The Lutheran Livingroom

Biblical Text: Matthew 18:1-20 (but also Ezekiel 33:7-9 and Romans 13:1-10)

This Sunday was our “invite a friend” Sunday. So the bulletin had more pointers and explanations about the service than normal. And this sermon is intended as something of an introduction to the Lutheran House. As the sermon discusses C.S.Lewis’ Mere Christianity you can think of using Jesus’ metaphor of a house – “in my father’s house are many mansions.” That Mere Christianity – the things we all believe and practice – is like the hallway of the foyer. Great things, but not where anyone lives. At least not comfortably. The sermon is an invitation to see the Lutheran Living Room. And that Living Room deals with what is called Law and Gospel. God speaks to us in two ways – the Law and the Gospel. What the sermon does – from the texts of the day above – is hopefully familiarize anyone with how a Lutheran hears, lives and practices Law and Gospel.

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The Law and the Promise

In the Young Adult group that meets on Wednesday evenings, in between silly movies, we’ve been reading Galatians. And to Lutherans in the know Galatians is probably the most Lutheran book of the bible. It is a book about the proper distinction of law and gospel. And distinction is the right word. They are two separate covenants – Abraham and Moses. But the covenant with Abraham – “he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Galatians 3:6)” – is both prior to that with Moses and more direct. God speaks directly with Abraham. The covenant of Sinai with Israel is mediated by Moses. Exodus has Moses going up the mountain and down the mountain and up and down each time relaying parts of a negotiation. Down, I’ve met the LORD. Up, the people of Israel say you are scary. Down, tell them they are right and to back away from the mountain. Up, they’ve agreed and backed away. Let me bring down your word. You should go down first. Down, witnesses the golden calf. Breaks the law. Cleans up Israel. Up, yes, God, I’m sorry, I dropped the tablets. I’ll make a copy. Down, here is the law again, will you keep it? Up, they said they’d keep it. Down, we need to assemble the elders for a meal on the mountain. Up, a meal with the Elder and the LORD to celebrate the covenant of Moses. The covenant with Abraham is the promise – the gospel. Believe, God will do it, God has done it. The covenant with Moses is the law.

Isaiah 56, our Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, is an interesting mixture of the promise and the law. But I can’t help but hear the gospel predominate. “Thus says the LORD: Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed (Isaiah 56:1).” Paul would say something like the law was given to us as guardian (Galatians 3:24). And there is nothing wrong with the law. The law is good and wise. It is justice. It is righteousness. It’s problem is that the law cannot make us righteous. It instead exposes that we are far from righteous and injustice is what sow. Often injustice is what we sow exactly when we think we are meeting it out. And so what we need is the promise. “My salvation will come, my righteousness be revealed.” God will act. And in the act of God we shall find our salvation, even victory over our sinful selves.

And this is the superiority of the Gospel – of the direct promise. It is available to all. It is available not to the offsprings of Abraham, the pure physical descent. It is available through the offspring – Christ (Galatians 3:16). Isaiah puts this in a different key. He calls out the foreigner, that is the gentile, and the eunuch, that one literally cut off. Our lesson cuts this line out. Probably because of squeamishness over eunuch. “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say ‘behold, I am a dry tree. (Isaiah 56:3)’” Isaiah implores both to “hold fast to my covenant.”

Which covenant? He mentions the Sabbath and the sacrifices. The sacrifices are clearly part of the law. But the Sabbath goes back to the beginning. On the seventh day, God rested. The toil of the law – the guardian – is felt. But he Sabbath rest comes. And yes, the necessities of the sacrifices of the law once filled the temple. And Christ cleared it saying “my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples (Luke 19:46).” For Christ is the salvation of God. And Christ is the righteousness of God. It is not that the law is useless or contrary. It is that the promise is stronger. The law kills us, but God is the God of life.

And he gathers us all into his house of prayer. He promises the eunuch “I will give you a house within my walls, and a name that shall not be cut off.” He promises the foreigner, “I will gather others to him, besides those already gathered.” These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in prayer. Paul would say in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In Christ we are heirs of the promise. And we have seen his deliverance revealed.

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Buried Treasure

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Biblical Text: Matthew 13:44-52

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.

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Why Does It Feel So Hard at Times?

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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.

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Golden Mean vs. All-In

The wisdom of the world is often expressed as the golden mean. The Oracle said, “nothing in excess.” Aristotle talked about virtue as the path between extremes. Courage was the virtue between recklessness and cowardice. And it is not just a western thing. The Buddhist might chart the middle path between existence and non-existence which was the expansion of the Buddha’s original rejection of both extreme asceticism (non-existence) and self-indulgence (too much existence). And you can even find it in Christian thought. For Aquinas and Dante the middle path is that between insufficient love and excessive love. In our love infatuated age it might be hard to imagine that second pole of excessive love. But think again of courage and recklessness. Isn’t recklessness an excessive love of risk? It is hard to outgrow old training so I return to a finance example. If one part of our society is engaged in the attempt to eliminate all risk, like shutting down all society for a virus, is not the other, invested in prop bets on Draft Kings and Crypto coins, running to an excess love of it?

And you would be a fool to completely reject the golden mean. But there is something in the spiritual life that speaks against it. Let’s describe it as submission and aggression. God says to Abram, “Go, from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you (Genesis 12:1).” It is the demand of absolute submission. Not much later God would ask Abram to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, the only child of that promise. And Jesus uses demands like this. “”If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26 ).” Or speaking in a way that people responded – “this is a hard teaching, who can listen to it” – “”Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (Jn. 6:53).” You shall have no other gods before me is a call for complete submission.

Yet that submission is aggressive, it is not passive. “Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai…and Lot…and all their possessions…and set out (Genesis 12:4-5).” Sarah when Isaac was born told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and God told him to listen to his wife. Joshua was told to conquer the land and Israel was only rebuked when they didn’t go far enough. And like Abram who “journeyed on (Genesis 12:9),” Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).” Within Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane “Lord, not my will, but thine be done” are both the absolute submission and the aggression.

I think there is something here of what we need. Occasionally it is the law which says do this. And the “this” is usually some virtue or some golden mean. The golden rule – “treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated” – is akin to that golden mean. If we all lived that way, we would have no problems. But we don’t live that way. And as much as the philosophers might agree in theory, in practice each one has their own list of virtues and their ordering. And when we find ourselves off the middle way, and the true path is lost, it takes something radical to restore us. It takes the One who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Romans 4:17).”

It is that One, who is not at all the middle way, but a jealous God, that we need. And who has shown up not walking a middle path dispensing wisdom like the Buddha, but setting his face for the cross. And it is that One who has given us a promise like Abram. The Kingdom is yours.

Getting Salty

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Biblical Text: Matthew 5:13-20

As we dig a little into the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the real start of the sermon after the poetic beatitudes opening, begins with the juxtaposition of salt and light. Standard parallelism would hold that these two images are supposed to mean the same thing. But I’ve honestly never really liked that, or at least I’ve felt they contained a bit more contrast. And the entire Sermon on the Mount to me is weaving of contrasts. What always made me think deeper is the note about salt losing its saltiness, while you can’t hide a city on a hill is part of the expansion on the light. There is a built in contrast. As it turns out, Luther’s reading is one of contrast. Now I can’t explain either why I never read Luther’s thoughts prior, or if I did why I dismissed them. It might have something to do with modern interpreters, including those I highly value, more or less dismissing Luther. But then that in itself is common. Over and over you find people dismissing Luther, but then he just resonates.

This sermon preaches salt and light as Luther would have it. The salt being the stinging but preserving function of the law while the light is the proclamation of the gospel of free grace. Both are good. But as Luther would say, we are often in trouble of losing our saltiness. And when we lose contact with the truth of the law, the gospel is placed under a bushel.

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Meditation on The Law – Psalm 19

Once upon a time, the liturgy started with the Introit. You can probably hear “enter” in Introit. It was that entrance hymn. Confession and absolution were done privately prior to attending service instead of our corporate confession. Our opening hymn, or processional hymn, is really a duplication of the Introit. Think of it this way. The Psalms were the original hymnbook. The Divine Service of the Word grew out of the Synagogue worship. So the opening hymn, the Introit, typically comes from the Psalms. Over the centuries it got handed to the choir to chant. And in our case has become a call and response spoken act. That Introit is meant to encapsulate the theme of the entire service. When we didn’t all carry calendars with us in our phones or have them on every wall the weeks of the year were often known by the first word or phrase of the Introit as they were standardized across all of Christendom. After the antiphon, this week might have been “The Heavens Declare” week.

That comes from Psalm 19:1-14. What do the Heaven’s declare? And how are they declaring? According the Psalmist they declare the Glory of God. And it is the mere existence of the sky that proclaims his handiwork. The Scriptures are consistent. We – mankind – can look at creation and know there is a creator. We can also know by looking at creation that this creator is glorious. And the scriptures are equally as clear that this is not a subtle or hidden speaking. “Day to day pours out speech…there is no speech whose voice is not heard…the voice goes out through all the earth.” You can call this natural revelation. You might call it the natural law. Wherever we go we can perceive the natural workings of God. They are as persistent and as dependable as the sun. “In them [these naturally proclaimed words] he has set a tent for the sun…and like a strong man runs its course with joy.”

But those natural words that we all live and move and have our being within are not all the words that God has shared with us. He has also revealed to us his law. “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the LORD is sure, make wise the simple.” And the Psalmist continue praising and extoling what that revealed law does: enlightens the eyes, endures, shows truth, refines. “By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.”

But the meditation upon the law – whether that be the glory of Almighty God shown forth in creation, or the perfection of the revealed law, the commandments of the LORD – has a flaw. “Who can discern his errors?” The glory is beyond my understanding. The keeping of the revealed law is deeper than I can understand my own heart. My own heart works against me. Hiding its purposes. Convincing me of falsehood and foolishness. Hiding the truth from myself. “Declare me innocent from hidden faults, keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.” The meditation of the law leads all of us to that place where we know our sinfulness, even if we don’t know it’s depth or reach. We need a savior. One who will ‘declare us innocent..keep us back.” One who will free us from what has enslaved us. “let sin not have dominion over me.”

The Psalmist leaves it there. His petition is to God to deliver him. And he trusts in God – “O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” He does not know the how, but he has faith that God shall redeem him. But to you has been proclaimed the fullness of the story. You know your rock and redeemer are Jesus Christ. We share the faith of the Psalmist that God has done this. But we know the how. The cross. And His son who hung on it. As the Baptist will point out in the Gospel lesson. “Behold, The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Here is the one who has moved us from the dominion of sin into his Kingdom.

Subjected to Futility…in Hope

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope – Romans.8:20

I’m sorry this corner is not about one of the lessons of the day. I commend Amos to your personal piety this week. But this is something that has been in the bones for a while and I have to get it out.

If you’ve ever played team sports or especially ever coached them you will recognize this kid immediately. He’s not the fastest, or the strongest, or the meanest, or the absolute best in any category. But he will run through brick walls. He’s the first in the gym, the last guy out, and he probably goes home and does some practice there too. Absolute coach’s dream. And if you are chasing a glory story, you need that kid. When you need the ball, he will get you the ball. When you need someone to lean into the fastball, or put down the bunt, he’ll do it. And he’ll play hurt. You can’t get him off the field. You love that kid, or you think you do.

As much as I like sports movies or TV shows, sometimes they tell the truth, but more often they lie. The greatest liar in these regards was maybe the most heartfelt dream – Coach Taylor played by everybody’s all American Kyle Chandler in Friday Night Lights. He had a phrase “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.” Absolute catnip to that kid. And it’s a great phrase. Because 95% of the time, it’s true. Maybe even 99% of the time. The Law of God is good and wise. Aristotle wasn’t an idiot. If you do this, you will become this. This being courageous, strong, whatever virtue you seek. And that kid who will run through brick walls? He’s amped up. He’s doing it. Full heart, clear eyes. Can’t lose, right?

There is another football movie that cuts closer to the truth. Keanu Reeves’ The Replacements. Gene Hackman is all his glory playing exactly that coach who assembles a team full of that kid. From the police sergeant linebacker who will get him that ball. To the former Heisman Trophy winner who is all heart. To the deaf kid who can catch anything close and will take all the pain of the hits. They are coached to run through brick walls. The Replacements is not completely honest, it’s Hollywood, so they win the game, but not before they hit the wall. Not before they have to realize it isn’t a glory story. The regulars are better. The sergeant will get bloodied and run over. The deaf kid will get separated from the ball. And all the heart in the world won’t keep you on the field. That takes grace. That takes some intervention.

If you’ve coached that kid, and you think you love him by sending him at bigger and bigger walls, eventually he is going to hit the wall. The one he can’t blow through. Because the creation was subjected to futility. God, I wish I could just preach the law. Do this and you will live. It would be so easy. And if things didn’t work out, even easier. You didn’t follow the rules. Your eyes were not clear enough. Your heart not full enough. You lose, sorry. Do better. The law makes so much sense. But it only works 95% of the time. And it usually fails at the most important moment. Because creation was subjected to futility. And if you really love that kid, you’ve got to be there to pick up the pieces. To tell him Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can lose. But this is just a finite game. And you are playing an infinite one.

Because life is not a glory story, it’s a grace story. The Replacements got to play one more game. Something every former player dreams about. Gene Hackman playing another coach in Hoosiers realizes that you can’t just “patch him up” and put your only big guy back on the court bleeding from glass cuts. And most importantly that all your plans are dust. Sometimes you have to rely on the living miracle that is Jimmy Chitwood and give him the ball. He’ll make it. Life is a grace story. We’ve already died to the law. We’ve hit that wall, hard. We’ve tasted the futility. But we’ve done that in hope. Because we have our own Jimmy Chitwood – Jesus Christ. And he’s already made it. We are already playing that one gifted game. And don’t worry, there will be more. It’s an infinite game. The creation was subjected to futility that we might see it’s not about the brick walls to run through. It’s about playing the game. You’ve already been given the victory. Enjoy the play.

Temporal Blessing of the Land

“The distinction between law and gospel is the highest art in Christendom.” – Martin Luther

When modern Lutherans have thought about Law and Gospel they have tended to do so in two ways. The first is as an individual. The law condemns me; the gospel proclaims my salvation. And that is fine…as far as it goes. The second way is more troubling. We have tended to put law and gospel in contradiction to each other. Because the law condemns me we label it “bad,” while the gospel is “good” because it saves me. And anytime someone brings up the law we dismiss it because we are free in the gospel. Those two ways of pondering the distinction of law and gospel have at least been debated. There are minority reports on the 20^th and 21^st century handling of this highest art which take them to task. There is a third part that just floats under the surface like an iceberg. Everything in law and gospel has been focused upon salvation. And don’t get me wrong, salvation is important. You might even say ultimate. But we are not taken immediately out of this world (John 17:15, 1 Cor 5:10). “How then shall we live” is important. And how we shall live together is also important.

The Old Testament lesson for this week (Deuteronomy 30:15-20) comes from Moses’ final words to Israel after 40 years in the wilderness before they take the promised land. Moses’ worlds are clear law. “If you obey the commandments of the LORD you God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules…”. There are some interesting distinctions made like the gradations in the law – commandments, statutes and rules – which we might think of as the moral law, the civil law and the kosher laws of religious cleanliness. But it is the law which demands that our hearts follow it, but that law has no ability within itself to compel hearts. Israel was always a stubborn and stiff-necked people, like all sinners. But the promise that is attached to this law is neither an individual promise nor a salvation promise. If you keep it…“you shall live and multiply, and the LORD will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.” The promise, at least this one of the law, is about the here and now, and it is more about the collective.

God in his grace is giving Isreal the land. That is the gospel. God promised that to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and God keeps his promises. Ultimately that gospel promise of the land is fulfilled in the New Jerusalem and the life of the world to come. But the law of God is good and wise. If the society one lives in is one that respects the 10 commandments (commandments), and if that society has civil laws that are both upheld and respected (statutes), and if that society has folk ways that are shared (rules), things will go better. That is not a promise of a rose garden for every individual, but collectively, that is a place where people can live. They are not worried every day about murder and theft and calumny. That is a place where people would desire to have children (multiply). That is a place where “the mandate of heaven” has fallenjoyfully – “the LORD will bless you.” These are not the blessings of the gospel which come to us by grace. No amount of doing these things earns us heaven. But the way the LORD has created this world, these things are part of that natural law.

Sin of course runs in us and we are always looking for ways to take advantage. If everyone else walks in those ways, but I defect from them, I can get all kinds of private benefits. But as everyone defects, it all falls apart. “If your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land.”

The law has no ability to enforce itself. But by grace God has given us the land. God has given us the world to come, and God has also given to us this place. He has both given us salvation and everything we need to support this body and life. And our lot has fallen in a blessed place. As Moses said to Israel, “choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” That you may live in eternity, but also that God might bless our native land and firm may she ever stand.

Meditation on Now and Not Yet

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. – 2 Corinthians 5:17

It’s a person theory, but all the trouble in Christendom stems from what this verse is talking about. Here the Apostle Paul is talking Old Creation and New Creation, but he has other ways of talking the same thing. The Kingdom which is passing away and the Kingdom Come. The Old Adam and the New Man. And there are many others. The way that it fixes in my mind is actually from John. “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared (1 Jn. 3:2 ESV).” – the now and the not yet. Now we can already claim the resurrection. Now the promises are all fulfilled in Christ. But stubbornly some of them are not yet ours by sight. They are ours by faith.

If you are within the church we all wish that we were now perfect. There is an expectation that if we are not part of the Kingdom things should be smooth. So when minor disagreements crop up, not even mentioning gross sins, how is this place the Kingdom is a natural question. That fact that the church now is the gathering of sinners, forgiven by Christ, but still dealing with the Old Adam is often forgotten. Yes, the new has come, but the old is still passing away. Daily the old Adam must be drowned.

Externally the church now still deals with the old creation. And the Old Creation recognizes the church for what it is, the Omaha Beach of the New Creation, the place where now the Kingdom Comes, if not yet in full power. Now the church forgives sins. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18).” And that reconciliation comes through the proclamation. Now, your sins are forgiven. “As a called and ordain servant of the world, I pronounce the grace of God onto all of you.” Not yet have we been made perfect. Not yet does the truth of that proclamation shine forth to all who hear it. The Prince of this Old World knows it and now fights hard against. But the residents of it? Not yet have all seen the way, the truth and the life.

Living in the overlapping of the now and the not yet is constantly frustrating. Not only in dealing with others both inside and outside of the church. The most frustrating part is when that now and not yet are within ourselves. Now we know what we should do, but we do not yet do it. Not yet have we mortified the flesh, because now sin still lives in our members. We often find we are at war with our very selves. We are the new creation, but the old hangs around. And the fact of the old hanging around, if we are wise, prevents us from claiming and acting on the now, when what we are desiring is not yet. If we are foolish we plunge ahead only to find ourselves worse than the starting point. The law has not been put away, and not a jot or tittle will disappear until the fulness of the Kingdom.

The now and the not yet is the right division of the law and the gospel. Now the gospel comes to us in word and promise. The not yet becomes the now by faith. But the day comes when that Kingdom will come in power. But the power is not yet. Now it comes in poorer form. A message of reconciliation. A rumor of resurrection. “God making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:20).” And we implore you, be reconciled to Christ, now. Trust the Word.