Trinity 4

Note: Much of the part of this sermon that deals with the Gospel reading is drawn from the first sermon for Trinity 4 in Luther’s House Postils.

Readings: Luke 6:36-42 (Genesis 50)

“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead,” they became terrified. A long time ago, you see, they had plotted to kill their brother Joseph. They saw that their father favored Joseph; and Joseph had told them these seemingly-delusional fantasies of his that one day his family would all bow down to him. And so they took him and threw him in a deep pit, leaving him to die. But then they saw some traders passing by on their way to Egypt, and they decided to sell him. They got twenty pieces of silver for him. And Joseph became a slave in Egypt.

In this web of fraternal hatred and betrayal, of suffering and loss, God was working. He used the evil done by Joseph’s brothers to put Joseph in a position to become a ruler in Egypt, and so save the very brothers who had plotted to kill him.

But now, their father Jacob is dead. And the brothers fear Joseph will, at long last, exact his revenge. It must have been tempting. Joseph has soldiers and guards to command. He has more money and more power than we can imagine. But instead, he said to his brothers who were begging for forgiveness, “Am I in the place of God?”

And that is precisely the attitude that Jesus is addressing in today’s Gospel reading. When you show no mercy, you act higher than God Himself. When you judge someone not under your authority, you seize the right of God and act as though you are God. Who are you to condemn? Who are you to withhold forgiveness? This is what Joseph was saying. “Am I in the place of God? Only God has the right to judge you. It is my place to forgive and show mercy, and even though you harmed me, I will forgive. And besides all this, I see that while you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.”

We learn something most important in Joseph’s words: God uses evil for His own purposes; He uses evil for good. At the height of this is the crucifixion, where God takes the greatest evil ever perpetrated – the murder of the God-man, Jesus – and works it for good: the absolution of the world’s sin.

And so both Joseph and his brothers are examples to us: Joseph’s brothers confessed their sin and asked for forgiveness; and Joseph forgave them readily.

All this gets applied to us when Jesus says, “Judge not!” We could put the meaning of our Lord this way: “Stop judging, stop having an attitude of criticism.” These words of our Lord are often misused in a weaselly way to rule out any discipline, to take off the table any notion of absolute right and wrong; but Jesus does not rule out legitimate use of judgment. A judge and jury in a court has not only the right but the duty to judge; a teacher in a school must judge pupils; parents have the commandment of God to discipline and judge children; and pastors have the commandment of God to exercise church discipline. Jesus is not declaring anarchy and the end of all legitimate judgments, but wants to check our constant tendency to criticize and find fault in others, especially where God has not given us the office of judging.

So within our offices, where God has given us power, we are to exercise it in a godly way. For example, a child must obey his father, and therefore his father is the judge of that child and exercises discipline; but he is to judge in the fear of God, knowing that God will judge him at the last day.

But to our neighbors, where God has not made us judge or put us in any office over that person, then we are to show only mercy. Our attitude is to be just as Joseph’s: “Am I in the place of God?” “Who am I to judge you? No one.”

And then Jesus takes this a step further, with the parable of the speck and the plank. He introduces it with this damning question: “Can the blind lead the blind?” Jesus warns us about being blind to our own faults. How quick we are to find fault with our neighbor, while ignoring our own faults! We look at the speck in our brother’s eye, but do not perceive the log in our own. Jesus says “perceive,” meaning we are to consider carefully, analyzing our life – and in discovering the depth of our own sin, the faults of others appear as mere specks by comparison. St. Paul spoke of himself as “chief of sinners,” and that’s how we are to consider ourselves.

So when we see someone else sinning, even doing wrong against us, we should see that as a tiny speck of sawdust in our neighbor’s eye, knowing that our own eye is filled with enough beams of wood to build a stinking latrine. Luther put it this way:

Our Lord God graciously forgives our many sins and is resolved to forget our big beam, but we do the exact opposite. Isn’t that a totally inappropriate way to act? If we really think this through, we won’t be so hasty in judging our neighbor, but will say to him, Dear brother, may God who has overlooked my many planks, and has not only forgiven all my sins, but daily showers his grace on me by letting his sun shine, may he also forgive your splinter of sin. That is what it means to live like a Christian.

As we’ve seen with the other gospels for the Sundays after Trinity so far, we are not learning how to be saved – Christ has accomplished that for us. We are learning how to be disciples of Jesus, which means loving our enemies and forgiving those who trespass against us. “If we have received faith and are considered to be Christians who have been saved from sin, death, and every kind of misfortune through our Lord Christ, then a new life must immediately follow, one in which we do what he desires” [Luther]. Jesus summarizes what our new life as Christians is to be in this one simple statement, “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” He doesn’t mean be merciful to people we like, people who are close to us, or people from whom we can expect some good thing in return. He means be merciful to people we can’t stand, people who have hurt us, people that we would like to write off and never talk to again.

That’s hard! We don’t want to do it. So when that challenge comes, we have to remember this: We have broken every commandment, and despised God and His Word. He would be justified in saying, “Why should I not send those wretched hypocrites straight to hell?” But instead, He sends the rain to water our earth, He gives us food from the earth, and makes the sun to shine. He gives us beauty and joy in this world, a body to delight in His creation; but beyond all of that, He sends His Son to redeem us and give us eternal life. That is the kind of mercy He practices, and it is the kind of mercy He wishes us to learn to practice. The bad things that people have done to us cannot compare with our behavior toward God.

So think always, constantly meditate on how merciful and kind God is to you. If you think God is a harsh judge, then that is how you will treat others. But when you remember what He says about Himself – that He is merciful, that He is love – then you will want to be merciful and loving to your neighbor as God in Christ is to you. Remember Joseph’s rhetorical question: “Am I in the place of God?” No. But God in Christ took on flesh and came into your place, and all the judgment for your sin was poured out on Him. That is the judgment of God. Rejoice and be glad in that judgment, and measure out that judgment of forgiveness on your neighbors and even your worst enemies. +INJ+

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