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19. Sunday after Pentecost, 10/23/2011
Sermon on Matthew 22:33-46, by Samuel Zumwalt
33And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" 37And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the great and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." 43He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 44 "'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet'? 45If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
TOGETHER IN CHRIST: LORD OF ALL!
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[The congregation sings] "All hail the power of Jesus' name! Let angels prostrate fall; bring forth the royal diadem and crown him Lord of all. Bring forth the royal diadem and crown him Lord of all."(Text by Edward Perronet, Lutheran Book of Worship #328)]
In our gospel readings for the past several Sundays we have been hearing about conflict between powerful religious leaders and Jesus. They are the gatekeepers and the stakeholders of God, Incorporated, in Jerusalem. These self-appointed blue ribbon committees on theological integrity and purity have been testing Jesus intending both to put Him in His place, strip away His popular support, or get rid of Him completely.
Using the language of psychology, these religious leaders are extremely anxious about losing power and privilege to the backwoods rabbi from Galilee. They are not unlike the (God help them!) poor bishops of several "demon-in-ations" who would sue congregations over property or who would resort to the worst kind of Machiavellian power plays against "dissident" clergy. (I'm writing as a Lutheran, but it translates into a number of protestant contexts...aka the board of deacons firing the pastor).
I'm not sure why the pericope-pickers left out the intervening account of Jesus and the Sadducees in Mt 22:23-32 (who didn't believe in the resurrection; that's why they were sad, you see). Did someone think it was it too hard to explain levirate marriage? Or was someone afraid that Aunt Tillie would think Uncle Hans wouldn't know her in heaven - as if Jesus were teaching about who knows whom in the resurrection? Whatever the case, you have to know that story or the beginning of today's Gospel lesson makes no sense. Why not just continue on in Matthew 22 with that pericope this week?
Apparently, the Pharisees are willing to give Jesus another look now that He has handled so cleverly the doubts of the Sadducees about a key Pharisaic teaching on the resurrection of the righteous. But they're still in that self-appointed blue ribbon mindset when a Torah scholar asks Jesus about the Great Commandment (the Shema of Deuteronomy: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD (YHWH) our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" 6:4-5).
Doubtless they were satisfied when Jesus repeated the Shema and indicated that Leviticus 19:18 (loving neighbor as self) was the proper application of the Shema. Taken together the two could be understood as a précis of both the Torah and the Prophets.
Now the Lord Jesus turns the table on these Pharisees with a question of His own, inviting them to abandon the role of institutional or theological watchdog and instead to enter into the proper relationship with Him. "So...what do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" Again, they can't get past His Galilean accent (like the intellectual bigots in any culture - think here of the bi-coastal elites who have a kneejerk reaction to a Southern or Southwestern American accent). "Good heavens, man, don't you know anything? Don't you know the Messiah must be descended from King David?"
"Oh, well, then" says the Lord Jesus, "why does David in the Spirit call Him Lord (going on to cite Psalm 110)?" And the self-appointed blue ribbon committees on theological integrity and purity stop asking Jesus questions from that day on! It's embarrassing to be shown up in public by a hick!
WHAT DOES THE LORD JESUS WANT?
[The congregation sings] "Crown him, you martyrs of our God, who from his altar call; extol the stem of Jesse's rod and crown him Lord of all. Extol the stem of Jesse's rod and crown him Lord of all."(Text by Edward Perronet, Lutheran Book of Worship #328)]
It could have turned out differently for these Pharisees. They could have asked the Lord Jesus to explain what it meant. They could have asked how it could say that the Messiah was not David's son when 2 Samuel 7 made clear he was. Or they could have followed up with, "Then whose son is he if not David's?" And a subsequent, "How can you suggest that the Messiah is not David's son when Scripture clearly teaches it?"
The Pharisees like the Sadducees and the Herodians lived within a closed system that was so tightly closed that not even God Himself in human flesh could break in!
The late Will Spong, brother of the infamous bishop, once said of his denomination that it was so well organized that it would continue to operate for a full month after the second coming of Christ. Further making the same point, Jeffrey Archer's novel, "Paths of Glory," talks about a priest father who asks his son to consider the ministry. The son replies that he is disqualified by his lack of belief in God. The father replies that unbelief had not hindered the careers of any number of his colleagues.
And so it was in God, Incorporated, both then and now. God Himself could not break into their closed system. How could He when they were in charge?
A former colleague who left the ministry told how many of his classmates in the 1960s went to seminary to avoid being drafted for the war in Vietnam. Lack of faith in God and a disinterest in passing along the faith they didn't share led to (what else in the 60s?) a passion for community organizing and social change. Is it any wonder that the churches formerly known as the mainline (now led by such) will keep shrinking until they merge into the Protestant Union of Sixty- and Seventy-Somethings? I can see the nursing homes in twenty years full of sign-wielding residents on walkers shouting "Hell no, we won't go" while Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez blast from speakers. It reminds one of the bishop in C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce" that could not fathom he was in a hell he didn't believe in because his own intellectual pride was his favorite substitute for God.
As the Christ did with His disciples at Caesarea Philippi, so here the Lord Jesus is asking the Pharisees to confess Him as the Messiah - a much different Messiah than they were longing for! The Lord God was doing a new thing - not a humanly-hatched "new" thing in contradiction to Scripture as they supposed. But a new thing consistent with Scripture! The true King of Israel was always Israel's God, and so the true Messiah of Israel must be Israel's God in human flesh! Yes, He was descended from David according to His matrilineal line and full humanity, to fulfill the promise in 2 Samuel 7, but He was also David's LORD, true God from all eternity!
This is what Lewis called the deep magic in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." From before the foundation of the world, the Lord God in His mercy knew that He would have to send His Son in human flesh to suffer and die to destroy the power of sin, death, and Satan. And so the blue ribbon committees' anxiety found its twin in the Roman governor's own anxiety about keeping Tiberius Caesar happy. It was a kind of diabolical order in the province of Judea that was, at its heart, chaotic. In short, those that willed the execution of God's Beloved Son in human flesh on the cross had an unknown emperor behind their treasured closed systems. And so it was that the one who once overcame sinful Adam and Eve by a tree had to be overcome by Calvary's tree.
Despite the Divine Mercy working against the malevolence of the old evil foe, the true Messiah never resorted and never will resort to pulling puppet strings. This is why Peter at Pentecost and beyond in the Acts of the Apostles calls Israel first of all to repent of her ignorant rejection of the Author of Life. Even now the true Messiah continues to call everyone trapped in systems closed to His good and gracious rule to repent and be baptized. Interfaith and even ecumenical conversations may well be part of loving neighbor if not yet prolegomena to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but the Gospel is not preached if there is no call to repentance and to Baptism into the death and resurrection of God's Incarnate Son, the true Messiah of Israel. It's still both a scandal and foolishness!
What the Lord Jesus wanted of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians was nothing less than their confession: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!" Like Joseph's brothers in Genesis, even when they meant their rejection of Jesus for evil, His adversaries' malevolence became the occasion for the salvation of the whole world by His death on a cross! Again, this is costly grace that calls each woman, man, and child to the baptismal font where we must die with the Lord Jesus to rise with Him! Indeed, we are all called to daily martyrdom: "It is now no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
AND CROWN HIM, LORD OF ALL!
[The congregation sings] "O seed of Israel's chosen race now ransomed from the fall; Hail Him who saves you by His grace and crown Him Lord of all. Hail Him who saves you by His grace and crown Him Lord of all."(Text by Edward Perronet, Lutheran Book of Worship #328)]
Because God has in His great mercy in human flesh has lived the life we cannot live and died the death we cannot die on a cross...because God in His great mercy has claimed us in the washing of Holy Baptism through no effort or merit of our own, therefore we are called out of death and into new life in His kingdom day by day!
To confess the Lord Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is not our work. It is not as the popular synergistic error claims: "Now you must make Him your Lord." No, He is Savior and Lord, and when we confess Him as such, not only with our lips but with our lives, it is the Holy Spirit's work. The Gospel is monergistic. God does the work, or there is no grace; the death of God's Son in human flesh gets wasted!
As with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians then and now, we can insist on living in systems closed to the true Messiah! God knows it's a stupid choice, but oh how we listen to the devil's empty promises. The antidote is to return to Holy Baptism. God the Holy Spirit is calling, gathering, enlightening, sanctifying us through God's Word!
When we confess Jesus as Lord to the glory of God the Father, our closed systems give way to the Kingdom of God. We can invite those with power and privilege, those without faith in Christ, to repent and believe in the Crucified and Risen Messiah! We can invite those who are anxious (because they fear losing what they don't really own) to repent and believe in the Crucified and Risen Messiah! We can admit that we have no power to change anyone, but God can change anyone who finally grasps that those demonic closed systems are a dead end. With Peter, we can call everyone to repent and believe in the Crucified and Risen Messiah! For God has crowned Him Lord of all!
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.