“TRINITY 6 2024”
Saint Matthew 5: 20-26
6th Sunday after Trinity: July 7 Anno Domini 2024
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
You focus too much on what “Raca” means and not enough on your sins—YOUR sins.
One of your biggest faults is that you think, all-in-all, you are pretty good. You try after all. I know you do, because we all do. It is not so important that I know you sin, and do not really “get-it,” as it is that God knows. The Lord Christ speaks: “[unless] your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven;” you will not be saved.
The Pharisees knew their Holy Scripture better than you do. They read Moses and The Prophets more than you do (and Micah, Hosea, Amos, and Daniel too). Their outward lives also, probably, were more in accord with the bare words of the Decalogue than your daily report card. Moses was quite clear because The Lord is clarity personified: “Keep (i.e., obey), do, The 10 Commandments perfectly, all the time.” If one, in their self-righteous, hypocritical, arrogant, and conceited, ‘little brain,’ wants to live under and brag about Law-Keeping, then they dang-better well be perfect—better than the Pharisees.
But the scribes and Pharisees were not perfect. They thought they were because they did not know or understand God. Their God was their own system of man-made customs, folkways, and interpretive legalisms. They were good, just like you, on “surface” obedience: “woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” [Mt. 23.23].
And while you do not exceed their hypocrisy, you come close to it: “well at least I have never murdered anyone; I have not cheated on my spouse; I do not worship the false gods of other cultures/nations; I do not steal; and, I do not tell many lies…” HYPOCRITES!
This just illustrates that though your ‘brain’ may have read, studied, and knows what the Reformer wrote in his Small Catechism explanations to the 10 Commandments, your heart, soul, and will, are blinded by “old Adam.”
The Holy Ghost lays it out clearly through the blessed Saint James: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law” [Ja. 2. 10-11].
Lest any of you, any of us, think there is any “wiggle room” in God’s demand for perfection—fearing and loving Him perfectly above all things; loving our neighbor perfectly, even as much as we love ourselves—Jesus makes the statement (the one that Luther “picks up on” in his explanations): “but I say unto you, that whoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.” AND EVEN there you will ‘nit-pic’ and say: “but Pastor, you omitted the words ‘without a cause.’” REPENT! You know what Christ means. Your own self-conceived “justifiable” causes are ‘slim to none, and slim is out of town.’
The reason pagans want no part of the Good News of “Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins” is that they do not believe in the uncompromising severity of God’s Law. They think they can do good works and thus weigh the scales in their favor just enough to be okay. The reason Christians, weak faith, fallible, sinful Christians take the Gospel for granted in lukewarm fashion, is that they (YOU) also avoid the Law as much as their sinful nature permits.
You hear what Christ says. You know, that is, you do truly believe Him: “…first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (prayer, praise, and thanksgiving). And for all those times—too many—that you do not “agree with thine adversary” (i.e., forgive him) you have a Savior that saves you from the “council,” from the “judge,” and from the “officer that would cast you into prison”.
The Pharisees who refused and resisted the true LAW were only made obdurate in their mercilessness. No Gospel could penetrate that kind of hard-heart. But for you who have been slain by The Law, who are contrite, are thus made miserable. That is good. The Mercy of Jesus is only for the miserable.
Jesus, because of His love for His Father and for you, willingly, joyfully, let Himself be led to the council (Sanhedrin). He permitted the lies and calumnies, and blasphemous slanders (far worse than Raca) be hurled, slapped, and spit on Him. He deigned to be falsely convicted that you would be proclaimed innocent. His captivity is your freedom. Christ was walked with “The Adversary” (the old ancient enemy) with all of your adversarial sins and treasonous trespasses…all the way to the Judge: God the Father and His wrath against sins and sin. Jesus let Himself be deliverer to the “officer” (the oh so temporary officer of death and hell) so that you by The Spirit, In Him, can say “depart Satan” I am Christ’s; I am forgiven. You pay no farthing, no works of deliverance, because Jesus paid the uttermost farthing. You come out and exit, pain, penalties, and perdition, because Jesus went into the jaws of death and damnation for you.
That is Righteousness; That is Gospel; That is Jesus for you.
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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