Pentecost 12 – lost due to a Zoom recorder malfunction. Sorry.
Pentecost 13
The suffering man brought to our Lord could not speak aright. His impediment was part and parcel of his deafness. The one who cannot hear cannot learn to speak clearly. So it is with you. The devil, working through your fallen flesh, stopped your ears by filling them with his lies. The Word of God could not work, for unbelief rejects truth. Unable to hear, you could not believe. So you could not rightly speak of God, which is to say that you could not confess Him. He who cannot confess cannot be saved. But God, in His great love for you, opened your ears and your heart by the piercing Word of the Law, that you might rightly hear of your sinfulness. His Spirit worked through the saving Word of the Holy Gospel, bringing through your ears and to your heart the forgiveness Christ won for you on the Cross. Hearing, by the indwelling of the Spirit, you rightly confess Christ, which is the fruit of faith. Thanks be to God, He has done all things well.
Pentecost 14
“Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” So was our Lord’s answer to the Lawyer stinging salt rubbed in his wounded ego. The Lawyer did not strive to keep, but rather sought a loophole in the perfect Law. But so have you. In the Lawyer’s failed attempt to skirt God’s Law, we see not just every hypocrite, but we see you, and me, and every fallen man. The Law is clear. It only and always accuses. So sinful men resort to equivocation. So does St. James write “If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.” But there is One who made Himself your neighbor, as He crossed the road of this fallen world, as He traversed death and the tomb, to pluck you out of the ditch of sin and death. He showed mercy to you. The God Man descended from heaven to become your neighbor, the true Good Samarian, that believing in Him, you inherit eternal life.
Pentecost 15
The works of the flesh are evident. They cannot be mistaken with the works of the Spirit. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. But if you are under the Law, which is to say if you are a sinner, if your flesh has its way, then you stand with the lepers, afar off, unable to draw near to God. And your disease ultimately breaks forth, covering the afflicted with unsightly proof of what is inside of him, finally taking his life. But God, in his superabundant grace, bespeaks you righteous. He proclaims you clean in Christ. He washes into you the cleanness of the perfect Son of God. Then you go, believing what God has said over against what you see and feel. Faith returns to where God is. Faith returns to give thanks. But God gives you more. He gives you to grow in wisdom and righteousness, in sanctification and redemption. And He says to you “Your faith has made you well.”
