Sermon: Wittenberg Academy - Nov 12, 2024

12 Nov 2024

Text: Matt 26:1-19

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

As we approach the end of Matthew’s account of the life of our Lord, we are rapidly moving to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Things are coming together quickly, and in two days time, the world will be changed forever.  At this point, the only one who knows this is our Lord: “After two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”  And as our Lord is saying this, “the chief priests and the elders… plotted together” along with Caiaphas, the corrupt high priest, “in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill Him.”  But they had to be politically sensitive, for, as Jesus said, “The Passover is coming.”

Indeed, the Passover is coming: the one final Passover to end all Passovers.  This is the one actual Passover for which the fifteen hundred or so previous Passovers were nothing more than previews or rehearsals.  “The Passover is coming,” says Jesus.  The Passover is the cross, dear friends, when the body of the sacrificial Lamb will be slain, and the people will be delivered from death by means of the protective blood poured out by God’s grace and mercy.

Some Christians want to go back to the rehearsals by having so-called “seder meals.”  It is almost pretending that Jesus hasn’t yet come.  But Jesus changed everything – and for the better.  There is no going back.  Jesus said, “The Passover is coming.”  And the Passover is the Eucharist.  Jesus is the Lamb.  The blood on the doorway leading to heaven is the blood of Jesus being poured out on the beams of the altar and doorway of the cross.  And this holy, sacrificial blood is poured from the chalice into your very body as the “medicine of immortality” as it was described by St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple of the apostle John.

Two days before the Passover came, we see the alignment of the conspirators.  We see Jesus anointed at Bethany, and we see the treasurer (and thief) Judas complaining about the expense.  And it was at this moment that he “went to the chief priests and said, ‘What will you give me if I deliver Him over to you?’”  The price of the Lamb was thirty pieces of silver, paid by the priests of Satan to the traitor.  Never before or after has the monetary cost of a King’s ransom been the price of a slave.

Jesus makes arrangements to eat the final Passover meal with His disciples to prepare for this final Passover: the moment for which all of human history has led.  Jesus will forever change the meal from mere symbolic seder ceremony to the miracle of the Mass: His ongoing Real Presence with us in the Divine Service, the Sacrament of the Altar.  For His Word – the same Word that created the entire universe – the Word Made Flesh and Blood will forever fulfill the Passover by establishing the Lord’s Supper of His flesh and blood.  And the ransomed people of God will eat the flesh of the Lamb and drink His blood – and the Lamb’s blood will cry out to heaven for redemption.  God will use the wicked conspirators even as he used hard-hearted Pharaoh to lead His beloved people away from the bondage of sin, death, and the devil into the promised land of forgiveness, life, and salvation.  

Indeed, the Passover is coming.

Amen.

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

Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Nov 5, 2024

5 Nov 2024

Text: Matt 23:1-12

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

The scribes and the Pharisees were the social elites of the day.  They were not the rulers of the government (though they were represented in the Jewish council).  They were not the priests of the temple (though they were considered to be the religious experts).  Their real power was in the way ordinary people looked up to them, and trusted them.  Their opinions became public opinions, as they held sway over all those who admired them – much like our celebrity class today.

But their motivation wasn’t the truth.  Their motivation wasn’t to submit to God’s Word.  Their motivation was to maintain their status and the status quo, “to be seen by others,” as our Lord observes.  They did so by interpreting the Scriptures in such a way as to affirm themselves.  They made themselves immune from any criticism, and instead, applied the Law to everyone except themselves.  Their manmade religious system was based on laws and regulations of their own making, “heavy burdens, hard to bear,” as our Lord said, and they would “lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves [were] not willing to move them with their finger.”

They routinely distorted Scripture.  One ridiculous example is how they treat Moses telling the people to figuratively place the Word of God “as frontlets between your eyes” (Deut 6:8).  Instead of interpreting this to be a matter of the primacy of God’s Word in the heart and mind, they insisted, as a matter of law, on wearing literal little boxes, called “phylacteries,” tied to their heads with little scrolls inside as proof of their righteousness.  They had similar rules and regulations with “fringes” on their garments.  And, of course, they had all the best seats at banquets reserved for themselves.  They lived for being called by various titles and being bowed and scraped to. 

They lived for the respect of others – respect that was not returned.  Their religion became a distorted and legalistic parody of what God called them to be, and to do, as children of Israel, as the people of the Covenant, as the custodians of the Word of God.  And this self-obsession led them to be blinded to the reality that the God they claimed to worship was standing right in front of them, speaking to them even more intimately than He spoke to Moses, and was the fulfillment of all the Scriptures they claimed were guiding their lives.

Once people saw how phony the Pharisees were, they could not unsee it.

Their problem, according to Jesus, is their lack of humility – in other words, their pride.  Jesus corrects them, largely to no avail – although two of the Pharisees, who secretly followed Jesus, will act courageously and publicly at His crucifixion (John 19:38-39).  But in spite of the hardness of heart of the scribes and Pharisees, our Lord continues to proclaim the Law to them, to show how they misinterpret Scripture, and to use them as warning to all of us of how not to be.  For “the greatest among you shall be your servant.  Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Amen.

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