The Fourth Sunday After The Epiphany God Opened His Mouth Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Gospel, Jesus “opened His mouth and taught them.” Dear Christian friends, Today’s Gospel is somewhat wordy and cumbersome, that Jesus “opened His mouth and taught them.” Wouldn’t it be easier for this Gospel to say, with more common speech, “Jesus began to teach them” (as in the NIV)? Perhaps, but then you will have totally missed the point. Today’s Gospel gives you a gift by spelling out the detail that Jesus “opened His mouth and taught them,” and not merely because that is a closer translation of the Greek. Today’s Gospel spells out the detail that Jesus “opened His mouth” so that you will not miss the point. The point is this: by telling you that Jesus “opened His mouth” today’s Gospel is emphasizing for you that your God is speaking these Words to you. What I mean is this: Today’s Gospel is Matthew chapter 5. Just prior to this Gospel, in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus was tempted by the devil. During that temptation, Jesus spelled out for you in very clear Words, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD” (Matthew 4:4). Having proclaimed that the sum total of your life proceeds from the mouth of God, Jesus then “went up on a mountain, sat down, and He opened His mouth and taught them.” Why is it so important for you to know this little detail, that Jesus your God is speaking to you in today’s Gospel? Because in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells you things about your life that you could never know simply by looking at your life. Jesus can say these things about you because He is God, and He knows things about you that only God can know. He looks at you in a way that no philosopher, no religious leader, no self-help guru, no family member could ever look at you. Jesus the Son of God looks at you the way God looks at you. In this Gospel, Jesus wants you and all Christians to learn what God sees when He looks at you, in order that you also may look at yourself in the same way. “He opened His mouth.” Miracles pour forth from His mouth when He names you His blessed ones. 1. No one on the street would ever say, “I am blessed because I feel inwardly empty. I have nothing to give anyone. I must rely completely on others for everything.” Our human sense of worth compels us to make a contribution—or at least to want to make a contribution. To our minds, it is humility, not blessing to be utterly dependant—just ask a shut-in. Jesus says, “Forget it.” Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That is to say, God considers you to be in the best possible position when you are completely helpless in His work of salvation, and when you stop trying to make your contribution or do your part in the work that only He can do for you. Blessed are you who are poor in spirit, you who realize that you are so empty inside that you cannot even feel religious. Yours is the kingdom of heaven because you must rely on Jesus and Him only. 2. Can you imagine a widow lady saying, “God has blessed me by allowing my gentle, caring and thoughtful husband to die, leaving me here alone to fend for myself”? Or what would you think of the fearful mother and the helpless father who claim, “God has blessed us by allowing our child to become seriously ill”? The man on the street would consider such people insane. No one would consider fear or grief to be expressions of happiness and contentment. But Jesus says, “Blessed—happy—are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” No matter what you endure in this life, and no matter what you shall lose, you shall be comforted. God the Son promises you that your losses shall become gains. You shall be comforted when the dark night of your struggle dawns in the morning light of the Last Day resurrection, earned for you by Christ’s own resurrection from the dead. 3. What if I were to ask, “Will everyone who is humble people please stand up?” If you stand up, you would be publicly proclaiming—making a boast—about your humility. If you remain seated, you would be saying that you are not humble, but proud. Humility—meekness—is not a personal quality that you can cultivate. Jesus speaks something impossible to you—something divine to you—when He says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Your humility comes only by the miracle of God. You become meek only when God’s condemning Law crushes you; when it forces you to realize how impoverished of spirit you truly are and how grievous is your condition. But when your old self gets crucified with all of its sins and evil desires—that is, when God creates your meekness for you—then He regards you as blessed and happy. Then you are blessed and happy because God loves to pick up the meek, wiping you clean of all your sins and giving you a place of glory and honor in His Kingdom and Church. 4. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Without God speaking to us in His Law (Romans 2:14015) and His Gospel (Romans 3:21-22), none of us would ever perceive our persistent unrighteousness, much less hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness. But Jesus speaks two miracles and two promises in this Beatitude. First He speaks about the miracle that you perceive a hunger and thirst for righteousness. Through the Word of God, the Holy Spirit has entered your heart and your mind and He has revealed to you that there is nothing there that may be considered righteous—“nothing good” as St. Paul says (Romans 7:18). But then, after Jesus points to your unrighteousness, He also promises you, “You shall be satisfied.” Your hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled through the hearing of the Word, through eating the Lord’s Supper, through your future dwelling in eternity, where there shall be no more hunger (Revelation 7:16). 5. Life would appear to be nasty and brutish (Thomas Hobbes), most successfully lived by those who are nasty and brutish. But Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Yet mercy does not adhere to our sinful hearts and minds. Only self-preservation does. Just as it is written, “We love because [God] first loved us” (1John 4:1), so also may it be said, “We show mercy only because God first showed mercy to us.” Your ability to show mercy is a divinely-given ability; it is a matter of faith, declaring your divinely-given conviction that God shall yet show mercy to you when you are called to account before His throne. 6. If you honestly examine your own heart, you will see only impurity and sin. If you pass judgment about the way you struggle in this life, you will be tempted to think your struggles indicate that God is not actually at peace with you, that He is angry with you, and that you owe Him something. But none of that is true. Jesus the Son of God looks at you in a way you could never see yourself: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” and“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Your blessedness in the eyes of God has come to you, not because you figured out how to purify your own heart, but because God Himself declares to you right now that your heart is purified by Jesus’ death for your sins. Blessedness is yours, not because you figured out a way to make peace with God, but because God declares peace with you on account Jesus’ sacrificial death for your sake. 7. Jesus says it is a good thing for your family and co-workers to pick on you because of your Christian faith. It is a good thing for people to look down their noses at you for what seems like an over-dependence on Jesus or a seemingly fanatical commitment to the pure Word of God, to Baptism and Holy Communion. It is a good thing when some Christians snobbishly conclude that you do not have the gift of the Holy Spirit because you do not pray in some gibberish tongue or bark like a dog in worship. It is a good thing when other Christians consider you hard-hearted or old-fashioned because you will not throw away the clear words of Scripture to welcome a more “modern” Christianity in your pews, which is really no Christianity at all (Galatians 1:6-7). It is a good thing when it seems like the entire world hates you on account of the Christian faith God has given to you. So traveled the prophets and other believers before you. Yet for all of the world’s hatred and condescension and religious bigotry against you, God’s promise to you cannot be taken away: “yours is the kingdom of heaven.” “He opened His mouth.” Today’s Gospel is a good Epiphany Gospel. It reveals to you that Jesus truly is God the Son, speaking the Words of God. And you live “by every word that comes FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD” (Matthew 4:4). Here Jesus says things to you and about you that only God could know. In other words, He shows you who you are by first revealing who He is. Who are you? You are God’s blessed ones, His happy ones. You may not feel blessed or happy in the midst of your poverty of spirit, your mourning over losses, your humility, or your hunger and thirst for righteousness. You may not feel blessed in these things, but in these things you are blessed indeed because God says you are blessed. You might not walk around feeling in your heart the sort of mercy, purity and peace that are spoken about here. Be that as it may: you are truly the blessed ones of God because the Father has shown you mercy in Christ His Son, making you able to be merciful. He has purified your hearts with the forgiveness of sins, so that you shall see God. He has made peace with you through death and resurrection, and in so doing He has named you “sons of God.” _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
