Month: February 2014

Text: Matthew 5:33-48
Date: Epiphany VII + 2/23/14

Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. We have been hearing our Lord Jesus Christ revealing that light, the gospel, the heart of God’s good and wise Law in His words on this mountain. Today He leaves us with the challenge “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The word He uses here doesn’t mean flawless or sinless, however. Teleioi. It is the same word He will use as His last word on the cross, tetelestai, “it is finished” (John 19:30). So here He is saying of you, you must be finished, completed, made whole. It is the present tense of our daily sanctification just as St. Paul wrote, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). The writer of the letter to the Hebrews uses the same word when he encourages us saying, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:1-2). So today Jesus is speaking about your new person, the new Adam which is perfect because it is the perfect Christ living in you. Continue reading “Christ the Perfecter”

Text: Matthew 5:21-32
Date: Epiphany VI + 2/16/14

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Is. 2:5). That walk and that light begins, says St. Matthew, with the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says Jesus as He begins the sermon with the Beatitudes. At first it sounds so nice, so comforting. But all too soon it begins to sound more like condemning Law, demands laid down as qualifications for entry into the Kingdom of God. It sounds like Law because our first reaction is to despair, for we are not and cannot adequately be “poor in spirit,” “meek,” “merciful” or “pure in heart.” We know our sin and weakness. But through these very same words the light of the Lord shines as Jesus reveals that these are not qualities expected of you but qualities given you by a gracious and merciful God, by faith, faith in Jesus, Jesus Christ the Revealer. Continue reading “Christ the Revealer”

Text: Matthew 5:13-16
Date: Epiphany V + 2/9/14

As we continue to encourage each other on our journey of faith and life, saying, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord,” suddenly today Jesus stops, turns to us and counters, saying, “You are the light!” Today God’s Word wants to turn you into a “Lib.” No not a political or social “liberal” but a disciple of Christ the Liberator. On the one hand, by our baptism into Christ and by faith in Him alone we have been liberated from sin and death and have the sure promise of resurrection and eternal life. On the other hand we are called to live as if we have been liberated, no longer enslaved to sin. St. Paul urges us on as he wrote to the Ephesians, saying, “this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:17-24). Continue reading “Christ the Liberator”