Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – St. Michael and All Angels

29 September 2019

Text: Matt 5:21-48

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“You have heard that it was said,” says Jesus.  You have heard the rabbis and the Pharisees and the scribes and the priests say that it is sufficient to outwardly keep the Law.  But Jesus teaches with divine authority, unlike the scribes and Pharisees who think that they have kept the fifth commandment simply by not being an actual murderer. 

Our Lord teaches us that the Law is not about external actions, but about the internal condition of the heart.  Have you been angry and fantasized about harming someone?  You have broken the fifth commandment.  Have you had lustful thoughts?  You have broken the sixth commandment.  Have you had to bolster your word by means of oaths?  You have broken the eighth commandment. 

In fact, if you have hated your enemies, you have broken all the commandments, for as our Lord taught elsewhere, to keep the commandments is to love God and love one’s neighbor.  And love is not an external compliance with a rule; love is a state of the heart.  Jesus Himself demonstrates this by dying for us on the cross while we were His enemies, while we were yet sinners.  This is what it means to keep the commandments.

And so we need to repent, not merely outwardly, but inwardly.  The Greek word for repentance means to change the mind, to have a change in heart.  It is internal, and it is the internal that controls the external, not the other way around.

On this day, we honor St. Michael and all angels, these ministering spirits who serve the Lord, whom the Lord sends to serve us.  We cannot see them, but they are there for us in danger and in temptation.  When our Lord crushed Satan’s head at the cross, Michael the Archangel expelled Satan from the heavenly realms and sent him to earth.  His time is short, and his hatred for us is the very opposite of the love that is embedded in the Law.  Satan’s desire here on earth is to destroy our faith.  And this is why Luther’s morning and evening prayers implore the Lord to “Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me.”

You have heard that it was said that the Law can save you.  But without relaxing the Law by a jot or a tittle, our Lord says to us that we are saved by love: the love of the Son in dying for us on the cross, and the love of the Father in sending angels to minister to us.  We also have the love of the Spirit who keeps us in the one true faith.  Satan has been defeated and cast down.  Let us strive to keep the Law by loving our neighbor, and when we falter, may the angels guard us by drawing us to the cross, to the Word of God, and when we die, to Abraham’s bosom, bearing us home.

Amen.

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