In the Name of Jesus
Jeremiah 9,22-23 1312Septuagesimä (3. Sonntag vor der Passionszeit) 020
Jacob (Israel), Patriarch
Agatha, Virgin, Martyr at Catania, Sicily 251
5. February 2012
1. O Heavenly Father, gracious in mercy and justice, You sent Your Only-begotten Son to redeem us from sin and the curse of sin. We are prideful. We are demanding. We fail to fully comprehend Your good will. Pour out upon us God the Holy Spirit and give us the same mind as Your Beloved Son, Christ Jesus, for as He teaches us in today’s parable, You give eternal life equally to all people regardless of who they are. Help us to spread the joy of this parable to our borough and neighbors for in doing so we are pointing them to Jesus who brings the good gift of life everlasting. Amen.
2. Thus says Yahweh Sabaoth: „Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches. Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am Yahweh who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. For I delight in these things.“
3. The words from Yahweh our God, proclaimed by His prophet, Jeremiah, hits like the ice-cold Gatorade dumped on victorious coaches or a jarring tackle in football. Yahweh tells us not to boast. He speaks this to fallen men and women whose lives often revolve around boasting. „See what I did? Marvel in my wisdom. Behold my strength and power! Check out my wealth.“ If you’ve watched any of the pre-Super Bowl fanfare, you have seen talented and well-paid football players boast in themselves. If you watch today’s championship game, you will see celebrations and chest-thumping when a good play is made. Professional sports brings out mankind’s worst narcissistic traits, and coaches constantly drill into their over-paid problem players that everything is not about you but it is all the about the team.
4. No team wants to lose the Super Bowl; there is no joy proclaiming you came in second place as you watch your opponents lift up the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Neither do we enjoy telling others how foolish, weak or poor we are. Human pride will fight against such actions, and we will often do all we can to accentuate our positives and boast of our successes. We strive to become first, and we will fight to remain in that position. It’s a dog eat dog world, and being the top alpha dog does has its benefits in the world.
5. Our sinful nature, therefore, might grate at such attributes as kindness and righteousness, for the world often associates such traits, even if they are Divine, as traits that reveal weakness or humility. Certainly the statement by Jesus in this morning’s Gospel Reading goes against our Western ideals of fairness and the ethic of hard work. Jesus proclaims: »So the last will be first, and the first will be last« (Matthew 20,1 ). Some might hear these words and decide that Jesus must be a Communist or a Socialist. Such a declaration would immediately rile up conservative talk show hosts, and might even cause the Founding Fathers to start rolling over in their American graves!
6. Jesus was not a Communist nor was He a Socialist. He also was not a Democrat, a Republican or a Libertarian. No American political party gets to claim Jesus only for themselves, nor can they claim the political high ground in any debate by quoting Jesus. During His life on earth, Jesus found common cause with the Pharisees, the Sadducees and even the Romans on various issues, but none could claim that Jesus was their go-to candidate.
7. When Jesus proclaimed that the last would be first and the first last He was making a theological statement, not a political one. Jesus came to this earth to bring us the kindness, justice and righteousness of His Heavenly Father. God the Father delights in these attributes.
8. Here we see the great disconnect that we have with Yahweh. There is a wide gulf between Yahweh and sinful men and women. Our warped sense of reality believes that kindness is for those who are good, justice is for those who deserve it and righteousness is for those who have earned it. Surely the laborers hired at the first hour deserve Yahweh’s kindness, justice and righteousness more than those guys who only got hired at the end of the day and merely put in an hour’s worth of hard work. At the very least the first laborers deserve a large bonus for all their dedication to offset the equal wage paid to the ones who showed up last, right? Wrong!
9. The point of Jesus’ parable is that God’s grace is undeserved. You don’t deserve it, I don’t deserve it and nobody in the world deserves God’s grace. If God the Father treated us fairly and rightly, then we would all properly deserve His judgment and punishment. Our sinfulness only merits Yahweh’s holy wrath.
10. Thank God that He is gracious to us! The Prophet Jeremiah wonderfully proclaims that Yahweh delights in kindness, justice and righteousness. In His kindness, God the Father sent to us, yes, to the entire world, His Only-begotten Son. In His justice, God the Son suffered in your place, and in doing so spared you from Divine judgment and punishment for Jesus Christ justly bore the guilty sentence that you deserved. In His righteousness, God the Holy Spirit applies to you the holy merit that belongs to Jesus: Christ’s righteousness is now your righteousness. The Holy Spirit speaks Jesus’ righteousness to your ears whenever the word of the gospel is proclaimed to you. In a few moments the Holy Spirit will place Jesus’ righteousness in your mouths with the really present body and blood of Jesus that is sacramentally united to the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.
11. Jesus declares you righteous because He gives you His very own righteousness. Where Jesus is, there is His righteousness. Where His righteousness is, there is everlasting salvation. Where salvation is, there is the forgiveness of sin, and not just one or two gross sins, but the forgiveness of every single sin, no matter how serious or petty it may be. And not just your individual sins, but even your very sinful nature is covered by Jesus’ righteousness. Where there is righteousness there is grace, yes, free, undeserved grace that is yours because our Triune God is merciful.
12. Do not mistake Yahweh’s free grace as easy grace. The grace of Jesus Christ is most certainly free, but it does not come without a cost. Jesus paid the highest cost to justify you, because it cost Jesus His own life.
Marvelous grace of our Loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds your sin and your guilt!
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace that is greater than all your sin (Julia H. Johnston).
13. The crucified Christ shows that Yahweh’s grace is free, yet costly. The risen Christ shows that Yahweh’s grace is yours and that it is effective. In your Baptism you have died with Christ and have now risen to new, everlasting life with Him. Yahweh shows you His kindness, justice and righteousness in Christ Jesus, yes, the Jesus who was crucified and resurrected for you and your justification. God the Father boasts in His kindness, justice and righteousness; He boasts in Christ Jesus, and so also do you boast in Him.
14. It does not matter whether a person was baptized as a baby and has been blessed to receive Christ’s grace for many decades, or if someone calls upon the Name of Jesus on his or her deathbed, both will receive the same forgiving grace of Jesus, and both will be rewarded with life everlasting. Christ’s grace is undeserved, and in this marvelous truth you rejoice, for Christ’s grace is yours. Believe it, boast in it and revel in it, for you are forgiven and you are saved by the merit of Jesus alone. He makes the last first and the first last, for all who believe upon Him for righteousness have that very justification in full abundance and in full equality into life in Paradise. Amen.
15. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, we present our pleas before You because of Your great mercy; hear our petitions and graciously answer them so that we may remain steadfast on You when the tribulations of this world would drive us from You. Amen.
One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you!
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
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