The Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany A Perfect Place to Stand Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Dear Christian friends, Baptism is more than “the water included in God’s Word and combined with God’s command” (Small Catechism). Baptism is more than the washing away of our sins (Acts 22:16), once and for all, in Christ. Baptism is more than our crucifixion with Christ (Galatians 2:20), more than our adoption by the heavenly Father into the family of God (Galatians 4:4), more than our birth of water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:5), and more than new set of clothes (Galatians 3:27). Baptism is more than the liquid Word of God. Baptism is also our defense against the very Words that our God speaks to us. If you think that you have no need for defense or help against the Words of God, then perhaps you were not listening: “You must be perfect,” says the Lord, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We Lutherans generally think of preaching in terms of Law and Gospel. In the Law we expect to hear condemnatory and uncomplimentary things; things that cause us to deplore our inner condition, so that we will look around for something better; things like, “You must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect.” Generally we do not think of sermons as accomplished and full, whole and complete, when we hear only the Law. We have been trained to wait for the Gospel, which we can expect to hear in the second half of the sermon, or at least near its end. In the Gospel, we receive something from God to fill the emptiness that the Law has identified. In the Gospel, the crucified Christ becomes the answer to every concern that the Law raised. As Paul preached, “All the promises God find their YES in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:19). What happens when the Gospel seems absent? If Jesus submitted His Sermon on the Mount to a seminary professor, He might not have passed the preaching class. The problem is that His Sermon does not fit our pattern. It seems to ring entirely with the Law, not so much with the Gospel: Keep your eyes and your hands to yourself. Stop worrying about everything. If you fail to be more righteousness than the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You are not as generous as you think you are. Pray like you actually mean it. Stop putting on appearances, because it is very unbecoming. Love your enemies, not merely in theory, but in sincerity and truth, action and intent. “You must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect.” None of these sayings of Jesus were designed to compliment you. All of them are meant to kill you. By comparison, read through the Sermon on the Mount and underline all the glowing promises of forgiveness and life Jesus speaks therein. You will not need to re-sharpen your pencil. Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount is one of the reasons why Baptism remains so continually essential for daily life. As I said before, Baptism is our defense against the Words that our God would speak to us, in order to kill us. More to the point, Baptism is our defense against the Sermon on the Mount. What I mean is this: · If you wish to locate the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount, consider the Words that were written just prior to the sermon, before our Lord began to preach: “Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when He said down, His disciples came to Him” (Matthew 5:1). That is to say, Jesus took up a position in the midst of His disciples, whom He had called and gathered to be His own. By sitting down, Jesus might have been indicating (in part) that He had no plan to leave any time soon. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus was described as “Immanuel, which means, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:23). The presence of Jesus beams forth the light of forgiveness and life, even while His Words identify the darkness in which we live. God Himself sits in the midst of His disciples, even reconciling and drawing them in, even while He proclaims how impossible it is for them to be disciples. Jesus was creating their perfection, even while He preached to them, “You must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect.” The incarnation of Christ—the very presence of Jesus—gave His disciples comfort and defense against the Words He preached. · The forgiving and reconciling presence of Jesus, sitting on a mountaintop, is all fine and good for the people who sat there with Him. That was a long time ago in a land far away. How can you and I be assured of the same patience from God, the same un-repulsed presence in our midst, the same defense against the things our God preached in His sermon? That is where Baptism comes in. First, Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount to His disciples. Then, after He was raised to life for our justification (Romans 4:25), Jesus explained how new disciples were to be created: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” With these Words, Jesus has woven together 1) your Baptism, 2) His teaching (that is, the Sermon on the Mount), and 3) His promise to be ever present in the midst of His disciples. These Words not only allow us to think of ourselves as truly present at the Sermon on the Mount, because we are baptized, but these Words also give us the same defense that the original disciples received. That is to say, when Jesus says to us, “You must be perfect, as you heavenly Father is perfect,” we should also believe that He is likewise here, shining perfection upon us and creating perfection for us. When our Lord sits in our midst (Matthew 5:1), we receive the perfect place to stand. Baptism is the only way to do this math. Our Lord’s Words “you must be” can just as easily be translated as “you will be.” Our Lord’s Word “perfect” can just as easily be translated as “accomplished, fulfilled, whole, and complete.” · The Word for “you must be” or “you will be”—no matter how you translate it—this Word is a very good Baptismal Word, precisely because “All the promises God find their YES in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:19). · “Perfect” is also a very good baptismal Word. Jesus not only calls for our perfection, but He has pledged Himself to fulfilling our perfection, right down to the last iota and the last dot (Matthew 5:18). At His cross, Jesus accomplished and finished for you and me the righteousness we could not complete (John 19:30). At the Baptismal font we get crucified along with Jesus, which means we receive everything that pertains to His cross. Among other things, this indicates that Baptism gives us a good defense against the Words of God and their condemnations. Perhaps we could even think that Paul might have had our Lord’s Sermon in mind when he later preached, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
