The sermon for August 20 was based on Luke 19:41-48.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

A man come home and finds the one to whom he had entrusted his household beating the members of his household and squandering his wealth in ways he did not authorize or approve. Enraged, he rails at the faithless steward making clear that the steward has lost all of his rights and privileges within the master's home and that the only place he deserves to be is out on the curb with the rest of the household refuse. What are we to say of such a man? Has his love failed? Has he acted in a godless way? Can such vehement outrage ever be sanctioned by Christians?

What now if that wretched and unworthy steward begins to make excuses for his loathsome conduct? What if he says to the master, as did the people of Israel to Moses when they made the Golden Calf, "You were gone so long, you shouldn't have left us alone, we can't be expected to do the right thing unless you are here to make us do it"? What if the steward began to complain that if he were treated better himself he would be more willing to do his duty? What if the steward began to say that other people conduct their stewardship in that way with the implication that if other people do it must be acceptable, a gray matter, part of a sliding scale of expectations?

This is, a hypothetical situation, of course and playing "what-if" isn't as helpful as we would like it to be. Jesus addresses a specific situation very similar to this one and includes with it a declaration of what He would do in such a circumstance. Our Lord has just finished speaking a number of parables to the gathered multitudes and has retired into the private company of his Apostles. St. Peter asks Jesus what all these parables mean and, as usual, Jesus, who behaves very differently in the confines of His "apostolic family", gives a direct and specific statement of His meaning. We'll return to the fact that Jesus is different in His own home than He is in public at a later point in the sermon but for now, listen to these words from the 12th chapter of St. Luke's Gospel.
41Then Peter said to Him, "Lord, do You speak this parable only to us, or to all people?" 42And the Lord said, "Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season? 43Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. 44Truly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all that he has. 45But if that servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,' and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, 46the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. 47And that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. 48But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more. 49"I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! 51Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. 52For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. 53Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

So, according to Jesus, if He came home and found his trusted steward abusing his loved ones and squandering His gifts he would cut such a one and cast the dead body out with the corpses of the unbelievers. He would further beat with many blows all those who knowingly participated in the stewards wickedness and He would beat with fewer blows even those who participated without really understanding how angry their misconduct would make the head of their house. Then Jesus goes on to say that he has come to bring strife and conflict and that He wishes the fire of His judgment was ready to pour out. Thus says the Lord. But what are we to make of this clear and unambiguous statement of Jesus, real feelings about the conduct of His people? Is Jesus somehow deficient? Is He exaggerating? Does He really feel this way and, more importantly, would He really act this way toward the people He claims to love more than life itself?

Let's set aside even the ambiguity of this very specific and transparent parable and look at an actual historical incident from the life of Jesus, recorded for us in today's Gospel. First of, all Jesus walks home with tears in His eyes because He knows how weak and pitiful His people are, how they cling so stubbornly to the views and opinions of the world, how unwilling they are to obey even His simplest instructions. He weeps partly because of the pains they bring upon themselves by their disobedience but even more so because of the judgment they will force Him to unleash upon them. Jesus weeps on the way into the city because the day is quickly approaching when He, Jesus Christ, will send the Roman army against the city with such terrible force that the city will, as Jesus prophecies be leveled and all its inhabitants slaughtered or sold as slaves, with such devastating brutality that the besieged people of Israel would turn to eating the children in their final desperation. This is the what Jesus says will have to happen to His chosen people, those whom He nurtured from the loins of Abraham down through the ages.

It is Jesus, Himself, who begins this terrible apocalypse, the awful revelation of His justice. He walks through the front doors of His own home, the Jerusalem temple, built at his instruction, maintained according to His specific ways and to His exacting standards. He walks through His front door and finds it is disarray. Now we get to see what He does. Does He sit down with the temple priests and their licensed and legally authorized vendors to talk through a mutually agreeable solution? Absolutely not. St. John says this:
He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. 16And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!" 17Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."

So Jesus means what He says about getting rid of anyone who goes against His will and behaves within His home in a way that He has forbidden. He is violent and unyielding in His insistence upon His own will, especially within his own home. But who are these people and what are they doing that is so bad? The Bible doesn't say that they being crooked in their exchange of money. Some of them may have been shrewd but the Bible doesn't say so and neither does Jesus. He calls them thieves but He doesn't accuse them of dishonest commerce. Neither is there any reason to think that these men were foreigners or unbelievers. They were, in fact, Israelites, people whom Jesus had made His own by solemn and holy covenant. They were making it easy for those who traveled to the temple to offer their sacrifices. They were providing a service. Rather than making the people lug a bull half away across the Promised Land, the temple priests made bulls available for sale on the premises, so that people could fulfill the law of God without being tempted to neglect their sacrifices because of the incontinence of having to bring livestock through the city gates and into the temple. I'm sure that this is how they saw what they were doing. They meant well, they were trying to be helpful. But Jesus, it seems, is never satisfied with what they do. It seems as if they can do no right. He picks on everything that the poor priests are trying to do.

To be totally honest. I feel more sympathetic to the money changers than to Jesus. I find Jesus behavior shocking and most of us find it unacceptable. That is because we are loathsome sinners who's wills and inclinations are as opposed to those of God as is possible. Were we truly Christian in the way that God requires of us, we would relish the sight of God pouring out justice and the fear that He might do so to us would never even enter our minds. But we are not such people. We are sinners who routinely violate the will of God while thinking that we are being good. We have just enough faith to realize our depravity but not enough strength to stop sinning. And that is what Jesus requires of us. He will not be happy with us until we stop sinning. This is exactly what He says in the Book of Jeremiah. "IF we amend our ways" He will bless us. Otherwise He will curse us. Oh but Jesus doesn't curse people you say. Oh yes He does!

Not only did He curse the serpent and Adam and Eve when He cast them all out of the garden and cut off humanity from the fruit of life. In the verses immediately following the cleansing of the temple, this occurs:
18Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry. 19And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." Immediately the fig tree withered away.
20And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither away so soon?"
21So Jesus answered and said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,' it will be done. 22And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."

Jesus does, indeed curse that which offend Him. The priests, indignant, at Jesus' indignation challenge His authority to behave this way.
23Now when He came into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching, and said, "By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority?"
Jesus refuses to give these upstart and usurpations nags a direct answer. They don't deserve a direct answer from Him and He refuses to give them one. He changes the subject and puts the screws to their thumbs as it were about the baptism of John the Baptist. They are guilty of all kinds of false doctrine and false practice as well. They have nothing to say to Him and He dismisses them as beneath His contempt. Later He will have them slaughtered wholesale by the ravenous and unbelieving legions of Rome, but not before they can murder Him themselves.

So what are we to make of all this? We are the money changers. We are the chief priests. We are the wicked stewards who abuse God's trust and deserve nothing but to be cut in half and put out with the trash. First of all we are to repent. The person who will not his head and admit his guilt when it is shown to Him will be cut off from the kingdom and of this there can be no doubt. But remember that before Jesus went rampaging through His own home and casting out those had violated His will, He wept for them, longing for them to recognize the rightness of His will and of His ways. Jesus has come to save us from ourselves and the wrath He has in store. We cannot stop sinning and He knows that. He keeps the law for us so that we don't have. All we need to do is recognize the rightness of His wrath and repent. This too is beyond our ability and so God gives us preacher who preach the Word with power and integrity. He gives us Bibles and congregations to keep His Word ever before us. He gives us His own Holy Spirit to enlighten us. God gives us repentance. The marks of genuine repentance are grief and shame and humility. I have been hearing confessions for many years now and I have been listen to people talk about themselves my whole life. Here is something I know for certain. True repentance makes absolutely no reference to anyone else's behavior. The man who is truly sorry for losing His temper over something unworthy does not hedge his confession by pointing out the faults of the one who angered him. The unfaithful husband does not truly repent if He continues to blame his wife for driving him to sin. The sincere penitent has no room for blame, only shame and humility. Upon such a heart the tears of Christ wash in the cleansing flood of Holy Baptism. To the one truly mortified by his sin, there is nothing from either the lips or the hands of Christ but grace and peace and mercy. It is top those who approach him with downcast eyes and heavy hearts that He gives His Body and Blood. It is to those who know that they sinned because they wanted to and because they loved to, and not because the devil made them do it, that the Words of Absolution come tripping off the tongue. It is to the man who is surrounded by wretches and sinners and beasts among men but can still say "It is I alone who have damned my soul. Please O Lord, forgive and save me" that the whole power of God is bent.

To that man, to the one who is genuinely repentant and willing to live in whatever conditions God proscribes, God promises every conceivable goodness. Once a man has repented and been absolved of his sin, no matter how heinous, no matter how hurtful, it is never to be mentioned again. The husband or wife or parent or child or sibling or friend who continues to hold up the sins of the past will not be forgiven their own sins as our Lord says in His Prayer.

Jesus will not even let us hold our own sins against ourselves. He is as violent and unstoppable in His warfare against those who would accuse the repentant as He was against those who would make a convenience of the temple sacrifices. God chains the devil in the flames of Hell and prevents Him from making his accusations against the faithful. He is iron-like in His refusal to let us continue accusing one another after we have been absolved. He is absolute in His desire that we forget our own sins and give no further thought to their consequences once we have been absolved for them. In short, Jesus is no less zealous about the cleansing of our hearts than He is about the cleanliness of His own home. This morning He has bent the whole power of His will toward your salvation. The Laws of Heaven and Earth do not apply here this morning. The Bread and the Wine are truly the Body and the Blood of Jesus. Baptism is no mere rite and the words coming out of my mouth have the very same authority as those of Jesus Christ as they resounded through the temple courts in Holy Week.

Friends, there is no painless way to be saved. We are saved by grace through faith for Christ's sake alone. We contribute nothing to our salvation other then the need for it. But even though our salvation is a free gift from God it is not an easy one to receive. It comes with the pain of having to hear how much we need to be saved. It comes with the realization that we are not free to think or feel what we want but must submit even our opinions to the unfathomable Word of God. The life of the Christian in this world is a painful one, full of contention and division and conflict. But that life is genuine and true and comes with the promise of eternal blessedness and fellowship with God. Jesus is scrupulous about the cleanliness of His house because He desires His house to be a place of joy and beauty and rest for us. It is just such a home that He has prepared for each of us and to which each of us is destined. We will, on the last day, be delighted forever more that Jesus was so shockingly fussy about His housekeeping. As with all things. It is for the sake of those who love Him and hate themselves that Jesus does His work. It is His promise that all our tears of shame will, on that great day be washed away and never again appear. But woe to him who has no tears to dry. Amen.

The Peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 5/27/2009