Sermon manuscript:
In the Name of Jesus
The words that Jesus said in our Gospel reading sound
strange: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace
to the earth. I have not come to bring peace to the earth, but rather a sword.
I have come to set a son against his father and a daughter against her mother
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A person’s enemies will be
those of his own household.” These words sound strange. How can we
understand them?
The context is important. Matthew chapter 10, which is where
our reading came from, is when Jesus sent out his apostles to preach. He told
them what they should preach. They should say, “Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” In last week’s sermon I
talked about what that message meant. “Repent,”
means that you should change your ways. “The kingdom of
heaven drawing near” means that God is coming. He comes to reign and
rule. There will be judgement. Let the sinner sin no more, for we shall all be
accountable to God for what we have done.
Already you can maybe see how this message would be opposed
so as to cause division. People don’t like to be criticized. If you had done
something that you wanted to do, and if I were to say to you, “You shouldn’t
have done that!” You’d resent it. Maybe you’d say within yourself, “Who are you
to judge? What, are you one of those ‘holier than thou’ people? Mind your own
business!”
It’s amazing how deeply seated this attitude is. You can see
it in three year olds. You see it in twelve year olds. You see it in eighty year
olds. Our sinful flesh has this proud trait in it, which hates to be humbled
and put to shame. No matter how sanctified a Christian might be, this trait is
always there, ready to lash out against anyone who might suggest that you’ve
done anything wrong.
So already you can see how division could happen with the
apostles’ message. We don’t want to change. But there is another way that
Jesus’s message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is
near,” can cause even profounder divisions. It has to do with the way
that we all construct meaning for our lives. Everybody has his or her own
understanding of what life is all about. One might believe that life is for the
purpose of accumulating wealth. Too much is never enough. Never give. Always
only take.
Another might believe that what is most important about life
is family. Family comes first. Often a certain look for the family is what is
really meant. You have to have the perfect wedding. You have to have the
perfect childhood. You have to be the perfect grandparents. Make the perfect
memories, and make sure that you have the perfect pictures to prove it.
Another might believe that life is for the purpose of
advancing mankind towards greatness. With continued investment in our sciences
and technologies we can interface our brains with computers. Then, when our
bodies wear out we can upload our consciousness to the cloud. We can live
forever in some electronic form. This is but one of many such dreams that very
talented people are working on.
Everybody has his or her own version of what life is for.
Each seems to be tailored to what the person likes best, or is best at. These
visions of what life is for are very serious. One’s view of what life is all
about takes up that person’s money, labor, devotion, dreams of grandeur.
But then Christ the King comes. The kingdom of heaven draws
near. And this kingdom of God claims absolute supremacy for itself. Every other
view of life must bow before it. There is only one God, and there is only one
Lord. The meaning of life is what you know from the Creed. God has made you and
all creatures. God has redeemed you. The Son of God was born of the Virgin
Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He
descended into hell. The third day he rose from the dead. He ascended into
heaven where he sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence
he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
When the kingdom of God comes, when Jesus comes again to
judge the living and the dead, then it won’t matter how advanced technology has
become. It won’t matter if photo albums are filled with precious memories. It
won’t matter how much wealth or how many computers and how many robots and how
many gallons of oil we have managed to burn. Vastly more impressive things like
the sun and the moon will even go wonky. There is no ruler, power, authority,
or principality that will not be put under Jesus’s feet. Paul says every high
and exalted thing must be torn down and be brought into submission to Christ.
At the Name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Does this vision of what life is all about sound ruthless? It
doesn’t just sound ruthless, it is ruthless. God is unbelievably serious about
the 1st commandment: “You shall have no
other gods.” How often do you think about that commandment? Not too
often? And yet nobody escapes this commandment. God made you. He won’t share
you with others. He says, “Behold, I the Lord your God
am a jealous God.” That means that he won’t share you with any other meaning
that might get constructed about life.
The Lord your God is a jealous God, but let us rightly
understand that jealousy. This is not the jealousy of some petty tyrant. God’s
jealousy is the jealousy of a lover. The book of the Bible called Song of Songs
talks about God’s love for his church. Isaiah and Paul talk about God as a
great lover too. God is a lover who ruthlessly seeks out his beloved. God woos,
and courts, and loves his beloved. He’s downright obsessed. You are his, and he
wants you.
And to have you, he sends his only begotten Son into the
flesh. His perfect Son, whom he loves, who’s perfectly loveable, this perfect
treasure who is worth more 10,000 worlds all heaped together, this Son comes in
such a way where he becomes sin for us. He becomes a worm and no man, scorned
by mankind and despised by all the people. God gives him into death, so that by
his blood you may be presented before him without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing.
God, this great adventurer, is not some apathetic
bean-counter in the skies. God is the profoundest and activest lover there ever
was. If we sold all we had so as to buy this pearl of great price, we would by
no means be disappointed with what we ended up with.
But despite everything I have said to you about the
greatness of God’s kingdom, there will still be those who reject this kingdom
of heaven. The reasons for rejecting the kingdom of heaven vary and are as
numerous as there are people. One will reject the kingdom of heaven because he wants
to hold on to all of his money and property. You perhaps remember Jesus’s story
of the rich man and Lazarus?
Another will reject the kingdom of heaven because she can’t
stand the thought that a son or daughter is condemned through unbelief. Jesus
really means it when he says, “Whoever loves father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more
than me is not worthy of me.” To love the created thing or the creature
more than you love the One who did the creating is not allowed.
And yet, when I say this, I am not speaking as though this
is just somebody else’s problem. The first commandment is our greatest problem
too. We love the created thing rather than the Creator. What pulls us away from
our devotion to him? What pulls us away from church? Isn’t it either the fun
that we might attain for ourselves elsewhere? Or maybe there’s a school event,
a sporting event, or work. And these are very important for the meaning we want
to construct for our lives.
We have our Creator’s commandments, but we don’t want to
change. We’re not so sure that we have to, first of all. Maybe we can get by
without needing to. Plus we’re not so sure that God is always right with what
he says. He’s maybe a little old fashioned? So we, the creature, will believe
and act according to our own lights. It’s plain to see that we know how to
despise the kingdom of God as well as anybody?
So when we hear from Jesus that he has come, not to bring
peace but a sword, we should not think that he is just talking about horrible
villains in far away places who hunt down Christians. The villains are much closer
to home. “Your enemies,” Jesus says, “will be those under your own roof.” Maybe you can
recognize the villain that is in your own heart. We shouldn’t talk about the
kingdom of God only needing to come for other people, because, you see, we’re
fine. We need it for ourselves. So, as we pray so often, “Thy kingdom come.”
The kingdom of God is such that he does not set out to
exclude people. “God did not send his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
God wants all people to repent, come to a knowledge of the truth, and be saved.
But God also isn’t going to be embarrassed if people reject
him because they love other inferior things more than they love him. Nobody is
going to hurt God’s feelings by rejecting him. He has better things to do than
to feel sorry for people who for whatever reason hate him and his love. He is
the great lover. How could any great lover be derailed from pursuing his
beloved by the bitter, sour faces of onlookers?
So we have this wonderful apostolic message before us today,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
My advice to you is that you join in on this glorious romp of our Lord Jesus’s.
There’s no greater adventure in the cosmos than living under him in his kingdom
and serving him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. Lots
of people can’t see this adventure. It is thoroughly hidden now, only to be
more fully revealed in the last times. But it is as real and true as Jesus’s
resurrection from the dead.
But if you don’t want to join in, then there’s only sad news
for you. There’s no stopping this kingdom of God, even if you rage and fume
like the devil so as to kill Christians left and right. It won’t do you any
good! As Luther says in A Mighty Fortress, “And take they our life, goods,
fame, child and wife—though these all be gone—our victory has been won. The
kingdom ours remaineth.” God wins. Amen.
We stand to sing the offertory.
