The text is the completion of Jesus’ Parable Sermon. It is a string of three parables that are from appearances so easy. They aren’t detailed stories. None of them have multiple parts really. But I’m convinced most of the time I hear these preached or explained it misses the gold. Not that the standard interpretation is exactly wrong, but it depends upon so much that is left unsaid. It depends upon an unspoken gospel. This sermon attempts to preach the gospel that we might hear the parable again. It attempts to bring out of the storehouse things old and new.
Biblical Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (Matthew 35)
The parable of the wheat and the weeds on its surface is an answer to the problem of evil. I just don’t think we push it far enough. We settle for a type of glory story. It is not that the glory isn’t true. There will be a day when the straight line power is used. When the angels are sent out for the reaping. When the judgement comes. But it is a glory story to focus exclusively on that. If God could use that right-handed power the problem of evil would stand. Why doesn’t he do so? Now?
The parable gives a surface answer, but I believe it also encourages the deep one, the theology of the cross. The Christian doesn’t get to look past the cross. If God stayed locked up on his heaven, there is no hope for any of us. And the honest pagan might right. The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, and this is just. It is just the way of the world. God is only in the strong. But God did not stay locked in his heaven. He descended – even to sheol – that he might get you (Psalm 139:8). The cross is the power of God that all might believe and be saved. And it is the only way for us weak sinners.
Biblical Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 (Isaiah 55:10-13)
The core text is the Parable of the Sower and the Soils, one of about two or three Biblical stories that I think are still general knowledge even today. Although honestly this sermon doesn’t treat them as that. It has a good section talking about basic textual meaning. A smart preacher once said, “assume they know nothing.” Now the best thing about this text happens to be how great a service you can construct with the hymns. Including ending with LSB 923 Almighty Father, Bless the Word which ends on the actual Doxology. You don’t get better.
But turning back to the sermon, the text at a very basic level is one of the few answers to a why question. It’s a common and natural why question, why if God gets his way and he wants people to believe are there so many that do not? The parable of he Sower and Soils explains that. The gospel comes a certain way – by proclamation, by the Word. And it has enemies. The sermon matches these up with three types of soils. In this sense the parable is legalistic in that it describes the basic functioning of the world. But I do think there are ways it proclaims the gospel. And those come not by focusing on the soils, but by focusing on the sower. And then with the picture of the sower pondering the nature farming. How it is a seasonal game. In that sense I don’t think you are meant to take the soils are unchangeable eschatological statements. They are more encouragements to examine ourselves. What type of soil has our heart been?
Anyway, maybe it is getting older. Or maybe my personal standards are slipping. But I like this sermon.
National holidays – like July 4th – sit uneasily within the church. Why is that? The short answer is various authorities of the three estates. This sermon talks about those three – home, church and state – and their rightful authority. And how the authority of each is rightly derived from Christ who all authority in heaven and upon earth has been granted to by the Father. The sermon is an attempt to walk the middle path between a couple of ditches that the church so often falls in when it comes to national celebrations.
The hymn referenced at the start is I Walk in Danger All the Way – LSB 716. The meditation is based largely on Jesus’ statement, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Which saying I think is one of the hardest for the current generation of Christians to absorb or think about. I am rarely simply happy after a sermon. There is always something that comes up after that I think “that would have been a lot better.” But this one I have a strange contentment about. So I’m just going to say listen, maybe after you read through the stanzas of that hymn.
These lessons early in the “green season” are about discipleship expectations. And this one touches on something that effects many Christians today – the family is all over the place in regards to faith. Not long ago, within living memory of those who live in Christendom lands, being baptized and being a Christian were just assumed. And it was often a good assumption. And even if people might complain or worry about a living faith, you didn’t have the open opposition that these verses talk about. Today that is different. And the sermon addresses, there isn’t a family that isn’t torn like this. The text says this is the more likely reality. Because the kingdom advances by hearts and minds and souls. Household by household. Eternal stakes.
It is very rare you stumble across something in translation that I’d describe as uniquely terrible. Words don’t just mean one thing. They have a range of meaning from hyper-literal to extremely metaphorical. You could also label them formal to slang, and general to specific. Most translation issues are more like “I think the translators were a bit to formal and general. The word in its original context is more specific – say raven and not just bird – and more colloquial – say it happened instead of behold.” And the translators would rightly point at their degrees and expertise and tell me to shut up. And this is part of the reason people migrate to different English translations. If you look at about 5 version you can get a sense of the range (say KJV, ESV, NIV, NRSV, NLT) because each of those translation committees tended to have their sweet spots. But occasionally you find something like “affliction” is Matthew 9:35 in the ESV. The ESV tends to default where possible to the KJV. But the KJV goes with sickness. The NLT illness. The RSV with infirmity. And the point in getting this picky is that affliction is something that comes from outside. The word itself, which the RSV gets, is something that comes from the inside, some softness, some weakness, an infirmity. And so you have two type of A to Z phrases. Jesus heals every disease (outside) and every infirmity (inside). And you have the people being harassed (outside) and helpless (inner strength).
And the gospel is that Jesus heals all of these. The Devil and the World might harass. Our sinful flesh makes us helpless. Jesus heals.
We live in a world that attempts to start moral cascades or moral panics all the time. The sermon hopefully demonstrates that and how they have sped up with social media. What the text does is both expose that this mechanism of the world has always been with us. And then it shows us what stops them. Or maybe if not stops them, it shows us how the gospel addresses them. Jesus turns their logic inside out. First, because the logic of a moral panic is the logic of contagion. We think we can stay righteous by excluding “sinners.” The gospel is only for sinners. Jesus came not for the righteous, but for sinners. Which we all are. The second way that Jesus and the gospel flips the world’s logic is that it is not the contagion that spread, but the healing. Christ eats with tax collectors and sinners. In Christ we have nothing to fear from the world. We are called like Matthew to follow Christ which is a dramatic change. But the gospel sends us out to offer the balm – the blood of Christ.
The Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so the Athanasian Creed is a fixture. We say it responsively, and the congregational response isn’t clear enough, so I’m sorry it isn’t on the recording. Although we had a new reader this morning who did a very good job with a very long reading in that Old Testament lesson.
So, the seed idea for this Sermon comes Professor Richard Beck. He is a prof at Abilene Christian, and I’ve been reading him for what seems like forever. I’d say that all his books are on my shelf, but most of them are in my Kindle along with all the underlines (145 over 4 books, the ones in the physical books I don’t have a count on.). Now we diverge in quite significant ways. He I think would still call himself a Progressive Christian, while I’m a confessional Lutheran. The difference is that most people who would use that label do so to avoid thinking. Dr. Beck is the opposite. You occasionally find these people who are close enough to you that you can think along with them fruitfully, but they are different enough to be challenging. That has been Dr. Beck to me. Anyway, in his most recent book – The Book of Love – he starts out with a couple of very powerful ideas.
The first you find embedded in the first part of this sermon that rests on the Old Testament lesson. The devil, the world and our sinful nature present us with an ontology of death. Life is the temporary accident. The Bible is the book of an ontology of life. Death is the temporary thing. Because in the beginning God is. And in the end, God is. That is the point of the first part of the Athanasian Creed. Father, Son and Holy Spirit eternal and coequal.
The second idea from Dr. Beck is that God – best seen in Jesus Christ – is for us. You can’t lose His love. The second part of the Athanasian creed presents this to us. So that by the time we get to those end statements on the judgement, we already know that the judge is in our corner. Which means we are free to go embrace and ontology and a teleology of life. We can go live it. Because God is for us.
The Holy Day was Pentecost – hence the red and the Holy Spirit. Both Pentecost and the Holy Spirit are parts of more staid Protestantism that tend to get forgotten or played down. And I think they tend that way for what this sermon attempts to address. What we really want is God in a Box. Whether that is because we would like personally a God who does what we want, or whether we are protecting God’s reputation from losers and unsavory acts, we can find ourselves like Joshua telling God to “stop it.” The problem there is that the Holy Spirit does what He wants when He wants. And if your theology can’t handle that, as the kids say, it’s not going to make it. The flip side of that is faith, that God loves you, and if this is how the Spirit is acting it must be for your eternal good.
