Sermon: Trinity 6 - 2020

19 July 2020

Text: Matt 5:17-26 (Ex 20:1-17, Rom 6:1-11)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

God created us in His image: perfect.  And so it is completely reasonable for God to expect us to be just as He created us: perfect.  In fact, perfect people don’t need laws or rules or commandments.  But by the time Moses came down Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Law written by the finger of God, we had not been perfect for thousands of years.

In fact, the very moment that Moses returned, he found the people disobeying the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.”  The people of God had made themselves a false god, a “carved image” the likeness of a cow, and they were bowing down and serving their ridiculous bovine idol.  They couldn’t even keep the First Commandment long enough to hear it read for the first time.

And it is here, just after the First Commandment, that God says: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.”  Indeed, this act committed by the Israelites is described as “hate” – which in the modern mind, is the worst sin of all.

Later generations of the Israelites decided that the law must be kept, but they realized that they could not do it.  But instead of turning to the Lord to seek His mercy for becoming sinners who hate the Lord and break the commandments at every turn, rather than to cry out for the promised Messiah to deliver them from themselves, the experts said, “Let us make the law in our own image, after our likeness.”  They recited the same Ten Commandments, but when the rabbis and the priests and the scribes and the teachers of the law asked “What does this mean?” they watered down the Law.  

They made it doable by lowering the bar.  They also made up other “laws” that were easier to keep – 611 to be exact.  And they were so proud of themselves.  They were still rotten sinners on the inside, but they could pat themselves on the backs for taking advantage of the loopholes that they themselves created.

And then the Messiah came.  He came to save sinners.  But the teachers of the Law, known by this time as the Pharisees, had become so good at playing the angles and cutting the corners that they believed they didn’t need the Messiah after all. 

But they were not actually keeping the Law any more than their grandfathers who danced around the golden calf in the wilderness.  And so our Lord Jesus Christ exposed their hypocrisy, called them to repent, and clarified for us what the commandments mean in His “sermon on the mount.”

He tells them and us: “I have not come to abolish [the Law or the Prophets] but to fulfill them.”  For though we don’t fulfill the Law any more than the calf-worshipers or the Pharisees, our Lord Jesus does.  He is the perfect image of the Father, for He is the Son.  He is “very God of very God,” and He is perfect even when we are not.  He comes to save us from the Law, from our hypocrisies and delusions, and from death itself.

Before one can be healed, one must know that one is sick.  And so our Lord preaches the Law, removing the loopholes, and explaining to us exactly what it means to obey the Ten Commandments. 

We are not to relax even the least of these commandments, and we are not to teach a watered-down version of them.  He says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

And so, to be innocent of the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not murder,” it is not enough to never take a life.  You are expected to control even your thoughts about other people.  You are to be reconciled with “your brother who has something against you.”  Our Lord interprets the commandment not merely as a prohibition of an act of violence, but rather as a moral imperative to do good by your neighbor.  It is in this light that we recite in our catechism, “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.”

Or as our Lord says elsewhere, the commandments are summed up in the word “love.”  You keep the commandment by not killing your neighbor, and also by loving your neighbor – even if your neighbor is your enemy.

And while this sounds impossible, our Lord Jesus Christ indeed fulfills this commandment as part of the Law.  While our Lord called sinners to repent, and while He was blunt and even offensive at times, He is the very definition of love.  He loves us enough to preach the Law to us, to call us to repent, and He loves us enough to preach the Gospel to us, even dying on the cross as our atoning sacrifice to save us and redeem us from our sins.  And in so doing, He makes us perfect.  He declares that our sins are forgiven, and He, the Word made flesh, speaks forgiveness and perfection into us just as surely as He  spoke the universe into being out of nothing, and just as certainly as He spoke Lazarus back to life.  He speaks His body and blood into bread and wine, shared with us as a miracle of faith, making us holy, restoring our lost image of God, and giving us a taste of the banquet to come: eternal life in the flesh, perfect creatures in a perfect world worshiping our perfect God, in perfect love, for eternity.

And yes, dear friends, we still need the Law.  We still sin and need to repent.  We still need our Savior’s mercy.  We need to hear the Word of God proclaimed and preached.  We need to be reminded of our baptismal grace. We need to partake of the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.  We still need the ongoing sanctification of the Holy Spirit.  We still need to fight against the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh.

We must not water down the commandments, deluding ourselves into Pharisaical hypocrisy.  We do need to love, even as we need God’s love.  We need to forgive even as we are forgiven.  We need to show mercy, even as we are shown mercy.

St. Paul teaches us how this deficit between the perfection that God requires, and our failure to live up to it, is overcome.  “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

The apostle continues in words that are so important that we read them at every funeral, so please hear this Word of God, dear friends: “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.”

Our Lord came to our broken world to save us by perfecting us.  And He perfects us not by nagging and threatening, but by recreating who we are, as we grow in love.  And by His obedience, through His blood, by means of our baptism into His perfection, we are renewed and made perfect, by His declaration, and by our growth in the Christian faith and life.  You cannot do it by will power or by finding a loophole.  Rather He does it for you by His blood, by His mercy, through your baptism, and by means of your faith by which you receive Him.

So be perfect, dear brothers and sisters.  Strive to be perfect.  And when you come up short, do not despair.  Pray for forgiveness.  Hear His absolution.  Plead the blood of Christ.  Remember your baptism.  He has come to fulfill the Law for us.  And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.