The Vineyard, The Owner, and The Husbandmen: A Meditation on Matthew 21

Hear another parable:

There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard,

and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower,

and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:

And when the time of the fruit drew near,

he sent his servants to the husbandmen,

that they might receive the fruits of it.

And the husbandmen took his servants,

 and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.

Again, he sent other servants more than the first:

and they did unto them likewise.

But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying,

They will reverence my son.

But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves,

This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.

And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.

When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh,

what will he do unto those husbandmen?

 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men,

and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen,

which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.

 

In Matthew 21, Jesus began by entering Jerusalem in fulfilment of Old Testament prophesy, a heavenly King seated on a lowly donkey, with crowds chanting thanks and praise to God for His arrival.  He entered the temple, purged it of the profane profiteers who had turned it into a house of merchandise, and received the sick and the lame to heal, teach, and comfort them.  The rulers of the temple, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, were enraged and sought some way to capture Jesus, but they feared the multitude who held Jesus to be a prophet sent from God.  Of course, not many days hence, those temple rulers would find a way to betray Jesus, and have him crucified before the Roman governor on false charges and slander.  But before the betrayal of the Jewish leaders sent Him to the Cross, Jesus taught both them and the people several profound truths, including the parable above.

 

The Owner of a vineyard in the ancient world, as would also be today, was entitled to the produce of his property.  He had the freedom to hire workers for an agreed upon wage, who would tend to the vineyard according to their duties, that the produce might be shared among them—or perhaps better said, the produce of the vineyard was what provided for the payment of the workers and the owner alike.  The owner was free to hire whomever he wanted to tend to his vineyard, and the workers were free to accept or reject this offer of work.  Once in a covenant together, both were entitled to what was to come: the workers to their wages, and the owner to his vineyard’s fruit.

 

In an almost inexplicable case of rebellion and theft, the workers in the owner’s vineyard became mutinous, demanding to take what was not theirs to take.  They were employed by the owner to tend the vineyard and to receive wages worthy of their work, but instead demanded that they take it all.  In an equally inexplicable act of grace, the owner sent emissaries and messengers to the workers of the vineyard, pleading with them to stop this evil and return to their covenant.  Repeatedly, the workers of the vineyard abused the owner’s emissaries and rejected their overtures for repentance and grace, until at last the owner sent his only son to intercede with them.  Having now risen to the heights of their wickedness, they determined that if they could kill the owner’s heir, they could seize the owner’s vineyard forever.

 

It was, of course, a ridiculous plan.  The workers did manage to kill the owner’s son, but the owner did not bow in acquiescence to the murderous and mutinous mob.  Rather, as Jesus’ interlocutors observed, the owner would return with vengeance and wrath, slay the unfaithful stewards, and give his vineyard to others who would keep his covenant.  This observation which was so obvious to the people who followed Jesus, was also obvious to the temple rulers.  The Pharisees and the Sadducees perceived that Jesus was teaching against them, and still, they plotted to murder the Son of God anyway, just as their forefathers had plotted to abuse, persecute, and murder the prophets who came before Him.  Jesus’ warning to them, and to every age of mankind, is that the Lord will not be mocked; His calls for mercy and grace have an end, and judgement will fall upon those murderous rebels who persist in rejecting Him and His covenant.

 

There is much here that the church in our time must learn.  We have been entrusted with the Lord’s Vineyard, which He alone created, and to Him alone are due the fruits thereof.  Those who have heard His Word of Law and Gospel, who have been called by grace through faith into the covenant of forgiveness and mercy through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, have been entrusted to work in the Lord’s vineyard.  Our terms of service are the grace earned by Jesus, which are to us eternal life and salvation from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  In our covenant with God, we receive the wages of Jesus, while God takes the penalty of our wickedness upon Himself—a grace that is free to us, but which cost Him everything.  Then we are sent into His vineyard, his whole world and the communities into which we are placed, to bear witness to this Gospel of salvation in Jesus alone, and to give to others forgiveness, life, and salvation just as freely was it was given to us.  This is the love of God which first loved us, and that we carry into a dark and dying world, that the Lord would receive the fruits of His Gospel in due season.  This Word of the Living God, His whole counsel of Law and Gospel in the Holy Scriptures, is the living trust Christians are given to love and serve their neighbors, that God may be glorified in all things.  Neither the Church nor the World belong to men, but all are called to live and work therein according to the Creator’s covenant of grace.

 

To our generation, and to us individually, the Word of the Lord comes to bring us to faith and repentance.  It is the Gospel truth that God alone calls us into His fellowship through faith in His Son, and that God alone sets the terms of our service in His Kingdom by grace through faith in Christ alone.  It is also the truth of the Law that those who would corrupt His Kingdom, abuse His servants, discard His Word, and attempt to seize what is not theirs, shall be consigned to the flames of hell forever, so that the grace once offered to them will be given to others.  Thus we all stand in the presence of both a Just and Merciful God—to those who reject and betray Him, judgement; but to those who repent and believe in Him, grace.  This is as true for the people in Jesus’ time as it is in our own, and shall be until the Lord returns.  Hear the Word of the Lord today, that you may abide in his grace by faith in Jesus, and escape the judgment which is quickly coming upon an unfaithful and rebellious world.  Amen.

Radical Forgiveness: A Meditation on Matthew 18

Then came Peter to him, and said,

Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me,

and I forgive him? till seven times?

 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times:

 but, Until seventy times seven.

 

It is difficult to escape the enormity of Jesus’ answer to St. Peter, just as it is the gravity of the parable Jesus used to emphasize it.  I doubt the average fisherman or day laborer whom Jesus called into His service was particularly gifted at mathematics, but they could immediately grasp the significance of Jesus’ use of symbolic numbers.  Peter, in asking if he should forgive someone who worked evil against him up to seven times, was making what he must have thought was a generous overture (who would let someone walk into their house seven times and steal their things, and forgive them when they repented after each theft?)  Jesus corrected this perspective of an ostensibly pious human, by granting divine perspective—seven offerings of forgiveness might seem gratuitous to a person, but in relation to God and His grace, such an offering is in reality vanishingly small.

 

The parable which followed showed this clearly.  A steward who owed his master 10,000 talents of gold, was brought in for a reckoning.  This steward must have had control over much of his master’s resources, as this was more money than anyone could hope to earn in several lifetimes—perhaps like a hedge fund manager who controls a billion dollars of Warren Buffet’s vast fortune.  Imagine that hedge fund manager lost, either by neglect, malfeasance, or corruption, a billion dollars of his boss’ money, and was called into the office to give an account, surrounded by attorneys and federal officers.  His boss would have the right to have this wretch’s whole personal inventory and assets seized and sold to pay a fraction of the debt, and the hedge fund manager would likely go to prison for the rest of his life.  In the ancient world, the penalties were even more severe, where the perpetrator could be put into slave labor in the prisons until they worked off the debt, which in this case, they could never accomplish.  Such was the debt and the guilt of the steward before his master, that all he could do was plead for mercy, with vain promises to pay back what he knew he could not live long enough to repay.

 

In a radical and shocking act of grace, the master forgave the steward the debt; which is to say more precisely, the master took the penalty of the steward upon himself.  10,000 talents were still owed, but the master paid it out of his own resources, accepting the loss on his servant’s behalf.  Can anyone imagine that happening to the hedge fund manager who lost or stole a billion dollars from his boss?  And yet, this is the image of divine mercy and grace that Jesus presented to St. Peter—of forgiveness for a servant’s unrepayable debt, with the suffering and loss taken by the wronged master.  Such an idea was as shocking then, as it is now.

 

And yet, that’s not the end of the story.  That same servant, forgiven in radical grace, went out and seized a fellow servant of the same master, demanding what amounted to about 1/3 of a year’s wages.  Certainly not a small amount of money, but orders of magnitude smaller than what he was just forgiven.  Instead of mercy when begged, he threw his fellow servant into the prisons to work off the debt, imposing suffering and misery on this servant and his family until the debt was repaid.  Of course, with his own debt forgiven before his master, this would all be profit to him now, and he could wallow in the money without fear of losing it to his creditor. 

 

When word of this reached the master’s ears, He was implacably angry, and summoned the unforgiving servant into his court.  Not only was the servant handed over to the debtor’s prison but also to the torturers, from who’s grasp he would not escape until he had paid back every penny of his unpayable debt.  The image is one of the torments of hell, where the eternal suffering of the damned continues until the eternity of their debt is repaid—which is to say, that their calamity is forever.  The steward who had received grace and mercy from his master for sins against the divine majesty, who then exacted judgment upon his fellow servant for sins against his own person, is then given back the justice due his crimes.  Mercy denied is justice received.  Jesus ended His parable with a warning to His disciples, that the same fate would befall each of them, if they did not earnestly forgive their neighbors their trespasses.

 

So, too, we find ourselves before God.  The debt of sin and evil we each have is infinite and unpayable by human labors, no matter how many lifetimes we might be given to do so.  We are the stewards who have squandered the riches of life and time and prosperity, of every good gift we have received from our Creator, and who must stand before the judgment seat of God to give an account of our negligence, our malfeasance, and our betrayal.  It is we who have no other escape but to plead for mercy, to offer our lives a living sacrifice in our Master’s service, and to beg to be spared from the eternal fires of hell.

 

And it is to us that God responds with unimaginable grace and mercy, taking our debt upon Himself in the person of His Son.  The debt against the divine majesty must be paid, and instead of demanding justice upon us, He satisfies justice against Himself, so that He might offer forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who repent and believe in Him.  This forgiveness is one of incalculable magnitude, an eternal debt for every soul, settled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Here, even the image of seventy times seven pales by comparison, when we look upon the sins of others against us, and realize that there is no wrong we can suffer which amounts to the wrongs we have been freely forgiven.  Thus we become the ambassadors of grace from a gracious King, offering to every soul the radical forgiveness of Jesus, knowing that it is by this grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus alone, that our peace with God is made.

 

As the recipients of this radical grace, it is both our gift and our duty to forgive, lest we find ourselves demanding justice upon others who have wronged us, only to receive justice instead from the God to whom we owe our every breath.  This grace, this unfathomable, healing grace, is the gift of life to all who would repent and believe in Jesus, for which we are sent to every sinner who needs it as desperately as we do.  In this grace we surrender justice to the Cross of Jesus, that grace and mercy may abound to us all, and that we all might live forever in Him, forgiven and free.  Amen.

Overcome Evil with Good: A Meditation on Romans 12

Let love be without dissimulation.

Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love;

in honour preferring one another;

 Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;

Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;

 Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.

Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice,

and weep with them that weep.

Be of the same mind one toward another.

Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.

Be not wise in your own conceits.

Recompense to no man evil for evil.

 Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you,

live peaceably with all men.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves,

 but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written,

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him;

 if he thirst, give him drink:

for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

Be not overcome of evil,

but overcome evil with good.

 

Every verse of Romans 12 is worthy of deep meditation, and each is an elucidation of what St. Paul meant when he started the chapter by telling the Christians in Rome to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”  His concluding encouragement was that they not be overcome by the evil which swirled all around and inside them, but rather to overcome all that evil with good.  A tall order, indeed, as the violence, corruption, and intrigue of Rome was well known throughout the ancient world.

 

Such an injunction is also contrary to the natural response most people have to injustice, which is probably closer to fighting fire with fire, or as the murderous mobs of our day often phrase it, “no justice, no peace.”  Violent, destructive mobs have often swollen their ranks with people who feel injured, abused, downtrodden, or oppressed, feeding their passion for vengeance to substitute for justice.  This general human inclination burns with intensity when fanned into flame, rationality losing place to bloodlust, and pours out terrible harm onto communities and individuals like a volcanic flood.  One person’s lust for power and destruction feeds another’s until everything around them is in ashes, and inevitably that disordered passion burns within the mob itself, until all is consumed.  Across all the ages of human history this pattern repeats, as if to warn every person against the folly of the lust for vengeance hidden in dark recesses of the fallen human heart.  Far from satisfying the true demands of justice, the lust for vengeance consumes everything in its path, including the one who pursues it.

 

But of course, this is because the darkened mind of fallen man cannot clearly see either justice or truth, nor can it control the murderous appetites of disordered passions.  A wounded person thinks himself wronged, and due a recompense greater than the pain inflicted upon him, all the while ignoring the evil within his own heart and the wrongs he has done to his neighbors.  The one who calls for justice forgets their own guilt before God and man, and the eternity of justice they personally deserve in the fires of hell.  No one living in this world is without sin, and no heart that beats is without offense before its Creator.  We have all wronged our neighbors, been dishonest and deceitful, pursued idols of every kind, harbored thoughts of hatred and malice and lust which on occasion we have brought forth in word and deed—things we’ve done, and things we’ve left undone which were our duty to perform.  Every person stands before God a fallen creature condemned by our own hands, perverse to the very core of our heart, mind, and soul.

 

And this is the insanity of either individuals or mobs who unleash their wicked lusts for vengeance, bathing in the blood and ashes of their victims, while they unwittingly call down upon themselves eternal damnation and temporal destruction.  People often wonder why violent mobs are so fickle, so dangerous, and impossible to reason with, but there is no real mystery here:  the lustful pursuit of vengeance is fundamentally irrational, and the mind set aflame by it loses all sense of logic or perspective.  Such minds forget their own fallen nature, and bring forth a cycle of violence and retribution whose only end is total destruction.  This is the Roman backdrop against which St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, and which seems so familiar in America today, because our fallen human nature is the same in every time and place.  To borrow a bit from the old philosophers, the incidents and accidents may change, but the essence remains the same—people act out their evil inclinations in different ways and dress them up in different language, but the wicked passions which lead to destruction are hauntingly familiar.

 

Thus Paul encourages the Christians of Rome not to be overcome by this evil through yielding to it, but rather by the power of the Holy Spirit given to them by grace through faith in Christ alone, to live in opposition to it.  When the Christian feels the rise of passion for vengeance, he instead recalls the justice he is due for his own sins, the unmerited grace of forgiveness, life, and salvation he has received for Christ’s sake, and offers blessings rather than curses.  The Christian knows by the Eternal Word of Jesus that he has freely received his own forgiveness for crimes against God and man that should land him in hell forever, by the righteous vengeance taken out upon Jesus for the sins of the whole world as He hung upon a Roman cross.  In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the wicked atrocities of every human heart across all the ages of man were paid for, and no person’s sins were left in debt.  So the Christian knows to pray as Jesus has taught him, that he might be forgiven, even as he forgives those who wound, betray, attack, oppress, or in anywise sin against him.

 

The truth to which Christians cling is that vengeance belongs to God, who alone can see clearly through eternity to bring forth true and enduring justice.  Only God could choose to either let individual people bear their own justice both in this world and the next, or take that justice upon Himself and die for the sins of the world.  Only God could be both just and gracious, that He might offer life in place of death, and flourishing instead of destruction.  Only God could execute true vengeance, because only God could execute true justice and thus offer true grace, through the Person and work of Jesus as our High Priest, our atoning Sacrifice, and our Divine Intercessor.  Only Jesus could be both righteous Judge and gracious Savior, and thus to Him alone is given authority to judge the living and the dead.

 

As this age in which we live finds the swirling seas of evil vengeance played out in violence and destruction, we are reminded of our high calling in Christ, that we be not overcome by this evil, but overcome this evil by the good of Jesus’ saving Gospel of faith and repentance.  In this eternal truth we stand unassailable by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, able to calm the destructive impulses both within and without by words of forgiveness for Christ’s sake.  Thus we become the peacemakers of our time and place, the conduits of reconciliation between fallen men and their saving God.  And so the ages will roll on until their fulfilment, until all the saints be gathered in, and every burning heart aflame with destruction is salved by the grace of Jesus.  Here we take our stand with the saints of old, and the saints yet to come, saved by the same grace, through the same faith, in the same Jesus.  Amen.

Of Doctrines, Rocks, and Keys: A Meditation on Matthew 16

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi,

 he asked his disciples, saying,

Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist:

some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said,

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona:

for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,

but my Father which is in heaven.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter,

and upon this rock I will build my church;

and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:

and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven:

and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

 

Matthew 16 begins with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, religious leaders of the people of Israel, haranguing Jesus for a sign to prove that He really was the Christ.  What is revealed across Jesus’ long interaction with these religious leaders is that they had no intention of acknowledging Him at all.  They saw His miracles, heard His teaching, and were continually trying to undermine, trick, and ultimately betray Him to death under false accusation to the Romans.  Their doctrine was one of man and politics, of hypocrisy and power.  They denied Jesus and the Scriptures, creating their own traditions upon which they built their kingdom, and exercised their authority to their own benefit.  Many of them were, in St. John the Baptist’s words, a brood of vipers whose teachings and actions lead to both physical and spiritual death.  To them, Jesus offered a correction that in their blindness which could see the weather better than the signs of their own times, the only sign they would receive was that of Jonah—a cloaked reference to Jesus’ coming three days of death in the belly of the earth, only to emerge triumphant over the grave.

 

This is the context in which Jesus gave His disciples warning to beware the false teachings of the Sadducees and the Pharisee, which like leaven begin small with false words, assumptions, and corruptions, but manage to infect the whole mind and spirit of people.  A religion of power, politics, and personal advantage blinds the eyes to the authentic works of God, and dulls the ears to hear His saving Word.  No greater an example can be made than the situation in which Jesus and His disciples were in, where the very Incarnate Word of the God walked among them, full of grace and truth, inspiring many to follow Him, while others plotted His death.  Jesus put a point on this when He asked His disciples to tell Him who people conjectured Him to be, and they responded with all kinds of whacky answers:  John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other heroic prophet of antiquity brought back from the dead.  The religious leaders were blinded to who Jesus really was by their own commitment to false doctrine, and the people were muddled and confused by the influence of that same false religious system.  False teaching not only corrupts the ones who teach it, but those who learn from it.

 

When Jesus asked directly who the disciples knew Him to be, St. Peter responded on behalf of them all by declaring Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God.  This declaration and doctrine Jesus warmly confirmed as having come from God Himself, and noting Peter’s rock solid answer, Jesus told him that it was this rock of confession—this bedrock doctrine of Jesus as the simultaneously divine and human messianic Savior of the world—upon which His unconquerable Church would be built. To Peter would be given the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the power to forgive sins in Jesus’s Name according to Jesus’ own teaching that all who repent and believe would be saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.  This power would be a power over sin, death, hell, and all the wiles of the devil; a battering ram against which the gates of hell itself could not stand.  The power to forgive sins would change the world, rescuing people from the condemnation of their inherited Original Sin, as well as the sins of their own commission.  These Keys would unlock the gates of heaven for all mankind, that everyone who would repent and believe the Gospel might be unchained and set free from eternal perdition.  These Keys would be the gracious gift of life earned by His Vicarious Atonement upon the Cross, given freely to a world which did not deserve it, nor could ever earn it.  These Keys, to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who repent and believe in Jesus, or to declare bound in sin all who refuse to repent or believe in the Word of Christ, would be the living and active Word of Jesus among His people until His final return, empowered to accomplish what it says by the omnipotence of His Holy Spirit.

 

And what Jesus promised to St. Peter in Matthew 16 before His crucifixion, He fulfilled in John 20 after His resurrection, where John clearly declares that Jesus breathed on all His disciples, gave them these Keys of the Gospel, and sent them out as His Apostles to bear His saving Word.  Jesus accomplished what He promised, building His unassailable and eternal Church upon His Eternal Word, and the sacrifice of His own body and blood upon the Cross.  What Jesus alone could earn, He gave freely to His disciples, instructing them to give just as freely to others as they themselves had received.  The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus gave to His Church are the living power to forgive the sins of all by grace through faith in Christ alone, and to declare to a fallen world that there is salvation in no other name given under heaven but Jesus.  This is the power of the Keys, of the true doctrine of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and His ultimate return to judge the living and the dead.  This Eternal Word of Law and Gospel, the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, has been, is now, and shall be forever the Rock upon which Jesus’ Church is built.  This is the Rock no storm can shake, no demon can assail, and no brood of vipers can overthrow.  This is the Rock of our Salvation.

 

Let the words of false teachers and the leaven of hypocrites fall away, and hear once again the sounding trumpet of heaven to mankind:  Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, has come to save sinners like you and me, and calls us all to eternal life by grace through faith in Him alone.  Hear Him today, gather together with His people where His Keys are rightly administered according to His Eternal Word, that repentance and faith might bring to your hearing the declaration that your sins are forgiven for His sake, and that the gates of heaven are open to you.  Amen.

The Election of Grace: A Meditation on Romans 11, for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost

I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid.

For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew.

Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias?

how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying,

Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars;

and I am left alone, and they seek my life.

But what saith the answer of God unto him?

I have reserved to myself seven thousand men,

who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.

Even so then at this present time also

there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

 

As we pass the ides of August, and our communities seem stuck in the political vicissitudes of an election season marred by a fanned public panic in the latest pandemic, it is easy for a Christian to feel alone.  In various parts of the country, hostile politicians have attacked the Church with renewed vigor, facilitating mobs which persecute them in their congregations for having the audacity to gather around Christ in His Word and Sacraments.  Worse yet, faithless church leaders have abandoned the faithful to the whims of government, effectively shutting down their churches and taking away from the people their blessed communion.  Insanity has reached a fever pitch in many cities, where elected officials have bowed to Marxist mobs to defund police and deliver over the people’s property and livelihoods to masked marauders.  Such civilizational suicide waxes stronger in some regions than others, but nowhere seems immune from its reach.  There is an infection of unbelief in both the body politic and the Body of Christ which is causing massive suffering both locally and globally, and many there are who despair of our recovery.

 

However, the words of St. Paul to the church at Rome nearly 2000 years ago, help us remain centered and grounded in times such as these.  Lest we forget, the church at Rome was persecuted not only by the government but also by fellow Jews, and not many days hence that vitriolic persecution would become a persecution of blood.  St. Paul reminded the Christians at Rome that they stood in the election of grace by faith, which is how the people of God had always stood—from the ancient Israelites to the current day.  There were times in ancient Israel, hundreds of years before Paul’s writing to the church at Rome, where the faithful thought they were being persecuted into oblivion.  Yet even in Elijah’s time, when he was whisked away in the wilderness, fed by ravens in a secret location to avoid his government execution, he cried out to God in his loneliness, and God told him that He had retained for himself over 7000 people of faith even in that dark time.  St. Paul used this example to remind the Christians in Rome that they stood by grace through faith, grafted into the Root which supported both the faithful Jews of times past, and the people of faith in times present.  Various times of unbelief in the history of Israel caused some of those branches to be broken off in judgment so that others like themselves might be grafted in, but the Lord of the Harvest had power to graft every branch back in again, should they return to Him in faith and repentance.

 

The thrust of Romans 11 is to remind the Gentile Christians of Rome that they stood by grace through faith, and that if the Jews had become the enemy of the Gospel, partnered with a pagan government to persecute them in unbelief, the calling of God was still irrevocable, and everyone who returned to Him in faith would receive grace.  The message to the Church at Rome would strengthen them for the times of trial ahead, knowing that if God did not abandon His people during the time of Elijah, He would not abandon them now.  For in every age, God retains His remnant of faithful people who do not bow their knees to the pagan idols of their age, but remain steadfast in His Word.  And that remnant was strengthened by divine grace through an election which could not be overthrown by any powers of man or devil.  This was true in ancient Israel, in the days of St. Paul, across the 2000 year history of the church, and in our own day, as well.

 

As I shared with some friends this weekend who lamented that they thought they would never live to see such days as ours, the reality born of history shows that every generation has its time of controversy and conflict over the faith.  And while some times and places have greater or lesser persecution of the people of God, it is more likely than not that a Christian will face some form of persecution in their time and place if they seek to abide in the Word of God by faith.  This time in which we have been called and sent, grafted into Jesus like branches to a steadfast and living Root, is our time to live out our faith and resist the forces of despair, unbelief, destruction, and death.  And if we feel alone in our struggles, we can remember the times past when God’s Living Word sealed to Himself by His own power a remnant which would not bow their knees to Baal, just as He has done in our own time.  We are not alone as we stand in the election of grace by faith in Christ alone, but rather we stand together with all those who are sealed by the Holy Spirit in our time, and in the great cloud of saintly witnesses who have been saved and sealed in every generation before us.

 

We stand by grace through faith in our time and place, because God has very intentionally placed us here in this time, and in this place.  We are not accidents of the universe bouncing around with pointlessness and fear toward oblivion, but the called and elect children of God who live forever, forgiven and free.  We are the ones through whom the Lord of Glory has chosen to shine His saving Gospel today, to accomplish in our time and place the works He has ordained for us from before the foundation of the world.  And we do not stand alone.  For we are grafted together into the Body of Christ, born from above by Water and Spirit, receiving our eternal life in this world and the next through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  The Gospel of faith and repentance which we carry by Jesus’ Word is irrevocable, piercing through every darkness in each generation, calling all who will return to Him, to forgiveness and life.

 

Be of good cheer, for we may not have chosen the times in which we live, but we can be sure that we were chosen for our times by Him who holds the whole universe in the palm of His omnipotent and gracious hand.  We stand forever by grace through faith in Christ alone, calling all people to join us in that life, through the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus.  Amen.

Of Wheat and Tares: A Meditation on Matthew 13

Another parable put he put forth unto them, saying,

The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

So the servants of the householder came and said unto him,

Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

He said unto them, An enemy hath done this.

The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them:

but gather the wheat into my barn…

Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house:

 and his disciples came unto him, saying,

Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.

He answered and said unto them,

He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;

The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom;

but the tares are the children of the wicked one;

The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world;

and the reapers are the angels.

As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire;

so shall it be in the end of this world.

The Son of man shall send forth his angels,

and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend,

and them which do iniquity;

And shall cast them into a furnace of fire:

there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun

in the kingdom of their Father.

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

All the vignettes of Matthew 13 pertaining to the Kingdom of God are worthy of meditation, and each add to our understanding of who we are relative to that Kingdom.  As Jesus noted when He gave these parables to His disciples, they were making known truth which had been kept secret from the foundation of the world.  It is worth spending time to hear what He has to say, and consider what meaning it has for our lives.

What we see in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares helps us appreciate the suffering we find ourselves in.  God is not the author of evil, nor does He teach men to be evil.  The world He created is good, and by His Word, we know His intentions for the world and everyone in it.  The devil, on the other hand, as an enemy of God and man, plants his seeds of deception, destruction, division, theft, murder, and insurrection in the world, and teaches men to follow in his footsteps.  In the parable, the Holy Angels look upon this mess and ask the Lord if they should tear it all up immediately, so that evil may no more dwell upon the good creation of God.  But God, in His mercy, allows the evil one to persist in his weeds and tempt others toward evil, so that the people of God are allowed to live, and grow, and find their future with Him in the fullness of time.

From the perspective of the wheat, this life among weeds is a constant struggle, with an enemy who is unceasingly working to choke them out.  Not only would the devil corrupt the world by infesting it with his own works of malice and evil, but he would turn every person he could into a noxious reflection of himself.  Every person, tempted as we are by our own fallen nature and the smooth seductions of the evil one, is susceptible to this fate.  And while the Weeds are growing, they seem at times to be winning the war against the Wheat; like the kudzu of the south or the blackberry vines of the northwest, weeds can seem to have the upper hand against cultivated crops, and the temptation of every generation is to simply give in and join them.

However, Jesus is clear that while God allows the suffering of a corrupted world to continue for the sake His people’s continued life, it is not a forbearance without end.  The fullness of time comes, both in an individual sense and as a whole creation.  Each stalk of Wheat, or every child of God who lives by grace through faith in Christ alone, will find an end to their suffering and strife against the evil one and all his minions at the fullness of their time in this world.  It is then that the Holy Angels come to harvest that soul, that it may shine with undimmed glory in the presence our unconquerable King forever.  As individual servants of the Living God, no matter the struggles and strife brought upon us by the servants of the wicked one, our destiny is sealed in the loving promise of our Father in heaven, where we shall live in blessed communion with all the saints forever.  Likewise, the fate of those who embrace the evil one is also sealed regardless of their apparent temporal successes in this world, and those same Holy Angels who come to take the saints to heaven, will gather the wicked to be cast into their hellish prison, a furnace of fire, for all eternity.

And yet, beyond the individual fullness of time we each experience as either Wheat or Tares, disciples of God or disciples of the devil, there is a fullness of time for the world, as well.  Eventually time will run out for the devil and his scheming horde, and the great harvest at the end of the age will come.  There will be a unique event for all who still abide on the earth in those days, where they will see their individual fullness of time coincide with the fullness of time in creation.  For that generation, they will see the return of Jesus to the earth, together with all the saints of every age and the hosts of Holy Angels, who will descend in glory to judge the living and the dead.  In that day, all evil will be removed from the earth, the resurrection of all flesh will be accomplished, and the saints will shine forth in the victory of Jesus in a new heaven and a new earth.

Of this time, we do not know.  Jesus did not reveal it to His disciples, but He did command them to watch.  So while we cannot know the fullness of time for all creation anymore than we can know the fullness of time for our own lives, we watch and we pray, living out our faith in love for God and neighbor, striving to do our duty according to the calling we have received from our Lord.  This life of faith lives in grace, knowing that He who holds all the fullness of time in His omnipotent hands, has promised to work all things out for good to those who love Him.  Our blessing and our duty is to live in faith and repentance, assured of the promise of God’s Word, that He will guide all things—including us—into eternity.  In this promise we find our hope, our rest, our confidence, and our inspiration, as the Eternal Word of the Father gives us a victory no conglomeration of evil men or demons can overcome.  All glory be to our saving God, now and forever!  Amen.

The Life of the Mind: A Meditation on Romans 8

There is therefore now no condemnation

to them which are in Christ Jesus,

who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus

hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law could not do,

in that it was weak through the flesh,

God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,

and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,

who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh;

but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

For to be carnally minded is death;

but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Romans chapter 8 continues St. Paul’s theological magnum opus, by drawing out for his readers the significance of the life of the mind and its relationship to the life of the individual.  This life of the mind is something different than many philosophers of the last several centuries might have made it out to be, and certainly not the Gnostic bifurcation of spirit and body that abounded in the Greek culture of Paul’s day.  St. Paul makes clear for his readers in the Church at Rome that the life of the mind cannot be separated from an individual’s life as a whole, and that what begins in the mind as focus or conviction will play itself out in the physical aspects of a person’s life.  A person who, in their own mind, focused on and pursued the Spirit of Christ (another way of saying the Holy Spirit, who bore the Word of Christ through the Prophets and Apostles, and is the ultimate author of the Holy Scriptures which all testify of Jesus) was one who walked or lived in Christ and was free from the law of sin and death.  Conversely, a person who, in their own mind, focused on and pursued the various passions and lusts of their flesh, was one who walked or lived in the flesh and was still subject to the law of sin and death.

In this context, St. Paul was mapping out two distinct paths:  a person could be alive in Christ, where the mind was fixed on Jesus and His Word by grace through faith, continually disciplining both body and mind through repentance, or they could be dead in their trespasses and sins by ignoring Jesus and His Word, fixing their minds instead on the disordered passions and lust of their flesh.  These two paths, one of life and one of death, were paths begun in the mind.  Where the mind began, the body and soul followed.  This allowed St. Paul, as St. John would do later in his epistles, to advise his readers if someone claimed to be a Christian and didn’t walk after Jesus, abiding in Jesus’ Word, then that person did not really belong to Jesus or the fellowship of Christians we call the Church.  While the Christian would aspire to follow Jesus by abiding in His Word through faith and repentance, receiving grace and forgiveness to rise up again if they fell to sin or temptation, the unbeliever wouldn’t really care about Jesus or His Word, and would happily abide in their own sins without faith or repentance, and thereby forgoing grace and forgiveness.  The path of Christian struggle against sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil through faith in Jesus ultimately resolves in resurrection unto eternal life, where the path of the flesh resolves in the terrible resurrection to eternal condemnation in hell.

Thus today, as in St. Paul’s day, Christians continue to gather together around Jesus’ Word and Sacraments by grace through faith, in the hope of eternal life, while striving within themselves to put to death the disordered passions of the flesh, and bring their flesh under the control of the Spirit of Christ.  Unbelievers today, as in days past, still gather together in unbelief around anything other than Jesus’ Word, comforting each other in their sins and passions, and lying to themselves about the judgment which awaits them.  These two paths are irreconcilable, are destined for two entirely different ends, and they both begin with the life of the mind.

It is tempting, but ultimately unfulfilling, to imagine that we are fully in control of our own mind.  Apart from the Word and Spirit of God, our minds are dark, fallen places from which emerge all the sins and wickedness known to mankind.  If the battle for our minds were decided simply by our own efforts to win them, we would be as lost today as we ever were—unable to believe, trust, or hope in the promises of God, or to love Him and keep His commandments.  Our fallen powers are hopelessly twisted, both of body and mind, so that our fallen spirit careens toward the abyss we have rightfully earned.  And yet, in His mercy, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  While we were unable to fix our minds on anything but our lusts and passions, the Word of God Made Flesh became our atonement upon His Cross, and by His Holy Spirit preached this Good News to all who might repent and believe in Him, reconciling the household of faith to the Father by the blood of the Son in the power of the Spirit.  In this the Christian trusts the battle not only for their daily physical walk of life, but of their life of the mind, as well.  For Jesus came to save sinners such as us, who could not save ourselves by our own thought, word, or deed—by the things we’ve done, nor the things we’ve left undone.

The good news to all people today, is the good news that St. Paul shared so many centuries ago, and that the people of God have lived in since the dawn of time:  that we are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ alone.  In Christ alone, we find the power of the Spirit to abide in His Word, that our minds might be conformed to His, and that the entirety of our lives may follow—a work begun in this world, and made perfect in the next.  In Christ alone we find the path of life which rings true to the mind as well as the body and the soul, calling all people to leave behind the ways of death and destruction.  In Christ alone do we find our salvation from the evil which corrupts our every fallen power, and the hell which yawns wide to receive all those who prefer darkness over light.  In Christ alone is our mind renewed as we are born from above by Water and Spirit, that we might be called the children and heirs of God.

Hear the Word of the Lord as it calls to you today.  Turn to the light which would dispel your darkness, the grace which would absolve your sins, and the life which would swallow up your death.  Let the Word of God reign in you, that your mind, your feet, your hands, and all that you are, might be found on the path of life.  Amen.