Sermon: Tenth Sunday after Trinity

2023 Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Jeremiah 7:1-11; Psalm 92; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Luke 19:41-48

This week I came across a book list called Recommendations for the Intellectual and Curious. I am no intellectual, but I am curious. So, I gave the list a careful look.  It has a section called “Books you will never be graded on except by Reality.” The books in that section include St. Augustine’s Confessions, works by Plato, Thomas A Kempis and Cicero.  The section also includes the Biblical books: The Epistles of St. Paul, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Genesis, the Psalms, and the Gospel of John.  My eyes caught this list because the prophet Jeremiah is included.  

What does the compiler of this list mean with “graded by Reality?” As I understand what God says to us in His Holy Word, God is the ultimate Reality by which we shall be graded or to use a Biblical word: judged.  The grade is Pass or Fail.  There is no in-between. Either you confess Jesus Christ as Lord or you don’t.  You either have faith or you don’t. You either bear the mark of the cross we receive in Holy Baptism and regularly affirm through our mutual confession, or you don’t. 

Graded by Reality means the Lord’s Reality.  The Lord presents us with the Truth.  God created the earth, the heavens, and everything in it.  God chooses to save us through the cross of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. The Holy Spirit creates faith within us through the announcement of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

While the Lord’s Truth says specific things about God, the Lord also speaks the Truth about us. We once lived in harmony with God, but through Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden, all of us perpetually fall short of the Glory of God.  There is so much good that men and women regularly do, and we strive to do more, but the Truth is that before God, we remain sinners. Our human nature is so profoundly disturbed that we could not possibly save ourselves, God must be the one to save us.  Only God can break through muck and grime and slipperiness of that unholy trinity: sin, death, and the devil. The Son of God comes into our midst as the Incarnate One and he ultimately dies on a cross for our salvation. 

When I spoke of our human nature a moment ago, I specifically used non-theological words that convey our human nature’s ability to be stuck, slow moving, dim witted, and easily turned away from the Truth that God presents. We are easily led astray to a far lesser truth that leads only to death.  The Holy Spirit shows us through text after text, Biblical story after story, how adept we are at twisting, contorting, and remaining firmly fixated on a lie or a deception that either our own sinful nature or Satan and his minion have concocted. 

We can, with hardly any effort at all, shift our focus and our faith from God’s Truth and Reality to a truth and reality of our own making.  We really don’t need the metaverse to create an alternate reality.  The Bible records humans doing it since the Garden of Eden. 

God speaks to us through both Law AND Gospel. The Law reveals our sin.  It shines a bright light upon our deceptions and false-truths. God not only speaks to us through the Word, but He also uses nature and other nations to grab our attention. 

In the long build up to that dreadful year 587 BC when Judah and Jerusalem are invaded by the Babylonians, then exiled from the Promised Land, the Lord God called Jeremiah to prophecy. He was to speak the Words that God gave to him.  He was not to pull any punches. He was not to amend or sugar-coat the message.  He was to speak God’s Truth, God’s Reality, with the hope that the covenant people would hear what God is saying to them and to repent.  For they not only needed to focus their faith on the one true God, but they also needed to live in the correct doctrine that the Lord gave them. 

Jeremiah 7:1-11 is part of a sermon that Jeremiah is compelled by God to give at the entrance of the temple.  Jeremiah is correcting a false doctrine of God.  First, that God is safely confined within the walls of the temple.  And, because the LORD is confined within the Temple, He really does not see what the people are really doing with their life.  They come to say the necessary words and offer the appointed sacrifices to make God happy with them, but there is no consistency in their lives.  They wear their “Sabbath best” expressions and acts of piety while upon the Temple grounds, but live a very different set of values in their personal and business lives. 

They have reduced the omnipresent and omniscient God of the Scriptures to a nice, predictable, easily managed deity that is confined within a box.  God only sees what they want God to see.  He is easily fooled.  

As Jeremiah makes plain, God see just fine into their crooked, sinful hearts.  He sees the injustice. He sees the blatant disregard for the disadvantaged. He sees the selfish and short-sighted life choices that the “faithful” are making.  The Lord sees the lust, the idolatry, the love of money, the theft, murder, adultery, and whatnot.  He does not approve.  Nor does He approve of the shift in focus away from faith in the Lord God to faith in the Temple. The temple is not a “safe place” to come to in order to get some forgiveness, refresh, and then continue on with life as normal.  These are all lies, dangerous fictions and doctrines.  If there is not heartfelt repentance and a change of behavior, then the days are surely coming, and will soon be, when the Lord’s judgment will be fall upon the land. 

In fact, in 587 BC that judgment did come with the Babylonian captivity of Judah and Jerusalem.  The temple was destroyed, and the people exiled from the land. 

When Jeremiah preached to the people, he used the phrase “den of robbers.”  The full sentence is: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”  In other words, have the faithful’s expectations of the Lord’s house been so debased  that it is now considered a place of respite similar to the outlaw’s hangout in the mountains in between criminal acts?  

Jesus uses the phrase “den of robbers” as he is clearing out the money changers.  The people with whom God established His covenant have once again slipped into false doctrine and sinful behavior.  The new temple is once again a significant focus of faith. The temple is also a place where the well-to-do and the well-connected make money from and take advantage of the less prosperous and the poor. On top of all of that the religious leaders have been twisting Scripture around and created an extensive system of rules whereby one essentially earns God’s favor. Jesus taught repentance and grace. In response to God’s grace, he calls us to discipleship.  He calls us to a life that is rooted in humility and repentance and the need for God’s unmerited declaration of grace. From that foundation, Jesus calls us follow Him by loving God and loving our neighbor. 

The leadership of the temple, in addition to the Pharisees and Sadducees are threatened by Jesus. 

Jesus not only speaks God’s Reality with sharp words.  He practices God’s Reality with his life choices and with his miracles.  He lifts up the lowly. He heals the physically, mentally, and spiritually broken. He extends our heavenly Father’s forgiveness to the meek, humbled, and repentant. He gives people life, renewed life, and hope. He inspires faith and obedience. His authority is clearly not of men, but of God.  In the Father’s name and through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus leads people into the only Reality that truly matters. Live and dwell in the Lord’s grace, my friends, Jesus teaches us. Feast in, delight in, God’s declaration of righteousness upon you. 

God’s declaration of righteousness upon us occurs because Jesus first takes up the cross for our sakes.  We cannot save ourselves any more than we can produce an authentic version of God’s reality. We are brought into God’s Reality of Grace through the merits of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for us. We receive this gift by faith. 

The temptation to turn away from God’s Reality is ever present.  We return again each day to the cross of Jesus so that his sacrificial death keeps us grounded in God’s truth.  Amen. 

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The Best of Schall: Recommendations for the Intellectual and the Curious.  https://www.christinenorvell.com/resources.html