Trinity 11
August 28, 2022 A+D
St. Luke 17: 11-19
NO SERMON AUDIO
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The goal of this sermon is not to teach you something new. You already deeply intimate with the the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector. It is the bread and butter of Christianity and a particular favorite of Lutherans whose doctrine and piety never veers very far from justification and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus welcomes and eats with sinners. No one deserves salvation because no one is without sin. And yet, there is no one, no matter how terrible, for whom Jesus did not die. There is no one who has not been reconciled to the Father and therefore no one for whom faith in Christ would not be enough. Faith in Christ delivers the most vile of men, as well as the best of men, from what they deserve to eternal glory by grace. But without faith, there is no salvation. So two men go up to the temple to pray. The one who is justified is the one repents and believes. The goal of this sermon isn’t to teach you that. It is to help you meditate upon it.
The collect is especially helpful. Notice the great and necessary exception of Christianity. We pray:
Almighty and everlasting God, always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than we either desire or deserve, pour down upon us the abundance of Your mercy, forgiving those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things that we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
The first part of the description is that God is more ready to hear than we to pray. That is because He believes His Word. He said what He meant. He meant what He says. Though our sins were scarlet, He declares them to be as white as snow. He hears and answers prayers and Christian prayer, along with all Christian good works, that is, all things that are done in faith, are pleasing to Him.
Next we confess that God is eager to give more than we desire or deserve. The second part is obvious. We deserve nothing. If He wants to give anything, it is more than we deserve. This lesson is well embodied by the tax collector in the Temple.
But are we ready to say that God is eager to give more than we desire? We are greedy! Our desires seem insatiable. When we daydream, 1 million dollars isn’t enough. We dream of hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of years to live in order to endow all the institutions that we love, to help all our family and friends, to buy all the pleasures that money can imagine, and the like.
Here is the reality. That is not simply desire. It is covetousness, the wrong, selfish desire. God desires more for us than pleasure and the avoidance of pain. We are greedy for the wrong things, confused by our fallen nature and its persistent lusts. God is eager to give more than we can imagine or desire, because He wants to give us Himself and with Himself virtue. It is as though we are worms upon the ground, daydreaming about mountains of dead flies and decaying garbage to gorge upon, while God wants to lift us up from the earth and fill us with music and beauty, to teach us to feast without gluttony, to be satisfied and yet still able to enjoy the bounty. He desires to give more than we desire. Because He desires to be our God, to bring us into His presence. To make us more than we now are.
The actual petition asks that God would “pour down upon us the abundance of (His) mercy, forgiving those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things that we are not worthy to ask.” This again is right in line with the Tax Collector. We need mercy. Our conscience is afraid because it recognizes that mercy is for the guilty. Despite that servile fear, we ask anyway. We ask because of God’s Word and promise. He is the One who commands and invites us to pray. He is the One who says He is eager to forgive and that He will hear and answer our prayers.
And all that leads to the great except. We are not worthy to ask for any of this “except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ.” Through that, by that, on account of that – the merits and mediation or intercession of Jesus Christ – we are worthy and more than worthy. It is our right as the sons of God named in Holy Baptism with the fullest and most intimate name of God. By that – the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ – we are most bold and confident before the throne of grace.
That isn’t to say that we boast and brag and strut around like the Pharisee. Our sins are serious, deadly and dangerous. Our role model is the tax collector. We come in confidence that Jesus is good. That is merit and mediation is more than enough. And that all of that merit and mediation serve the cause of mercy, a mercy that endures of forever, that forgives the sins of repentant believers and sends them home justified.
Once more, let us pray:
Almighty and everlasting God, always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than we either desire or deserve, pour down upon us the abundance of Your mercy, forgiving those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things that we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
In +Jesus’ Name. Amen.
