Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: 2. Samuel 12,1-10.13-15a. 11. Sunday after Trinity

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum

2. Samuel 12,1-10.13-15a 4514

11. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 056

Isabella, Virgin ✠ 1270

31. August 2014

1. O Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the downtrodden, like the tax collector, our sinfulness makes us the stranger before You, nevertheless, we and we come to You, convicted of our sins and seeking Your mercy. Look upon us with grace and transform us through Your Spirit so that we receive Your mercy (VELKD, Prayer for the 11. Sunday after Trinity ¶ 1). Amen.

2. »David said to Nathan: „I have sinned against Yahweh.” And Nathan said to David: „Yahweh also has put away your sin; you shall not die.“«

3. In Jesus’ day, people went up to the temple in Jerusalem to pray twice a day because „public prayer was permitted in the temple in the morning and evening during the atonement sacrifices, which was made at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.“ (Just 681). In this parable, the Pharisee and the publican have gone to the temple, where Yahweh was present, precisely at the time of the atonement sacrifice, and atonement was the reason for the temple’s existence (Just 682). With the lamb sacrificed, the blood of the lamb now covered the sins of Israel for that day, and then incense was burned and filled the air as the Psalmist notes: »O Yahweh, let my prayers rise before You as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice« (Psalm 141,2). The people prayed to Yahweh in the context of worship and redemption, for as the incense went up as a sweet fragrance to Yahweh so too did their prayers.

4. Furthermore, the theme of this parable is how is one made righteous? Under the old testament, righteousness was imparted upon people through the blood of the lamb and was received by faith in what the sacrifice gave. The morning and evening sacrifices assured people that their sins had been atoned for and forgiven. So then, how is that righteousness received?

5. First, the Pharisee boasts of his righteousness! I am a holy and pious man! I don’t cheat anyone, I live a moral life and I only worship Yahweh. I am everything that this tax collector hiding in the shadows is not! The Pharisee boasts in his own self-righteousness rather than the righteousness that is given to him through the sacrificed lamb as a gift from the God he claims to worship. If this Pharisee cannot understand nor receive the righteousness as it was instituted in the old testament, is it any wonder why he and most of his fellow Pharisees failed to receive the righteousness that the Lamb of God promised to bring through the new testament? If this Pharisee rejected the Levitical lamb’s sacrifice for his salvation, then he also rejected the Lord Jesus’ sacrifice for his salvation.

6. Second, there is the tax collector who is ashamed of his unrighteousness. He knows he is the worst of sinners, as correctly tabulated by the pious Pharisee. That tax collector is everything the Pharisee claims he is not. That tax collector acknowledged that he is a wicked man. He cheats his neighbors by overcharging them for their taxes and makes himself rich in the process. He lives an immoral life that is full of scandal and derision. His only help is Yahweh. The tax collector throws himself onto the mercy of Yahweh. He takes comfort in God’s righteousness that covers him like a new garment as the Prophet Isaiah promises: »We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. But now, O Yahweh, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; we are all the work of Your hand« (Isaiah 64,6.8). The work of our Heavenly Father’s hand is to make us righteous.

7. So the question is: how do you merit your righteousness? Will you merit it like the Pharisee, who, contrary to both the old and new testaments, trusted in his own righteous life, or will you merit it like the tax collector, who trusted in Yahweh as all the faithful do in the old and new testaments? The righteousness of the Pharisee, the righteousness of our own good works, is not even a viable way of righteousness. Jesus said: »The Pharisee went down to his home having been declared unrighteous, for he had exalted himself and was thus humbled.« Not that the Pharisee would have noticed, because he still saw himself as righteous on account of his exemplary life. God, however, saw something different, and it is God’s view that matters in the realm of righteousness. The Apostle Paul gazes into all our hearts when he says: »No one is righteous, no, not one. All have turned aside; no one does good, not even one. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. For we hold that one is righteous by faith apart from works of the law« (Romans 3,10.12.23-24.27-28).

8. „Our Lord neither condemns the exemplary life of the Pharisee nor does He commend the disreputable life of the publican. The crucial point is that the Pharisee negotiates with God, does a deal, calculates, and tells God the answer. God is expected merely to nod approval. God has no choice but to accept and admire this splendid man. The publican surrenders every claim and calculation. The decision rests with God. He gives God the right to condemn him; hence God has the possibility of showing mercy. Mercy is only possible when you surrender yourself into the hands and decision of God. Where there is not God’s mercy, there is only hell“ (Nagel 199,20).

9. But where this is God’s mercy, there is full forgiveness. When the Prophet Nathan showed King David his manifold sins committed against his neighbors, »David said to Nathan: „I have sinned against Yahweh.” And Nathan replied to David: „Yahweh has put away your sin; you shall not die.“« Nathan proclaimed the gospel that is grounded upon righteous Yahweh who makes propitiation for sin.

10. Too often the temptation is to pit the tax collector against the Pharisee and praise the tax collector’s humble repentance while vilifying the Pharisee’s arrogant boasting. We should rightly praise the tax collector’s attitude, for we should always come to God in humble sorrow, confess our sins and rely on His rich mercy that He has shown to us in Christ Jesus our crucified and risen Lord. We should also acknowledge all the good the Pharisee did. He was a man of solid reputation. He was an excellent neighbor and always willing to help when in need. We could trust him with our possessions and our lives and he would do his best to preserve both against robber or murderer. Would that our good works that bear fruit from faith in the gospel were as bountiful as the Pharisee’s! Our church would be full of people, our offering plates would overflow with money and our neighbors would have so much help that they would have to turn us away because they lacked need.

11. Jesus’ parable shows that there are two ways to stand before God the Father: either boasting of our righteous deeds or humbly seeking His mercy to cover our unrighteousness. „We stand before God, and He does not determine our righteousness because of what we do and how we compare to what others do, but He solely determines our righteousness on the merit of the one sacrifice of the Lamb, who bore the sins of the world, and we rely solely on Christ and His death on the cross. We stand before God with empty hands, with hands that we can only use to beat our breast in sorrow and confess our sins. And then we must also here today in the Divine Service experience this miracle anew so that we leave this church building as justified people, as people who are judged by God to be good and righteous in His eyes – because He applies to us what Christ has acquired on the cross for us. It is precisely this verdict, that you are righteous, that you have heard the absolution that was spoken after your confession, and that this verdict shall be the same again upon you when you see Christ the Lamb of God and receive His own body and blood in the Holy Supper. And now you may return home to your everyday life knowing that, like the tax collector, your sin and guilt have been forgiven. Now you you return to your everyday life and may be quite confident that: God is merciful to you, despite your guilt, despite your failure; for He has promised you, and you can count on Him. This allows you to live each day well as a Christian ...!“ (Martens § 14). Amen.

12. Let us pray. O Lord Jesus, the Righteous One, we give thanks to You and proclaim Your deeds among the peoples, so that they may hear of Your mercy and be certain that even their sins are forgiven. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Soli Deo Gloria

✠

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Martens, Gottfried. A sermon preached on 22. August 2009 (11. Trinitatis) in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany on Luke 18,9-14. Copyright © 2011 St. Mary Church in Berlin-Zehlendorf (SELK). All rights reserved. The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind, Tr. © 2011.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Monday, September 8, 2014

2. Samuel 12,1-10.13-15a. 11. Sunday after Trinity

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