years earlier, to be exact— God had already made a covenant or a testament with Abraham and with his Seed. First, Paul clarifies that the “seed” or “offspring” back in Genesis 17 referred to one specific offspring of Abraham; it referred to the Christ. The Christ, the true Seed of Abraham, was to receive all things as an inheritance, on the basis of God’s promise. God promised to be God to Abraham and to his Seed, and to give all things to his Seed. There were no strings attached, no conditions to be met. The Christ would receive God’s favor and all things as an inheritance, because of who His father was, and in the case of the Christ, that means both his father Abraham according to His human nature, and God the Father Himself according to His divine nature. God’s favor and eternal life were an inheritance to be given to the Christ and to be received by the Christ, and then to be passed on as an inheritance to those who are beneficiaries of Christ.

But the Old Testament Jews were then placed under the Law at Mt. Sinai until the coming of Christ. St. Paul writes later in Galatians 3, the Law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. For 1500 years the Israelites had been under that Law, waiting for the Christ to come. Finally, Jesus the Christ, the Seed of Abraham, arrived in Israel and was in the process of calling people into fellowship with Him by faith. Finally the promised Heir had arrived and was passing on that promised inheritance to all who believed in Him. That’s why Jesus burst forth with joy in the first words of our Gospel, saying to His disciples, Blessed are the eyes that see the things you see! For I tell you, many prophets and kings desired to see the things you are seeing and did not see them, and to hear the things you are hearing, and did not hear them.

Understanding the concept of “inheritance” and “promise,” you can see the inconsistency in the lawyer’s question in our text. What must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s an absurd question. You don’t “do” anything to “inherit” something. Again, an inheritance is given to you because of your relationship to someone, not as a prize to be earned or achieved.

But instead of explaining something that the expert in the law should have already known, Jesus played along with him. What is written in the Law? How do you read it? He answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Yes, Jesus says, that is a very good summary of the Law. You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live. It’s worth pointing out that this summary—love for God, love for your neighbor—isn’t in opposition to the Ten Commandments, as if the Ten Commandments demand loveless behavior, while this “law of love” demands something else. No, the Ten Commandments are the Law of perfect love. Love for God. Love for the neighbor. Love that has been defined by God in the Ten Commandments.

But that law of love wasn’t part of the testament God made with Abraham, was it? God didn’t tell Abraham, if you love Me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and if you love your neighbor as yourself, then I will be your God and give you this land and eternal life and everything else. No, that testament was based on the promise of an inheritance.

So why was the Law added 430 years at the time of Moses? Paul says in the Epistle that the Law was added for the sake of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise had been spoken. What does that mean, “for the sake of transgressions”? It means the same things Paul wrote in Romans 3 in different words, We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law comes the knowledge of sin. The law shows us our sin.

The lawyer understood that the Law had him dead to rights. He was caught red-handed. It’s one thing not to murder someone or not to steal. It’s a much bigger thing to have a heart of perfect love for God and for one’s neighbor. That’s a tall order, taller than the lawyer was capable of, taller than you or I are capable of.

But he was still fixated on the Law, still ignoring the testament God made with the Seed of Abraham, still wanting to justify himself by his obedience to the Law. So his last hope is to narrow down the law’s application. Who is my neighbor? If my neighbor is my mother or my father or my children or my wife or the guy next door who treats me really well, then maybe, just maybe, I can love him as I love myself. But does it include the one who mistreats me? The one who hates me? Does it include a total stranger whom I just happen to encounter walking along the road?

So Jesus tells this parable of a Jewish man who was attacked by robbers on the road leading away from Jerusalem, beaten, robbed, and left half-dead on the side of the road. A priest and a Levite happen to see him lying there, but instead of helping, they both pass by on the other side of the road. It’s a man from Samaria who stops to help, a foreigner from that half-Jewish, half-Gentile territory to the north of Judea. Remember that there was an ethnic and a religious animosity between Jews and Samaritans. Still, the Samaritan stops to investigate. He performs triage on the man’s wounds, sets him on his own animal and walks him to the nearest inn, where he cares for him and then provides for his care until he returns from his journey.

And so Jesus teaches the lawyer that the right question isn’t, who is my neighbor?, but to whom should I show mercy as a neighbor? Who was a neighbor to the man who was robbed? The one who showed him mercy. Then Jesus adds the requirement of the Law: Go and do likewise!

That is what the Law requires, what it demands. Not that you love people who love you, not that you love only the people you feel close to; God’s commandment to love your neighbor has nothing at all to do with how another person treats you or who that person is. Your neighbor is the person whom God has placed on your path who needs your love, who needs your mercy, regardless of who that person is or how that person has treated you.

When we look at ourselves in the mirror of that perfect law of selfless love, what we see is transgressions. The law was added for the sake of transgressions. What we see are hearts that are not eager to go out of our way to show love to everyone in our path, but only certain ones, if that. The chief purpose of the Law was not to control Israelite behavior, nor was it to give the Israelites a way to earn God’s favor and the inheritance of eternal life. The chief purpose of the Law was to show them, as they lived their daily lives, how sinful they were at heart. And so the Good Samaritan shows the sin in each one of us, reveals us as the ones who have been beaten up by the devil and left on the side of the road, reveals us as the ones whom the Old Testament priest and Levite refused to help because we’re sinners, reveals us as the ones in need of a good Samaritan to come along and save us, a Savior who would be the very Seed of Abraham promised in the original testament, a Savior who would be the named heir of eternal life, a Savior who would come to our aid and share His life with all who are brought into His New Testament.

The genius of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that in the very good Samaritan whose actions show us our transgressions against God’s holy law of love, whose behavior shows us how far short we fall of God’s holy requirements, we also see our Savior depicted. And in His behavior toward the dying man, we see His behavior toward us.

We did nothing to save ourselves. We couldn’t. But He came down to earth, a foreigner from heaven, the very God against whom we had sinned, made one of us in order to become a neighbor to us. He applied forgiveness to our wounds in Holy Baptism, brought us into the inn of His holy Christian Church, and has now left His ministers in charge of caring for our souls until He returns at the Last Day. The Good Samaritan shows us our Savior, Jesus, who has brought us into the New Testament in His blood, and has made us heirs of eternal life, by grace, through faith.

And now, finally, having shown us the purpose of the Law—to show us our sins—and having shown us also our Savior, the Good Samaritan also guides our behavior.

Was God serious when He gave Israel the Ten Commandments? Was He serious when He called upon them to love God with all their heart and to love their neighbor? Of course He was! Just because the Law can’t save us or help us to inherit eternal life doesn’t mean it’s useless. It guides us to walk in the new life of God’s redeemed children. It shows us, as Paul writes in Ephesians 5, how to be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and to live a life of love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. “As Christ also has loved us.” Or, “As the Good Samaritan has loved us.” That is how we are to live, with selfless love to those around us, being merciful neighbors to the ones whom God places along our path, not in order to inherit eternal life, but as those who have been made heirs of eternal life through faith in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.